overseeing the construction of the original Golden Temple (Harmandir Sahib), painting from –95 According to the Sikh historical records, the land that became Amritsar and houses the Harimandir Sahib was chosen by
Guru Amar Das, the third Guru of the Sikh tradition. It was then called
Guru Da Chakk, after he had asked his disciple Ram Das to find land to start a new town with a man-made pool as its central point. Ramdaspur town expanded during the time of
Guru Arjan financed by donations and constructed by voluntary work. The town grew to become the city of Amritsar, and the area grew into the temple complex). The construction activity between 1574 and 1604 is described in
Mahima Prakash Vartak, a semi-historical Sikh
hagiography text likely composed in 1741, and the earliest known document dealing with the lives of all the ten Gurus. Guru Arjan installed the scripture of Sikhism inside the new gurdwara in 1604. Continuing the efforts of Ram Das, Guru Arjan established Amritsar as a primary Sikh pilgrimage destination. He wrote a voluminous amount of Sikh scripture including the popular
Sukhmani Sahib.
Construction being recited near the
Akal Takht and Golden Temple, Amritsar,
Punjab, India. Guru Ram Das acquired the land for the site. Two versions of stories exist on how he acquired this land. In one, based on a Gazetteer record, the land was purchased with Sikh donations of 700 rupees from the people and owners of the village of
Tung. In another version, Emperor
Akbar is stated to have donated the land to the wife of Ram Das. According to Sikh traditional sources such as
Sri Gur Suraj Parkash Granth it was laid by Guru Arjan himself. After the inauguration, the pool was filled with water. On 16 August 1604, Guru Arjan completed expanding and compiling the first version of the Sikh scripture and placed a copy of the
Adi Granth in the gurdwara. He appointed
Baba Buddha as the first
Granthi.
Ath Sath Tirath ("shrine of 68 pilgrimages"), is a raised canopy on the
parkarma (circumambulation marble path around the pool). The name, as stated by W. Owen Cole and other scholars, reflects the belief that visiting this temple is equivalent to 68 Hindu pilgrimage sites in the Indian subcontinent, or that a Tirath to the Golden Temple has the efficacy of all 68 Tiraths combined. Arjan's son and successor
Guru Hargobind fought a
Battle at Amritsar and later left Amritsar and its surrounding areas in 1635 for
Kiratpur. For about a century after the Golden Temple was occupied by the
Minas. In the 18th century,
Guru Gobind Singh after creating the
Khalsa sent
Bhai Mani Singh to take back the temple. The Golden Temple was viewed by the Mughal rulers and Afghan Sultans as the centre of Sikh faith and it remained the main target of persecution. After the original temple was destroyed by hostile forces, the shrine was reconstructed in 1764 (a date which H.H. Cole affirms in his monograph on the temple), however most of the elaborate decorations and additions were added to the shrine in the early 19th century. However, according to
Giani Gian Singh's
Tawarikh Sri Amritsar (1889), a slightly later date of 1776 is given for the construction of the temple tank (sarovar), the temple edifice proper, the causeway, and the entry gateway or archway (
Darshani Deori). He had waste poured into the pool along with entrails of slaughtered cows, before departing for Afghanistan. The Sikhs restored it again. • In 1762, Ahmad Shah Durrani returned and had the Golden Temple blown up with gunpowder. Abdali then destroyed the Golden Temple for the 3rd time. He entrusted
Mistri Yar Muhammad Khan to carry-out the roofing work, who himself was supervised by Bhai Sand Singh. the 7th
Nizam of
Hyderabad,
Mir Osman Ali Khan started giving yearly grants towards it. The management and operation of Durbar Sahib – a term that refers to the entire Golden Temple complex of buildings, was taken over by Ranjit Singh. He appointed Sardar Desa Singh Majithia (1768–1832) to manage it and made land grants whose collected revenue was assigned to pay for the Temple's maintenance and operation.
Hari Singh Nalwa, a general of
Maharaja Ranjit Singh, decorated the Akal Takht with gold and is responsible for adding the golden dome at the top of the edifice. One of the main Bungas that was destroyed in 1988 was the
Burj Gianian. The other family were the Kapurs, who were made as the Head Granthis, this included the ancestors of
Bhai Jawahir Singh Kapur who also did try to become the Head Granthi in the late 1800s, but was not allowed (his father Bhai Atma Singh, grandfather Bhai Mohar Singh and their ancestors were also Head Granthis).
Destruction and reconstruction after Indian independence The destruction of the temple complex occurred during the
Operation Blue Star. It was the codename of an Indian military action carried out between 1 and 8 June 1984 to remove militant Sikh
Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers from the buildings of the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) complex in
Amritsar,
Punjab. The decision to launch the attack rested with
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. In July 1982,
Harchand Singh Longowal, the President of the Sikh political party
Akali Dal, had invited Bhindranwale to take up residence in the Golden Temple Complex to evade arrest. The government claimed Bhindranwale later made the sacred temple complex an
armoury and headquarters. On 1 June 1984, after negotiations with the militants failed, Indira Gandhi ordered the army to launch Operation Blue Star, simultaneously attacking scores of gurudwaras across Punjab. A variety of army units and paramilitary forces surrounded the Golden Temple complex on 3 June 1984. The fighting started on 5 June with skirmishes and the battle went on for three days, ending on 8 June. A clean-up operation codenamed
Operation Woodrose was also initiated throughout Punjab. The army had underestimated the firepower possessed by the militants, whose armament included Chinese-made
rocket-propelled grenade launchers with armour piercing capabilities.
Tanks and
heavy artillery were used to attack the militants, who responded with anti-tank and machine-gun fire from the heavily fortified Akal Takht. After a 24-hour firefight, the army gained control of the temple complex. Casualty figures for the army were 83 dead and 249 injured. According to the official estimates, 1,592 militants were apprehended and there were 493 combined militant and civilian casualties. According to the government claims, high civilian casualties were attributed to militants using
pilgrims trapped inside the temple as
human shields.
Brahma Chellaney, the
Associated Press's South Asia correspondent, was the only foreign reporter who managed to stay on in
Amritsar despite the media blackout. His dispatches, filed by
telex, provided the first non-governmental news reports on the bloody operation in Amritsar. His first dispatch, front-paged by
The New York Times,
The Times of London and
The Guardian, reported a death toll about twice of what authorities had admitted. According to the dispatch, about 780 militants and civilians and 400 troops had perished in fierce gun-battles. Chellaney reported that about "eight to ten" men suspected of being Sikh militants had been shot with their hands tied. In that dispatch, Chellaney interviewed a doctor who said he had been picked up by the army and forced to conduct postmortems despite the fact he had never done any postmortem examination before. In reaction to the dispatch, the Indian government charged Chellaney with violating Punjab press censorship, two counts of fanning sectarian hatred and trouble, and later with sedition, calling his report baseless and disputing his casualty figures. The military action in the temple complex was criticised by Sikhs worldwide, who interpreted it as an assault on the Sikh religion. Many Sikh soldiers
deserted their units; several Sikhs resigned from civil administrative office and returned awards received from the
Indian government. Five months after the operation, on 31 October 1984, Indira Gandhi was
assassinated in an act of revenge by her two Sikh bodyguards,
Satwant Singh and
Beant Singh. A few months after the government operation of 1984, major
kar seva renovations were undertaken at the shrine complex, including a complete draining and then cleaning of the temple tank (
sarovar) by volunteers. This was made into a public park and opened in June 1988. In December 2021, a young man was allegedly beaten to death after disrupting the
Rehras Sahib (evening prayer) at the sanctum of the temple. He reportedly jumped over a railing and picked up the sword lying before the temple's copy of the
Guru Granth Sahib, before attempting to touch the Guru Granth Sahib itself. He was subsequently overpowered by the pilgrims and received fatal injuries to the head. The
2023 Golden Temple blasts occurred on 7 May and on 9 May 2023. ==Architecture==