Amritsar

The Sikhs’ holy city of AMRITSAR is the largest city in Punjab with the fabled Golden Temple, whose domes soar above the teeming streets. Amritsar is also an important staging-post for those crossing the Indo–Pakistan frontier at Wagha, 29km west.

The Golden Temple stands in the heart of the old town, itself a maze of narrow lanes and bazaars. Eighteen fortified gateways punctuate the aptly named Circular Road, of which only Lohgarh Gate (to the north) is original. Skirting the edge of the old quarter, the railway line forms a sharp divide between the bazaar and the more spacious British-built side of the city. Further north, long straight tree-lined streets eventually peter out into leafy residential suburbs. The neat military barracks of the cantonment form the northwestern limits of the city.

Even visitors without a religious bone in their bodies cannot fail to be moved by Amritsar’s resplendent Golden Temple, spiritual centre of the Sikh faith and open to all. Built by Guru Arjan Dev in the late sixteenth century, the richly gilded Harmandir rises from the middle of an artificial rectangular lake, connected to the surrounding white-marble complex by a narrow causeway. Every Sikh tries to make at least one pilgrimage here during their lifetime to listen to the sublime music (shabad kirtan), readings from the Adi Granth and also to bathe in the purifying waters of the temple tank – the Amrit Sarovar or “Pool of Immortality-Giving Nectar”.

The best time to visit is early morning, to catch the first rays of sunlight gleaming on the bulbous golden domes and reflecting in the waters of the Amrit Sarovar. Sunset and evenings are an excellent time to tune in to the beautiful music performed in the Harmandir. The helpful information office (daily 7am–8pm) to the right of the main entrance organizes guided tours, provides details on temple accommodation and has books and leaflets about the temple and Sikh faith.

Amritsar was founded in 1577 by Ram Das, the fourth Sikh guru, beside a bathing pool famed for its healing powers. The land around the tank was granted in perpetuity by the Mughal emperor Akbar to the Sikhs. When merchants moved in to take advantage of the strategic location on the Silk Route, Amritsar expanded rapidly, gaining a grand new temple under Ram Das’s son and heir, Guru Arjan Dev. Sacked by Afghans in 1761, the shrine was rebuilt by the Sikhs’ greatest secular leader, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who also donated the gold used in its construction.

Amritsar’s twentieth-century history has been blighted by a series of appalling massacres. The first occurred in 1919, when thousands of unarmed civilian demonstrators were gunned down without warning by British troops in Jallianwalla Bagh – an atrocity that inspired Gandhi’s Non-Co-operation Movement. Following the collapse of the Raj, Amritsar experienced some of the worst communal blood-letting ever seen on the Subcontinent. The Golden Temple, however, remained unaffected by the volatile politics of post-Independence Punjab until the 1980s, when as part of a protracted and bloody campaign for the setting up of a Sikh homeland, heavily armed fundamentalists under the preacher-warrior Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale occupied the Akal Takht, a building in the Golden Temple complex that has traditionally been the seat of Sikh religious authority. The siege was brought to an end in early June 1984, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered an inept paramilitary attack on the temple, code-named Operation Blue Star. Bhindranwale was killed along with two hundred soldiers and two thousand others, including pilgrims trapped inside.

Widely regarded as an unmitigated disaster, Blue Star led directly to the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards just four months later, and provoked the worst riots in the city since Partition. Nevertheless, the Congress government seemed to learn little from its mistakes. In 1987, Indira Gandhi’s son, Rajiv Gandhi, reneged on an important accord with the Sikhs’ main religious party, the Akali Dal, thereby strengthening the hand of the separatists, who retaliated by occupying the temple for a second time. This time, the army responded with greater restraint, leaving Operation Black Thunder to the Punjab police. Neither as well provisioned nor as well motivated as Bhindranwale’s martyrs, the fundamentalists eventually surrendered.

Note : from the 'Rough Guide' directory www.roughguides.com