Historical memories and Inclusiveness

The interplay of past and present times and histories is visible in and around JallianwalaBagh. While the Bagh area once echoed with betrayal, bullets and deaths, in recent times it plays host to tourists, lovers and children who thus transform the Baghinto a living site thus rescuing it from being a dead artifact.The Martyr’s Well(ShahidiKuan) remains a popular tourist site as legends narratehow several injured civilians jumped into the well to escape their agony. Harmandir Sahib or Golden Temple stands within stone’s throw distance from the Bagh. Though both pay homage to ‘martyrs’, they protect very different and perhaps contradictory historical memories. The neglected walls of Harmandir Sahib still display yellowish photographs of the Sikh assassins of a prime minister of independent India and remind of the scar of 1984. Thus though the two different memorials stand together — one a testimony to the birth of a nation; the other, an acknowledgement of the depredations committed by that very nation, the site does not reverberate with conflict and tensions. The beauty of Indian democracy lies in its inclusiveness and the site upholds that.