Chandigragh is the capital of the northern Indian state of Punjab but Amritsar it is the spiritual home of the dominant Sikh faith.
The further north you travel in India, the greater both the size and preponderance of turbans. Muslim and Sikh alike wear different colours and sizes to denote everything from social position and marital status to mourning.
After a succession of increasing grand forts, palaces and temples, we were exhausted and over-stimulated. It was going to take something very special indeed to rouse us from our fatigue. There are plenty of things to see and do in Amritsar but by the time we arrived we were ready for a rest. We hid away in the City Heart hotel, 100m from the Golden Temple and watched bad TV and survived on room service.
It helped.
After 24 hours, we emerged, a little refreshed and limited ourselves to just a few of the recommended sights.
The Mata Hindu Temple was built to house the relics of a local Sri or saint who, in the severely redacted version of her life, did a lot of good and ate only milk and fruit. Access is in the style of an urban Indiana Jones, through a concrete cave mouth and along a tiled stream to the inner sanctum where henna and coconut is distributed to devotees. Tourists are made most welcome as were we. The poignant part of the temple is the fence to which red and golden rags are tied by women seeking saintly assistance with fertility issues.
After a hair raising journey on a cyclo – better described as long wheel base tricycle with an armless bench strapped to it, on which we remained only by leaning aggressively into the corners – we were decanted unceremoniously onto the road for the agreed fare, but miles away from where we paid to be. The realisation dawned as the cyclo disappeared into a crowd of a hundred others on a chaotic roundabout. On one hand, we were tempted to give chase; on the other, the madness of the roundabout suggested that the unscrupulous man had done us a favour.
Tuk-tuking to the budget Varise restaurant, a stone’s throw from the hotel, we ate thali and relaxed in the cool, brick lined interior before wandering next door to the Jalian Whala Bargh. In 1922, Brigadier General Dyer, commanding a corps of 90 soldiers perpetrated debatably the worst atrocity in the history of the British Army. During a period of civil unrest, Dyer took it upon himself to engage a peaceful protest in an enclosed square with only one means of access. Unable to gain entry with his armoured cars due to the narrow lane, instead he ordered his troops to open fire on the protestors. When the volleys ceased, upwards of 1,500 Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus were dead or dying, representing a kill rate of nearly twenty men, women and children per rifle.
Dyer was unrepentant.
Churchill’s masterful understatement to the House of Commons at the time, expresses both the humanitarian tragedy and the political folly of the disaster. The event hastened the end of the British Raj and was regarded as Ghandi’s inspiration for the campaign of non-violent resistance. A museum and shrine mark the spot and it is a place of pilgrimage for thousands each day.
Sadly, the Golden Temple has its own history of tragedy. It was stormed in 1984 on the express instructions of the then Prime Minister, Indhira Ghandi, during a peaceful Sikh separatist protest. Six hundred died in the temple and 3,000 more in the crack-down on the ensuing riots. As a demonstration of political, religious and cultural vandalism, there can be fewer more extreme examples. On a personal level, the Prime Minister paid for the misjudgement with her life when she was assassinated by a Sikh member of her body guard shortly afterwards.
The spiritual centre of the Sikh faith, the temple resides in the middle of large water tank, accessible only by the short Guru's Causeway. Enclosed within a giant wall of white, crenelated marble, it is overlooked majestically by two giant minarets and less impressively by two grotesquely inappropriate water towers that can only have been built as a conscious insult to the faith.
The walkway that runs clockwise around the tank is lined with gruesome tales of the heroics of the ten Guru’s who founded and formed the tenets of the faith. Baba is said to have fought to raise a siege of Amristar in his old age. After being beheaded by his opponent, all seemed lost until Baba took up his severed head in his left hand and his sword in his right, before predictably putting the besiegers to flight.
The Temple itself is magnificent. It is gold, from the tip of its crown to the foot of its foundations. A staggering 956kg of gold are said to have been used in the construction of its canopy alone. Only the doors are silver and the whole structure is intricately engraved with extracts from the Sikh Holy book, the original of which resides in the surprisingly small interior of the Temple.
Inside, the golden walls are inset with a mosaic of red and blue while the book is attended by three priests. Music is played constantly by a five piece ensemble of sitar, drums, percussion and a squeeze-box keyboard. The holy of holies resides under a pink cloth awning, embroidered with golden lettering. Devotees shuffle through and men and women sit in neatly segregated rows around the book. Above them, a special few peep over the balconies of the first floor onto the proceedings below.
Amritsar is truly a place of extremes.
The devotion is sublime but the streets are ridiculous.
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