Timeline
14 October 1919
The Hunter Commission, formally the Disorders Inquiry Committee, was constituted by the Government of India on to investigate the disturbances that had conv…
13 April 1919
The Hunter Commission, formally the Disorders Inquiry Committee, was constituted by the Government of India on 14 October 1919 to investigate the disturbance…
19 November 1919
The decisive moment came when General Reginald Dyer, who had ordered the firing at Jallianwala Bagh, testified before the committee on .
Positions at a glance
Supporters
The Hunter Commission submitted its report in March 1920, splitting along racial lines. The majority report, signed by the British members, censured Dyer for acting on a mistaken conception of his duty, found that he had continued firing longer than necessary, and condemned the "crawling order" he had imposed on a lane where a British missionary, Marcella Sherwood, had been assaulted. The three Indian members issued a sharper minority report rejecting the doctrine of "minimum force" as applied and arguing that Dyer's conduct was inhuman and unjustified. Neither report recommended penal or disciplinary action. Dyer was relieved of his command but faced no court-martial; the Army Council later required his resignation. The episode provoked a celebrated debate in the House of Commons and House of Lords in July 1920, where Edwin Montagu, Secretary of State for India, condemned "Prussianism," while the House of Lords passed a motion approving Dyer's conduct and a public fund organised by the Morning Post raised over £26,000 in his support.
Opponents
The Hunter Commission, formally the Disorders Inquiry Committee, was constituted by the Government of India on 14 October 1919 to investigate the disturbances that had convulsed Punjab, Bombay, and Delhi in April 1919, and above all the firing at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar on 13 April 1919. Its appointment followed mounting pressure within Britain and India after the suppression of agitation against the Rowlatt Act (the Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act of 1919), which had extended wartime emergency detention powers into peacetime. The committee took its informal name from its chairman, Lord William Hunter, a former Solicitor-General for Scotland and a senator of the College of Justice. It operated under the authority of the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, rather than as a judicial tribunal, and its terms of reference confined it to inquiring into the causes and conduct of the disorders and the measures taken to suppress them—not to prosecuting individuals.
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In November 1919, General Reginald Dyer testified before the Hunter Commission in Lahore that he had fired on the Jallianwala Bagh crowd to create a "moral effect," a confession that shaped the committee's 1920 report.
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