When the bus pulled into Amritsar, I could see that I was finally back in India.  I had left the mist-capped mountain retreats, the hummus-peddling tourist restaurants and I was back in the land of cycle rickshaws and dhabas.  Also, I had been traveling with people since Leh, so I was on my own again, which felt right after all the foreign tourists in the mountains.

Amritsar has some amazing sights and some of the most important history in India.  The jewel of Amritsar is the Golden Temple, the most holy place to all members of the Sikh religion.  You can generally recognize Sikhs due to their traditional turbans, dark beards and the ceremonial knife they carry.  This is a fundamental part of their culture, so they continue to wear these things in England and the United States, making their small group instantly recognizable around the world.

The Golden Temple really lived up to expectations.  I visited it at night on the day I arrived and it was truly an otherworldly experience.  The temple sat glistening in the center of a large lake with constant chanting emanating from the loudspeakers.  Sikhs all around prayed and bowed down at intervals.  Some bathed in the water of the lake.  When I entered the complex, I had to cover my head and apparently I screwed up the head scarf, so the Sikh guard set aside his large wooden spear and tied the scarf for me before letting me into the complex.  Everyone around seemed to find it quite funny, but he was so nice that I felt really honored.

There are a few pivotal pieces of modern Indian history which took place in and around Amritsar.  Most recently, in 1984 Sikh separatists barricaded themselves inside the Golden Temple and Indira Gandhi, then Prime Minister for the second time, had the army attack the Sikhs and drive them from the temple.  Parts of the temple were  destroyed in the attack.  The end result was not good for Indira Gandhi though.  She was assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguards, who apparently put religion and people above country, or at least Indira.

Prior to this, at the partition of India, Punjab was wracked by violence, as the state was being split into two and Hindus and Muslims began killing each other as Muslims tried to move to future Pakistan and Hindus to India.  Some estimates place the number of people killed in the violence of 1947 in the former Punjab state at around 500,000.

The continuing wounds caused by this can be seen in the border closing ceremony at the only open border between India and Pakistan.  This elaborate ceremony is done every night and really elicits nationalist pride on both sides.  Huge stadium seating is set up around the border and thousands of Indians crowd in.  I’d guess there were 10,000 there and this was one day of 365 that the ceremony occurs.  The Indian military troops are dressed elaborately with giant fans on their helmets and multicolored belts wrapped around their waists.  They march quickly to the border, goose stepping the whole way.  They flex and take on all sorts of aggressive poses as the crowd chants nationalist Hindi chants.  Some members of the crowd even lead the rest in loud chants.  “Hindustan Hindustan…”

On the other side, the Pakistan stands were less crowded but still filled with people chanting nationalist chants which the Indians tried to drown out.  Their own troops had similar outfits and poses.  Interestingly, the Pakistan side was seperated with  men on the left and women on the right while the Indian side seemed to flaunt its liberalism with women and children dancing to bollywood tunes in the street as people got seated.  The separation was deep and the difference was visible even when blocked by the large border gates.  The mood was festive but the nationalism and dislike between the two nations was palpable.  It’s absolutely fascinating given that these nuclear armed enemies were one nation sixty two years ago.  The border they were gesticulating over didn’t even exist three generations ago.  Lahore in Pakistan was the capital of a single Punjab state.

Prior to partition, Amritsar was the site of a huge historic and tragic event, one which propelled India on its way to independence.  In 1919,  in Amritsar, people organized a peaceful protest in a park called Jallianwalla Bagh near the Golden Temple.  The infamous British general Reginald Dyer decided to break up the uprising with force.  He brought his troops into the square and opened fire into the crowd.  With almost nowhere to escape, thousands of people were wounded.  Many people jumped into a well to try to escape the bullets.

The square has now been turned into a memorial. Indian placards in the memorial state that two thousand people were killed in the massacre, while the British Raj claimed at the time that 379 were killed and 1100 wounded.  In several parts of the memorial, I saw the bullet marks left from those few bullets that hit walls instead of flesh.  It’s also possible to view the well into which people jumped.  The open square is now a beautiful garden and I think it’s a very nice memorial to such a tragic event.  To understand the event though, I think it’s useful to watch the re-enactment in the movie Gandhi with Ben Kingsley.  It gives a real sense of the terror people must have felt being fired on with no warning by a madman intent on killing as many of them as possible.  Dyer was sacked from the army and sent home, but sadly, he was welcomed as a hero by many in Britain and rewarded with a huge purse of money raised on his behalf by a newspaper.  Outrage in India at this atrocity was the spark for Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement and also caused the Nobel prize winner Rabindranath Tagore to return his knighthood.

Some tourists in the mountains tried to convince me to come through Amritsar quickly without spending the night.  I should just glimpse the temple and move on, they said.  But I’m happy I spent a little time here in the big Indian city because there is so much history and so much to know about it.  Maybe it’s not beautiful, but it’s central to who India is today.