Sri Harmandir Sahib, Amritsar

01The pool of nectar

Guru Ram Das, the fourth Guru, began digging a sarovar in 1577 and the town of Ramdaspur grew around it. Guru Arjan Dev, the fifth Guru, completed the tank and built the Harmandir, the house of Hari, in its middle, lower than the city around it and open by four doors, one to each direction, so that all might enter. On 1 September 1604 he installed the newly compiled Adi Granth inside, with Baba Buddha as the first granthi. In 1606 Guru Hargobind raised the Akal Takht facing it.

02Desecrated, destroyed, rebuilt

In 1740 Massa Ranghar, the Mughal chaudhri, occupied the shrine and held dances in it; Mehtab Singh and Sukha Singh rode in and killed him. In 1757 the forces of Ahmad Shah Abdali defiled the sarovar, and Baba Deep Singh, with his head, as the Sikh account says, held on his palm, fought his way to its edge and fell there. In April 1762, months after the Vadda Ghallughara massacre, Abdali blew up the Harmandir with gunpowder and filled the tank. The Sikh misls began rebuilding in 1764. Maharaja Ranjit Singh covered the upper storeys in gilded copper in the early 19th century, and from then the world called it the Golden Temple.

03Langar and kirtan

Gurbani kirtan goes on from before dawn, when the Guru Granth Sahib is brought in procession from the Akal Takht, until it is carried back at night. The langar feeds every visitor, of any faith, sitting together on the floor, often over a lakh people on a festival day. The complex was badly damaged in the army action of June 1984, Operation Blue Star, and the Akal Takht was afterwards rebuilt by kar seva. Hindus of Punjab have long counted the Darbar Sahib among their own holiest places.

The life of this place