In 1922, the Government of Punjab distributed nearly 22 lakh rupees to Punjabi families of the dead and maimed at Jallianwalla Bagh (Amritsar) and Gujranwala on the insistence of local Indians. The compensation was (perhaps) the first of its type offered to colonial subjects on a larger scale in history. This paper explores not only the historical aspects related to the the debates for compensation — how and why they emerged, but places these compensation efforts into a wider conversation on reparations, colonial violence, justice, and law.
About the Speaker
Hardeep Dhillon is a Ph.D. Candidate in the History Department at Harvard University with a secondary in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGS). Her dissertation project, titled Indians on the Move, explores the movement of Punjabi men in the early twentieth century to write a larger history of border and boundary making, mobility, race, law, and dissent.