Gerard Anstruther Wathen

Gerard Anstruther Wathen CIE (28 December 1878 – 9 August 1958) joined the Indian Education Service in 1905 and became professor of education and Principal of the Khalsa College, Amritsar.

Early life and education Gerard Anstruther Wathen was born on 28 December 1878, in Bexley, Kent, the youngest child of William Hulbert Wathen. He completed his early education from St Paul's School in 1898 and subsequently gained admission to Peterhouse, Cambridge to study the classics.

Career From 1903 to 1905 Wathen was assistant master at Tonbridge School. He then taught at Government College, Lahore, later becoming professor there.

Wathen moved to India with his wife Melicent in 1909. Prior to the First World War, his social circle included Malcolm Lyall Darling and E. M. Forster, who in 1912 delivered a talk to Wathen's class at Government College.

Amritsar 1919 After the First World War, Wathen re-visited England with his wife and children, and upon return to India in early 1919, found his students preoccupied with politics and the then recent Rowlett Act. He was not called to testify before the Hunter Commission, the official inquiry following the Jallianwalla Bagh Massacre, and in Wagner's words "was more or less written out of the official history of the events of April 1919". Wagner notes that almost 16 years later in 1940, following the death of Michael O'Dwyer, Wathen reflected on 1919 and wrote to The Times concluding his letter with "He was right and I was wrong". The letter read;

It fell to me to be the first to tell Sir Michael O'Dwyer of the shooting in the Jalliwala Bagh. I reached Government House at Lahore from Amritsar at 3 am that night and urged Sir Michael to go at once to Amritsar and replace in the hands of the civil authorities the power being vested then under martial law in the hands of General Dyer. I told him that I feared intense bitterness among the Sikhs and probably a rising. He took a different view, said that the shooting, however horrible, would mean an end of rioting, and besides, he added, I always trust the man upon the spot. There, he established financial aid to boys who arrived as refugees from German-occupied Europe. Khalsa College awards the Prof GA Wathen Scholarship. The Wathen Society is named for him.