The congestion of these shops and businesses leaves only a narrow space in between to be used as a door to the mandir. It can initially be recognised by the saffron coloured flag from a distance, standing side by side with the Pakistani flag at the entrance.
Once inside, you see an open space with a weathered brick floor and a semi-carpeted sitting area at one corner to accommodate visitors. The inner chambers of the temple are restricted to two small rooms, prone to flooding with even the slightest amount of rainfall. Inside the rooms, the garbhagriha occupies a central position, with the saffron-coloured flag taped to it at the forefront and the Pakistani flag again by its side.
If they harm our land, then they should know that they are also harming Pakistan. John, another congregant of the Valmiki temple, disagrees. Why is the flag on our shrine itself? Next to the grand lotus-petal Alamgiri Gate of the Lahore Fort rest the scattered ruins of the Lava Mandir, accidentally exhumed while the royal kitchen above the temple was being excavated.
The abandoned temple has no congregation, only Hindu yatrees from across the border visit and worship at the Lava Mandir. The small room remains barricaded to Pakistanis and is easy to miss under the majesty of the Lahore Fort. Faded frescoes and well-worn arches surround the central shrine. The garbhagriha itself, comprised of an ancient stone pavilion topped with a lotus-adorned cupola, notably lacks any murtis in its hollowed-out middle.
Instead, subdued garlands and burnt-out incense sticks mark the ephemeral visits that the temple hosts. The dilapidated site of the Loh Mandir is a manifestation of the lack of public Pakistani investment in Hindu heritage sites, especially in Lahore.
The durability of Hindu spaces in the city is not judged by their utility to the indigenous Hindu population, but rather their viability within a complex nexus of international relations and capitalist development.
The brick-laying ceremony was attended by the prime minister of Pakistan and multiple ministers from India, both parties eager to co-opt the opening to soften India-Pakistan relations.
Videos produced from the Kartarpur Corridor showcase large developments, an expansive highway and future plans for five-star hotels and world-star cuisine descending upon the space of this small ascetic gurdwara. While the government does facilitate the arrival of a few thousand Hindu and Sikh yatrees from across the border every year, it is particularly negligent and even exploitative of the precarious position of Pakistani Hindus living inside Lahore.
At the Valmiki Mandir, John asserts that his fealty to the land runs deeper than both India or Pakistan. Bhagat Lal Khokar, the priest, tells us about how during and after Partition, the elders at the temple adamantly decided to stay in Lahore and care for their ancestral temple, even giving up portions of the large mandir complex to Muslim refugees coming in from India.
Those refugees never gave that property back. The Auqaf had started a Jinnah Fund for minority communities in the s, and when they came to the Valmiki Mandir for contributions, the elders decided to give the rent from these khokas towards the Jinnah Fund. However, the Jinnah Fund abruptly ended, yet the Auqaf did not remand revenue back to the mandir.
Some congregants demanded that the dilapidated and encroached-upon mandir needed significant work, especially after the Babri Masjid demolition. This February, after decades of struggle, the Valmiki Mandir has finally filed a court case to regain revenue rights from their own property.
Meanwhile, at the Krishna Mandir, the only other public functioning Hindu temple in the city, Diwali and other festivals are celebrated with huge fanfare with the economic support of the Auqaf, but with little substance as the entire road is barricaded and the Muslim community around the temple is prohibited from visiting. That Muslims are not allowed to ring in festivals with the Hindu community further stratifies their religious identities, demarcating them at a point of difference.
This contestation of space hinges on the role of neoliberal capitalism in nation-state building. Not only do the Hindu temples fall under the coercive purview of the governmental departments with no other option, but they are also expected to accept and use these funds in a manner that suits the Pakistani ideology.
Nation-building is inextricably linked to capitalist development in Pakistan. Meanwhile, in the case of the Kartarpur Corridor, the framework for free market profit has already been laid around the epicentre of the gurdwara. Therefore, these unorthodox, non-Muslim religious spaces only become relevant in the context of profit.
Now, there are only a few traces of Hindu visibility in Lahore, such as the building once known as the Hanuman Basuli Mandir. Its shikhara peaks through the newly constructed plazas and old heritage buildings of the Anarkali Bazaar. This mandir, now a residence to numerous families, is easily distinguishable from its surroundings. It stands out with its antique Hindu architectural language, sculptures of deities whose faces have been scratched out and Sanskrit wall engravings that the city has grown to neglect over time.
Before the partition, when Amritsar and Lahore were both in the Indian state of Punjab, there were Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs who had links with both cities. Some even had a home in one and business in the other. In Divided Cities , Ian Talbot explores anew a region with which he has been deeply engaged. Talbot recounts the changing equation between Lahore and Amritsar, and traces the traumatic and dramatic changes in the two cities in , their sudden transformation from heartland centers into border cities, and, later, their contrasting evolution.
The author's long lens takes in the pre history and the decade after partition. All cities have their periods of glory and importance, and of decline. Lahore became part of the Mughal empire in , and was next only to Delhi and Agra in imperial prominence. For brief periods during the reigns of Emperors Akbar and Shah Jahan in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries , it functioned as the empire's capital.
There is also an ancient Ramayana connection that links Lahore to Rama's son Lav. A key year in the story of Amritsar is , when the Adi Granth, the Sikh scripture, was installed at the site of the Harmandir Sahib, which would become Sikhism's holiest shrine. But it was during the forty years that the Sikh chieftain Ranjit Singh ruled over the Punjab and territories beyond that Amritsar found preeminence.
The Harmandir Sahib was gilded with gold during this time, and was to be known thereafter as the Swaran Mandir, or Golden Temple. The city prospered and bustled, trade expanded. Though Lahore was Ranjit Singh's capital, it declined. Ranjit Singh's successors squabbled even as a new power, Britain, extended its control across the subcontinent. In the s the Punjab's Sikh rulers lost out to the British, who proceeded to develop Lahore as their Indian empire's chief city to the north of Delhi.
In the year of independence, partition, violence, and migrations , Lahore's , Hindus and Sikhs constituted about a third of the city's population. They migrated to different parts of East Punjab, Delhi, and elsewhere in India. On the other hand, Amritsar's Muslims, who formed half of its total population of around ,, went chiefly to Lahore, taking skills and talents.
Lahore lost all its Hindus and Sikhs, Amritsar, all its Muslims. After Lahore grew at a much faster rate. The census had Lahore's population as seven million, while Amritsar's was less than a million. In all, between half a million and a million lost their lives in the violence. Talbot notes that "there are no wayside memorials to provide clues to the Amritsar-Lahore road's dark history in August-November Huge caravans of refugees … traversed this route as part of the mass exodus of 4.
Rejecting an explanation that many still offer for India in and for similar traumas elsewhere, Talbot argues in Divided Cities that "the violence in Lahore and Amritsar was not the outcome of primordial religious differences which culminated in a spontaneous outburst of irrational passion and ferocity" p. A modern state or states that no longer functioned by the rule of law, and individuals and communal groups seeking to grab the power of a departing empire provided a combustible mix.
The author divides his study into six parts: 1 the colonial period and its impact on the development of Lahore and Amritsar; 2 events in the two cities from March to August ; 3 post-partition between and ; 4 the challenges posed by destruction and demographic changes; 5 recovered memories of Lahore and Amritsar; and 6 how refugees influenced the two cities and related to local residents.
The British annexed the Punjab in the mid-nineteenth century. Urban development of the two cities followed a set pattern for colonial civilian settlements, with tree-shaded roads and large bungalows, cantonments, and a Mall Road in each, but the scales tilted in Lahore's favor as the provincial capital.
Lahore saw its engineering, textile, and leather industries grow during the Second World War. Colonial architecture in Lahore sought to blend with the city's Mughal heritage, and it became an educational center with impressive schools and colleges that competed with Delhi's. Hindus resided in distinct enclaves. Its larger student and European population gave Lahore a cosmopolitan feel that Amritsar could not match.
Amritsar's markets, factories, and mills grew rapidly, however, with trade links extending to Europe and Central Asia in cotton and woolen textiles, raw silk, cattle, and horses. The wheat market for the Punjab--the granary of India--was situated in Amritsar. Flour mills were mostly owned by Hindus from the bania, or trading castes. I read the newspaper as best as I could amidst the clucking and the quarrelling of the birds. This continued right through the spring of the year I read of the impending transfer of power from British to Indian hands, of the Boundary Commission that was to partition India and Pakistan and of the rioting that was taking place all over Punjab.
I assumed that these things would pass, that India and Pakistan would be free members of the Commonwealth and that I would stay on where I was in Lahore, whether it went to India or Pakistan, and have my morning cup of tea with my white leghorn rooster and his harem of three snow maidens.
The birds gave life a sense of continuity. Early in the August of things began to change. The riots assumed the magnitude of a massacre and it became clear that the Sikhs and Hindus would have to clear out of Pakistan. I was a Sikh, but I clung to the hope that I would be able to stay in Pakistan where I had been born and where all my closest friends, who were largely Muslim, were living. This was not to be. One afternoon in the first week of August, I saw columns of black smoke rising from the bazaars and heard sounds of gunfire and the wailing of women.
We picked up whatever we could in our hands, handed the keys of the house to a Muslim friend, Manzur Qadir, and joined the stream of Hindu and Sikh refugees going out of Pakistan into India.
Escorted by six Baluch constables, my wife and I took a train to Kalka to join our two children, who had been sent ahead to their grandparents in Kasauli. We came across convoys of Muslim refugees fleeing from India into Pakistan. We heard terrible stories of murder, rape and arson. We had no doubt of the fate that had befallen them. Then I realized that the world I had lived in and whose continuance I had taken for granted had ceased to exist.
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