Dyer Circumstances

Edward Dyer, John8217;s son and Reginald8217;s father, followed an altogether different profession. He was the beer baron of the still emerging British India: 8216;8216;He installed the most modern technology, and managed, contrary to the expectations of his fellow expatriates, to prove that beer brewing in India could be a success.8217;8217;

Eventually the senior Dyer, the books says, sold two of breweries, in Solan 8212;which Collett for some reason spells 8216;8216;Solon8217;8217;8212;and Shimla to an old rival, H G Meakin, a name that still lingers.

The Dyers were rich, but being 8216;8216;commercial people8217;8217; they were looked down upon by the civil servants and commissioned officers of the Raj. The pent-up frustration needed an outlet8212;and found itself scalding 8216;8216;the natives8217;8217;.

Also, as the author points out, 8216;8216;Rex8217;8217; was born only seven years after the Mutiny. While his parents had been safe in Shimla during the war, they spent his early years in mortal fear of an insurrection in the 8216;8216;black town8217;8217;. To put it politely, this clouded their responses8212;the most horrific manifestation occurring on a calamitous April evening in Amritsar.

Dyer was a complex mix of athleticism8212;he was big built and a keen boxer8212;and irony8212;he shunned killing animals since the day, as a boy, he shot a monkey and found it weeping. Yet he thought nothing of gunning down hundreds of Indians8212;the official figure was 379, the real one probably three times that8212;at Jallianwala Bagh.

Just without being judgmental, Collett deconstructs Dyer8217;s character, which may seem strange to us but was probably not quite unique at the zenith of Empire. Thanks to his childhood insecurities8212;his parents sent him to boarding school in Ireland8212;he suffered a stammer and an inter-personal diffidence.

This made him a bully, the signs being clear as early as his voyage home from his first army posting in Burma. On the boat, he beat up local crewmen over a minor matter.

Perhaps the best part of the book is Collett8217;s description of the debate8212;it swung from disgust to deification8212;in British circles after Dyer8217;s massacre. The analysis and reproduction of letters published in contemporary newspapers tell a story of their own.

Till the end, Dyer believed 8216;8216;He did his duty as he saw it8217;8217;8212;Kipling8217;s ambiguous epitaph for him. Yet he died a lonely, reclusive man, shunned by many, a political tool for others8212;and in the history books for all the wrong reasons.