Tread lightly at Jallianwala Bagh, for you walk on tragic ground. Only a stone’s throw from the astonishing Golden Temple, it is hard to imagine anything bad could happen in such a peaceful place.
But it was on this spot in 1919 that the British Indian Army fired 1,650 rounds into an assembly of 20,000 Punjabis. The brutality of the attack, in which up to 1,000 people died and many more injured, shocked the nation and is widely seen as triggering the beginning of the Indian nationalist movement.
The only way in or out of the park is on foot through a narrow passageway – the same passageway through which the army entered on that fateful day, and the same one the soldiers blocked as they massacred the assembled crowds.
Today, Jallianwala Bagh is a public garden, housing an elegant red-sandstone monument honouring the dead. And on the other side of the memorial is the Martyrs’ Well, into which innocent people threw themselves in an attempt to escape the bullets.
This serene park is a place for reflection and introspection, but its tragic past is still very tangible. Look closely and you’ll see the bullet holes that pepper the stone walls of the park’s perimeter. Be prepared to be moved.