In 1960, when Jawaharlal Nehru was on a visit to Shimla, Narendra Nath Mohan, the owner of Dyer Meakin Brewery Limited in Solan, regarded as a local employer, requested Nehru to make a quick pit stop at his manufacturing unit. Nehru refused. For, the brewery bore the surname of Brigadier-General Reginald Edward Dyer, the person infamous for orchestrating one of the worst massacres in history. The owner promptly changed the name of the brewery to Mohan Meakin Brewery Ltd – and consigned the name Dyer to the dust bin of history.

Reginald Edward Dyer, Rex to his friends, was born in the hill-station town of Murree, near present-day Islamabad, in October 1864. He grew up in Shimla – not far from Solan, where his father’s brewery was located – and studied at the Bishop Cotton School.

The British ruling establishment – people who worked in various government services – considered themselves to be a cut above the commercial classes. Sneeringly, they referred to Dyer’s father, a businessman, as the ‘boxwallah.’

Throughout his childhood, Rex Dyer was the butt of jokes; he had a stammering problem. Bullied at school, he found it difficult to make friends. At the age of eight, he went to boarding school in Ireland where the kids mocked him as ‘wild Indian.’

In Ireland, Dyer continued to read Hindi books to ensure that he didn’t forget the language he had learned during his initial years in India. Later, he joined Sandhurst, the army officers’ training academy, and spent two years in Ireland after being commissioned in the British Army.



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