On this day Rabindranath Tagore, protesting against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre wrote a letter to the Viceroy of India, Lord Chelmsford, with a request to renounce his knighthood, conferred on him by the British monarch in 1915. Thousands of unarmed people, who had collected at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar to protest against Rowlatt Act, had been fired upon by British troops at the command of brigadier general R. E. H. Dyer. Many were killed. The estimates vary between a few hundreds and more than a thousand.
The entire country erupted in protests.
In his letter to the Viceroy, Tagore wrote: “The time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part wish to stand, shorn of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen, who, for their so-called insignificance, are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings.
“These are the reasons which have painfully compelled me to ask Your Excellency, with due deference and regret, to relieve me of my title of Knighthood, which I had the honour to accept from His Majesty the King at the hands of your predecessor, for whose nobleness of heart I still entertain great admiration.”
