In its essence a puritan movement, there was unquestionably a nationalist side to it which tended to render it suspect in the eyes of many Punjab officials, and these suspicions were heightened by the Gadr conspiracy fomented in the second year of the war by a number of Sikhs, who returned from Canada bitterly estranged from British rule by the anti-Asiatic policy of the Dominion and still more by the fiery eloquence of Indian revolutionaries in German pay.  But against the disloyalty of a small section must be weighed the loyal war services of the vast majority of Sikhs, and the Punjab Government proudly boasted at the time that there were 80,000 Sikhs serving in the army, a proportion far higher than in the case of any other community.  It was doubtless partly in recognition of such war services that in the reforms scheme they were given the benefit of “community” representation in the new Councils on the same lines as the Mahomedans.  But with a tenacious memory of the language used years ago by Lord Minto in reply to Mahomedan representations, they still complain that the historical importance and actual influence of their community have not received nearly as full a measure of consideration.  Unfortunately, bitterness was revived by the large number of Sikhs amongst General Dyer’s victims at Jallianwala, most of them, according to the Sikh version, innocent country-folk, who had come into Amritsar on that day because it happened to be a Sikh religious holiday, and had merely strayed into the Bagh out of harmless and ignorant curiosity.

The puritan movement struck a dangerous course when it addressed itself to the recovery of the Sikh shrines which it held to have passed into the possession of unorthodox and corrupt Mahunts, faithless both to their religious and temporal trust.  Considerable success was achieved by the exercise, it was affirmed, of mere moral pressure, though not perhaps always without a display or threat of material pressure behind it in the event of moral pressure proving inadequate.  Amongst others, the incumbent of the Golden Temple at Amritsar, the most sacred of all Sikh shrines, was constrained to make a public confession of his wrongdoings and resign his office into the hands of a Reformers’ Committee.  Next to Amritsar in wealth and sanctity came Nankhanda Saheb with a Mahunt to whom the Reformers imputed all kinds of enormities.  A great popular demonstration against him had been organised for March 5, and some 150 Sikhs had gone out to make arrangements for sheltering and feeding several thousands in the immediate vicinity of the shrine.  The Mahunt had already scented danger and he clearly believed in taking the offensive.  He collected some fifty Pathan cut-throats as a Praetorian guard for the temple, and also, for a purpose which was soon to transpire, a very large store of petrol.  When the advance party of reformers entered the shrine to perform their morning devotions the gates were closed upon them and over 100 were butchered, and their corpses so effectively soaked in oil and burned that when the District Commissioner and a detachment of troops arrived post-haste on the scene, the victims could scarcely be counted except by the number of charred skulls.