Lehal Library

Banda Bahadur 113 'I wiJJ tell you. Whenever men become so conupt and wicked as to relinquish the path of equity and abandon themselves to all kinds of excesses, then Providence never fails to raise up a scourge like me to chastise a race so depraved; but when the measure of punishment is full then he raises up men like you to bring him to punishment. ' 26 Thus died Banda Bahadur-a man who first chose to renounce the world to live in the peaceful seclusion of a sylvan hennitage, then renounced both paci.ficism and the life of solitude to rouse a downtrodden peasantry to take up arms; a man who shook one of lhe most powerful empires in the world to its very foundations with such violence that it was never again able to re-establish its authority.f7 Although Banda's success was short-lived, it proved that the peasants were discontented and that the administration had become feeble. In seven stormy years Banda changed the class structure of land holdings in the southern half of the state by liquidating many of the big Muslim zamindar (land-owning) 26 Siyar-ul-Mutiilrhm11, 79-80. 27 Muslim historians, who were invariably attached to and dependent on the patronage of the ruling class, have for these obvious reasons interpreted the role of Banda as an enemy of Islam and also exaggerated the talcs of atrocities committed by his followers. Syed Mohammed Latifs opinion based on these rcpons (Histqry ofthe Punjab, p. 280) is as follows: 'Though bravery is a qualification which is highly meritorious, and in all cases one which is handed down to posterity, yet the audacious achievements of this monster arc an exception to the rule. His triumphs are not remembered as heroic acts, but as malicious and cold-blooded atrocities. His ruling and insatiable passion was that of pouring out Mohammedan blood. A1 the present day his name is never mentioned in any part of India unaccompanied with maledictions on his savagery and blood-thirsty propensities. His memory is held in the same detestation by the Sikhs as by the Mohammedans.· As pointed out by Thornton (Histcny of tht Pun1ab, p. 176), 'a Mohammedan writer is not to be implicitly trusted upon such a point'; nor, 1t might be added, a Sikh like Gyan Singh, exaggerating the reports in a spirit of anti-Muslim exultation. Banda's followers were undoubledly guilty of savagery practised by most victorious annies of the time, but the movement was clearly an agrarian revolt and not an anti-Islamic crusade.