Michael O'Dwyer

Uncommon card · No. 103379

Sir Michael Francis O'Dwyer (28 April 1864 – 13 March 1940) was an Irish colonial officer in the Indian Civil Service (ICS) who served as the Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab from 1913 to 1919. His tenure is most notably associated with the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, which took place in Amritsar on 13 April 1919. O'Dwyer endorsed Reginald Dyer’s actions at Jallianwala Bagh and maintained that Dyer’s order to fire on the crowd was justified. As a result, his actions are considered among the most significant factors in the rise of the Indian independence movement. He subsequently administered martial law in Punjab, on 15 April and backdated it to 30 March 1919. In 1925, he published India as I Knew It in which he wrote that his time as administrator in Punjab was preoccupied by the threat of Indian nationalism, demanding freedom and the spread of political agitation. In 1940, in retaliation for the massacre, O'Dwyer was assassinated by the Indian revolutionary Sardar Udham Singh.

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