Everyone knows the painful story of Kahot riots where thousands of Hindus were slaughtered by the Muslims. According to reports there were 5000 Hindus and 12000 Muslims were there in Kahot on 8th September 1924. On 11th September, 3200 Hindus fled away. The destructive anti-Hindu war wiped away almost the majority of the Hindu population from that area within two days.
This is the painful story of the Kahot riot where a successful attempt had been taken to completely exterminate or erase the entire Hindu and Sikh population from the region. Kohat town is located in the Northern-Eastern Frontier Province present day Pakistan now known as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. During the riot many prominent personalities blamed Hindus for erupting the communal riots in the region.
History tells us how the militant mob of Islamist unleashed the rage on the Hindu colonies of Kohat. A premeditated attack on the Hindu people resulted in the slaughter of almost the entire population of Hindus from the region. During that time the whole India including Pakistan was under the control of the British government but at the time of the Kohat riot did not support the Hindu people from the exodus.
It is also said that the British government depended on the majority of the Muslim population in the region to maintain its power. So much so, the Assistant Commissioner of Police and the Head Constable of Police were Muslims named S Ahmad Khan and Abbas Ali Shah. In the decisive days of 9th and 10th September, the militant mob of Islamist unleashed Chaos in Hindu neighbourhood of Kohat region.
The massacre was premeditated and resulted in the exodus of almost the majority of the Hindu population from the region. At that time there was a British government and as they had a stronghold with Muslims to maintain their power in the region, they did not take a step against the Muslim and the massacre created by them.
The trust that Britishers had in Muslims was evident in a letter that Lord Reading wrote to the British Secretary of State on July 23, 1924. He wrote, “The Gandhi movement could never have gained its strength but for the Treaty of Sevres which made the Mohamedans so fanatic that they joined up with the Hindus for the time being…the difficulty at present is to keep the Mohammedan and Hindu from each other’s throats, a task which I believe can only be performed by the British.”
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