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. There was a universal thrill of horror and fury, and passions rose so high that Government found itself suddenly confronted with a situation which at once put to a severe test the capacity of the new regime to deal with emergencies endangering law and order. That Indian Ministers now shared in the responsibility of government, and that there was a popular assembly to undertake legislation for composing the differences between the conflicting sections of the Sikh community, helped at least as much to avert still graver troubles as the object-lesson which the Nankhanda Saheb tragedy afforded to thoughtful Punjabees of all creeds. The massacre carried out by a mere handful of Pathans was a grim reminder of the dangers to which the Punjab would be the first to be exposed if the hasty severance of the British connection for which Mr. Gandhi is clamouring were to leave it defenceless against the flood of lawless savagery that would at once pour down, as so often before in Indian history, from the wild fastnesses of the North-West Frontier. CHAPTER XI CROSS CURRENTS IN SOUTHERN INDIA