クイーン・エリザベスといえば国家元首。①
投稿者： i_am_not_ill 投稿日時： 2010/08/18 09:42 投稿番号： [173684 / 230347]
In India, Queen Bows Her Head Over a Massacre in 1919
Published: October 15, 1997
AMRITSAR, India, Oct. 14― In an act of contrition for Britain's colonial past, Queen Elizabeth came to this Punjab city today and paid 30 seconds of silent homage at the site of the Amritsar massacre of April 13, 1919, one of the British Empire's darkest days.
The Queen removed her shoes and laid a wreath of white and gold marigolds at a pink granite memorial at Jallianwala Bagh, the walled garden where Brig. Reginald Dyer, a British officer administering martial law in Amritsar, ordered 50 soldiers to open fire on a crowd of about 10,000 unarmed Indians protesting an extension of World War I detention laws.
A British commission concluded at the time that the fusillade killed 379 people and wounded more than 1,100, while an independent Indian inquiry empaneled by Mohandas K. Gandhi, the independence leader, estimated that 1,000 had died. Reports at the time said Brigadier Dyer, after the massacre, had made Indians crawl along a street where two Englishwomen had been attacked, and ordered others to be whipped.
The incident galvanized the Indian freedom movement. After it, Gandhi's formula of nonviolent resistance caught fire, sidelining conservatives who had argued for pragmatic cooperation with the British. In later years, Indian historians came to see the Amritsar massacre as a crucial juncture in the struggle for independence from Britain, which came at midnight on Aug. 14, 1947.
At a state banquet on Monday night, the Queen, 71, said: ''It is no secret that there have been some difficult episodes in our past -- Jallianwala Bagh, which I shall visit tomorrow, is a distressing example. But history cannot be rewritten, however much we might sometimes wish otherwise. It has its moments of sadness, as well as gladness. We must learn from the sadness and build on the gladness.''
Stepping back at the ceremony today, the Queen stood stock still, then briefly bowed her head, as she did last month when the cortege carrying the body of Diana, Princess of Wales, passed before members of the royal family outside Buckingham Palace on its way to Diana's funeral. This tour of India and Pakistan, planned months ago to mark the 50th anniversary of the two nations' independence, is the Queen's first public engagement since the funeral.
Like everything touching on Britain's imperial past here, the ceremony today touched off a babel of opinions. Most of these were tinged by the larger judgments many Indians have made -- some resentful, some nostalgic, many somewhere in between -- about the 200 years in which Britain's presence expanded from a trading toehold on the coast north of Bombay to a vast domain whose riches helped Britain become the world's dominant power for the century before World War I.
Some Indians delighted in the fact that the granddaughter of King George V, Emperor of India at the time of the massacre, had acknowledged the wrong done at Jallianwala Bagh. But others were angry that the Queen, during her 15-minute tour of the site, had stopped short of the more explicit apologies that Japanese and German leaders have offered for atrocities in World War II.
Otherwise, the most telling gesture was the color of the Queen's dress. Described by British officials as pale apricot, it was, in fact, what Indians call saffron -- a color regarded as sacred by the Hindus and Sikhs who died, along with Muslims, in the Amritsar massacre, and one of three colors that make up India's flag.
Published: October 15, 1997
AMRITSAR, India, Oct. 14― In an act of contrition for Britain's colonial past, Queen Elizabeth came to this Punjab city today and paid 30 seconds of silent homage at the site of the Amritsar massacre of April 13, 1919, one of the British Empire's darkest days.
The Queen removed her shoes and laid a wreath of white and gold marigolds at a pink granite memorial at Jallianwala Bagh, the walled garden where Brig. Reginald Dyer, a British officer administering martial law in Amritsar, ordered 50 soldiers to open fire on a crowd of about 10,000 unarmed Indians protesting an extension of World War I detention laws.
A British commission concluded at the time that the fusillade killed 379 people and wounded more than 1,100, while an independent Indian inquiry empaneled by Mohandas K. Gandhi, the independence leader, estimated that 1,000 had died. Reports at the time said Brigadier Dyer, after the massacre, had made Indians crawl along a street where two Englishwomen had been attacked, and ordered others to be whipped.
The incident galvanized the Indian freedom movement. After it, Gandhi's formula of nonviolent resistance caught fire, sidelining conservatives who had argued for pragmatic cooperation with the British. In later years, Indian historians came to see the Amritsar massacre as a crucial juncture in the struggle for independence from Britain, which came at midnight on Aug. 14, 1947.
At a state banquet on Monday night, the Queen, 71, said: ''It is no secret that there have been some difficult episodes in our past -- Jallianwala Bagh, which I shall visit tomorrow, is a distressing example. But history cannot be rewritten, however much we might sometimes wish otherwise. It has its moments of sadness, as well as gladness. We must learn from the sadness and build on the gladness.''
Stepping back at the ceremony today, the Queen stood stock still, then briefly bowed her head, as she did last month when the cortege carrying the body of Diana, Princess of Wales, passed before members of the royal family outside Buckingham Palace on its way to Diana's funeral. This tour of India and Pakistan, planned months ago to mark the 50th anniversary of the two nations' independence, is the Queen's first public engagement since the funeral.
Like everything touching on Britain's imperial past here, the ceremony today touched off a babel of opinions. Most of these were tinged by the larger judgments many Indians have made -- some resentful, some nostalgic, many somewhere in between -- about the 200 years in which Britain's presence expanded from a trading toehold on the coast north of Bombay to a vast domain whose riches helped Britain become the world's dominant power for the century before World War I.
Some Indians delighted in the fact that the granddaughter of King George V, Emperor of India at the time of the massacre, had acknowledged the wrong done at Jallianwala Bagh. But others were angry that the Queen, during her 15-minute tour of the site, had stopped short of the more explicit apologies that Japanese and German leaders have offered for atrocities in World War II.
Otherwise, the most telling gesture was the color of the Queen's dress. Described by British officials as pale apricot, it was, in fact, what Indians call saffron -- a color regarded as sacred by the Hindus and Sikhs who died, along with Muslims, in the Amritsar massacre, and one of three colors that make up India's flag.
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