After the temple complex, we abandoned the idea of dry feet, we were all half-soaked by rain. We visited Jallianwalla Bagh, the site of a horrific massacre by the British in 1919. Plainly put, in a time of rising tension in Amritsar, the British government passed a strict sedition law, a curfew and strictly limited Indians' ability to assemble. The men in charge were old-school colonials, look them up some time: O'Dwyer was the territorial governor and his brig. general was an Irishman named Michael Dyer. In a nutshell, on one of the holiest days of the year for Sikhs, April 13, Dyer had his armed troops enter a large park near the temple complex to encounter thousands of Indians who were resting after worship. There were Sikh activists who had started speaking (giving speeches?) to the crowds, so I guess they were technically breaking the (unjust) laws. The park is accessible only by one opening, a very narrow passage where two people can barely walk side-by-side. In a matter of minutes, Dyer's men killed hundreds of men and boys. 120 bodies were recovered from the well as people tried to save themselves from the bullets. This horrific event spurred Mahatma Gandhi's "satyagraha" campaign of truth force activism. Ironically, Gen. Dyer was officially hailed a hero, though I read part of Winston Churshill's speak in Parliamant, decrying the inhumanity of the order and action. The Indian government has preserved 3 of the original walls where you can still see bullet holes. And the park designers used very creative means to show where the soldiers probably stood as they fired into the crowds.
After this sobering visit, we drove 30 minutes to a village and had a carnival-esque time. We met twice with the village elders, with scores of young men crowding into the small meeting space as we sat in a semi-circle on plastic chairs. A dozen young boys performed a Sikh martial arts demonstration with sticks and swords and much fanfare. There was music, jumping, lots of swinging of long sticks, Liv and Ruby would've gotten lots of new ideas for combat. We saw the village dairy, the grand and new house of the recently-elected chief, and eventually we saw a good number of the women too. This village has 240 families, with about 25 members now living in the US. They don't intermarry in the village, they struggle to balance tradition (long hair + turban, for example) with the energies of modern life (cut hair, no turban). We took lots of pictures, and I think my face hurt from smiling by the time we left.
I took a long nap yesterday afternoon--must've needed it. And we went back to the Temple in the evening.
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