A 'heritage walk' reveals another fascinating side of Amritsar's history

Amritsar has a quaint and prosaic commercial history

In Amritsar, Punjab Tourism doesn’t hide its light under a bushel but behind a fire truck in a dusty corner of the magnificent Town Hall. Tacked on to a glass door is a handwritten sign offering a “heritage walk”, the timings and a mobile number.

This unlovely old city has a heritage beyond the Golden Temple, Jallianwala Bagh and the traumas of Partition? Intrigued and with time to spare, we call to book ourselves on the 5 pm tour. Just turn up, says the voice on the phone, so we show up 15 minutes ahead just in case tickets are sold out. We needn’t have worried. Having paid the princely “contribution” of Rs 75 each to Gurvinder, we discover that we are the only clients. And Gurvinder, it turns out, is our ticketing agent-cum-tour-guide.

She starts the tour briskly, pointing to the grand vista of the Town Hall, the 1866 British administration building that is being renovated, somewhat aggressively, as part of a project to create a tourist zone around the Golden Temple (the must-see Partition Museum occupies one end). We turn on to Mallika Chowk, named after Empress Victoria, whose imposing statue has been despatched to a museum and replaced by a heroic depiction of Ranjit Singh, Punjab’s most revered maharaja (a banner on the way from the airport boasts no less than a “7D” show on his life).

It is appropriate that this statue of Ranjit Singh, who defended his kingdom so ably from the British in the early nineteenth century, should face Gurudwara Saragarhi Sahib. This pristine little jewel of white painted brick, set back from the road so it is easy to miss in the melee of people heading for the Golden Temple, commemorates the bravery of 21 soldiers of the 36 Sikh battalion. They died defending their army post on the North West Frontier border against marauding Pathans several times their number in 1897 (the Sikhs fought as part of the British army). Our visit, we learn, comes just ahead of the release of the Akshay Kumar-starrer commemorating this heroic last stand.

Thanks to British myth-making, the Sikhs’ martial history dominates public perception but Amritsar also has a quaint and prosaic commercial history that is rooted in the bustling, chaotic market of the old city. Amritsar, “the city of nectar”, was once known as Ramdaspur because it was founded by Guru Ramdas, the fourth Sikh guru. He invited 52 traders from the nearby villages of Patti and Kasur to settle in the city. They did, setting up 32 shops between themselves, which led to the market being named battisi hatta (literally, 32 shops).

Gurudwara Saragarhi Sahib

Now Gurvinder turns towards a massive wooden door studded with metal shields of the kind you see in Rajasthani forts. This is the entrance to Qila Ahluwalia, which belonged to Jassa Ahluwalia, who ruled the city in the 1700s, and apparently repelled many foreign invasions during his time. But the interior of the fort is a huge disappointment: it’s an unsightly jumble of dwellings and offices, a prime example of modern urban grunge that can be seen in Old Delhi’s Khari Baoli mansions. These units, Gurvinder tells us almost apologetically, are occupied by the descendants of Marwari traders whom Ahluwalia had invited to settle there.

But just around a corner you spot the crumbling havelis of Amritsar’s once prosperous merchant community. Even the streaks of dirt and jumbles of electrical wiring cannot mar the beauty of these intricately carved wooden frontages, mute witnesses of another era. Those merchants were probably aware of the ephemeral nature of worldly wealth. At the end of the delicate trellis-work framing each balcony is a hand, forefinger pointing downward, a cautionary reminder of the need for the rich and mighty to cultivate humility.

Intricately carved wooden frontages amid jumbled wiresI

Gurvinder leads us to the Udasin Ashram Akhara Sangalwala, set up in 1771, a meditation centre of the sect founded by Sri Chand, Guru Nanak’s son, whose ascetic philosophy dominated Sikhism for many decades. The Chitta Akhara nearby was another monastic order founded in 1781, testimony to the existence of competing philosophies within Sikhism.

The spare, quiet interiors of both offer a sharp contrast to the congested anarchy of the market outside where negotiating piles of garbage, stray dogs, fellow pedestrians, rickshaws, cycles and two-wheelers remains a constant challenge. The “crawling street”, in which Punjab Governor Michael O’Dwyer imposed his notorious crawling and whipping orders during the unrest of 1919 leading up to the Jallianwala Bagh tragedy, barely registers because it’s just another dingy alley today.

Indeed, the appalling state of the old city somehow detracts from the many unexpected jewels that Gurvinder pointed out en route. Tucked between neon signs and shop frontages is the Darshini Deori, an exquisitely painted archway under which, it is said, Sri Guru Arjan and Sri Guru Gobind would view the Golden Temple (no surprise, you can’t see a thing from there today).  There is the Thakurdwara Dariana Mal, a colonial-style mansion with the distinctive brickwork that can be spotted in other parts of the city. There’s a mint, a crumbling reminder of where the Sikh regime’s coins were once minted. And finally, we walk down what we are told is an ancient passage linking the mohallas of old Amritsar. With the tightly packed wholesale shops on either side, the “ancient” nature of the avenue was lost to us. That is why at the end of this unexpectedly fascinating one-hour walk we began to understand why Punjab Tourism does not promote more vigorously a tour that offers an intriguing glimpse into the history of a storied city. More’s the pity.