The wretched landowner who found himself deprived of his land by legal process held our methods rather than his own extravagance responsible for his ruin, and on the other hand, the pleaders and their clients, the moneylenders, who were generally Hindus, resented equally our legislative attempts to hamper a process so beneficial to themselves.
But all these were only contributory causes.

There were still deeper influences at work which have operated in the Punjab in the same direction as the forces of unrest in the Deccan and in Bengal, but differ from them nevertheless in their origin and in some of their manifestations.

In the Punjab too the keynote of unrest is a spirit of revolt not merely against British administrative control, but, in theory at least, against Western influence generally, though in some respects it bears very strongly the impress of the Western influence which it repudiates.

The motive force is not conservative Brahmanism as in the Deccan, nor does it betray the impetuous emotionalism of Bengal.

It is less rigid and purely reactionary than the former, and better disciplined than the latter.
Orthodox Hinduism ceased to be a dominant factor in the Punjab when the flood of Mahomedan conquest swept over the land of the Five Rivers.