(Following is the text from Robert Henry Elliot’s Concerning John’s Indian Affairs published in 1872. In this text, Elliot discusses the connection of Sher Ali Afridi, assassin of the Viceroy Lord Mayo, and Wahabis of Patna. It must be noted that Wahabis, for the English, is a misnomer and included Muslims from all sects. Rather, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan claimed that none of the real Wahabi was part of the conspiracy against the British and others were wrongly called Wahabi.)
And here we must carry the reader back to the bitter trial of 1857, and ask him to set himself down in the city of Patna, which is situated on the Ganges, in the province of Bengal and some four hundred miles from Calcutta. To those who have heard anything of the Wahabis, the city is now well known as the headquarters of the most troublesome and dangerous sect in India; but at the time of the mutinies few could be got to believe that the Wahabis were other than a harmless and industrious set of people who belonged to the most useful classes of the community. Now, the then commissioner of Patna soon came to the conclusion, by evidence derived from a variety of sources, but which, like most evidence procurable in cases of the kind, would not be received in a court of law, that this apparently peaceful sect were not only dangerous conspirators, but that they were holding meetings and acting in a manner calculated to excite strong suspicions as to their intentions. At such a crisis, what was to be done ? Should he send in a report and wait for orders, or should he act at once on his own responsibility ? Fortunate, indeed, it was for the lives of many English men and women that he was not the man to flinch from responsibility, and that he took his measures with cautious and yet bold decisions. He knew that the Wahabis would not move without their leaders, and he simply resolved to arrest those leaders as quietly as possible, and hold them as hostages for the good behaviour of the sect. A meeting of the principal inhabitants was forthwith convened at the house of the commissioner, ostensibly with the purpose of concerting measures for the safety of the town; and to the meeting came the men who were wanted – Mahomed Hossein, the spiritual leader of the sect; the notorious Ahmed Oolah, the principal disciple; and Moulvee Waizool Huq. Seats were provided at a long table in the dining-room, and the meeting opened with the usual form. Two of the Wahabi chiefs looked somewhat uneasy, but Ahmed Oolah entered into the discussion with much volubility and apparent nonchalance, made several propositions for the safety of the city, and appeared thoroughly to appreciate the object of the meeting. When the meeting broke up, the chiefs were requested to remain behind, when the commissioner acquainted them with his intentions regarding them. With wonderful readiness Ahmed Oolah placed his hands together, and said that they appreciated his Excellency’s kindness and wisdom more than ever they had done before, seeing that their enemies would for the future be unable to make false charges against them. The chiefs were then removed, and placed under a guard of Seiks. The city was then disarmed as completely as possible, and the general result was that, with the exception of a trifling émeute, which broke down in consequence of the precautionary measures adopted, Patna remained quiet throughout the rebellion. When all danger was finally over, and just as the commissioner was receiving the congratulations of his friends, he was dismissed from his appointment on the shallow pretext of having committed an error of judgment. The “Wahabi gentlemen,” as they were termed by Government, were shortly afterwards released, and the deputy collector, Mowla Buksh, who had been the commissioner’s right-hand man, was ignominiously removed from Patna. We need hardly say that the gentleman (Mr. Samuells) sent down to supplant the commissioner was a man after the heart of his masters – that he soon reported that “there was not the slightest proof that any danger was to be apprehended from this sect, and that there was absolutely none for attributing seditious designs to the Wahabis.” The triumph of the sect was now complete. Their enemies had been cast down and publicly disgraced, while the chief of their enemies was kept without employment for seven months, and then packed off some six hundred miles to the remotest corner of the province. It now only remained for the Government to cover itself with ridicule, and this it at once proceeded to do. Ahmed Oolah was received by Mr Samuells with open arms, his sufferings condoled with, while his deeply injured feelings were soothed with a Government appointment, and for several years he sat with the commissioner and other English gentlemen on the Committee of Public Instruction at Patna. The wily chief was indeed a man whom the Government delighted to honour, and in the year 1863 might have been seen shaking hands with the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, in the reception-hall of Belvedere, preparatory to being formally introduced to the Governor-General. But just as he was at the highest point of favour, and holding grave counsel with English officials as to the best way of furthering the moral and intellectual interests of the rising generation, there arrived all the way from Umballa, in the Punjab, a certain Captain Parsons, who went straight to the quarters of the Wahabis, made several arrests, and carried off a batch of prisoners forthwith for trial in the criminal courts of the Punjab. After this batch of conspirators had been disposed of came the turn of the now notorious Ahmed Oolah, the pet of the Bengal Government. He was forthwith arrested, convicted on the clearest evidence, sentenced to be hanged, and subsequently banished to the Andamans ; and we have to add that he was at Port Blair at the time Lord Mayo was murdered. Now that circumstances had come to the rescue of the innocent, Mowla Buksh has been decorated with the Star of India, and we soon hope to learn that Mr Tayler, the commissioner, has received some reparation for his unmerited disgrace.
The reader will naturally be anxious to learn why we have told this long story, and we must therefore say that we have done so partly to give an idea of the extraordinary astuteness of the Wahabis and the gullibility of the English, but mainly to show that in India, if we wait for such evidence of a conspiracy as would satisfy Chief Justice Bovill in a court of law, we may wait forever. Such evidence is seldom or never procurable, and if Mr Tayler had waited for it Patna would have gone. He had to form his opinion by a variety of information and facts, not one particular of which, in all probability, could be admitted as strictly legal evidence. And in judging as to the probable causes of Lord Mayo’s murder we must do the same. The exact link between the Wahabis and Shere Ali we shall probably never learn; but here are the leading points, and the reader can form his own conclusions.
First of all, immediately after the conviction of Ahmed Oolah in 1865, an attempt was made to murder Mr. Ainslie, the convicting judge, at Patna. In the next place Chief Justice Norman fell a victim to the assassin’s knife immediately after rejecting sundry applications made on behalf of the Wahabis, and just before he was about to sit on the Wahabi appeals. In the third place we come to the sad murder of Lord Mayo, whose activity in pursuit of the sect was notorious. As regards the facts connected with Port Blair, they are simply these. Nearly all the Wahabi convicts were there, and headed by their most influential chief — our old acquaintance – Ahmed Oolah, and from the laxity of discipline had frequent communication with their friends in India; and further, it is an absolute fact, that when one of the spiritual leaders was arrested some years ago, three letters from a Wahabi convict on the Andamans were found amongst his papers.
We may repeat, that if the Government waits for legal evidence, it may wait forever ; and the question now is, whether we should wait for more assassinations or act at once. There can be no doubt that we ought to choose the latter alternative. This Wahabiism must be stamped out. These men, it must be remembered, do not appreciate our forbearance; they call it cowardice, and the more we exhibit of it, the greater contempt they will naturally feel for us. It should be proclaimed from one end of India to the other, that any one convicted of treason will be hanged, the whole of his kith and kin banished, and the possessions of the family forfeited to the State. A barbarous remedy truly, it will be said, but we must in any case be content for many a year to come, and for ever if we continue our present system of government, to say with Macbeth :—
” For mine own good,
All causes shall give way;
I am in blood Stepp’d in so far, that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”
We are aware that the course recommended will be in the last degree unpalatable to the tenderhearted British people; but if we do not choose to govern the country, at least to some extent, on Asiatic principles, the sooner we leave it the better.
In conclusion, we must protest, as strongly as possible, against the adoption for the future of the course pursued as regards Chief Justice Norman’s murderer. He was, the reader will recollect, not only subjected to every possible personal indignity, but the Government, by burning the body, showed in the eyes of the people a malicious desire to injure the prospects of the deceased in a future state. This action of the Government, as has been amply seen from the murder that followed, is not sufficient to act as a deterrent, while it exasperated the Mahommedans to the highest degree, and is supposed by some to have had no small effect in aiding to bring about the assassination of Lord Mayo, who approved of the indignities practised on the murderer and his remains.
As it is probable that many will read this paper who never read a line about India before, and who perhaps will never do so again till another Governor-General is murdered, I may be allowed here to offer one word of warning. That word is simply, that the people of England should either rouse themselves up, and put their Indian affairs in order, or that they should get back as fast as possible the enormous sum they have been weak enough to lend on the security of an empire which not only contains all the elements of decay, but which, at this moment, is only preserved from immediate and utter bankruptcy by the fact that it is still able to force some eight millions worth (nearly one-sixth of the revenue) of opium on the Chinese.
I may here add that it has since been proved by Shere Ali’s last letter to his cousin Arsala Khan, that, so far from being miserable at the Andamans, Shere Ali seemed to think himself rather well of than otherwise ; and there is also strong reason for asserting that he had expectations of obtaining the pardon of the Government. This, I need hardly say, makes it still more probable that he was urged on to the deed by the Wahabis.
