COW RIOTS IN LAHORE 1845
BUTCHERING THE BUTCHERS OF LAHORE

Mohalla Kasab Delhi Gate area

The KOOKA sect was formed by one Baluk Ram in the year 1845. A carpenter named Ram singh inherited the position. They were interested in going back to the Pristine qualities of their religion. The Sikhs and the Hindus joined hands in this tirade and in 1845 a number of Butcher shops were raided in Lahore and some Butchers put to death. The aim that there should be no dispLay of beef meat at Butchers shop as it was against their principles. The British were in a quandary as what to do. Full control of Lahore was not in their  hands yet. The young puppet Dallip Singh was being groomed for complete take over. The  Cow riots as they were called were becoming more and more destructive.

An ultimatum was issued to the KOOKAS to mend their ways and they kept quiet for some time. But it was a mum before a storm. By 1871 the riots had spread to Amritsar, and a group of 12 Kooka assassins butchered again a group of Muslim Butchers. The British were in no mood to accept the challenge to their authority, and the Kookas were ruthlessly pursued and captured by them. Out of perhaps a following of fifty thousand Kookas, 300 kookas weree taken into custody, and quickly executed by the authorities. Everybody believed that it was an excess but that excess unless controlled would have left a scar on the reigning policy of thew British. Anybody disturbing the status quo was a risk to their rule.

The people who think that there is no Two nation theory, should wake up to the fact, that even in Lahore, there were separate Mohallas of the Hindus and the Muslims, and nobody dared to traverse the domain of others. And this division was always there. The theme of the Hindu mohallas was very different from the Muslim ones. The ‘SHARM’ or ‘HAIYA’ we talk of was alien to the Hindus living here, and strangely it is reported by many people of that time, that literally the Hindu girls were naked from the top and wearing flimsy dress from the bottom. It was indeed a threat to the culture of the Muslims. And this invasion of the undressed person is something we see in our media today, and forget that it was always so. Sex was one of the way to reach the Divine reality in that religion. In the Muslim area the approach was totally different. That is why Quaid e Azam gave us the famous saying about the two nation theory, which we will repeat later on of the people.