By LYDIA POLGREEN

AMRITSAR, India - It is lunchtime at what may be the world’s largest free eatery. The langar, or community kitchen, is located in this city’s glimmering Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of the Sikh religion. Thousands of volunteers have scrubbed the floors, chopped onions, shelled peas and peeled garlic. At least 40,000 metal plates, bowls and spoons have been washed and stacked. Anyone can eat for free here, and on a weekday, about 80,000 come.

On weekends, almost twice as many people visit. Each visitor gets a wholesome vegetarian meal, served by volunteers who embody India’s religious and ethnic mosaic. “This is our tradition,” said Harpinder Singh, the 45-year-old manager of this huge operation.

India is not only the world’s largest democracy, it also is one of the most spiritually diverse nations. It was born in a spasm of religious bloodshed in 1947 when British India was torn in two to create a Muslim homeland in Pakistan.

Yet India has been a resolutely secular nation and has managed to accommodate a vast range of views on such fundamental questions as the nature of humanity, the existence of God and the quality of the soul. Indeed, few places demonstrate so clearly the country’s genius for diversity and tolerance.

Sikhism, which emerged in the Punjab region of India in the 15th century, strongly rejects the notion of caste, which lies at the core of Hinduism. The Golden Temple, a giant complex of marble and gold that sits at the heart of this sprawling city near the border with Pakistan, seeks to embody this principle.

Nowhere is it more evident than in the kitchen, where everyone is considered equal. Guru Amar Das created the kitchen during his time as the third Sikh guru in the 16th century. Its purpose, he said, was to place all of humanity on the same plane, no matter his religion, wealth or social status.

Volunteerism and community support are other central tenets of Sikhism expressed in the langar. When the Mughal emperor Akbar tried to give Guru Amar Das a platter of gold coins to support the kitchen, he refused them, saying the kitchen “is always run with the blessings of the Almighty.” Ashok Kumar, a Hindu with a scraggly beard, has been volunteering at the kitchen almost every day for the past five years. “It is my service,” he explained. His job is to man the heavy bucket that receives the dirty plates and bowls.

Plates and bowls fly at him, but he never misses a beat, using a metal plate in each hand to deflect the traffic into the tub. Mr. Kumar used to be a bookbinder. “I feel happy here,” he said when asked why he had given up his old life. Indians of all faiths come here to find a measure of peace largely unavailable in the cacophony of the nation’s 1.2 billion people.

Like the thousands of pairs of shoes left at the temple gates, the chaos and filth of urban life are left at the marble entrances. The temple is a world of cleanliness and order - where the wail of the harmonium and the shuffling of bare feet are the only sounds, and every square centimeter is scrubbed many times a day.

It has not always been a peaceful place. A Sikh insurgency, which sought a separate homeland for Sikhs in Punjab, tore at India’s heart in the 1970s and ‘80s. In 1984, Indira Gandhi, then the prime minister, ordered a bloody raid on the temple. Hundreds of militants hiding there were killed.

The temple was also damaged. Sikh bodyguards later assassinated Mrs. Gandhi to avenge the attack. Despite this history, Sikhs remain resolutely a part of India’s mainstream, holding leading positions in the arts, government and business.

India’s current prime minister is a Sikh. Pankaj Ahuja, who owns a medical supply shop in Rajasthan, was visiting the temple for the third time, this time bringing his wife and son, who had never been before. They were sleeping in the pilgrims’ dormitories, which are also free. The family is Hindu, but the temple has a special significance for them.

“You have lots of religious places in this country,” said Mr. Ahuja’s wife, Nikita. “But the kind of peace and cleanliness you find here you won’t find anywhere else.” Indeed, she never gives a moment’s thought to who prepared the food in the kitchen, even though in India’s highly stratified caste traditions such matters are vital.

“It is more than food,” she said of the meals that she had eaten at the community kitchen. “Once you eat it, you forget who is cooking, who is serving it, who is sitting next to you.”