Golden Temple

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They were everywhere!
Women!
After 3 months in Pakistan with some areas with no women at all in the public realm, now here in Amritsar they were all over the place, even in the police.

At a time when in Germany women had not really arrived yet on the streets as beat cops, women had been already active in the Indian police force for decades. The first woman police officer had been appointed in 1933 in Kerala.
I dislike police in general and I don´t like them any better if they are female, but if you want to use women´s participation in certain men´s domains as a measure of emancipation, then India´s women had achieved quite a lot already early in history, compared to other regions of the world.
And if you see what strong women like Kiran Bedi, former Inspector General of Prisons in New Delhi, have achieved, one could believe that it might be some improvement, might make the police more human, if women are involved.

Doing time doing Vipassana
Since Vipassana is the first meditation method I learned and Kiran Bedi is such a wonderful woman, this is one of my favorite spiritual movies.

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The next thing I noticed in abundance in the markets of Amritsar were flies, they were covering everything and if the vendor could be bothered to wave his fly-whisk, black clouds of flies would lift off into the air shortly, allowing me a quick glimpse of the meat they had been feasting on, before settling down on the meat again.
So right there I became a vegetarian for the first time in my life! For hygienic reasons.

I had been a meat eater all my life, though traditionally my family did not eat that much meat compared to other Germans, because we prefered to eat our own vegetables from our garden which was also cheaper of course. Those were the days when Sunday lunches still were kind of a special meal with a nice roast from the oven, so once a week a big meat dish.

In Pakistan I had still eaten meat, because first of all I thought, those guys are Muslims, they know how to treat meat, slaughtering halal, meaning they would make sure all the blood was drained, so less likely to spoil quickly in the heat and second, I spent most of my time in Pakistan in the cooler mountain regions anyway, so not so hot not that many flies.

But after seeing those dark clouds of flies on the meat in the market in Amritsar, I did not have a single bite of meat, apart from some momos in Ladakh, in India. And being a vegetarian in India is easy, because many Hindus are vegetarians and there are vegetarian restaurants everywhere and in some of the holy cities of Hinduism meat is even forbidden.

In Amritsar I stayed of course in the the hostel for pilgrims of the Golden Temple. Everybody, no matter what religion, is allowed to stay there for free for up to three days and you also get free food from the communal kitchen in the dining hall of the Golden Temple.

The Golden Temple was my first of many spiritual experiences in India. I was the only white guy there and the Sikhs, though sometimes tall, fierce-looking, impressive warrior types, and you don´t want to mess with their woman folk either, once you´ve seen the knifes, more like daggers they all carry, were very friendly to me. Those Sikhs were from all over the world on pilgrimage in Amritsar, what the Kaaba in Mecca is to the Muslims, the Golden Temple is to the Sikh religion.

Revenge of the Sikh

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On the outside of the walls surrounding the Golden Temple complex I saw the writing on the wall again, even in India it would not leave me, bullet holes over bullet holes, silent witnesses of Operation Blue Star in 1984, when the Indian army had raided the Golden Temple Complex in order to flush out armed Sikh rebels fighting for Khalistan, the Land of the Pure, an independent Sikh state in Punjab. The latest darkest moment of so many in Sikh history.

The writing on the wall, a reoccuring theme during my travels.

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Indira Gandhi, then Prime Minister, ordered the attack, after apparently all negotiations with the rebels had failed, even Swami Vishnudevanda, whose teachings would later on become quite important in my life, tried to act as an intermediary and visited the rebels in order to reach a peaceful solution.

Swami Vishnudevananda, meeting with Sikh leaders in the Golden Temple in 1984

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If you think about that big parts of the Indian army were Sikh, of course only non-Sikh units were used in the attack, it was not the smartest order to give for Indira and in October 1984 this order sealed her fate.
To get an idea what this attack on their holiest shrine meant for the Sikh community, just imagine what would happen, if anybody would attack the Kaaba in Mecca.
Like every morning she stepped into her garden and gave her two body guards the namaste. But this time she was in for the surprise of her life, her guards opened fire and gunned her down. Like the old Sikh martyrs of lore, acting against any Mughal ruler trying to defile the Golden Temple, those two Sikh soldiers, Indira´s faithful servants for many years, had decided to avenge the sacrilege.

What happened next must have been a déja vu for many Sikhs, the horrors of The Partition reappearing, only this time it was not only Muslims against Sikhs, but Hindus as well, all of India was out for revenge against the Sikhs. Sikh cab drivers were pulled out of their cars in Delhi and set ablaze by angry mobs, shops were looted and burned, many Sikhs fled from Delhi to the safer, predominantly Sikh regions of the Punjab.
Incited and supported by politicians of Indira Gandhi´s Congress Party, the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 cost the lives of more than 3000 Sikhs.

I have always thought it a miracle that the Indian masses manage to live together so peacefully most of the time. I think if us Germans were under such living conditions in such crowded spaces, with poverty, pollution, heat, flies, dust, beggars and burial grounds, we would be constantly at each other´s throat. But sometimes also in Incredible India it just needs a little spark and the whole thing explodes.

Fortunately, when I was in the Golden Temple in 1992, peace prevailed and the Sikhs I met there were all wonderful, hospitable people, happy to see a foreigner joining them in their meals, and their walks in the serenity of the Golden Temple.

Little did I know then, during those happy days in Amritsar, that only a few months later, and of all days they could choose to start the eruption, they chose my name day, the sixth of December, the day of the Holy Nikolaos, India would erupt once more, this time Hindus and Muslims at each other´s throat.

For previous travel and other stories check out my blog @likedeeler

For more inspiring stories and a group of inspiring and supportive people check out @ecotrain.