30 A PILGRIMAGE FOR PEACE
peaceful crowd of Pathans, including Hindus and Sikhs.
For a full account of the gruesome tragedy that followed,
we may turn over the pages of Shri V. J. Patel's Report
of Inquiry into Peshawar Firing (1930), which was ban-
ned at that time by the British Government. Here are a.
few extracts culled from a report which was sent by a
responsible Muslim leader of the Punjab at that time and
published in Young India:
"A troop of English soldiers........reached the spot and
without any warning to the crowd began firing into the crowd
in which a number of women and children were present......
When those in front fell down......those behind came forward
with their breasts bared and exposed themselves to the fire......
some people got as many as 21 bullet wounds......and all the
people stood their ground without getting into a panic. A young
Sikh boy came and stood in front of a soldier and asked him to
fire at him, which the soldier unhesitatingly did, killing him
........an old woman seeing her relatives and friends being
wounded, came forward, was shot down and fell down wounded.
An old man with a four-year old child on his shoulders, unable
to brook this brutal slaughter, advanced asking the soldier to
fire at him. He was taken at his word and he also fell down
wounded........people came forward one after another to face
the firing and when they fell wounded they were dragged back
and others came forward to be shot........"
" A fairly senior military officer " described the " in-
cident " in the columns of the British-edited Indian Daily
Mail as follows :
"You may take it from me that shooting went on for very
much longer than has been stated in the newspapers. We
taught the blighters a lesson which they won't forget........Our
fellows stood there shooting down the agitators, and leaders who
were pointed out to them by the police. It was not a case of a
few volleys, it was a case of continuous shooting."
It made everybody who knew anything about the
Pathans • rub his eyes in wonder. Two platoons of war-
hardened Garhwalis, belonging to the Royal Garhwal
Rifles, who were ordered to fire upon the unresisting
crowd were so affected by what they saw that they refused
to carry out orders, were courtmartialled and were sent-
enced to terms of imprisonment varying from 10 to 14
years. Their cases were not covered by the amnesty