हिंदीOn this day
Standing

Swaminarayan Akshardham, Gandhinagar

The first Akshardham, a pink sandstone mandir with no steel in it, raised by the BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha in Gujarat’s capital. In September 2002 two terrorists attacked it and killed 33 people.

Built: Built over 13 years; opened 1992, Pramukh Swami Maharaj of BAPSWhere: Gujarat (Gandhinagar)Deity: Bhagwan Swaminarayan23.23° N, 72.67° E
  1. 1992
  2. 24–25 September 2002
Photo: Harsh4101991 · CC BY-SA 3.0

01Stone without steel

Yogiji Maharaj wished for it and his successor Pramukh Swami Maharaj built it. Some 6,000 tonnes of pink sandstone from Rajasthan went into the mandir, carved and fitted in the old way with no steel or iron, 108 feet high, with 97 carved pillars and 17 domes. In the centre sits a seven-foot gold-leafed murti of Bhagwan Swaminarayan in the posture of blessing; relics of his, his clothes, a tooth and nails among them, are kept on the lower floor. Around the mandir are 23 acres of gardens and halls of exhibitions on his life and on the Upanishads and the Itihasas.

0224 September 2002

On the evening of 24 September 2002 two armed men of the Lashkar-e-Taiba climbed the fence and opened fire and threw grenades among the visitors. Commandos of the National Security Guard ended the siege the next morning; 33 people had been killed and about 70 wounded. Pramukh Swami asked his followers for calm and prayer, and the mandir reopened within two weeks. The case went through the courts for years; in 2014 the Supreme Court acquitted the six men convicted earlier, and the attackers’ handlers were never brought to trial.

The life of this place

  1. 1992The mandir is opened by Pramukh Swami Maharaj.
  2. 24–25 September 2002A terrorist attack kills 33 people before NSG commandos end it.
Visiting

Akshardham is in Sector 20, Gandhinagar, about 25 km from Ahmedabad; phones and bags are deposited at the gate, and it is closed on Mondays.

Nearby

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Company rule and the war of 1857

Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, Kalupur, Ahmedabad

The first temple of the Swaminarayan Sampradaya, consecrated by Swaminarayan himself in 1822 in the old city of Ahmedabad. It is the seat of the Nar-Narayan Dev Gadi.

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Hatkeshwar Mahadev Temple, Vadnagar

The family deity of the Nagar Brahmins, a swayambhu linga at Vadnagar, the old town the Skanda Purana’s Nagara Khanda calls Chamatkarapura in the kshetra of Hatakeshwara. Its outer walls are crowded with carving.

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Nadiad

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