Amritsar and Sikh History

The Golden Temple at 5:00 am.

In the line of the faithful.

Sunrise from the roof.

Some of the marble floor tiling around the temple.

Mark and friends.

Monument to the 1919 massacre.

The 'soldiers'.

Prerna and her elephant ride.

Lorry cramming.

Playing cricket in front of the chicken market.

I feel sorry for animals in traffic.

The flag lowering ceremony.

Tuesday, March 20^th.

Yesterday at the Golden Temple I hemmed and hawed about lining up to see the inside of the temple but decided against it as the line was long and would take well over an hour. I also thought that since I’m not a Sikh, maybe I shouldn’t even go in. But, this morning I woke up at 4:30 and decided that since I was awake I would go, and I am really glad I did. So, I walked back, joined the long queue of the faithful and waited. There was no pushing or jostling and people didn’t really crowd your space, but nevertheless it was a bit claustrophobic as once you were in the line there really was no way to go back. However, it was good and I just shuffled along with the others for about an hour before reaching the temple. Photography is forbidden but it was beautiful inside. It was not very big, maybe twenty metres square, with an inner section where religious leaders were chanting from the holy book to musical accompaniment and performing other actions while we were shepherded around and encouraged to keep moving. I found a set of stairs that went up one level and there was a similar setup with more leaders chanting and people sitting around and praying. I found still another set of stairs which as it turned out led to the roof. Up there you could take photos and I got a few really nice ones, including the pink glow of the sunrise. I didn’t see any other foreign tourists, and although I was looked at with curiosity, no one seemed resentful that I was there. I felt quite welcome as some people greeted me with a smile or the namaste clasped hands.

When I went back to the hotel I joined Prerna and a few others for a typical local breakfast at a small restaurant frequented by local people. We had a kultur, which is a flat bread with a filling of your choice (I had potato) and a masala chai, for all of $1.

We met up with the whole group and went to the memorial for the 1919 Jallianwallah Bagh massacre. This sad story came about after the First World War. Britain had promised India dominion status, along the lines of Canada and Australia and despite the fact that they raised many more troops, money and equipment for the war than Canada and Australia combined, the British reneged. There was a backlash amongst the Indian people and the Sikhs in this region. General Dyer was order by Viceroy O’Dwyer to quell the rebellion. On April 13, 1919 Dyer tried to take armoured cars into a park area where there were protestors as well as other people celebrating Baisakhi, one of the Punjab's largest religious festivals, but he couldn’t get his machine gun armoured vehicles up the narrow path, so he took 50 soldiers in on foot. There without warning he ordered them to fire at the defenceless populace. They fired thousands of rounds, until they ran out of ammunition, and many people were killed. The actual number is unknown but is estimated at around 1000, with many others wounded. Others in an effort to escape jumped into a well and were drown. Ultimately, instead of snuffing out the rebellion, it became a catalyst for Indian independence, which eventually came on August 13, 1947. This park is now a memorial to that massacre and still houses the well, a monument and a garden. What is not mentioned in the museum on the property, is that the soldiers he commanded were actually Sikhs and Indians in the British Indian Army who as British soldiers were loyal to Britain. In other words, the British ordered Indians to shoot Indians. Udham Singh was a volunteer serving water at the meeting and witnessed it. He swore revenge and although it took him twenty years, he finally succeeded in getting close enough to Sir Michael O’Dwyer at a meeting in England and to shoot him dead. He was subsequently hanged in Pentonville Prison. He is considered a martyr and his remains were brought here and are housed in the memorial.

Later, a few of us walked down to the other end of the pedestrian walkway to the Partition Museum. This is another tragic story that happened in 1947. There were problems in India between the Hindus and the Muslims. After a few conflicts and the horrors of the Second World War, Britain finally decided to give break the county in two along religious lines. They gave the job to an excellent lawyer who had never been to India and had no understanding of the complexity of the country. To make matters more complicated, he was to create a Muslim country on the north west part of India (the Dominion of Pakistan) and the North East as well (which eventually became the Peoples Republic of Bangladesh). He was given a short time line to complete the task. The last British Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten, had the mistaken idea that the actual new border lines should not be announced publicly before the actual date that they would take place as this might cause unrest, decided that it needed to happen in an even shorter period of time. The border line was drawn up very arbitrarily and displaced 14 million people along religious lines. In some cases families were divided into two countries. When they realized that the new Pakistan didn’t have a big city the line was redrawn and Lahore was given to Pakistan. People scrambled to get on the right side of the border based on their religion. This meant giving up their property or belongings. There were clashes where one group killed the other, and sometimes a train load of immigrants would arrive with all the passengers murdered. It is estimated that between one and two million people died during the partition. The museum was very informative and factual without being overly sensationalized. 

At 2pm, we all gathered again and took our bus to watch the Wagah Border ceremony. When we got there we found ourselves basically in a sports stadium with hundreds of Indians and tourists, and on the other side of two fences, hundreds of Pakistanis. Between the two fences were two flag poles, one for each flag. One either side were a number of soldiers, the Indians in khaki colour and the Pakistanis in black. This event happens every evening at the India-Pakistan border between Amritsar and Lahore. With speakers blaring songs and anthems from both sides and hawkers selling popcorn, ice cream, ‘I Love India’ baseball caps, it felt like a sporting event without a ball. We watched as flag bearers ran between the Indian stands and then a bunch of locals disco danced to some other music before the actual ceremony took place. It needs to be stated that there have been border skirmishes between the two countries for years and they are basically at war, in order to understand how surreal this all was. The soldiers from each side took turns marching quickly towards the flags and making macho arm raising signals to the soldiers on the other side who were doing the same thing. This went on for about a half hour before two soldiers grasped the flag lines and slowly lowered them, folded them and marched back to their superiors to house them for the night. It was like campy, comedic theatre, with aerobic leg kicks and fist pumping. And then it was all over. Just like that. Then we had to leave the stadium with the mobs and walk through a gauntlet of make shift stalls and shops where hawkers were selling everything from snacks to clothing, souvenirs to drinks. It was totally bizarre.

(All of the historical information is necessarily short and simplified. I intend to learn more about it from the internet when I have time.)

On the drive back we stopped at a restaurant just before the city to have dinner. Then we just had time to drive back, retrieve our bags, load up the bus and drive to the train station to catch our night train to Rishikesh. The station was a busy, crowded place. Steven, Michael and I shared a compartment with a young newlywed Indian couple. There are six berths in each compartment, they had the top two and Michael and I had the bottom two, with Steven in the middle. Steven at 6’3” was cramped for space, but I really felt for Mark in the next compartment at 6’8’. He said it was like sleeping in a tree and trying not to fall out. We talked for a short time before we all settled in for the night with the clickety, clack sound of the tracks lulling us to sleep after an incredibly interesting and busy day.