Mumbai, April 11: Filmmaker Karan Johar found it ridiculous that General Dyer’s great-granddaughter chose to describe a survivor of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre “a looter” when she met the family of the victim for a documentary.
A video, which is from a 2019 Channel 4 documentary and has gone viral on social media, shows Caroline Dyer, the great-granddaughter of General Reginald Dyer who led the British troops during the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, meet with Raj Kohli, whose great-uncle Balwant Singh survived the massacre by hiding under the pile of bodies.
Caroline praised her great-grandfather as someone greatly liked by Indians and “who spoke three or four Indian languages which very few people did.”
Related Posts:
Kohli spoke fondly about his great-uncle and described him as a bit of hellraiser as a young man, to which Caroline quickly added, “Ah, he was a looter, was he a looter”, leading Kohli to confront her views that those gathered there on the fateful day of April 13, 1919 were rioters.
She then said, “I think history is history and you’ve got to accept that and not wallow in it.”
At a pomotional event for the film, Johar was asked whether he had seen the vidoe, to which Johar said he was left fuming when he saw the lady’s response.
“I don’t want to mince my words, be diplomatic in my answer or certainly beat around the bush when I say, how ridiculous she is to say that and how dare she? She was calling those thousands of people looters? They were innocent people who conglomerated right there for what was meant to be the auspicious day of Baisakhi, thinking something else was going to be the eventuality of the day and look what happened.
“The fact that she has even said those things, makes me so angry on a humanitarian level. Khoon khaulta hai jab maine wo video dekha with the fact that she has such disdain for one of the biggest genocides in the history of our nation and the world. The fact that she was disdainful of it makes me just angry and want andemand an apology even more.”
Johar said General Dyer himself had admitted he only stopped shooting when the bullets ran out. He also called out Caroline for harping on her great-grandfather’s love for Indian people and describing him as a compassionate person.
“What love can you have in your heart when your actions only spoke of hate? And the fact that she is living in a la la land of her own and is in some delusion of her own. And I don’t know her. I haven’t met her and I don’t wish to meet her. But the fact that she even said those things just makes me so angry,” Johar said.
Akshay said one nation’s trauma is other nation’s lesson but Dyer’s great-granddaughter never understood that.
“That’s why she keeps on saying history is history… I don’t think she has understood the lesson… And you will see that whole thing, the anger (in the film). By the time the film comes to the climax, you will understand how much anger there was. And I would rather say you watch the film to see the anger,” he said.
Based on the book “The Case That Shook the Empire” by Nair’s great grandson Raghu Palat and his wife Pushpa Palat, the film details the 1924 defamation trial in which Michael O’Dwyer, former Lieutenant Governor of Punjab and the architect of the massacre on 13 April 1919.
Johar said while everyone knows about the massacre very few people know about the case that Nair fought and the film demands that the British apologise for what happened in Jallianwala Bagh. (PTI)
