SOCIAL SCIENTIST The incident of Jallianwala Bagh has been discussed in detail in a number of writings. Some of the earlier accounts are highly polemical in nature and carry an emotional load which gives them an evidently partial colouring in the eyes of later historians. In particular, the books which carne out in India and England immediately after the incident had an obviously partisan bias and had their primary focus on the role played by General Dyer. They were written in justification of Dyer's action or to denounce the perpetrator of this crime. These writings can, by and large, be divided into two broad groups. The first category of work which was produced in India offered what can be called a 'nationalist account' of the incident. The pioneer work written with this ideological bent came from B.C. Horniman,6 editor of the Bombay Chronicle and an Englishman, who had completely identified himself with the Indian nationalist sentiment. In his small monograph published in 1920, Horniman highlighted the atrocities committed on Indians and strongly supported the demand for self-government. In the same year, Pearay Mohan7 wrote a book to forcefully contest the official view propounded by Michael O'Dwyer, Lt. Governor of Punjab (1913-1919), that the Rowlatt agitation was a well planned and organized 'rebellion'. According to Mohan, it was primarily the repressive policy of O'Dwyer's regime which was responsible for the large upsurge in Punjab/He further maintained that with the help of an Indian accomplice Hansraj, Dyer planned the killings in order to teach a lesson to the Indians for their audacity to challenge the authority of the British. On the 50th anniversary of Jallianwala Bagh massacre, two important works were published by professional historians. Dr. Raja Ram in his book presented an account of the incident to establish that the massacre was the 'result of pre-meditated plan carefully designed in advance and executed on the appointed day by the British bureaucracy/8 His contention is not fully convincing because he foiled to adduce sufficient evidence in support of his argument. A more comprehensive account of the incident was published by Professor V.N. Datta in his well documented work9 which reconstructs the 'entire series of happenings, giving minute details. He describes the tragedy as an 'expression of confrontation between ruler and ruled'.10 According to him, the disenchantment. caused by the repressive policies followed by O'Dwyer's administration was largely responsible for mass participation in the agitation against the government. Professor Datta's discussion of the massatore, rightly emphasizes that it should not be viewed as an isolated incident But understood in the larger context of the nationalist confrontation with the British Raj which had been gaining strength in the country around this period and was also visible in Punjab. This nationalist stance is both explicit and implicit in his narrative of the tragedy.11 Undoubtedly, the nationalist