HARKING BACK: Flogging and humiliation that Nila Gumbad once represented

One of the incidents that interested me immensely was a description by my father of how people were treated in Lahore’s Nila Gumbad square during the riots of 1919 following the events of Jallianwala Bagh.

Every time we walked past that square on our way to Anarkali, or onward towards Rattigan Road where we lived, he would recall some gory detail. He had it stored in his memory almost like a live film. My guess is it was the collective memory of people living in the old Walled City of Lahore, from where he picked up details. Now that I am researching that incident, it is amazing how detailed were his recollections. It has always made me wonder just why we never recall these important happenings. They are after all part of our collective struggle for freedom.

Of late I have been researching in detail what happened at Nila Gumbad in that period by going over the report compiled by the ‘Disorder Inquiry Committee’ headed by Lord Hunter. It is called the Hunter Report and was first printed by the Government Printing Press, Calcutta, in 1920, though for many years remained ‘confidential’.

The two GOCs of Lahore, one of the garrison area and the other of the civil area, were empowered to issue ordinances and notifications, but only after consulting their ‘superiors’. Both set up summary courts with each being headed by a Field Officer. Their powers were derived from the Army Act, though the Deputy Commissioner, F. Spencer, who was also the First Class Magistrate of Lahore, made it clear that no sentence that he could pass should be passed by the military. Within this stricture lay the portents of conflict within the colonial rulers, and the reason for that is very interesting. It could be relevant to what is happening today.

The military decided that they would not imprison anyone, but that they would “teach the people a lesson”. As one commander said to the inquiry: “The people must feel humiliated”. So they resorted to large scale whipping and being made to crawl on the floor before officials of the colonial power, and more so before ‘white women’. The amazing policy was not to arrest, but to punish, to hurt, to humiliate and to make them labour as a form of punishment.

In this a strange policy was followed, and the ordinance said: “Legal practitioners whose place of practice is outside the Punjab, are not allowed to enter a martial law area without permission of the martial law administrator”. For example Lala Harkishen Lal was deported from the Punjab and booked outside. He was then brought to Lahore and within two days he was sentenced. This meant that no person arrested could hire a lawyer. When the inquiry committee queried General Beynon, he replied: “Because it provided an advantage to us and did not waste time. Look at it from a military point of view. Lawyers need not confuse military matters”.

But the most interesting set of laws was the ‘Fancy Punishments Act’, and this left it to the local commander to think of some ‘fancy’ punishment. In Lahore there was a Captain Doveton who was charged with the civil area troops. He set up at a distance from the main city on Ferozepur Road, at today’s Walton area, hay stacks. All students arrested were driven there in trucks and made to unload the stacks and then collected at another nearby place. This was to be repeated all day long. If any student complained he was taken aside and whipped five times with a thin bamboo stick nicknamed ‘Maula Bakhsh’.

Captain Doveton told the inquiry that there was a student from Kasur who was heard telling a soldier: “hukam kya cheez hai. Hum koi hukam nahin jante”. This boy was arrested at Nila Gumbad square and he was made to kneel in front of Captain Doveton and touch his forehead to the ground one hundred times, each time swearing allegiance to the Crown. He was then sent to the haystack yard for three days and whipped twice a day.

Then Doveton decided to set up barbed wire all over the Nila Gumbad square and local people were forced to crawl under it while a special path for British officials and their wives was left. All those who entered the square were forced to touch their foreheads to the ground. The inquiry asked: “By this fancy punishment what did you hope to accomplish?” To this he answered: “To the people if there is no authority and no master, then the main object was to impress everybody that he was not his own master and they had to conform to order”.

When asked if it was humane, Captain Doveton replied: “I thought it was suitable. At least it humiliated them”. As the inquiry report goes on the question of public flogging, several top commanders were questioned, among them General Beynon and also Sir Michael O’Dwyer, who said: “Initially the idea was to make the people realise that law was being strictly enforced. His comment was: “A few flogging is good for young boys, it will make others see the light of day”.

In the three days starting April 19, 1919, a lot of people were flogged in Lahore. Amazingly a marriage party going from the Walled City towards Mozang was stopped for violating a Martial Law Order and a number of the party were flogged five times each. Then outside every gateway of the 13 of the walled city a flogging stand was set up, and from time to time arrests were made and the punishment carried out. Five flogs was the minimum and 30 the maximum.

At Nila Gumbad a total of 34 people were recorded as being flogged over three days when they refused to crawl on the ground and touch their foreheads on the ground before a British officer. In the walled city of those days people talked of ‘hundreds’ being flogged. The truth I just cannot vouch for. In Lahore area the inquiry enlists 258 major known floggings while the minor ones are ignored. As reports of this severe corporal punishment spread to other parts of the sub-continent, it created considerable unease.

The very name Nila Gumbad, so the inquiry report states, instilled fear in the minds of protesters. But then given the unease the Commander-in-Chief of the Army in India banned such floggings without a trial, or being recorded. What shocked the Lord Hunter inquiry was that there were no records of people flogged and released.

The collective struggle for freedom since colonial rule came to Lahore and the Punjab in 1849 seems not to be taught in our schools and universities. It seems the Pakistan Resolution of March 1940 is our starting point of study. The 91 years of struggle and humiliation in between, including the War of Independence of 1857, do not seem to interest us. This is why we must seriously reconsider just who we are and why our collective struggle is ignored. Must we remain communal forever?