Lehal Library

150 The Agrarian Uprising Disturbances in Afghanistan compelled Abdali to leave the Punjab. After making detailed arrangements for the administration of northern India, he left Lahore on 12 December 1762. Kabuli Mal was appointed governor ofLahore and other districts were neatly parcelled out between Afghan officers and their Rajput supporters. The _pains Abdali took over these appointments onlywent to show how a man of undoubted military genius could be utterly unrealistic as an administrator. In none of these districts was his writ worth more than the paper on which it was written. By the spring of 1763, Abdali's nominees were restricted to their encampments. The largest Afghan pocket in the Punjab, Kasur, fell to the Bhangi, Hari Singh, yielding a treasure large enough to finance many expeditions. The Jullundur Doab was retaken by Jassa Singh Ahluwalia. In November 1763 Charhat Singh Sukerchakia and the Bhangis inflicted a defeat on General Jaban Khan at Sialkot. Jassa Singh Ahluwalia defeated Bhikhan Khan of Malerkotla (who was slain) and plundered Morinda. As in the past, the wrath of the Sikhs was vented on Sirhind, which was recaptured in January 1764. At the site of the execution of Guru Gobind's sons, a temple was raised and named Fatehgarh, the fort of Victory. A few weeks after the fall of Sirhind, the Sikhs invested Lahore and dictated terms to .Kabuli Mal.~, There was nothing to stop them. The land stretching from the Indus to the Jumna (and often across up to the Ganges), and from the Himalayas down to the junction of the Punjab's five rivers beyond Multan, was under Sikh control. But before the Sikhs could celebrate their reconquest of the Punjab at the Divali festival, Abdali was on the move again. 39 Although the Sikhs made their Afghan prisoners clean the Harimandir and retaliated by slaying hogs in mosques, they did not massacre any captives. as the Afghans had done. 'The Sikhs,' writes Forster. 'set a bound to the impulse of revenge. and though the .Afghan massacre and perse0r tion must have been deeply imprinted on their minds, they did not, it is said, dt'stroy one pdsoner in cold blood' (1, 279).