Hazrat Ahmad — Page 46
46. HADHRAT AHMAD crowds made it difficult for the carriage to proceed. The authorities were obliged to make special arrangements for the maintenance of order, and Munshi Ghulam Haider, Tahsildar, was put on Special. Duty for the purpose. He remained with the Promised Messiah and with much difficulty cleared a passage for the carriage through the crowds which extended right up to the town. In addition to the people of the town, thousands of people from the villages had also come to have a sight of him. More than a thousand people made the covenant of initiation, and when he went to the court there was such a multitude to witness the proceedings that it became difficult to provide room for them. They extended far into the fields. At the first hearing the Promised Messiah was discharged. He then returned home. . That year ushered in a marvelous era of success for the mission, for the Promised Messiah. Sometimes as many as 500 letters of initiation came in on a single day, and the number of his followers rose from thousands into hundreds of thousands. Men in every walk of life made the covenant of initiation and the movement began to spread very fast passing from the Punjab into other provinces and countries. . A Martyr of the New Movement. In the same year the community suffered a great bereavement. . One of its most prominent members, Sahibzada Abdul Latif, was stoned to death in Kabul on a charge of heresy. . Harassment in Court and Ultimate Vindication. Persecution through legal proceedings which had apparently come to an end at Jhelum now commenced again with greater vigor. Karam Din, who had preferred a charge of defamation against him at Jhelum, now repeated it at Gurdaspur. The case dragged on to a most extraordinary length and one of the magistrates hearing it was transferred while it was still pending. . The dates for the hearings were fixed at such brief intervals that the Promised Messiah was at last obliged to take up his residence at Gurdaspur. The two magistrates who tried the case one after the other were both Hindus and for some incomprehensible reason the proceedings dragged on for too long. . The case turned upon only three or four words. Karam Din had