Nation, Region, Religion: Monumentality and Urban Space in Postcolonial Amritsar

This paper examines the postcolonial histories of the Golden Temple and Jallianwala Bagh Memorial, and their connections to Amritsar’s urban development. These distinct 'monuments’, produced by diverse actors and institutions, were entangled with the city’s broader histories of displacement and shifting urban imaginaries. We show how these spaces emerged through dissonant claims and erasures resulting from municipal works, property disputes, and monumentality. Sacrality was either subsumed within state and urban development or disrupted these processes to lay claims to land, practice, and space. First, these monuments were produced through the symbolic use of dominant national and regional histories that shaped . Second, demolitions, evictions and clearances were facilitated by diverse urban planning regimes and legislations, not entirely connected to the monuments themselves, provided myriad bureaucratic justifications to reshape the urban landscape. Engaging with this past allows us to explore a longer history of contemporary heritage-led urban development in India.