Rabindranath Tagore opposed the memorial proposed at Jallianwala Bagh in 1920. His objection was not to remembering the massacre of 13 April 1919 or its victims. He argued that a monument in the form the rulers used for their own memorials would copy the colonial state’s way of commemorating violence, and that copying it would amount to defeat. Mahatma Gandhi disagreed. He believed a memorial at the site could keep the victims’ courage and innocence in public view without keeping alive hatred of General Dyer.
What Tagore’s message said in 1920
The clearest record of Tagore’s position is a written message prepared for the Bombay session of the Indian National Congress in April 1920. According to Sarmistha Dutta Gupta’s 2024 book excerpt from The Jallianwala Bagh Journals, published with permission by Scroll.in, C. F. Andrews conveyed the message to the session and M. A. Jinnah read it out. The message opposed the proposed memorial in the form then being put forward, and Tagore went on to develop the argument in the journal Santiniketan later that year.
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The objection: copying imperial monuments
The most quoted passage, as Dutta Gupta reproduces it from Santiniketan, reads:
“It is not a matter of pride for us to commemorate this event in the Punjab … Our rulers have erected memorials of their crimes in Kanpur and Calcutta. Should we imitate them? Wouldn’t such an attempt be our defeat?”
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The argument turns on the word imitation. Tagore pointed to monuments that the British had built to commemorate their own acts of violence, and asked whether an Indian memorial in the same idiom would simply adopt the rulers’ way of seeing the past. In Dutta Gupta’s reading, this is an anti-colonial critique of monumentalization: a claim about the form public memory takes under an empire, not a refusal to remember. Tagore’s concern was with what a monument says and who it speaks for.
Gandhi’s counter-argument
Gandhi accepted much of Tagore’s reasoning. His response, also quoted by Dutta Gupta, reads:
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“What Sir Rabindranath Tagore has said is perfectly true, that we shall certainly not advance by keeping alive the memory of General Dyer’s cruelty. To perpetuate the memory of truth, firmness, courage and innocence, wherever these may be found – that is the people’s real duty and in doing so lies the nation’s regeneration.”
Gandhi therefore shared Tagore’s rejection of a memorial organised around the perpetrator’s cruelty. Where he differed was in his view of what a memorial could do. He held that a memorial could shift attention from Dyer to the victims’ example, so the site itself could carry a moral lesson rather than a record of imperial wrongdoing.
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Two theories of public memory compared
| Question | Tagore | Gandhi |
|---|---|---|
| Is a memorial at Jallianwala Bagh acceptable? | Opposed the proposed memorial as framed in 1920 | Believed a memorial could be made to work, if it preserved the victims’ qualities |
| What model of commemoration is at issue? | Colonial monuments to imperial crimes, with Kanpur and Calcutta cited as examples | Commemoration that honours the victims rather than the perpetrator |
| What is the main risk? | That an Indian monument would imitate the rulers and so be a defeat | That keeping Dyer’s cruelty in view would hold the nation back |
| What should be preserved? | Not framed as a list of qualities; the concern is the form of the memorial | Truth, firmness, courage and innocence |
Both men agreed that General Dyer’s cruelty should not be the centre of public memory. They disagreed about whether a memorial built at the site could avoid that outcome.
What happened to the memorial proposals
Two later documents show that memorial planning continued, though neither settles what Tagore’s view produced.
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- The 1949 Nehru note. A note by Jawaharlal Nehru, dated 24 July 1949, says the memorial fund began in 1919 and that several proposals for a building or structure were made. It records that general opinion favoured leaving the Bagh as an open space and garden. The same note states that one lakh rupees (Rs 1 lakh) was subscribed on the spot at the Amritsar Congress session in 1919. This is Nehru’s later account of the figure, not an independently audited one.
- The 1928 draft inscription. Gandhi’s Collected Works include a draft inscription for the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial dated 1 July 1928. It is identified as an enclosure to Gandhi’s letter to Mulkaraj, and it describes the ground as hallowed by the blood of people killed by British bullets on 13 April 1919.
The 1949 preference for an open garden is a record of later opinion. It is not evidence that Tagore’s argument shaped the final design.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Tagore’s condemnation of the massacre
Tagore’s opposition to a monument should not be read as indifference to the killings. The Amritsar district administration’s public page on the site quotes his protest against the massacre when he returned his knighthood. That protest is background on how strongly he condemned the atrocity, but it does not address the memorial question.
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What the evidence does and does not establish
- Established: Tagore opposed a memorial at Jallianwala Bagh in the imperial form in a message conveyed to the April 1920 Bombay Congress session, and he developed the argument in Santiniketan during 1920. Gandhi disagreed about what a memorial could preserve.
- Quotation status: The wording of Tagore’s and Gandhi’s statements is as reproduced by Dutta Gupta in her 2024 excerpt. The original 1920 issue of Santiniketan was not checked for this article, so readers who need the exact phrasing should consult the periodical.
- Not established: that Tagore’s view determined the memorial’s later design or that the open-garden preference reflected his argument. The figure of Rs 1 lakh rests on Nehru’s 1949 note.
- Not covered: the present condition of the site or the current form of its memorial.
For further reading, Dutta Gupta’s The Jallianwala Bagh Journals is the source of the excerpt used here and contains the fuller context around these passages.
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