HARKING BACK: Forgotten genocide that stunned Lahore into silence

The Mayor of London, Mr. Sadiq Khan, is known as a no-nonsense straight talker, or as a leading British newspaper claimed “here is a chap with no skeletons in any closet.” No wonder the fearless and honest Pakistani-origin lawyer won his election against the Conservative juggernaut and a biased press gone wild.

While in Amritsar last week, from where his father had crossed over the Wagah border in the 1947 Partition, Sadiq Khan called on his own government to apologise for the massacre at Jallianwala on the 13th of April, 1919, in which British sources claim 379 entrapped people were shot dead while another 1,200 were wounded. Sikh sources put the dead at over 700. My late father used to tell us stories about Jallianwala which he had heard from his elders. Our grandfather’s house in Amritsar was a few yards from the ‘killing ground.’

But my thoughts go out to an even bigger massacre, in reality a genocide that took place in Lahore and its surroundings where 500 disarmed soldiers of the 26th Native Infantry were massacred, without any visible reason, in the 1857 Uprising. The sheer barbarity of the genocide stunned the people of Punjab. But this portion of our history has been effectively shut out of our collective consciousness, thanks to colonial education and then a crippling communal mindset.

Experts today believe that it was a massive ‘miscalculation’ by the British, after all this was the diplomatic conclusion reached in a British House of Commons debate on the subject on 28th of July, 1859, where at the end it was stated: “It will serve better if the matter, however distasteful, was left for history to judge”. Historians are today judging the massacre very differently.

Lahore in 1857 had a population of just over 170,000. So these 500 unarmed men constitute almost 0.29 per cent of the city’s population. Surely they deserve to be called our true martyrs. Today we blindly describe terrorists and extremists as martyrs, such has become our confused way of existing.

Let me recollect what happened. On the 10th of May, 1857, soldiers in the Meerut cantonment revolted. The immediate trigger was a ‘greased bullet’ that hurt everyone’s religious sentiments. The underlying reasons were land reforms and British exploitation. As news of the uprising at Meerut spread the first to receive the news in Lahore on the morning of the 11th of May was at the telegraph station located at Kamran’s ‘baradari’ on the island at Shahdara. The message was rushed to the now demolished 1851-built garrison building near the Fortress Stadium, where a ‘Council of War’ was formed and it was decided to disarm the ‘native’ sepoys.

At this stage of the 60,000 soldiers in different cantonments in the Punjab, 10,000 were British. The only people the British expected to stay loyal were the Sikhs, who understandably did not want a return to the Mughal rule. The Sikhs of Punjab hated the ‘Purbias’ of East Punjab, as they had backed the British against Sikh rule. They had now come to lord over them, and were responsible for introducing Urdu as against Punjabi as the medium of education. In the summer of 1857, the Punjab had experienced a very good crop thanks to agricultural reforms brought in by the Company’s board of administration. So Punjab’s peasants were reasonably happy.

The ‘sepoy’ regiments in Lahore were Hindustani Hindus and Muslims. Except for Muslim ‘nawabs’ and landlords who sided with the British, poor Muslims supported the mutiny. The Hindus remained, at least outwardly, neutral. On the 13th of May it was decided to disarm all ‘sepoys’, and so this was achieved on the 14th morning. John Lawrence was to say: “India was saved in Lahore”. The disarmed soldiers really felt let down, but the British could not take any risks. So for over two months in Lahore’s Saddar Bazaar soldiers roamed about, disarmed with nothing to do.

On the morning of the 30th of July, 1857, a heavy dust storm hit Lahore. Right at that time the Commanding Officer of the 26th Native Infantry, Major Spencer and a non-commissioned British officer were proceeding from their houses in the Officers Colony in Saddar along with two Indian officers when they were attacked, and killed. A later investigation could not pinpoint the real attackers. But what did happen was that in the nearby barracks of the 26th Native Infantry word spread of firing on the officers and panic spread. The dust storm provided cover and all the 500 unarmed men ran in every direction.

At this point we see the entire regiment disperse in different directions. Nearly 87 soldiers were arrested from different streets of Saddar Bazaar, while the remaining 413 fled under cover of the dust storm towards the River Ravi. The order went out that not a single man of the 26th Native Infantry, even if he surrenders, is to be left alive. The fact remains, as the House of Commons committee was to narrate during the debate, not a single soldier had any arms. They had all been disarmed on the 14th of May, 1857, over two months earlier.

Of the 87 arrested in Saddar Bazaar, 45 were moved to the new Lahore Jail, where they were locked up and refused any food or even allowed to use a toilet. No prison guard was allowed to go near them. It is a recorded fact that all 45 jailed soldiers starved to death, and so a source claims were buried in one mass grave within the jail premises.

The remaining 42 from the arrested group were divided into 11 groups and were placed before cannons before nine of the larger gates of the walled city. Public announcements were made to the population to witness “what would happen to anyone who opposed the Company”. They were blown up before silent crowds. The effect was stunning. One group was blown up in Anarkali Bazaar, while one group of four soldiers were blown up in the Parade Ground that is today’s Fortress Stadium.

Now to the main group of 413 soldiers. The British collected 25 horsemen, they being Sikh and Tiwana Muslims, to chase the escaping men. The Tiwana horsemen gathered local villagers and along with local police started hunting these poor soldiers. By the time the main group reached the river nearly 150 soldiers had been shot and hacked to bits by villagers and left for vultures to eat. When the main group reached the river the horsemen took pot shots at the desperate soldiers and killed 35 of them in the river. Their bodies floated downstream.

By this time the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar, Mr. Cooper, after whom Lahore’s Cooper road is named, reached the river edge and with his British troops enticed the poor starving soldiers on the river island to return and they would be treated well. They had no choice and crossed back in boatloads. Each group on arrival had their hands tied behind their backs and were made to walk almost 18 miles to Ajnala. There Mr. Cooper, so accounts tell of him rubbing his hands in glee every time a group was executed. Hence all the 237 men of the 26th Native Infantry of Lahore were shot dead in cold blood and thrown into a well near the local gurdwara.