num_pages: 384
description: The dramatic true story of a celebrated young survivor of a 1919 British massacre in India and his ferocious twenty-year campaign of revenge that made him a hero to hundreds of millionsand spawned a classic legend.When Sir Michael ODwyer the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab ordered Brigadier General Reginald Dyer to Amritsar he wanted Dyer to bring the troublesome city to heel. Sir Michael had become increasingly alarmed at the effect Gandhi was having on his province as well as recent demonstrations strikes and shows of Hindu-Muslim unity. All these things to Sir Michael were a precursor to a second Indian revolt. What happened next shocked the world. An unauthorized gathering in the Jallianwallah Bagh in Amritsar in April 1919 became the focal point for Sir Michaels law enforcers. Dyer marched his soldiers into the walled garden blocking the only exit. Then without issuing any order to disperse he instructed his men to open fire turning their guns on the thickest parts of the crowd filled with over a thousand unarmed men women and children. For ten minutes the soldiers continued firing stopping only when they ran out of ammunition.According to legend eighteen-year-old Sikh orphan Udham Singh was injured in the attack and remained surrounded by the dead and dying until he was able to move the next morning. Then he supposedly picked up a handful of blood-soaked earth smeared it across his forehead and vowed to kill the men responsible.The truth as the author has discovered is more complexbut no less dramatic. Award-winning journalist Anita Anand traced Singhs journey through Africa the United States and across Europe until in March 1940 he finally arrived in front of ODwyer himself in a London hall ready to shoot him down. The Patient Assassin shines a devastating light on one of historys most horrific events but it reads like a taut thriller and reveals the incredible but true story behind a legend that still endures today.
language: English
title: The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge, and India's Quest for Independence
publisher: Scribner