1 May 1746[EoS][Gupta]13 Chet 1802 Bikrami (10 March 1746), for the killings at Lahore
The Chhota Ghallughara
In 1746 the Lahore minister Lakhpat Rai set out to destroy the Sikhs after his brother's death in a clash with them. The Sikhs of Lahore were martyred, and the main body was hunted from the Kahnuwan swamps to the Basohli hills in what Sikhs remember as the lesser holocaust.
Jaspat Rai, the commander at Eminabad, was killed in a clash with Sikhs early in 1746. His brother Lakhpat Rai, a minister at Lahore, vowed revenge and, with the approval of the governor Yahiya Khan, gathered troops from several provinces. He had the Sikhs of Lahore rounded up and martyred, and refused the appeals of Hindu notables led by Diwan Kaura Mall.
He then surrounded Sikhs in the swampy forest of Kahnuwan, south of present-day Gurdaspur. They broke out and made for the hills near Basohli, where hill men blocked them. Many were lost crossing the Ravi on the way back. The survivors crossed the Beas and the Sutlej and reached the Lakkhi Jungle in the Malwa.
The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism estimates that 7,000 Sikhs lost their lives and 3,000 were captured on 1 and 2 May 1746, and says the captives were martyred at the horse market outside Lahore's Delhi Gate, later the Shahid Ganj. Hari Ram Gupta quotes Khushwaqt Rai, a Persian chronicler, for 400 dead and about as many captured in one encounter. No agreed total exists.
Lakhpat Rai also ordered gurdwaras destroyed and Sikh books burnt. Yet within about six months Sikhs were returning to Amritsar, and on 30 March 1747 a Sarbatt Khalsa resolved to build the fort of Ram Rauni there.[EoS][Gupta]
Dates in the sources
- 1746-03-10: The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism dates the killings at Lahore to this day, 13 Chet 1802 Bikrami, a new-moon Monday, and the main action to 1 and 2 May.[EoS]
- 1746-04: Hari Ram Gupta dates the episode to about April to June 1746 and gives 9 April as the new-moon day on which Lakhpat Rai ignored the appeals at Lahore.[Gupta]
- 1748-04: Gupta reports that Ratan Singh Bhangu puts it in 1804 Bikrami (1747-48) and Giani Gian Singh in April 1748, and he rejects both because Lakhpat Rai left office in March 1747.[Gupta]