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Updated: May 31, 2025
Yet listen to the artless babble of the Blind Mullah of Jagai, the priest of the Khusru Kheyl, sitting upon a rock overlooking the Border. Five years before, a chance-hurled shell from a screw-gun battery had dashed earth in the face of the Mullah, then urging a rush of Ghazis against half a dozen British bayonets. So he became blind, and hated the English none the less for the little accident.
Even so, Maiwand was one of the gravest disasters ever sustained by our Indian army. It cost Burrows' force nearly half its numbers; 934 officers and men were killed and 175 wounded. The strange disproportion between these totals may serve as a measure of the ferocity of Afghans in the hour of victory. Of the non-combatants 790 fell under the knives of the ghazis.
Jakin drank, but there was no sign of the regiment's return. They could hear a dull clamor from the head of the valley of retreat, and saw the Ghazis slink back, quickening their pace as the Gurkhas fired at them. "We're all that's left of the Band, an' we'll be cut up as sure as death," said Jakin. "I'll die game, then," said Lew, thickly, fumbling with his tiny drummer's sword.
These yellow-robed monks, instead of sitting in their monasteries, would have pervaded the country, preaching against us and organizing. No one organizes better than an ecclesiastic. We should have had them leading their men into action with sacred banners, and promising them heaven hereafter when they died. They would have made Ghazis of them. Any one of these is a religion worth having.
Their front crumpled like paper, and the fifty Ghazis passed on; their backers, now drunk with success, fighting as madly as they. Then the rear ranks were bidden to close up, and the subalterns dashed into the stew alone. For the rear-ranks had heard the clamour in front, the yells and the howls of pain, and had seen the dark stale blood that makes afraid. They were not going to stay.
The Ghazis, seeing their opportunity, came closer and closer; their swordsmen charging in and cutting down the Sikhs in the ranks. Seventeen were thus killed or wounded.
The soldiers rushing forward amid loud cheers, plunged their bayonets into their furious adversaries. The sound of the hacking of swords, the screams of the unfortunate shopkeepers, the yells of the Ghazis were plainly heard above the ceaseless roll of musketry.
Like wasps roused to fury, the ghazis rushed together as if for a charge, and lines of Afghan regulars came into view. The deceitful haze yielded up its secret. Burrows' brigade stood face to face with 15,000 Afghans. Moreover some influence, baleful to England, kept back those Asiatics from their usually heedless rush. Their guns came up and opened fire on Burrows' line.
Presently, however, the Buffs arrived in support, and a squadron of the 11th Bengal Lancers charged the Ghazis, and speared many of them before they could reach the shelter of the hills; and the Buffs soon drove them away, with heavy loss. While this was going on the third detachment, which had destroyed many of the numerous villages, was called in to join the main body.
In spirit, it is not very unlike the movement of the fanatics known as Ghazis, whose zeal burns against all infidels, especially those of the European Christian type. What is the Character of the Mohammedan Population in India? It will be interesting to appraise them largely by comparing them with the Hindu population which surrounds them.
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