01Shiv Prasad Gupt’s offering
Babu Shiv Prasad Gupt of Banaras put his family’s fortune into the freedom movement. He founded the Kashi Vidyapith in 1921 for students who had left government colleges in the Non-Cooperation movement, started the Hindi daily Aaj, and built this temple between 1918 and 1924. Durga Prasad Khatri guided the work; the names of the thirty workers and twenty-five masons who built it are cut on a plaque in the hall, as Gupt wished. In the centre of the floor lies Bharat in Makrana marble: the Himalaya and its peaks, the plains and plateaus, the rivers and the seas, from Afghanistan and Baluchistan to Burma and Lanka, raised in relief and measured to scale.
02Gandhi’s opening
Mahatma Gandhi opened the temple on 25 October 1936, with Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan beside him. He said that there were no images of gods and goddesses here, only a map of India raised in marble, and hoped the temple would become a meeting ground for people of every faith and every caste. Visitors walk the gallery around the map and look down on the land as if from the sky; schoolchildren trace the Ganga from Gangotri to the sea.
The life of this place
- 1918–1924Shiv Prasad Gupt has the temple and its marble map built.
- 25 October 1936Mahatma Gandhi opens the Bharat Mata Mandir.
The temple is in the Kashi Vidyapith campus, about 2 km from Varanasi Cantt station. Go up to the gallery to see the whole map at once.
