Namdhari Sikhs, enraged by cow slaughter licensed at Malerkotla, attack the town and kill officials; the British answer without trial, blowing forty-nine prisoners from guns at Malerkotla and hanging more, a severity even the colonial government later disowned; the movement passes into Sikh memory as martyrdom.
Tagged: Persecution Namdhari Sikh
The Event
- Date
- 1872 (exact)
- Also called
- Kuka Revolt
- Era
- Reform and Colonial; Standard periodization of Sikh history
- Location
- Malerkotla; today Punjab, India
- Traditions
- Sikhism
- Streams
- Namdhari
- Key figures
- The Kuka prisoners of Malerkotla
Primary Sources
- The official inquiry into the Malerkotla executions
Secondary Sources
- Khushwant Singh, A History of the Sikhs, vol. 1 (Oxford, 2nd ed. 2004)
- Fenech and McLeod, Historical Dictionary of Sikhism (Rowman and Littlefield, 3rd ed. 2014)
Provenance: HIST-0522; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-27.
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