afghanistanits blood-soaked streets wearing a bejewelled robe resplendent with the
Koh-i Nur diamond.
Panipat marked the end of Maratha power in northern India and it was
Ahmad Shah’s most notable military victory, but he was not able to push
home his advantage and attack the Marathas’ allies, the Jats. His command-
ers had had enough of campaigning and thousands of his soldiers had been
killed or wounded. When news arrived that Hajji Jamal Khan Zargarani
in Kandahar had rebelled, Ahmad Shah ordered his army to march back
to Peshawar and sent a column under Shah Pasand Khan to deal with the
revolt in the Durrani capital. Once again the Sikh cavalry harassed the
army’s flanks as it marched through the Punjab, and after Ahmad Shah
had crossed the Indus, the Sikhs overran several Afghan outposts. In May
1761 a Sikh army annihilated a force led by Ahmad Shah’s governor of the
Chahar Mahal, and a relief army despatched from Kandahar was defeated
and forced to surrender. The Sikhs then took Lahore while its governor
barricaded himself in the citadel. Within just a few months after his victory
over the Marathas, Ahmad Shah lost most of the Punjab to a new and even
more formidable enemy, the Sikhs.
After putting down the revolt in Kandahar, Ahmad Shah returned to
the Punjab, whereupon the Sikhs abandoned Lahore. In early February
1762 the governor of Malerkotla informed Ahmad Shah that the fam ilies
and camp followers of the Sikh army were camped nearby. Aided by Zain
Khan of Sirhind, Ahmad Shah surrounded them and ordered his troops to
leave no one dressed in Indian clothes alive. The small Sikh guard formed a
cordon around the defenceless camp followers and fought and died to the
last man. After ten hours, Ahmad Shah finally called a halt to the slaugh-
ter. Exactly how many Sikhs lost their lives in the massacre is disputed,
although Sikh historians put the number at between 10,000 and 30,000
individuals, mostly women, children, old men and camp followers. Wadda
Ghalughara, or the Great Slaughter, is still commemorated by Sikhs to
this day.
Ahmad Shah followed up this ‘victory’ by attacking Amritsar a few
days before the Sikh New Year festival and another massacre ensued. The
Golden Temple was desecrated and the dead bodies and carcases of cows
thrown into its sacred lake, which was then filled up with the rubble from
demolished temples and gurdwaras. While Ahmad Shah supervised this
destruction, however, a piece of shrapnel from an explosion severed the
fleshy part of his nose, leaving a gaping wound. The injury never healed
and for the rest of his life Ahmad Shah wore a diamond prosthesis. Yet
despite the slaughter, the Sikh army recuperated and a few months later,