Harmandir Sahib
Interesting facts
- The gilding is far more than a thin skin: roughly 400 kg of gold covers the dome and about 750 kg more sheathes the upper storey.
- The sacred scripture spends about 20 hours a day in the sanctum and the remaining four in its own bedroom on the first floor of the Akal Takht.
- While Guru Arjan's first shrine was being built from 1581, the pool was kept empty and dry, and it was only filled once the building was inaugurated.
- Three old jujube trees survive in the courtyard; tradition says Baba Buddha sat under one of them while supervising the digging of the pool.
- The shaded spot by the Dukh Bhanjani tree is called Ath Sath Tirath, because a dip there is held to be worth visits to 68 pilgrimage sites.
- In the 18th century Sikh chiefs raised more than 70 watchtowers and hostels around the temple; the twin red-sandstone Ramgarhia Bunga towers are rare survivors.
- The marble inlay here breaks with Mughal pietra dura by including human and animal figures, set in semi-precious stones such as lapis lazuli and onyx.
- Painters of the naqqashi school left more than 300 distinct decorative patterns on the walls; the oldest murals still visible date from the 1830s.
- A red-brick Gothic clock tower built by the British between 1862 and 1874 stood at the north entrance until the Sikh community pulled it down in 1945.
- Ranjit Singh's gilded copper roof panels were valued at 500,000 rupees of the day, and the first of them was fixed to the shrine in 1803.
Why it is worth it
At the heart of Amritsar a two-storey shrine sheathed in gilded copper floats in the middle of a square pool, reached by a single marble causeway. This is the Harmandir Sahib, the Golden Temple, the holiest gurdwara of Sikhism. The pool, the Amrit Sarovar, is roughly 150 m on each side and about 5 m deep, and it is ringed by a broad white-marble walkway that pilgrims walk clockwise before queuing at the Darshani Deori gateway to cross to the sanctum. The complex was deliberately set lower than the surrounding city, as a lesson in humility, and it has entrances on all four sides to signal that people of every faith and background are welcome.
The pool was completed under the fourth Guru, Ram Das, in 1577, and the fifth, Guru Arjan, built the first brick shrine in its centre, finished in 1589; in 1604 he installed the first compilation of Sikh scripture inside. Because the site was the spiritual centre of the community, it was repeatedly attacked: Mughal governors and Afghan armies desecrated it, filled the pool, and in 1762 Ahmad Shah Durrani had the shrine blown up. Sikhs rebuilt it each time, and the present sanctum, causeway and gateway date from the 1760s and 1770s. Maharaja Ranjit Singh refaced the building in marble and copper in 1809 and in 1830 had the sanctum overlaid with gold leaf, the origin of the English name. Inside, the lower floor holds the Guru Granth Sahib; the walls carry floral marble inlay, gold-lettered verses and murals, and the doors of the gateway are worked in silver and ivory.
The twentieth century left deep scars. In 1919, crowds leaving the temple after the Baisakhi festival walked to the neighbouring Jallianwala Bagh, where British troops opened fire on them. In June 1984 the Indian Army's Operation Blue Star, launched to remove the militant leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his armed followers, turned the complex into a battlefield: hundreds of people died and the Akal Takht, the seat of Sikh temporal authority facing the causeway, was wrecked. The community rebuilt it, completing the work in 1999.
What makes a visit unforgettable is that the shrine is fully alive. Hymns are sung almost around the clock; at dawn the scripture is carried in a flower-decked palanquin from the Akal Takht across the causeway, and at night it is carried back to rest. On the east side the community kitchen, the langar, serves a free vegetarian meal to anyone who comes, prepared and served by volunteers to diners seated in long rows on the floor; well over 100,000 meals are served on a busy day, and more than 150,000 people visit daily. On the way out of the sanctum, volunteers hand out karah prasad, a sweet offering, and a museum of Sikh history sits above the northern clock-tower entrance.
Getting there
The Golden Temple is in the old city of Amritsar, Punjab. Amritsar Junction, the busiest railway station in the state, is about 2 km away, and Sri Guru Ram Das Ji International Airport (ATQ) is about 12 km from the complex.
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From the encyclopaedia
The Golden Temple is a gurdwara located in Amritsar, Punjab, India. It is the pre-eminent spiritual site of Sikhism and its holiest site. The gurdwara complex is a collection of buildings around the sanctum sanctorum and the sarovar, known as the Amrit Sarovar. One of these is Akal Takht, part of the Panj Takht and the chief centre of religious authority of Sikhism. Additional buildings include a clock tower, the offices of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, a museum and a langar—a free Sikh community-run kitchen that offers a vegetarian meal to all visitors without discrimination. Over 150,000 people visit the shrine every day for worship, being one of the most visited religious sites in the world. The gurdwara complex has been nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and its application is pending on the tentative list of UNESCO.
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