<P> Dyer was initially lauded by conservative forces in the empire, but in July 1920 he was censured and forced to retire by the House of Commons . He became a celebrated hero in the UK among most of the people connected to the British Raj, for example, the House of Lords, but unpopular in the House of Commons, which voted against Dyer twice . The massacre caused a re-evaluation of the army's role, in which the new policy became minimum force . The army was retrained and developed less violent tactics for crowd control . Some historians consider the episode a decisive step towards the end of British rule in India . </P> <P> During World War I, British India contributed to the British war effort by providing men and resources . Millions of Indian soldiers and labourers served in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, while both the Indian administration and the princes sent large supplies of food, money, and ammunition . However, Bengal and Punjab remained sources of anticolonial activities . Revolutionary attacks in Bengal, associated increasingly with disturbances in Punjab, were significant enough to nearly paralyse the regional administration . Of these, a pan-Indian mutiny in the British Indian Army planned for February 1915 was the most prominent amongst a number of plots formulated between 1914 and 1917 by Indian nationalists in India, the United States and Germany . The planned February mutiny was ultimately thwarted when British intelligence infiltrated the Ghadarite movement, arresting key figures . Mutinies in smaller units and garrisons within India were also crushed . In the scenario of the British war effort and the threat from the militant movement in India, the Defence of India Act 1915 was passed limiting civil and political liberties . Michael O'Dwyer, then the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, was one of the strongest proponents of the act, in no small part due to the Ghadarite threat in the province . </P> <P> The costs of the protracted war in money and manpower were great . High casualty rates in the war, increasing inflation after the end, compounded by heavy taxation, the deadly 1918 flu pandemic, and the disruption of trade during the war escalated human suffering in India . The pre-war Indian nationalist sentiment was revived as moderate and extremist groups of the Indian National Congress ended their differences to unify . In 1916, the Congress succeeded in establishing the Lucknow Pact, a temporary alliance with the All - India Muslim League . British political concessions and Whitehall's India Policy after World War I began to change, with the passage of Montagu--Chelmsford Reforms, which initiated the first round of political reform in the Indian subcontinent in 1917 . However, this was deemed insufficient in reforms by the Indian political movement . Mahatma Gandhi, recently returned to India, began emerging as an increasingly charismatic leader under whose leadership civil disobedience movements grew rapidly as an expression of political unrest . The recently crushed Ghadar conspiracy, the presence of Mahendra Pratap's Kabul mission in Afghanistan (with possible links to then nascent Bolshevik Russia), and a still - active revolutionary movement especially in Punjab and Bengal (as well as worsening civil unrest throughout India) led to the appointment of a Sedition committee in 1918 chaired by Sidney Rowlatt, an English judge . It was tasked to evaluate German and Bolshevik links to the militant movement in India, especially in Punjab and Bengal . On the recommendations of the committee, the Rowlatt Act, an extension of the Defence of India Act 1915, was enforced in India to limit civil liberties . </P> <P> The passage of the Rowlatt Act in 1919 precipitated large scale political unrest throughout India . Ominously, in 1919, the Third Anglo - Afghan War began in the wake of Amir Habibullah's assassination and institution of Amanullah in a system strongly influenced by the political figures courted by Kabul mission during the world war . As a reaction to Rowlatt act Muhammad Ali Jinnah resigned from his Bombay seat, writing to viceroy a letter, "I, therefor, as a protest against the passing of the Bill and the manner in which it was passed tender my resignation...a government that passes or sanctions such a law in times of peace forfeits its claim to be called a civilized Government". In India Gandhi's call for protest against the Rowlatt Act achieved an unprecedented response of furious unrest and protests . The situation especially in Punjab was deteriorating rapidly, with disruptions of rail, telegraph and communication systems . The movement was at its peak before the end of the first week of April, with some recording that "practically the whole of Lahore was on the streets, the immense crowd that passed through Anarkali was estimated to be around 20,000 ." In Amritsar, over 5,000 people gathered at Jallianwala Bagh . This situation deteriorated perceptibly over the next few days . Michael O'Dwyer is said to have been of the firm belief that these were the early and ill - concealed signs of a conspiracy for a coordinated uprising around May, on the lines of the 1857 revolt, at a time when British troops would have withdrawn to the hills for the summer . The Amritsar massacre, as well as responses preceding and succeeding it, was the end result of a concerted plan of response from the Punjab administration to suppress such a conspiracy . </P>

Who returned the knighthood conferred on him by british government after jalianwala bagh massacre