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This month has marked the anniversary of one of the bloodiest episodes in British colonial history, the Jalianwala Bagh Massacre. The massacre took place on Sunday the 13th of April 1919 on the orders of Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer. Dyer had banned public meetings because he believed an Indian rebellion was imminent. When he heard of a gathering at Amritsar's Jallianwala Bagh he ordered his riflemen to shoot at the unarmed crowd non-stop for about ten minutes till the ammunition ran out. The deathtoll remains under debate. An inquiry by colonial authorities claimed there were 379 fatalities but Indian sources put it nearer to 1,000. To discuss the impact of Jalianwala Bagh on today鈥檚 Sikhs in the Nortwest, Talat-Farooq Awan was joined in the studio by Luckvear Singh, Kuldeep Singh and Gurmeet Singh from Chorlton's Shri Guru Gobind Singh Gurdwara. In this extract we first hear from Sundeep Singh Deol who joined him on the line from the Guru Nanak Gurdwara in Preston and started by describing what happened on that day in Amritsar.
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