SACRED INDIAN RULER

Taranaki Daily News, 13 June 1930, Page 9

SACRED INDIAN RULER

ON TRIAL FOR MURDER.

HURS’ FANATICAL DEVOTION. Recent messages from Karachi announced the dramatic arrest and trial of the “Fir of Pagaro” in Sukkur on 27 charges of murder and smuggling arms. The seat of this important dignitary is at Kingri, south of Sukkur and near the left bank of the Indus. He is known all over Sind as the Pir Pagaro or Pir of the Turban. “Pagaro” is the Sindhi form of the familiar “puggaree” and means “turban.” The office of Pir, or spiritual leader who guides his followers along the path decreed by the Prophet, is hereditary and holders of it are said to succeed to the Turban as British people speak of succession to the Crown. The Pir traces his family 'back to a Saiyad of Mecca who went to Sind in the eighth century with the. Mahommedan conqueror, Mahomed Kasim, and helped to convert the Hindus to Islam. Some of the Pins of Kingri numbered their followers or murids by hundreds of thousands. Their chief stronghold has always been in the valley of the Nara and the desert of Thar and Parkar in Eastern Sind, a region which was formerly inhabited by unsophisticated shepherds and herdsmen. These people joined in a numerous fraternity, sworn to help one another in every need at any cost, sworn to sacrifice their lives and all they- possessed in the service of the Pir. They are known as Hurs. When the Pir goes on tour among the Hum, says a correspondent of the Times, to receive their gifts and adoration he is carried in a palanquin by many willing bearers, surrounded by an excited mob numbering hundreds, all yelling his praises in shrill acclamation, rushing, forward to throw themselves prostrate in the dust before his advance, and creating a din and melee that has to be- heard and seen in order to be appreciated. When he camps, his tent is surrounded by crowds anxiously waiting until the door of the kanat is opened, when men and women vie with each other in throwing down on the sacred cot offerings in money and ornaments of gold and silver. Women pluck off their marriage nose-rings, men give sheep and cattle and even land.

The present occasion is not the first upon which a Pir of Kinkri has been tried on a charge of murder. About 1850 a party of Hurs were bringing to Kingri a large pack of hounds as a gift to the As they were passing through Khairpur State, three miles from Kingri, the hounds pur. sued a wild boar into the forest. The keeper of the forest, a servant of the Mir Ali Murad’s, drew his sword upon them, whereat the Hurs clubbed him to death. The Mir accused the Pir, Hazabullahshah, of complicity, but, on being tried by a British Court in Shikarpur, the Pir was acquitted. In Hala of Hyderabad district was a rival Pir of great sanctity, a cousin of Hazabullah and his hereditary foe, called the Jhandewala or Pir of the Flag. Two Hurs treacherously murdered him in his own village mosque, stabbing him in the chest, in the holy month of Ramazan. The police held Hazabullahshah to be the instigator, and obtained a warrant from the Sadar Court at Karachi, as the local magistrate refused it. The Pir was acquitted, as witnesses failed to support the case. This second trial aroused the frantic devotion of the Hurs. Their ranks were swollen by sympathisers. Their zeal for the. Pir and for each other passed all bounds. Respectable Moslems found fault with the Pir for not checking their excesses and heresies, but the stream of tn* bute'flowing into his coffers damped the fires of his rebukes. • Any attempt on his part to oppose the Hurs was believed by them to be due to the evil influence of khalifas, as he himself, being God, could do no wrong in their eyes. They began to murder khalifas freely and frequently. The murderers almost invariably escaped, and by the help of the Hur brotherhood They formed a gang of outlaws with other bad characters, and had their headquarters in a vast swamp called the Makhi Dhand, in Eastern Sind. In 1866 a special force of armed police with two companies of Baluchis and a squadron of the Scinde Horse were sent against them. They died lighting. Slowly, but surely, they were exterminated.