By Majid Sheikh

Dawn Nov 22, 2020

Have you ever considered just how over a three-month period the British rulers of Lahore massacred almost 5,650 citizens plus another 11,200 soldiers? It averages almost 188 persons a day non-stop in the city alone. Yet today all is forgotten.

The time was 1857 and as the East India Company consolidated its hold on Lahore, the First War of Independence suddenly burst forth. There is no doubt that the British-backed landed aristocracy, as always, backed the rulers against their own people. Feudalism depends on such loyalties. Hence as events unfolded it was Lahore that saved the British Empire. The Imperial Gazetteer of India’ of 1858 states: “Had Lahore and Ferozepur fallen surely India would have been reconquered”. Such was the importance of Lahore to the entire Imperial scheme. Unrelenting massacre was the only option in the scared minds of the ‘rulers’.

In this column, let us point out to a few venues where these massacres took place. We do not have space for details. Punjab was the last State to fall to the EIC, and that was because of a determined Sikh State resistance. But once conquered, the landlords and the soldiers they provided both switched their loyalties from the Sikhs to the British. This was the force that the company feared most, and this was the very force that saved them. It is almost like what this class does today.

On the 11th of May, 1857, the cantonment of Meerut revolted killing their English officers. Soon a sizeable army of ‘freedom fighters’ was marching towards Delhi, declaring a clueless emperor Bahadar Shah Zafar as their ruler. The Mughal emperor outwardly sided with the ‘rebels’ but inwardly was more concerned about his ‘Company Pension’. Word had spread to all the cantonments in the sub-continent and in the Punjab, the first to rise against foreign rule was Ferozepur, where the 45th Native Infantry had attacked the outer defences. The EIC was more concerned about the huge arsenals at Ferozepur and Lahore. They then headed towards Lahore.

On the morning of the 13th of May, 1857, all the Indian soldiers in Lahore were called to parade and were ordered to disarm. A murmur ran through the ranks as on one side the entire English artillery stood ready to fire, and on the other three sides the cavalry stood ready to attack. It was a hopeless situation. All the arms were moved to the Lahore Fort, where rations for six months were rushed from all the markets for 4,000 mouths. With the arsenal secure and preparations for a possible siege in place, it was just a matter of time before the massacre started of a helpless citizenry and disarmed soldiers.

Sadly, those who did desert rushed to the villages surrounding Lahore, looting them on their way to Delhi. If anything it was an unplanned revolution. Revolutions are never planned. The stage was set for a grand battle at Delhi, and the starting point of finally crushing the ‘uprising’ was Lahore. But before the Great Train to crush the siege of Delhi set off from Lahore, gathered as they were in Company Bagh, later to be called Lawrence Gardens, all visible signs of rebellion in Lahore had to be eliminated.

The first place to be secured was the Anarkali Cantonment. Mind you the Mian Mir Cantonment had not been built then. The very first victim was a soldier who shouted in praise of the ‘rebels’ in Old Anarkali Bazaar. He was immediately nabbed, put in front of a cannon and blown apart. Immediately the sale of lead and sulfur were banned and all stocks confiscated.

Inside Lohari Gate, a small procession against the EIC shouted slogans. The Lahore Police under Subhan Khan’s Police Battalion rushed and arrested five of the ‘freedom seekers’. In front of Lohari Gate a cannon was placed and they were all blown to pieces. A hush ran over the old walled city and cannons were placed outside Delhi Gate too. But the largest concentration of arms and soldiers was at today’s university ground, which was then the Anarkali Cantonment ‘parade ground’. A sizeable armed group was outside the Lahore Fort and the turrets all had cannon.

The message had been clearly given that there would be no discussion and “anyone wishing so would be blown apart”. The message was ruthlessly stark. In the city secret police went around pointing out those who indulged in ‘negative’ discussions. The very next day they would be picked up and put to the cannon, or the firing squad. The intent was to brutalise the population into total submission.

All the roads leading up to Anarkali cantonment were guarded closely by police and military officers, with plainclothes intelligence fanning out to the nearby villages and towns. A few examples might put forward the mood of the Company Army. On the 26th and 27th of June the Guide Corp moved from the Company Bagh towards the Anarkali Cantonment Parade Ground. There two soldiers, both natives, spoke ill of the enterprise. They were immediately arrested and put before two cannons. People from Anarkali Bazaar were invited to watch the spectacle as they were blown up.

According to one manuscript, a soldier brandished a sword in defiance in Anarkali and hurt a few English officials. He was put away with the same method. But the wave of executions came when a complete record of all those ‘opposed to the Company’ living within the walled city was submitted. They were arrested and either sent to prison, or fined, or blown up by cannon. These executions all took place at several points, including the Anarkali parade ground, in the ground where now stands Tollinton Market, outside Lohari Gate, Delhi Gate, Shahalami Gate and outside the Lahore Fort. A similar execution site also existed near the Boat Bridge on the River Ravi.

Such was the terror of the East India Company that, according to one source, people stopped discussing events in the streets. But all this had a terrible effect on the minds of the disarmed soldiers living in the Saddar Cantonment. Then the big explosion came when the soldiers in the Lahore Saddar Cantonment revolted on the 30th of July, 1857 at Mian Mir. Events got out of hand after their commanding officer, Major Spencer, was murdered. From this point onwards it was everyone for himself.

Hundreds of sepoys fled towards the River Ravi, now known as the Mahmood Booti area. There the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar, Mr Cooper, headed a group and shot dead sepoys “by the hundreds” as they swam to cross the river. Another group headed towards Amritsar, only to be cut down even though they had surrendered.

In the Lahore jails which then housed 2,379 prisoners, suddenly there was a rush of new inmates. This sudden rush and lack of space led to an official policy of the ‘Elimination of all Undesirables’. A lot of prisoners who had just six months of their term left were flogged and released. There is no account of just how many were ‘eliminated’ but one account says they could be in five figures.

The consolidation of life in Lahore was critical before the conquest of Delhi was possible, where a horrible example was made of the Mughal emperor and his family. The cannons and firing squads of Lahore were followed by a long peace in which, without doubt, the rulers did considerable development work. For that they are still remembered. What we have completely forgotten is the brutality unleashed on our forefathers.

But then the British Empire consolidated, developed, then exploited beyond belief, and quickly left 90 years later once the sub-continent’s economy was sucked bone dry. We call it ‘independence’- an inheritance we experience every day.