O'Dwyer, Michael (1864–1940)

British administrator, governor of the Punjab 1913–19. The Amritsar Massacre occurred during the last year of his governorship. He was a consistent opponent of the Indian constitutional reforms, maintaining that they would be disadvantageous to the Muslim population. He was assassinated by an Indian in London.

O'Dwyer was educated at Oxford and entered the Indian civil service in 1885. He held the posts of resident at Hyderabad in 1908 and agent to the governor general for central India in 1910. In his book India as I Knew It (1925) he gave an account of the period during which he was governor of the Punjab, and defended his attitude at the time of the Amritsar Massacre.