Chhōtā Ghallūghārā

Chhōtā Ghallūghārā (Punjabi: ਛੋਟਾ ਘੱਲੂਘਾਰਾ [tʃʰoʈɑ kə̀lːuɡɑ̀ɾɑ]) was a massacre of a significant proportion of the Sikh population especially by the invading Pashtun people of the Durrani Empire during the waning years of the Mughal Empire. Chhōtā Ghallūghārā is Punjabi for "Lesser Massacre". As such, it is distinguished from the Vaddā Ghallūghārā "the great massacre of 1762. An estimated 7000 Sikhs died in these attacks.

The ghallūghārā were not pogroms in the sense of the killing of masses of defenceless people. Since the martyrdom of the fifth Sikh Master, Guru Arjan in 1606, Sikhs have known the use of arms and the need of self-defense. The first Chhōtā Ghallūghārā was a dramatic and bloody massacre during the campaign of Afghanistan's (Durrani Empire) provincial government based at Lahore to wipe out the Sikhs, an offensive that had begun with the Mughals and lasted several decades.

Sikhism began in the days of Guru Nanak (1469–1539) and grew to be a distinctive social force especially after the formation of the Order of Khalsa in 1699. The Khalsa was designated to oppose the tyranny of the Mughal Empire and any other form of injustice. Through much of the early eighteenth century, the Khalsa was outlawed by the government and survived in the safety of remote forests, deserts, and swamplands of the Punjab region and neighbouring Kashmir and Rajasthan.

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