People rioted . On 13 April 1919 , people including women with children gathered in an Amritsar park , and a British officer named Reginald Dyer surrounded them and ordered his troops to fire on them . The resulting Jallianwala Bagh massacre ( or Amritsar massacre ) of hundreds of Sikh and Hindu civilians enraged the subcontinent , but was cheered by some Britons and parts of the British media as an appropriate response . Gandhi in Ahmedabad , on the day after the massacre in Amritsar , did not criticise the British and instead criticised his fellow countrymen for not exclusively using love to deal with the hate of the British government . Gandhi demanded that people stop all violence , stop all property destruction , and went on fast-to-death to pressure Indians to stop their rioting
Jallianwala Bagh massacre
Jallianwala Bagh massacre
Mahatma Gandhi