Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar

A memorial of national significance, Jallianwalla Bagh is a public garden in Amritsar which is the site of the tragic Jallianwala Massacre. Spread across an area of 6.5 acres, mass killing of peaceful unarmed Sikh individuals including women and children, took place on the day of Baisakhi, the main Sikh festival. British troops on the command of Brigadier General Dyer, open fired on around 20,000 people, which resulted in more than 1000 casualties. The garden built to commemorate the dead, still shows bullet marks of the walls surrounding the site. Designed by renowned American architect Benjamin Polk, the entire structure depicts the suffering and dreadful trial of people during this heinous act. The well that saved lives of a lot of people is still intact and well-maintained by the civic authorities.

Jallianwala Bagh, which was once an ordinary garden house become a site witness to most gruesome committed by the British empire. Mass killing of peaceful unarmed Sikh individuals including women and children, took place here in 1919.

Jallianwala Bagh is a historic garden and ‘memorial of national importance’ in Amritsar, India, preserved in the memory of those wounded and killed in the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre that occurred on the site on the festival of Vaisakhi, 13 April 1919. It houses a museum, gallery and a number of memorial structures.The 7-acre (28,000 m2) garden site of the massacre is located in the vicinity of the Golden Temple complex, the holiest shrine of Sikhism and is managed by the Jallianwala Bagh National Memorial Trust, which was established as per the 'Jallianwala Bagh National Memorial Act, 1951'.

History

Jallianwala Bagh or "the garden of the Jallah-man", with its well, implies that it was once green and flowering. Over the years it had become popular as a recreation ground and an area of rest for those visiting the nearby Golden temple. In 1919, it was a dried out plot stretched to seven acres and was surrounded by tightly packed multi-occupancy buildings divided by some narrow gullies and holding only one narrow entrance and exit route. It was unoccupied and surrounded by a wall.The place derives its name from that of the owner of this piece of land during the rule of the Sikh Empire. It was then the property of the family of Himmat Singh, who originally came from the village of Jalla district of the Punjab in India. The family were collectively known as Jallewalle.