Swaminarayan Akshardham, Delhiਸਵਾਮੀਨਾਰਾਇਣ ਅਕਸ਼ਰਧਾਮ, ਦਿੱਲੀ

Swaminarayan Akshardham in Delhi is a 100-acre Hindu temple complex on the banks of the Yamuna, built by the BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha and inaugurated on 6 November 2005. Its pink sandstone mandir, 141 feet high and carved with more than 20,000 figures without any structural steel, holds a Guinness World Record as the world's largest comprehensive Hindu temple.

What is Akshardham, and why was it built?

In the Swaminarayan Hindu tradition, Akshardham means the eternal abode of God, and the Delhi complex is built as an earthly expression of that idea. The project fulfils a blessing given in 1968 by Yogiji Maharaj, then the spiritual head of the BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha, who told a few Delhi devotees that a grand mandir would one day rise on the banks of the Yamuna. It was his successor, Pramukh Swami Maharaj, who turned the vision into stone: he inspired the project, guided its construction, and consecrated the finished temple on 6 November 2005. The Delhi complex follows the pattern of the earlier Akshardham built at Gandhinagar in Gujarat. The official visitor guide describes it as a tribute to Bhagwan Swaminarayan (1781 to 1830), the founder of the Swaminarayan tradition, remembered as a torchbearer of Indian culture. It is meant to be a place of education, experience and enlightenment as much as a place of worship.

How was the temple built in five years?

Construction began on 8 November 2000, and the temple was opened on 6 November 2005, two days short of five years. A team of eight BAPS swamis, many of whom had worked on the Gandhinagar Akshardham, oversaw the work, with Pramukh Swami Maharaj consulted on many aspects. Seven thousand stone carvers and three thousand volunteers built the monument. More than 6,000 tons of pink sandstone came from Rajasthan, where workshops were set up around the quarries; the carvers included local farmers and fifteen hundred tribal women who had suffered from a drought and found paid work in the project. Rough cutting was done by machine, but the detailed carving was done entirely by hand, and every night more than a hundred trucks carried finished stone to Delhi, where four thousand workers and volunteers kept the site running. The design came from BAPS swamis working with Virendra Trivedi of the Sompura family of temple architects, and the swamis themselves researched 8th to 12th century stone craftsmanship at sites including Angkor Wat, Jodhpur, Puri, Konark and the temples of Bhubaneswar and South India before settling the carving programme. The opening was a national event: Pramukh Swami Maharaj consecrated the temple, and it was dedicated to the nation by President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and opposition leader L.K. Advani present before 25,000 guests. Advani called it the most unique monument of the world.

How was Akshardham built without steel?

This is the question every engineer asks. The answer lies in the rulebook the builders chose: the temple follows the Vastu Shastra and the Pancharatra Shastra, and the ancient Shilpa Shastra guidelines on temple construction, which forbid ferrous metals. The main monument therefore uses no structural steel and, by the builders' account, no concrete either: it is pink Rajasthani sandstone on the outside and white Italian Carrara marble on the inside, held together by interlocking stone. The architecture follows the Maru-Gurjara idiom, a western branch of the Nagara tradition (see the Nagara architecture explainer). The numbers give the scale: 234 intricately carved pillars, nine domes, twenty pinnacles, and more than twenty thousand carved figures of flora, fauna, dancers, musicians and deities. Under the central dome sits the serene eleven-foot gold-plated murti of Bhagwan Swaminarayan, seated in abhayamudra, the gesture of fearlessness; around it stand the murtis of Shri Sita-Ram, Shri Radha-Krishna, Shri Lakshmi Narayan and Shri Parvati-Shiv. The whole mandir rests on the Gajendra Peeth, a 1,070-foot plinth of 148 life-size stone elephants weighing more than 3,000 tons, a tribute to the elephant's place in Indian culture and history. Around the mandir runs the Mandovar, an ornate outer wall 611 feet long and 25 feet high, made of 4,287 carved stones, carrying 48 murtis of Ganeshji and 200 sculpted figures of rishis, sadhus, devotees and acharyas. A two-tiered red stone colonnade encircles the mandir for circumambulation, each tier 3,000 feet long with 1,152 pillars and 145 viewing windows.

What are the exhibitions at Akshardham?

The mandir is only the centre of the complex. Three ticketed exhibitions surround it. Sahajanand Darshan, the Hall of Values, runs about fifty minutes and presents universal values such as ahimsa, courage, honesty and faith through scenes from the life of Bhagwan Swaminarayan, using films and light-and-sound shows with robotic figures. Neelkanth Darshan is a giant-screen theatre, 85 feet by 65 feet, showing a forty-minute film on Neelkanth Varni, the eleven-year-old child-yogi form of Swaminarayan, whose journey through India was filmed in 108 locations with a cast of more than forty-five thousand people. Sanskruti Vihar is a quarter-hour boat ride through ten thousand years of Indian culture, from the Vedic age to the present. In the evening the Yagnapurush Kund, India's largest stepwell at 300 feet by 300 feet with 2,870 steps and 108 small shrines, becomes the stage for the Sahaj Anand water show: a telling of a story from the Kena Upanishad through lasers, water jets, underwater flames, video projections and live actors, about twenty-five minutes long. Beside the kund stands a twenty-seven-foot metallic murti of Neelkanth Varni, the teenage-yogi form of Swaminarayan; devotees can also pour Ganga water over his murti in the Abhishek Mandapam. Around the monument runs the Narayan Sarovar, a lake fed through 108 gaumukhs with water brought from 151 rivers, lakes and stepwells associated with Swaminarayan, and the 22-acre Bharat Upvan garden holds 65 bronze statues of India's great men, women and children.

Why does Guinness call it the world's largest Hindu temple?

On 17 December 2007, Michael Whitty, an official Guinness World Records adjudicator, travelled to Ahmedabad to present a new world record to Pramukh Swami Maharaj: Akshardham as the World's Largest Comprehensive Hindu Temple. The certificate records the measurements, 356 feet long, 316 feet wide and 141 feet high, covering 86,342 square feet, and notes that the grand, ancient-style, ornately hand-carved stone temple was built without structural steel within five years by 11,000 artisans and volunteers. The word comprehensive matters: the record describes the single carved temple structure, not the total land of the complex.

What should visitors know before going?

Plan around Monday: the complex is closed every Monday. On other days the first entry is at 9:30 am and the last at 6:30 pm. Murti darshan is free, while the exhibitions, the musical fountain show, the food court and parking carry fees. Photography, mobile phones, cameras, bags and outside food and drink are strictly prohibited inside, as are smoking, alcohol and pets, and visitors are asked to dress respectfully. The nearest metro stop is Akshardham station, a short walk from the complex. The Premvati Ahargruh food court serves vegetarian meals in a hall designed to recall Ajanta. Akshardham stands among the great modern mandirs of India (see the mandirs-in-india hub).