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I'd like to point out that there are two sides to every story:
The trial and martyrdom of the Gadar Party leadership in the Lahore Conspiracy trial, and the internment of some 1,500 of the emigrants in India, proved an abiding symbol for a younger generation of radicals....In Punjab, the doubling of prices of wheat, rice and bajra, and the tripling of salt prices fuelled discontent...
The [Indian] Congress' anti-Rowlatt Act agitation exploded on this landscape... By April 6, the anti-Rowlatt satyagraha was at its peak in Punjab. "Practically the whole of Lahore was on the streets," historian Hari Singh has recorded."The immense crowd that passed through Anarkali was estimated to be around 20,000."
In Amritsar, over 5,000 people gathered at Jallianwala Bagh. By April 9, Ram Navami day, traditionally riot-prone, a new spirit seemed to be in the air.... British authority appeared to be collapsing....
On April 10, 1919, the Empire tried to hit back.... News of Gandhi's arrest the previous day at Palwal soon reached Amritsar. The city exploded.
Over 15,000 people gathered at the Carriage Bridge... The enraged crowd, armed with lathis, turned on British officials. Four British residents were killed and two were seriously injured; one, missionary Marcella Sherwood, was left for dead.
Government property was burned and looted...
When Brigadier General Dyer arrived in Amritsar...at 9 p.m. the next day, his fellow British residents had convinced themselves that the events of 1857 were about to repeat themselves.
...The Danda Fauj (stick-army) of impoverished Muslim artisans led by Chanan Din marched through the streets with sticks and toy guns, declaring their loyalty to the Amir of Afghanistan and the German Kaiser. Crowds of students proclaimed the death of King George, while rumours were spread that Indian troops had mutinied...More dangerously for the Raj, the 4,000 Indian railway employees...went on strike....
On the morning of April 13, Vaisakhi day, Dyer's troops marched through Amritsar, proclaiming that all assemblies would be "dispersed by force of arms if necessary."
Shortly afterwards, two people walked through the city banging tin cans to announce a rally at 4:30 p.m. at Jallianwala Bagh. By afternoon, a peace gathering of over 20,000 people was in place, hearing a succession of speeches condemning the Rowlatt Act and the recent arrests and firings....
No effort, Dyer later admitted, had been made to prevent the gathering from taking place, a fact which, coupled with rally organiser Hans Raj's somewhat murky background, led some contemporary observers...to speculate that the dusty maiden had been deliberately chosen as a killing field.
An aircraft briefly hovered overhead as five speeches were completed before Dyer arrived at Jallianwala Bagh, along with two young officers, Briggs and Anderson, 50 Indian and British rifle-men, 40 Gurkhas...
A few minutes before sunset, the first of 1,650 rounds were fired into the crowd. Congress leader Durga Das at first believed the shots were fired into the air, but soon realised bodies were falling all around him. No warning was given to disperse before Dyer opened fire. Many died when they jumped into the well at the left-hand side of the maiden, only to be crushed by others who desperately dived on top of them....
"I fired and continued to fire until the crowd dispersed," Dyer told the official Lord William Hunter Committee of Inquiry set up to probe the violence, "and I consider this is the least amount of firing which would produce the necessary moral and widespread effect it was my duty to produce, if I was to justify my action."
"It was no longer a question of merely dispersing the crowd," he added, "but one of producing a sufficient moral effect, from a military point of view, not only on those who were present but more specifically throughout the Punjab...."
...it was a horrible duty for me to perform. It was a merciful act that I had given them the chance to disperse (that is, in the morning). The responsibility was very great. I had to make up my mind that if I fired, I must fire well and strong so that it would have its full effect...
To this day, no one knows how many died. The Punjab Government first asserted that 291 people were killed, but this figure was promptly challenged by the Allahabad-based Sewa Samity, which produced a list of 500 verified deaths An enquiry by Amritsar Deputy Commissioner F.H. Burton later raised the official toll to 379, broadly accepting the Sewa Samiti list but deducting 44 unknown rural bodies cremated by the organisation, and some alleged inaccuracies.
http://allaboutsikhs.com/events/jwbagh.htm
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Which begs the question, if you (third person plural, not first person singular) had been Dryer faced with this situation with number of troops how would you have handled it?