SIXTY-FIVE MEN BLOWN FROM GUNS.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 224, 27 June 1872, Page 3

SIXTY-FIVE MEN BLOWN FROM GUNS.

Some of the Indian papers are commenting severely on the wholesale execution of sixty-fnc of the fanatical Kookas who were blown from guns immediately after their rising. The Times of India, which condemns the proceeding, very fairly gives the case on which Messrs Cowan and Forsyth, the responsible officers justify' proceedings which were extra-legal as far as Mr Cowan (since suspended) was concerned ; legal in powers and form in the case of Mr Forsyth. With all our leaning to moderation and humanity we must remember the terrible responsibilities which rest on Indian officials, especially when we take into account the fact that prompt quenching in blood of the mutinous proceedings at Meerut in May, 1857, might have saved India and its inhabitants, natives and well as Europeans, the awful horrors which followed. The case of the Punjaub officials is this : “ It was then believed amongst the Europeans in the Punjaub that an extensive and organised rising bad been planned —one that would necessarily involve mutiny, more or less, as the Kukas had been rapidly gaining converts amongst our Sikh sepoys, for whom the cry, “ Death to cow-killers, and T Yah Guru Kalsa —affords an all hut irresistible incitement. The rising, it is alleged, was planned for April ; but whether this knowledge was possessed by the Commissioners before or after the execution, is one of the points yet to be explained. That the outbreak occurred when it did is alleged to have happened in this wise; one of the two leaders—it is not stated whether the Guru or Roor Sing remained quiet —had run down to Delhi to tab a look at the (camp, and it si melt him that an opportunity had ar' t which would never occur again. Not only were nearly all the Government of India forces belonging to the Punjaub stations, especially Umballa, busily engaged in their mimic warfare, but, rarest chance of all, one of the Sikh leaders, the Maharajah of Pattiala, was also amusing himself at Delhi, and nicely out of the way. The impetuous Singh rushed back to the Guru, and tried to show him that the day of the Khalsa’s triumph had come. It is still dark to us of the outer world whether the Guru accorded any sanction to the mad enterprise, or how far he was content to lie and wait for success while shirking the risk. But the leaders, whoever they are, are said to have had a very distinct, and, for the Sikh world, a far reaching plan. The first part of it, that of throwing a hundred or two of their more desperate followers on the presumedly defenceless forts of Muladli and Ivotla was, as we know, carried out; but thanks to the courage and vigilance of the Sirdars and their guards, the enterprise collapsed. Had it succeeded, the next, step was to have been the distribution of such arms as were stored at Kotlah ; the next to break up the rails ; then to attack the small Sikh State of Nablia, at the samo time raising the standard of the Khalsa over the great shrine of Uniritsur. “ Those who recollect the tone of the Observer in regard to the Jamaica murders, are aware that we entirely approved of the prompt punishment of the original wrongdoers. What we condemned, and still shudder to think of, as wicked and cowardly, was the long series of col blooded cruelties and murders inflicted oil poor creatures innocent, or at any rate powerless for evil. The war-like people of the north-west of India are very different indeed to the West India Negroes and we shall not readily join in condemning what was certainly a terrible act of retribution until the whole case is before us. Wo saw iu a previous account that 30,000 Kookas were ready to rise. If so, the awful example made of the sixty-five prisoners may have been, in reality, true mercy.”