Stop Performing History
Every April, the same tired script plays out across the border. Civil society groups in Pakistan gather to light candles, lawyers give somber speeches, and activists demand apologies for a crime committed over a century ago. They call it paying homage. I call it a comfortable distraction.
The Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919 was a foundational horror of British colonial rule. General Dyer’s decision to open fire on a trapped, unarmed crowd in Amritsar is an objective stain on human history. But when this event is commemorated in modern-day Lahore or Islamabad, it isn't about history. It’s about the safety of the past.
It is easy to mourn victims of a dead empire. It costs nothing to point the finger at a ghost. The "lazy consensus" of these vigils is that we are all united against colonial tyranny. The reality is that these ceremonies serve as a convenient pressure valve, allowing modern institutions to pretend they stand for human rights while ignoring the identical mechanics of state violence happening in their own zip codes today.
The Luxury of Distant Outrage
Why do we see such high-intensity engagement with 1919 and such deafening silence regarding 2024?
History is being used as a shield. When lawyers in Pakistan occupy the streets to honor the victims of the British Raj, they are operating in a risk-free environment. No state entity is going to crack down on you for hating the British Empire in 2026. It is the ultimate "safe" protest.
If these same civil society members applied the logic of Jallianwala Bagh—that the state has no right to use lethal force against its own assembly—to contemporary domestic issues, the candles would be extinguished by the authorities within minutes. We are witnessing a curated form of remembrance that intentionally avoids any "synergy" with current political struggles.
The Myth of the Unique Atrocity
The standard narrative treats Jallianwala Bagh as a freak accident of history, a "one-off" moment of madness by a "lone wolf" General Dyer. This is a lie.
Dyer was not a glitch; he was the feature. The Rowlatt Act, which the Amritsar crowd was protesting, allowed the state to detain people without trial. If that sounds familiar, it should. Many post-colonial states in South Asia didn't just inherit the British legal system; they polished it. They kept the sedition laws. They kept the preventive detention acts. They kept the heavy-handed policing tactics.
- The Rowlatt Act of 1919: Detention without trial, no jury, no appeal.
- Modern Counterparts: Special powers acts and "Maintenance of Public Order" ordinances that look remarkably similar.
When you pay homage to the victims of 1919 while remaining silent about the "disappeared" or the arbitrarily detained in 2026, you aren't honoring the dead. You are gaslighting the living. You are mourning the bullet but defending the gun.
The Apology Industrial Complex
The competitor's piece likely drones on about the need for a formal British apology. This is the ultimate red herring.
Demanding an apology from a modern British Prime Minister for a 1919 massacre is a form of performance art. It provides a moral victory that changes zero lives. It’s a low-stakes demand that allows local leaders to look "tough on imperialism" without actually challenging the neo-colonial structures—like debt traps and lopsided trade agreements—that currently cripple the region.
I’ve seen activists spend years drafting petitions for a "meaningful" apology. It's a waste of intellectual capital. An apology is a linguistic trick used to close a chapter that shouldn't be closed. It allows the oppressor to say "we're sorry" and the oppressed to feel a momentary rush of validation, while the underlying power dynamics remain untouched.
The Legal Community's Cognitive Dissonance
Lawyers are always at the forefront of these vigils. They cite the violation of "natural justice" in 1919. Yet, the legal landscape in South Asia is often a graveyard for these very principles.
In many regional courts, the wait for justice exceeds a human lifespan. The "black-letter law" used to justify state overreach today is often the exact same legal framework the British used to justify the massacre. If you are a lawyer honoring the victims of the Raj but you aren't actively dismantling the colonial-era penal codes in your own backyard, you are a hypocrite. You are participating in a costume party, not a movement.
Real Homage Requires Risk
If you want to truly honor those who died under Dyer’s bullets, stop lighting candles. Start looking at the structures of power that make such massacres possible.
- Analyze the Police Code: Most police manuals in the region haven't been fundamentally overhauled since the 1860s. They were designed to control a conquered population, not protect a citizenry.
- Audit the Judiciary: How many people are currently sitting in jail without a trial, exactly as the Rowlatt Act intended?
- Challenge the Assembly Bans: If "Section 144" (a colonial-era law used to ban gatherings) is still being used to stifle dissent today, then the spirit of the British Raj is still in charge.
The people at Jallianwala Bagh didn't die so that you could have a nice, quiet photo-op 100 years later. They died because they dared to defy a state that told them they had no right to speak.
The Subservience of Selective Memory
We choose to remember what makes us look like victims and choose to forget what makes us look like accomplices.
The British didn't run India and Pakistan with just a few thousand soldiers. They ran it with the cooperation of local elites, local police, and a local bureaucracy. That same bureaucracy is still there. It has the same desks, the same files, and the same disdain for the "common man."
When civil society members in Pakistan pay homage to Jallianwala Bagh, they are often members of that very same elite class that benefited from the transition of power. They want the aesthetic of the revolution without the inconvenience of a reform. They are mourning the victims of 1919 because it’s a way to feel virtuous without being dangerous.
Stop Looking Back to Avoid Looking Around
The "People Also Ask" sections of history usually focus on "Who was responsible?" or "How many died?" These are the wrong questions. The right question is: "Why does the machinery of 1919 still exist?"
The tragedy of Amritsar isn't that it happened. The tragedy is that we kept the blueprints. We kept the water cannons, the lathis, the secret detentions, and the "shoot to disperse" orders. We just changed the color of the uniforms.
True homage isn't a speech in a town square. It isn't a floral wreath. It’s the systematic destruction of the laws that allow a government to treat its people like a target.
If your activism ends where the government’s comfort begins, you aren't an activist. You’re a hobbyist. If you are more comfortable protesting a dead British General than a living local bureaucrat, your "homage" is a lie.
Put out the candles. Open the law books. Find the modern General Dyers. That is where the work is. Anything else is just theater for the bored.
