Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 5.djvu/73

TANAOLEES. of Sir William Denison from Madras, to act as Governor-General, gave a new turn to their deliberations, and the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Hugh Rose (Lord Strathnairn), was directed to have the campaign pursued with vigour. The consequences of this spirited conduct were ample reinforcements of troops and stores, and Mulka, the stronghold of the rebels, was blown up with all its magazines.

It is, however, impossible to record that this second punishment of the Wahabee fanatics has in any effectual degree deterred them from the prosecution of the "holy war." Their treasonable proceedings at Patna and in Bengal have never ceased; recent trials there have convicted men of wealth and respectable character of assistance to the fanatics of the same localities, and it seems as though former results were not sufficient to deter them from making fresh attempts to renew the "crusade." The whole question has recently been opened by Dr. W. W. Hunter, the author of the Annals of Rural Bengal, in a work, entitled Our Indian Mussulmans, which has a wide scope and very powerful interest, and may be the means, perhaps, of measures being devised for remedying the condition of chronic treason and discontent, into which the Wahabee doctrines have led but too many of the Mahomedan subjects of British India. The attention of the Government of India has been thoroughly aroused to the subject, and, whether on the frontier or throughout India, the proceedings of Wahabee missionaries will be watched and provided against with every possible precaution.