By Andrew Roberts PUBLISHED: 17:02 EST, 23 February 2013 | UPDATED: 17:02 EST, 23 February 2013 David Cameron, pictured at the Golden temple in Amritsar, described the killings as 'monstrous' but did not make a formal apology It is 5.15pm on Sunday, April 13, 1919, in the Sikh holy city of Amritsar in the Punjab. An open-topped motorcar pulls up near the Jallianwala Bagh, a seven-acre area of waste ground, and Brigadier Reginald ‘Rex’ Dyer steps out. He then attempts to bring an armoured car, with its machine gun, into the area, but is foiled because the street is too narrow. No matter, he orders his force of Indian and Gurkha troops to open fire into a peaceful crowd of local men, women and children who are listening to Gandhian speeches about non-violence.
@highlight
Brigadier Reginald Dyer ordered troops to fire on a crowd of 25,000 in Amritsar, Punjab, on April 13, 1919
@highlight
British maintain 379 were killed - lower than the 1000 stated by India
@highlight
Anti-British feeling was at its highest since the Indian Mutiny in 1857
@highlight
A revolt in the Punjab would have led to tens of thousands of deaths
India
At that point, the @placeholder in Amritsar had only 75 armed and 100 unarmed constables with whom to control a city of 150,000 inhabitants.
Reginald ‘Rex’ Dyer
Reginald Dyer
how @placeholder ‘was unnerved and deeply upset about what had happened’.
Indian
Gunfire: A painting depicts the moment around 50 British riflemen fired 1,650 rounds into a crown of @placeholder protestors
Golden temple
A deputation of Indian merchants and shopkeepers soon after the massacre actually thanked Dyer for preventing looting, and he received many other such tokens of gratitude; the guardians of the @placeholder invested him there as an honorary Sikh.