Saifuddin Kitchlew & Dr. Satyapal

Saifuddin Kitchlew and Dr. Satyapal were secretly arrested and driven out of Amritsar on 10 April 1919. Three days later, a crowd gathered at Jallianwala Bagh to protest their arrest, where General Dyer’s troops opened fire.

The Arrest That Triggered a Massacre Need to Know

• Dr. Satyapal was born on 11 May 1885, in Wazirabad, Punjab. Saifuddin Kitchlew was born on 15 January 1888, in Amritsar.
• Both became prominent Congress leaders in Punjab. Kitchlew was elected Municipal Commissioner of Amritsar in 1919.
• Both led protests against the Rowlatt Act, a law extending wartime emergency powers that let the British detain suspects without trial.
• British authorities kept both men under close surveillance from mid-March 1919, on the orders of Punjab’s Lieutenant Governor, Michael O’Dwyer.
• On 10 April 1919, they were summoned to Deputy Commissioner Miles Irving’s house in Amritsar, and secretly arrested.
• They were driven out of the city under military escort, disguised as a hunting party, and taken to Dharamsala, 50 miles away.
• News of their arrest spread quickly, and a public meeting was called for 13 April 1919, at Jallianwala Bagh, to protest.
• At that meeting, General Reginald Dyer ordered troops to open fire on the unarmed crowd, killing and wounding thousands in the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

Two Different Paths Afterward Good to Know

• Satyapal studied at Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he was a friend of Jawaharlal Nehru. He briefly served as a lieutenant in the Indian Medical Service during the First World War, then built a medical practice in Amritsar; he rejoined the IMS as a captain during the Second World War.
• Kitchlew earned a BA from Cambridge and a PhD from a German university, before practising law in Amritsar.
• In June 1919, at the Amritsar Conspiracy Case trial in Lahore, Satyapal was convicted alongside 14 others, and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.
• Kitchlew went on to become General Secretary of the All India Congress Committee in 1924. He later chaired the reception committee for the historic 1929-30 Lahore Congress session.
• Kitchlew was a founding member of Jamia Millia Islamia, and co-founded the Naujawan Bharat Sabha, a nationalist youth organisation.
• Both men strongly opposed the Partition of India in 1947. Kitchlew called it a “surrender of nationalism for communalism.”
• Kitchlew received the Stalin Peace Prize (later renamed the Lenin Peace Prize) in 1952, for his post-independence work with the All-India Peace Council. He died in 1963.
• Satyapal returned to politics after independence, winning a seat in the Punjab Vidhan Sabha in 1952. He died in 1954, in Shimla.

Test Yourself

Please wait…

1. The public protest that became the Jallianwala Bagh massacre on 13 April 1919 gathered in response to what event?

The arrest of Saifuddin Kitchlew and Dr. Satyapal three days earlier

The passage of the Rowlatt Act itself

The dismissal of the Amritsar Municipal Council

A newspaper report of General Dyer’s appointment

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Remembered Less Than What They Caused Great to Know

• The secrecy of the operation against Kitchlew and Satyapal is well documented. Deputy Commissioner Irving himself said he wanted them “30 miles on their way to Dharamsala before any one knew about it.”
• Their arrest, not the Rowlatt Act itself, was the immediate trigger for the crowd gathering at Jallianwala Bagh. This makes them the direct, if unwilling, precipitating cause of one of the freedom struggle’s defining tragedies.
• Michael O’Dwyer, the Punjab Lieutenant Governor, had ordered the surveillance and arrest of Kitchlew and Satyapal. Udham Singh later assassinated him, in retribution for the massacre that followed.
• Despite the scale of what their arrest set in motion, both men are far less widely remembered today. The massacre itself, and General Dyer, the officer who ordered the firing, tend to dominate popular memory instead.