The land of five waters gave the world its first cities, its saints and its songs. Broken by every empire that crossed it, it is still ours to remember, and to make whole again.
Read the manifesto →The 'Lesser Holocaust'. To avenge his brother's death, Lakhpat Rai hunted down Sikhs in the Kahnuwan swamps. Thousands were killed and captives were beheaded in Lahore.
In 1746 the Sikhs killed Jaspat Rai, faujdar of Eminabad, in a fight. His brother Lakhpat Rai, chief minister of the governor of Lahore, Yahiya Khan, swore to destroy the Sikhs and persuaded the governor to order a general massacre.
Sikhs in Lahore were seized and executed. Then a great army, with artillery, hunted down the Sikh bands, perhaps fifteen thousand people including families, who had taken refuge in the marshes and forests of Kahnuwan near Gurdaspur. Trapped between the army, the Ravi and the hills, where the hill rajas closed the passes against them, they were cut down in May and June 1746.
Around seven thousand were killed and three thousand captured and beheaded at Lahore. The Sikhs call it the Chhota Ghallughara, the Lesser Holocaust. Within two years they had recovered.
About three thousand prisoners were beheaded in Lahore at the horse market, the Nakhas, outside the Delhi Gate; the Shahidganj memorial was later built on the spot. When Lakhpat Rai fell from power the next year he was imprisoned, handed to the Sikhs, and died in their hands.
'Ghallughara' means a holocaust or wholesale massacre. Sikhs gave the name to the two great killings of the 18th century, and in 1984 many called the army's attack on the Harmandir Sahib the third.
Banda Singh's first great strike, on a wealthy town that was home to the executioners of Guru Tegh Bahadur and the younger Sahibzade.
Banda Singh avenged Pir Budhu Shah, who had been killed by Sadhaura's governor for helping Guru Gobind Singh.
The peasant army of Banda Singh routed the Sirhind army and killed Wazir Khan, the man who had executed the Guru's younger sons. Sirhind fell two days later.
The emperor himself marched against the Sikh capital. A Sikh named Gulab Singh put on Banda Singh's clothes and was captured in his place while Banda slipped away.
Banda Singh and his followers held out in a walled compound for eight months, eating grass and bark, before surrendering. They were marched to Delhi and executed.
Nadir Shah crushed the Mughal army in a few hours, then sacked Delhi and carried off the Peacock Throne and the Koh-i-Noor.
The only time Abdali was beaten in a pitched battle in India. Sikh bands attacked his retreating columns.
Baba Deep Singh, in his seventies, marched from Damdama to free the desecrated Harmandir Sahib and was killed near its precinct.