The inauguration of the newly-renovated Jallianwala Bagh complex in Amritsar last weekend has been followed by sharp criticism from various quarters for the erasure of the history and significance of a site of massacre through thoughtless and unnecessary beautification. But, supporters of the decision have argued that the additions will only make people conscious of its history.

Amandeep Madra, OBE, who is the founder of the UK Punjab Heritage Association and co-author of Eyewitness at Amritsar: A Visual History of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre 1919, points out that memorials themselves are not historic, the giant red sandstone structure at Jallianwala Bagh installed in the early 1960s, qualifying more as a piece of iconography. The issue, however, is that “the actual Bagh itself—the space in the middle of the old city of Amritsar where one of the most brutal massacres of British rule in the 20th century took place—has now been completely stripped of what it was like in 1919”.