Jallianwala Bagh: C Sankaran Nair called out a massacre

The Indian who called out a massacre - and shamed the British Empire 1 hour ago Share Save Meryl Sebastian BBC News, Kochi Share Save Alamy Sir Chettur Sankaran Nair was one of the few Indians to hold high government positions during British rule Long before India gained independence, one defiant voice inside the British Empire dared to call out a colonial massacre - and paid a price for it. Sir Chettur Sankaran Nair, a lawyer, was one of the few Indians to be appointed to top government posts when the British ruled the country. In 1919, he resigned from the Viceroy's Council after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in the northern Indian city of Amritsar in Punjab, in which hundreds of civilians attending a public meeting were shot dead by British troops. On the 100th anniversary of the massacre, then UK Prime Minister Theresa May described the tragedy as a "shameful scar" on Britain's history in India. Nair's criticism of Punjab's then Lieutenant Governor, Michael O'Dwyer, led to a libel case against him, which helped spotlight the massacre and the actions of British officials. In a biography of Nair, KPS Menon, independent India's first foreign secretary, described him as "a very controversial figure of his time". Nair was known for his independent views and distaste for extremist politics, and spoke critically of colonial rule and even of Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian independence hero who is now regarded as the father of the nation. Menon, who married Nair's daughter Saraswathy, wrote: "Only [Nair] could have insulted the all powerful British Viceroy on his face and opposed Mahatma Gandhi openly." Nair was not a familiar name in India in recent decades, but earlier this year, a Bollywood film based on the court case, Kesari Chapter 2- starring superstar Akshay Kumar - helped bring attention to his life. Getty Images Bollywood star Akshay Kumar played Nair in the recent film Kesari Chapter 2 Nair was born in 1857 into a wealthy family in what is now Palakkad district in Kerala state. He studied at the Presidency College in Madras, acquiring a bachelor's degree before studying law and beginning his career as an apprentice with a Madras High Court judge. In 1887, he joined the social reform movement in the Madras presidency. Throughout his career, he fought to reform Hindu laws of the time on marriage and women's rights and to abolish the caste system. For some years, he was a delegate to the Indian National Congress and presided over its 1897 session in Amraoti (Amravati). In his address, he held the British-run government "morally responsible for the extreme poverty of the masses", saying the annual famines "claimed more victims and created more distress than under any civilised government anywhere else in the world". He was appointed public prosecutor in 1899 and writes in his autobiography about advising the government on seditious articles in newspapers, including those by his close friend G Subramania Iyer, the first editor of The Hindu newspaper. "On many occasions… I was able to persuade them not to take any step against him." He became a high court judge in 1908 and was knighted four years later. Nair moved to Delhi in 1915 when he was appointed a member of the Viceroy's Council, only the third Indian to hold the position. He was a fierce proponent of India's right to govern itself and pushed for constitutional reforms during his time on the council. Through 1918 and 1919, his dissent and negotiations with Edwin Montagu, then secretary of state for India, helped expand provisions of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms which laid out how India would gradually achieve self-governance. Montagu wrote in his diary that he had been warned "that it was absolutely necessary to get him on my side, for Sankaran Nair wielded more influence than any other Indian". Getty Images In 2013, then UK Prime Minister David Cameron visited the Jallianwala Bagh memorial and paid tribute to the victims A pivotal moment in Nair's career as a statesman was the massacre in Jallianwala Bagh, when hundreds of unarmed Indians were shot dead in a public garden on the day of the Baisakhi festival. Official estimates said nearly 400 people were killed and more than 1,500 wounded by the soldiers, who fired under the orders of Brigadier General REH Dyer. Indian sources put the death toll closer to 1,000. Nair writes in his 1922 book Gandhi and Anarchy about following the events in Punjab with increasing concern. The shooting at Jallianwala Bagh was part of a larger crackdown in the province, where martial law had been introduced - the region was cut off from the rest of the country and no newspapers were allowed into it. "If to govern the country, it is necessary that innocent persons should be slaughtered at Jallianwala Bagh and that any Civilian Officer may, at any time, call in the military and the two together may butcher the people as at Jallianwala Bagh, the country is not worth living in," he wrote. A month later, he resigned from the council and left for Britain, where he hoped to rouse public opinion on the massacre. In his memoir, Nair writes of speaking to the editor of The Westminster Gazette which soon published an article called the Amritsar Massacre. Other papers including The Times also followed suit. "Worse things had happened under British rule, but I am glad I was able to obtain publicity for this one at least," Nair wrote. Getty Images Brigadier General REH Dyer ordered his troops to fire on unarmed civilians