Seeking Sikhs

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After leaving Udaipur I went to Amritsar in the North West of the country, near the border with Pakistan. My hotel was very close to the famous Golden Temple - in fact you could hear the chanting of the proests from my room.

The Golden Temple is very different from most Indian temples - there is great ostentation, obviously, with the roof and much of the walls of the main temple area being covered in gold - but there are no idols and it feels a spiritual and friendly place. There is a massive kitchen and dining area within the compound as Sikhs have no dietary rules and anyone is welcome to eat there. In fact you can stay and eat at the temple completely free of charge, though they limit the stay to three nights.

The Sikh religion was fonded by Guru Nanak and after him there were nine other gurus before the current guru, which is not a man but their holy book itself, the Guru Granth Sahib. The book is kept at the temple and ceremoiously moved in procession twice a day at about 4 in the morning and 10 in the evening.

During the day the covered book can be seen as you walk round the holy pond and through the temple. You have to take your shoes off to get into the temple - this is standard. But you also have to have your head covered. I had a hat, but this was not acceptable. I had to get a sort of orange bandana thing and tie it on.

There is a museum attached to the temple which gives a version of Sikh history with the aid of paintings.

Also within easy walking distance of my hotel was the Jallianwallah Bagh, the scene in 1919 of a massacre by British army troops of peacfully demonstrating unarmed Indians. It's a beatiful park now with memorioals to the event but at teh time it was an enclosed space with no exits and the demonstraters stood no chance when they were fired on without warning. Many tried to escape by jumping down the well which is still preserved - hundreds of dead bodies were taken out.

I was the only white man, and probably the only Englishman, as I walked around and it was hard not to feel guilty somehow for this atrocity perpetrated by the British army.

Amritsar is a nice town to wander about in and it was a pleasant walk throgh the old city where my hotel and the Golden Temple were, past Jallianwallah Bagh to the newer areas around Lawrence and Mall road where there were European style shops and restaurants.

Also in the new area was another pleasant park with dioramas and panoramas celebrating the life of Maharajah Ranjit Singh (the Lion of the Punjab) in whose time the Sikh kingdom had its greatest extent.

All male Sikhs, of course, have Singh as part of their name and I was wondering if the Punjabi telephone directory had very few entries for all teh letters up to R, then masses of S's and then practically nothing again. But, in fact, the Punjabi telephone book will be in Hindi or Punjabi, not English and my guess is that the Singh element of names is ignored for the purposes of alphabetiicisation.

I visited another temple in the newer part of town, the Mata Lal Devi Manhir, a Hindu temple. This was bulit in honour of a 20th century Hindu woman who was held to be a saint and is designed so that you have to crawl through an artificial cave and wade through water about four inches deep before reaching the main shrine. There there is an image of Mata Lal and she looks just like Ms Penh, the lady who founded th3e Phnom Penh temple in Cambodia.

I really liked Amritsar and would like to go back some day it was a relaxing place after all my hard work :-(
But the hotel was failry basic, so when moving on to Mumbai, I wanted a bit more luxury for a bit.

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Photos

Golden Temple
Looks like the Brighton Pavilion. Luckily they decided to add some gol

Golden Temple
Much nicer

Maharajah Ranjit Singh
THe Lion of the Punjab

Idol
With a remarkable resemblance to Mr Punch

Me
After visiting the temple