KAVITA SINGH

TEMPLE OF ETERNAL RETURN :

THE SWÂMINÂRÂYAN AKSHARDHÂM COMPLEX IN DELHI

CONSUMING ARCHITECTURE
n the Annakûta festival celebrated by many Vaiß∑ava sects, the autumn harvest is marked by a feast
I that is first offered to the gods, and then distributed among devotees as sacramental food. Dishes
are laid out before the deity in an elaborate tableau of sweets, savouries, and condiments surrounding
a central mound of rice. In 2001, a curious item entered the festive display of foodstuff at the Swâmi-
nârâyan temple in Neasden in London. This was a cake, shaped and iced to resemble a building with
multiple pillars and domes, and set upon a high plinth decorated with elephants. This pale pink con-
fection was the edible architectural model of a building that the Swâminârâyan sect was then construct-
ing in New Delhi: Akshardhâm (fig. 1).
This Akshardhâm cake was baked, iced, and presented to the deity in a sacramental feast halfway
across the globe when the building itself was still under construction in Delhi. The cake, then, must
be seen as a sign of the excitement with which a worldwide congregation was awaiting this building.
For not only was Delhi’s Akshardhâm the most ambitious project taken up by this prominent Hindu
sect, but it was likely to be its most significant. The $45 million temple-cum-exhibition complex, for
which devotees from Europe, North America, East Africa, and India donated funds, time, and skills,
would give material form to their vision of Hinduism’s past and future, and it would be located in
India’s capital, at a site that would bring them unprecedented national and international visibility.
Presumably, at the end of the Annakûta festival, the Akshardhâm cake was shared and eaten by
the devotees. The consumption of this cake-model, however, was but a pale foreshadowing of the
extent to which the Akshardhâm building itself would come to be visually consumed, and its mes-
sages digested, when it was completed four years later in 2005. Since the complex was opened to the
general public, it has been perpetually thronged with sightseers and pilgrims (six million in its first
two years); as predicted, it has become ‘one of North India’s major tourist attractions’;1 and its image
has been reproduced prolifically in the press, on television, and on the Internet. Why was this build-
ing so eagerly anticipated before it was built and so widely celebrated after its construction? What
kind of place is it? And what effects has it generated – for the sponsoring sect, for the Hindu commu-
nity, for the landscape of Delhi, and for India as a whole? This article explores some of Akshardhâm’s
meanings – as architecture and as idea – through a reading of the complex in general, and of its cen-
tral monument in particular. As this monument (the subject of the cake in figure 1) is intended as a
community’s ‘mega-revival of India’s ancient tradition,’2 its visual language and stylistic choices must

1 “President to inaugurate Akshardham temple today,” The Hindu, 6 November 2005, archived at http://www.akshar-
dham.com/mediacoverage/2005.htm (accessed 3 July 2009).
2 Sadhu Ishwarcharandâs et al., Swaminarayan Akshardham: Making and Experience (henceforth, Making and Experience)
(Ahmedabad: Swaminarayan Aksharpeeth, 2006), 28.

47
articulate a particular relationship to the past, even as they reshape the vision of that past into a vision
that clearly appeals to contemporary audiences. By attending closely to the architectural and sculp-
tural features of Akshardhâm, then, this paper attempts a formalistic analysis that is simultaeneously
a political one.

‘EDIFICE COMPLEX’
The Akshardhâm complex was built by the Bochâsanwâsi ·rî Akshar Purushottam Swâminârâyan
Sansthâ (henceforth, the BAPS or the Sansthâ), said to be the fastest-growing Hindu sect in the world
today.3 With a network of active centres on four continents, supported by many prosperous followers
and sponsoring prominent public festivals and temple buildings, the BAPS is one of the most visible
manifestations of transnational Hinduism today.
The BAPS is one of several subsects among the followers of Swâminârâyan, a Hindu-reformist
preacher in nineteenth-century Gujarat. Advocating non-violence and discouraging suttee and female
infanticide, his sect welcomed all castes, including the very lowest, which were usually excluded from
temple worship. The Swâminârâyan sect soon attracted a large flock of householders and renunciants,4
and became one of the most important religious orders in Gujarat.
Over the next two hundred years, the Swâminârâyan sect remained a regional phenomenon in
India. But in the twentieth century, as large numbers of Gujaratis migrated to East Africa, Britain,
and the United States, the sect gained a transnational status.5 As the Swâminârâyan sect flourished,
schisms also began to appear.6 From its origins in 1905 as a small group of dissenters, in the last thirty
years the BAPS has become the most prominent subsect of the Swâminârâyan sampradâya, with more
than seven hundred centres in Australia, Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America.7 Much of the credit
for this growth is given to its current head, Pramukh Swâmi Mahâraj, who nurtured the diasporic con-
gregation and brought highly qualified professionals into the ascetic fold.8 Use of the Internet has
helped to knit far-flung congregations together: on-line newsletters and webcasts allow devotees to
have darªan of faraway icons, to see each others’ festival celebrations, or to hear discourses by Swâmiji
himself.

3 Raymond Brady Williams, An Introduction to Swaminarayan Hinduism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2001), 2, 201. See also Raymond Brady Williams, “Training Religious Specialists for a Transnational Hinduism: A
Swaminarayan Sadhu Training Centre,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 66, 4 (1998): 841–62.
4 In his lifetime, Swâminârâyan initiated both male and female renunciants. The BAPS subsect does not have an order
of female renunciants.
5 See Williams, Introduction, chap. 7, for an account of the Gujarati diaspora, its various phases, the phenomenon of ‘chain
migration’, and the relationship between the Gujarati diaspora’s growth and the growth of the sect.
6 The BAPS derives from a group of ascetics who made their first temple in Bochâsan village in Gujarat. The group
that the BAPS seceded from calls itself ‘The Original Swâminârâyan Sect’; it is also known as the Vadtal group for it
controls the temple at Vadtal where Swâminârâyan lived and worked for a significant period of his life. A third promi-
nent subsect is the Swâminârâyan Gadi (‘throne’) or the Manînagar group. For a discussion of the various subsects,
see Williams, Introduction, chap. 2.
7 See http://www.swaminarayan.org/globalnetwork/index.htm (accessed 20 November 2009).
8 The BAPS was the first Swâminârâyan subsect that assigned ascetic swâmis to live permanently at centers outside India,
caring for temples and communities in the diaspora. Pramukh Swâmi Mahâraj is known for his respect for higher edu-
cation, and has encouraged aspiring renunciants to first obtain their college degrees. Williams, Introduction, chap. 7.

48
 A striking feature of the BAPS in Pramukh Swâmi Mahâraj’s time has been its investment in a
particular form of monumental architecture. For the first eighty years of the BAPS ’s existence, the
majority of its temples were modest structures.9 More recently, however, at centres in India, Britain,
the United States, and Canada, the sect has erected traditional-style stone temples that are often mon-
umental in scale and carved in exquisitely fine detail. These structures resemble the intricately carved
tenth- to twelfth-century western Indian Marû-Gurjara temples at Dilwârâ, Modherâ, or Kirâdû,10
and, like these medieval temples, they are made of brick and stone without the use of iron or steel. The
famous white marble and limestone temple in Neasden, north-west London, was among the first of
the BAPS ’s temple-building projects outside India (fig. 2). Inaugurated in 1995, this impressive struc-
ture brought the BAPS tremendous acclaim. Visited by statesmen and royalty, it has garnered several
awards,11 and has been hailed in the British popular press as one of the seven wonders of London,12 while
setting a record as ‘the largest Hindu temple outside India.’13 In the past fifteen years, the BAPS has
built other traditional-style stone temples at a rapid pace, dedicating fifteen such temples within
India14 and five others outside India15 in this period. Many of these temples surpass the Neasden tem-
ple in size, scale, intricacy, and magnificence.
Once built, the BAPS temples serve local congregations, but they also become urban landmarks
that draw sightseers. Several of these new temples are known for their spectacular celebrations of major
festivals such as Diwalî (fig. 1).16 Some include exhibition halls that provide an introduction to

9 This is particularly true for diasporic groups, who would often adapt pre-existing buildings for use as temples. The
sheds, warehouses, and abandoned churches they converted into temples were counted as hari mandirs, which are akin
to household shrines and can be contained in buildings of any form. The temples that are constructed in accordance
with the ªilpa ªâstras and that look like traditional temples are known as ªikharabaddha mandirs.
10 M. A. Dhaky coined this term to substitute for the less precise term ‘Solanki style’, which was used by earlier schol-
ars. As he points out, it is erroneous to identify a style solely with its royal patrons; the style ‘belongs’ to the artists.
M. A. Dhaky, “The Genesis and Development of Maru-Gurjara Temple Architecture,” in Studies in Indian Temple
Architecture, ed. Pramod Chandra (Varanasi: American Institute of Indian Studies, 1975), 114–65.
11 These include The Most Enterprising Building Award 1996, given by the Royal Fine Art Commission and British
Sky Broadcasting; and a special Natural Stone award given by The Stone Federation in 1995.
12 Jessica Cargill Thompson, “Seven Wonders of London: Shri Swaninarayan [sic] Hindu Mandir,” Time Out London,
11 December 2007.
13 A Guinness Book of World Records citation, which has since been surpassed by other temples built by the Sansthâ. See
http://www.mandir.org/awards&opinions/index.htm (accessed 20 November 2009).
14 These temples are mostly in western India, in the states of Gujarat and Rajasthan, and in the city of Mumbai. Accord-
ing to the Swâminârâyan website, www.swaminarayan.org/globalnetwork/shikharbaddha.htm (accessed 4 April
2009), and additional information kindly supplied by ·rî Yogesh Patel, the dates of dedication are: 1983 – Bombay
(Dadar); 1994 – Mehasana; 1996 – Amalner, Surendranagar, and Surat; 1997 – Nadiad and Navsari; 1998 – Rajkot;
1999 – Mahelav, Tithal, and Mehsana; 2000 – Anand; 2001 – Sankari, Bharuch, and Dholka; 2003 – New Delhi;
2005 – Jaipur; 2006 – Junagadh and Bhavnagar. Compare the rate at which the BAPS built temples from the time
of its founding up till the 1980s: 1907 – Bochasan; 1916 – Sarangpur; 1934 – Gondal; 1945 – Atladra; 1951 – Gadadha;
1962 – Amdavad; 1969 – Bhadara.
15 The dates of dedication of these overseas temples are: 1995 – London/Neasden; 1999 – Nairobi; 2000 – Chicago; 2004 –
Houston; 2007 – Toronto and Atlanta.
16 The temple at Neasden earned another Guinness Book citation for an Annakûta festival in 2000, during which the
congregation offered 1,247 vegetarian dishes to Lord Swâminârâyan.

49
Swâminârâyan’s writings as well as to the Vedas, the Râmâya∑a, or the Mahâbhârata, texts that are
important for all Hindus, not just the followers of Swâminârâyan. The temples also provide religious
education programs for children, youth, and adult groups. Among diasporic Indians, these new
Swâminârâyan temples and the celebrations within them have become important for they present an
aestheticized version of Indian culture that appeals to older and younger generations and generates
pride in Indian traditions.17 The sect’s ‘edifice complex’18 has served the BAPS well, bringing it a new
prominence among Indian communities in the diaspora.
For their early projects the sect would engage traditional temple architects and contract out the
artisanal labour. But the volume of work is now so great, and so continuous, that the BAPS has estab-
lished its own in-house temple-design studio in Ahmedabad as well as its own stone-carving work-
shop at Pindwara in Rajasthan.19 At its peak, this workshop has employed more than seven thousand
carvers. Even at a low ebb, more than eight hundred craftsmen are permanently at work, sculpting
stones that will form the pillars and brackets of the temple projects that are underway at any given
time.

DAR·AN AND PRADAR·AN : A HISTORY OF SHO WING

Even among the Sansthâ’s many architectural projects, the Akshardhâm complex in Delhi stands out
as the most ambitious. Unlike the sect’s constructions in London, Chicago, or Houston, however, the
structure the BAPS has built in Delhi is not quite a temple: instead, Akshardhâm is a new kind of
complex that combines elements of the temple with elements of the museum and the theme park.
Intended for a larger public that goes beyond the sect’s own followers, the Akshardhâm complex
includes landscaped grounds with sculpture gardens and rides for children, indoor exhibition halls
that feature museum-style displays and audio-animatronic shows, large-format films, computer-con-
trolled dancing fountains, well-stocked souvenir shops, and multicuisine food courts.20 In the center
of all this lies a shrine that houses icons of Swâminârâyan and his prime disciples. The Akshardhâm

17 In India, the temple is primarily visited for darªan or pûjâ in which individuals stand for a moment before the deity;
the interior of the temple can remain small. In the diaspora, however, the temple has become an important ‘oasis of
Indian culture in an alien environment’. Steven Vertovec, citing R. Jackson, in The Hindu Diaspora: Comparative Pat-
terns (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 124. The temple provides a center for immigrants to meet and share
not just religious beliefs but their common language, food, and culture. Temples built for diasporic communities thus
need to include large congregational spaces. See ibid., esp. “Community and Congregation: Hindu Temples in Lon-
don.”
18 This term is taken from the title of a paper by Hannah Kim, who thanks Charles Lindholm for giving her this phrase.
Hannah Kim, “ ‘Edifice Complex’: Swaminarayan Bodies and Buildings in the Diaspora,” in Gujaratis in the West:
Evolving Identities in Contemporary Society, ed. Anjoom A. Makadam and Sharmina Mawani (Newcastle, U.K .: Cam-
bridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), 59–78.
19 Interview with Virendra Trivedi, architect of the Delhi Akshardhâm, in Ahmedabad, 17 April 2009.
20 Pedagogic devices, such as dioramas, robotics, and multimedia shows, are also used in the Hare Krishna or ISKCON
sect’s temples at Bangalore. However, in its architectural vocabulary, ISKCON does not try to revive traditional tem-
ple architecture, favouring a modernist interpretation of the temple form as in Bangalore, where its temple has a glass-
and-chrome multistoried tower that invokes but does not imitate a temple ªikhara.

50
complex thus encompasses a range of visual regimes and modes of address, offering its viewers didac-
ticism and devotionalism, entertainment and informatics, ancient grandeur and cutting-edge tech-
nology.21 What kind of site is Akshardhâm, and how and why did it come into being?
The Sansthâ’s desire to build such a complex may be traced back to its celebrations of Swâmi-
nârâyan’s birth bicentenary in 1981. At that time, the sect hired two hundred acres in Ahmedabad and
erected a tented city in which thousands of devotees were fed and vast assemblies were held. The fes-
tival complex’s temporary structures included ornate doorways leading to landscaped grounds that
held full-scale temples made of bamboo, plaster, and burlap. The tented campus also had cultural
exhibits, which consisted of life-sized tableaux that depicted gods and goddesses, or showed events in
the life of Swâminârâyan, or imparted moral education by stressing the importance of family values
and vegetarianism. This festival was reportedly visited by eight million people. Subsequently, the
BAPS held other such ‘mega-festivals’ elsewhere in India, Britain, and the United States, again draw-
ing great crowds.22 The success of these festivals23 led to the desire for a permanent site that would
serve a similar function: a shrine-and-exhibition complex in which believers may have darªan of Lord
Swâminârâyan, and non-initiates may learn about him from the exhibits, or pradarªan, on view.24 It
would be called Akshardhâm, which in the sect’s soteriology is the heavenly sphere in which
Swâminârâyan eternally dwells. In 1992, the first Akshardhâm complex opened in Gandhinagar, the
state capital of Gujarat, on a twenty-three-acre site (fig. 3).25
The centerpiece of this first Akshardhâm complex is a lavishly carved, three-storied sandstone
monument that is simultaneously a museum and a shrine, for it houses gold leaf–covered icons of
Swâminârâyan and two prime devotees, as well as museum-style displays of his bodily relics and objects
of his personal use. Outside the shrine are exhibition buildings that contain dioramas and multime-
dia shows about the Upaniªads, the Râmâya∑a, the Mahâbhârata, and the life and deeds of Swâmi-
nârâyan. The peripheral gardens also include a small amusement park for children and a food court.

21 Some journalists have dubbed the site ‘Hinduism’s Disneyland’. See Jonathan Allen, “The Disney Touch at a Hindu
Temple,” The New York Times, 8 June 2008.
22 For images of these mega-festivals, see the photo galleries posted online. For Ahmedabad 1981, see http://www.swami-
narayan.org/festivals/1981india/photo/index.htm; for Ahmedabad 1985, see http://www.swaminarayan.org/festivals/
1985india/photo/index2.htm; and for Edison, New Jersey, 1991, see http://www.swaminarayan.org/festivals/1991usa/
photo.htm (all sites accessed 20 November 2009). One can see these early temporary exhibitions as ‘first drafts’ of the
permanent exhibitions that were later installed at the Akshardhâm complexes. For an analysis of the 1991 New Jersey
festival, see Sandhya Shukla, “Building Diaspora and the Nation: The Cultural Festival of India,” Cultural Studies 11,
2 (1997): 296–315.
23 Essential to this success were the efforts of thousands of volunteers from within the sect. Williams suggests that the
mega-festivals play an important role within the BAPS by uniting the community and giving it a sense of common
purpose. Williams, Introduction, 177. The 1995 festival at Sion, Mumbai, gained such a reputation for its high degree
of organization that corporate managers visited it to study its systems. Suma Verghese, “Spirit Centers – From Guru
to God,” Life Positive Magazine, January 1999, http://www.lifepositive.com/Spirit/spirit-centers/swaminarayan.asp
(accessed 7 July 2009).
24 Williams, Introduction, 180.
25 Another Akshardhâm is planned for Edison, New Jersey, while news reports suggest that an Akshardhâm might also
be built in China. “China Hankers after Akshardham,” http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=
NEWEN 20070028341&ch=10/5/2007%209:46:00%20AM (accessed 27 July 2009).

51
 Gandhinagar’s Akshardhâm soon began to attract large crowds. In a tragic event in 2002, the
Gandhinagar Akshardhâm was attacked by armed terrorists. Paramilitary forces killed the attackers,
but thirty-three visitors also died and seventy more were wounded. It is believed that the terrorists
came from a group associated with the troubles in Kashmir, and presumably they targeted Akshar-
dhâm as a prominent Hindu site. Ironically, at least one family that fell victim to the attack was Mus-
lim, suggesting that many visitors came to the site because it is seen to offer an entertaining, rather
than a strictly religious, experience. Even today, signboards on the Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar high-
way that point to Akshardhâm suggest the primacy of day-trippers over pilgrims, for they declare:
Welcome to Swâminârâyan Akshardhâm: Exhibition-Restaurant-Rides, advertising the complex as a leisure
destination rather than a shrine.

‘ THE VATICAN OF INDIA’

Thirteen years after the first Akshardhâm was inaugurated at Gandhinagar, a second one was declared
open in Delhi. Four times larger than the Gandhinagar campus, this one-hundred-acre complex cen-
tres around an immense and intricately hand-carved central monument set in a pool of water and sur-
rounded by a sculpted stone colonnade for circumambulation (figs. 4, 5). Spreading in front of the mon-
ument is an enormous sculpture garden. To its left are ticketed exhibitions which include: an audio-
animatronic show with full-scale architectural sets and lifelike moving and talking robots that show
Swâminârâyan building a following in Gujarat; a large-format film about his wanderings through
India as a young ascetic; and a boat ride that takes one past dioramas of ancient Indian science and
technology. There is also a musical fountain whose illuminated jets of water play every evening to the
sound of Vedic chants. To the right of the central monument are visitor facilities including a food court
and a souvenir shop.
In its size and scale, lavish carving, and use of cutting-edge technology, the second Akshardhâm
far outdoes its precursor. From the day it opened, the Delhi Akshardhâm was inserted into the cata-
logue of India’s great monuments.26 At the grand inaugural ceremony, attended by the president and
prime minister of India, President Abdul Kalâm described it as ‘the civilizational heritage of India in
dynamic form.’27 Within months, Akshardhâm became one of the monuments featured on India
Tourism’s Incredible India poster campaign, taking its place alongside Ajantâ, Ellorâ, and Khâjurâho.
According to the sect’s publicity materials, the Delhi Akshardhâm was built by Pramukh Swâmi
Mahâraj to realize his predecessor’s dream. Yogîji Mahâraj, the previous head of the BAPS , had wished
to construct a great monument on the banks of the Yamuna River in Delhi. For the sect’s first impor-
tant structure outside its traditional sphere in western India, Yogîji Mahâraj had settled upon the cap-
ital of the modern Indian state, rather than Mathurâ or Hardwâr or Varanasi, or any other traditional

26 See http://www.akshardham.com/mediacoverage/2005.htm for a digest of news reports of the inauguration; excerpts

from the speeches made by national leaders at the inauguration can be found at http://www.swaminarayan.org/news/
2003/02/NewDelhi/speeches.htm (both sites accessed 20 Novemer 2009).
27 “An excerpt from the Indian President, Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam’s address at the inauguration of Swaminarayan
Akshardham Cultural Complex in New Delhi: November 7, 2005,” http://hinduism.about.com/od/akshardhamtem-
ple/a/akshardhamdelhi.htm (accessed 7 July 2009).

52
pilgrimage center important to the Hindu faith. This choice seems to suggest that he saw its role not
within the framework of religion (and its association with the past, or with a limited section of the pop-
ulace) but that of the nation (and its associations with the present and the future, the relevance to the
entire population).28 And through this complex – its revival of ancient architectural traditions, its
high-tech displays, its extreme cleanliness and order that meld Hindu religious culture29 and hyper-
modern efficiency – the sect seems to be showing how Indian public life might be reshaped by com-
bining the ‘best’ of the ancient and modern worlds. A senior public relations officer at Akshardhâm
even suggested that this site could be something like ‘the Vatican of India’30 – a spiritual kernel at
the core of the national capital.
Akshardhâm’s concern with a ‘national’ frame is reiterated through a series of physical and sym-
bolic condensations of ‘India’ at many points in the complex. The pool within which the central mon-
ument stands holds water from 151 sacred rivers and lakes. The central monument is modeled on
medieval temples of western India, but the food court building resembles Cave 26 at Ajantâ. In fact,
in its visual references Akshardhâm even goes beyond the national to unfold an imperial vision before
our eyes: the ambulatory passage around the central monument (visible in figs. 4 and 5) is inspired by
a similar structure at Angkor Wat and is meant as a gesture toward the expansive moment in the his-
tory of Hinduism when the faith spread beyond India to other parts of the world.
Perhaps Akshardhâm’s interest in ‘narrating’ the nation is most overt in the vast Garden of India
(fig. 6), a landscaped lawn whose four clusters of over-life-sized bronze sculptures show us the Great
Women and the Great Children from Indian myth, India’s Brave Warriors and Great Freedom Fighters and
the Great Leaders from Indian history. Each cluster is explained by narrative labels placed alongside
the sculptures, and for those who cannot read, concealed speakers narrate their stories as well. Even as
it ranges across history, this selective group avoids Islamic figures, omitting even the uncontroversial
‘greats’ such as the Mughal emperor Akbar; it inserts Gujarati kings into the line of ‘nationally impor-
tant’ rulers; its ‘great women’ and ‘great children’ are models of selfless obedience; and its modern
‘freedom fighters’ include pre-modern rulers who resisted Muslim conquerors as well as revolution-
aries who chose armed struggle against the British rather than Gandhi’s path of non-violence. This
Garden of India gives one a taste of what is to come in the other exhibits, for the selective list of heroic
figures reflects a Hindutva-inflected history, with its anachronistic list of ‘national’ heroes who fought
against ‘outsiders’, Muslim and British. The combination of labels in English and Hindi and the
recorded commentary issuing from concealed speakers reflect a concern to guide the viewer and shape
what she sees and what she should think.

28 Yogîji Mahâraj’s words are quoted thus: ‘Delhi is the throne. The flag should fly high in Delhi. A pinnacled monu-
ment will rise. The land which has been performing penance shall be acquired. Now Yamunaji is waiting.’ See http://
www.swaminarayan.org/news/2000/11/delhi/introduction.htm (accessed 6 August 2009).
29 Ever since Vir Savarkar wrote Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? (pamphlet, 1923), one of the claims made in favour of Hin-
dutva is that it does not exclude non-Hindus but absorbs them within its fold. Savarkar expected religious minori-
ties to pledge allegiance to Hindu symbols in the public sphere, even if they worshipped other gods in private.
30 Christiane Brosius, “A Mega-Experience of Cosmopolitan Indianness: Akshardham Cultural Complex,” in India’s
Middle Class: New Forms of Urban Leisure, Consumption, and Prosperity (New Delhi: Routledge, 2009). I am grateful
to Professor Brosius for giving me an advance copy of this chapter.

53
 The history and territory of India are invoked again in the large-format film that is shown in the
complex’s theatre. Nîlkanth Yâtrâ follows the eleven-year journey of the young Swâminârâyan, who
left home to wander as a boy-ascetic known as Nîlkanth. Although Swâminârâyan was born in Uttar
Pradesh and had his ministry in Gujarat, as a child-renunciant he traversed the length and breadth of
India. The young ascetic, played by a pretty child and then by a beautiful man, is pictured against the
north, south, east, and west of India as he meditates in the frozen Himalayas, gazes at the Indian
Ocean’s surf, participates in the Jagannâtha rathayâtrâ (cart festival) at Puri, and discourses at the
Râmeswaram temple deep in the Tamil south.31 His body becomes the unvarying constant in a
panorama of shifting landscapes, a thread that sutures the disparate topographies into one patchwork
quilt. The film even literalizes Nîlkanth/Swâminârâyan’s connective role in a recurrent animation
that shows his footsteps ranging over a map of India. Nîlkanth’s travels may have been a spiritual quest,
but on the screen the images suggest a simultaneous discovery of India32 that brings to mind Gandhi’s
similar journey, also memorably captured in a lavish international film production, or Nehru’s famous
book of that name.
The enormous film screen provides the ideal canvas for the unfurling of the spatial breadth of India:
aerial shots of frozen mountains, religious rituals celebrated by a cast of ten thousand extras, a river in
spate. In contrast, the indoor boat ride, Sanskruti Vihar, takes visitors onto a ribbon of water that traces
a linear journey through time. In a ride modeled on the Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland, visi-
tors enter a cavernous hall to climb into swan-shaped fiberglass boats that take them through dramat-
ically lit, life-sized dioramas showing ‘10,000 years of Indian culture in 14 minutes.’33 The boats glide
past scenes of Vedic culture, of yogis and yajnas, past Vedic markets (fig. 7) and Vedic towns includ-
ing Lothal, described as ‘the world’s most ancient port’.34 Needless to say, the absorption of the Harap-
pan port, Lothal, into a ‘Vedic civilization’, repeats a well-established position in Hindutva-oriented
histories, which rejects the suggestion that the Harappan civilization was prior to, and distinct from,
Vedic culture. While most historians believe the Harappan civilization was built by indigenes who
were displaced by nomads who brought the Vedas with them, for India’s right-wing historians the
materially rich and settled culture of the Harappans was the culture of the Sanskrit-speaking Vedic
people, whose civilization was the primordial moment of the origin of Hinduism. Other dioramas show
the medical practitioners, mathematicians, and scientists of ancient and medieval India who are cred-
ited with discovering the atom and laws of gravity, performing neurosurgery and plastic surgery, and
building spaceships in an ‘aeronautics lab’. The ‘up-to-dateness’ of these figures is often effected
through the names given to things: a diorama of a doctor tending to children lying on string cots is
labeled ‘Pediatrics Ward.’ Toward the end of the boat ride, visitors float past workers carving the cave

31 Stills of this film can be seen at http://www.akshardham.com/photogallery/giantscreenfilm/index.htm (accessed

7 July 2009.)
32 Indeed, the film’s producers prepared a second version for theatrical release from the same footage, in which the nar-
rative thread of Swâminârâyan’s life was less prominent; the film, Mystic India, was primarily about India’s sights and
festivals.
33 Ishwarcharandâs, Making and Experience, 46.
34 Ibid., 47.

54
temples of Ellorâ and Ajantâ, monuments that are presented here not just as aesthetic marvels but as
wonders of engineering and technology.
Sanskruti Vihâr is a classic illustration of the syndrome of ‘primordial modernity,’ in which moder-
nity is shown to be an integral part of a particular culture’s ancient past. For a community that is seek-
ing cohesion through adherence to traditional values such as religion, modernity necessarily poses a
threat: the values that bind also seem inadequate and outdated. Here, the narrative suggests that what
one admires about the Other – in this case the West’s rationality, scientific progress, and technolog-
ical prowess – is actually ‘deeply buried in one’s own ancestral traditions.’35 To embrace the modern,
then, is not to betray one’s self but to discover one’s self; and one’s existence as traditional, or religious,
or Indian need not conflict with one’s simultaneous existence as modern or global.
Seeing tradition as modern also helps to rehabilitate religion as part of modern public life. We
know that the secularization of the public sphere has been at the heart of modernity. From being a
social, juridical, and economic force that organized all aspects of communal life, religion has turned
into spirituality, a private matter of the individual soul. Collective and public religious activities are
seen as counter-modern and counter-national, threatening the secular cult of the nation that has sought
to channel religious feeling into patriotism and citizenship. By demonstrating an ancient modernity,
by speaking of temple architecture as a technological feat, and by encasing narratives about ancient
traditions in hypermodern techno-entertainment apparatus, a complex such as Akshardhâm suggests
that a religiously guided state can be a move into the future, not the past.
At the end of the boat ride, just before emerging into the daylight, visitors hear a soundtrack urg-
ing them to restore India’s ancient glory. There is a burst of music and voices sing Vande Mataram!
Akshardhâm Sanatanan! (Hail Mother India! Akshardhâm Eternal!) – twinning the two incongruent
entities of the national and the denominational. For the visitor who has been through all the exhibits,
this song is the last in a profuse series of reiterations of a connection between the deep history and broad
expanse of India on the one hand, and the figure of Swâminârâyan and the Bochâsanwâsi Akshar
Purushottam Sansthâ on the other. The relationship between the two is not explained or built up by
argument. It is simply presented again and again and again. And as in cinematic montage, in which
disparate objects become connected by a relationship of proximity that stands in for a relation of causal-
ity,36 its very iteration of the identification between Swâminârâyan and India becomes the ‘truth’, and
this relatively recent, regional cult is positioned as the truest interpreter, articulator, and protector of
Indian values and traditions. And of this custodianship of Indian culture, the carved stone monument
that stands at the heart of the complex becomes the most persuasive sign and proof.

35 C. Jaffrelot, Hindutva: A Reader (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007), 10. Jaffrelot’s introduction offers
a lucid account of the evolution of Hindutva as a political movement and an ideology.
36 On montage, see Lev Kuleshov, “Art of the Cinema,” in Ronald Levaco, Kuleshov on Film: Writings by Lev Kuleshov
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974).

55
 A BRAND-NEW ANCIENT MONUMENT

The pink sandstone structure that is the Akshardhâm monument rises forty-three meters from a high
plinth and is more than ninety-one meters across (figs. 4, 5). Every centimeter of this huge edifice is
elaborately carved. This is the building that has been acclaimed as one of the most intricate structures
to be made in India since Independence, and the complex’s guidebook tells us that its ‘234 ornately
carved pillars, 9 ornate domes . . . and 20,000 murtis and statues’ were assembled from a total of three
hundred thousand pieces of carved stone.37
Constructed between 2000 and 2005, this is a twenty-first-century building that seems to inte-
grate smoothly with a building tradition more than a millennium old. All the elements within the
structure are modeled upon ancient and medieval temple architecture. The domes surmounting the
structure are ribbed with a chain-and-bell motif and are meant to recall similar, albeit much smaller,
domes at the eighth-century Shore Temple at Mahabalipuram. The mandovara walls follow the aedic-
ular pattern seen on the walls of the eleventh-century Sun Temple at Modherâ (compare figs. 8 and 9,
10 and 11). Exterior porch pillars exactly mimic those from Modherâ, with long circular shafts covered
in bands of decorative motifs giving way to four-sided sections that hold directional deities, and end-
ing in lotiform bases (fig. 12). As at Modherâ, the front pair of pillars are longer than the ones behind,
for they ‘drop down’ to meet the steps (figs. 12, 13).
Even innovative features of the monument contain references to ancient shrines. A notable part of
the monument is the frieze of elephants carved at the lowest level of the plinth; but unlike the usual
gajathara, with a row of diminutive and stylized elephants, this frieze is three meters high and is pop-
ulated by naturalistic elephants gamboling in forests, being domesticated by man, or playing a role in
mythic events (fig. 5). Although this gajathara’s narrative framework is unique, in its scale and ambi-
tion it draws inspiration from the similarly scaled elephant plinth at the great Kailaªa temple at Ellorâ.
Contrasting with the pink sandstone exterior is an interior made entirely of white marble. Every-
where, the stone is carved with an intricacy reminiscent of the celebrated twelfth-to-fiftheenth-cen-
tury Jain temples at Dilwârâ and Rânakpur, and the pillars are patterned on these temples and others
at Kirâdu and Modherâ.38 The ceilings above the nine ma∑∂apas are carved in shallow domes, which
again resemble the ceilings of temples at Dilwârâ or Junâgarh or Bhâruch (fig.14). In order to make the
monument wholly and authentically like an ancient temple, Akshardhâm’s sponsors chose to follow
the ancients not just in the building’s appearance but in its structural features as well. Designed to last
‘thousands of years,’39 the structure uses no cement or steel; even the portions that would remain out
of sight, such as the foundations, were made without steel, using layers of stone, sand, and bricks, as
was done at Mahabalipuram or Konarak. Such traditional techniques were not used for the exhibition

37 Ishwarcharandâs, Making and Experience, 31.

38 For instance, one could compare the Akshardhâm pillars visible in figure 14 with pillars at the Kiradu Somesvara tem-
ple (http://dsal.uchicago.edu/images/aiis/aiis_search.html?depth=large&id=63848), and the Vimala-Vâshi temple,
Dilwârâ (http://dsal.uchicago.edu/images/aiis/aiis_search.html?depth=large&id=30220). Also compare http://
www.akshardham.com/photogallery/mandir/pillars.htm with Dharanvihara Ranakpur, 1440 CE , at http://dsal.
uchicago.edu/images/aiis/aiis_search.html?depth=large&id=30471 (all sites accessed 20 November 2009.)
39 Ishwarcharandâs, Making and Experience, 24.

56
and visitor services buildings on the periphery of the complex; these are made of reinforced concrete
clad with stone.
The difference between the ornate central structure, made in adherence to ªâstric processes and
norms, and the complex’s other, modern buildings, sets the central monument apart as a marvel from
another age. Even the green lawn within which the monument is set adds to its ‘monument’-ality, as
it recalls the inevitable patch of grass that surrounds monuments maintained by the Archaeological
Survey of India ( ASI ). Just as the state presents itself through the ASI as the guardian of India’s ancient
culture, to this viewer’s eyes the BAPS signals, through this monument, its own capacity for custo-
dianship of India’s ancient culture – not by the preservation of ruins from the past, but by producing
a grand revival in the present day.40
In his essay ‘The Modern Cult of Monuments’, Alois Riegl speaks of monuments as buildings
whose main function is an appeal to memory. Riegl distinguishes two types: ‘intentional monuments,’
such as tombs and victory arches, which are built to commemorate certain persons and events; and
‘unintentional monuments,’ relics from an earlier age that might originally have served other func-
tions but now stand mainly as reminders of times past.41 The Akshardhâm monument – which is
assembled from a tissue of historic references, visibly resembles ancient sites, and is constructed using
ancient methods – appears before us as an apparition from an earlier time. But it is made intention-
ally to do so. Both of Riegl’s terms seem to apply here, for Akshardhâm is an intentional monument
that is built to look like an unintentional one. This twenty-first-century edifice, which revives a thou-
sand-year-old architectural style, appears before our eyes as a brand-new relic from an earlier age.
Most visitors refer to the central shrine as a ‘temple’, yet when it was first opened, informed mem-
bers of the sect, and especially the volunteer guides at the site, never did so. Instead they called it a
‘monument’. I had assumed that the use of the term was intended as an aggrandization of the struc-
ture. But when I asked one of the officials at the site about it, I was told that the central structure could
not be called a temple, for although it was built to be ‘just like’ an authentic temple, it was not used
as one. If it had been, the cycle of the deity’s resting and awakening would demand that the structure
be shut to visitors for much of the day. Instead, Akshardhâm was intended as a crowd-puller, and unlike
regular temples, it needs to be open to visitors from nine to five, Tuesday through Sunday. Accord-
ingly worship is conducted in another, smaller temple near the complex, which follows the ritual
norms and seems to be known primarily to the Swâminârâyan congregation. The main structure was
to be a monument whose purpose was its visibility – it was intended as a spectacle, something to see.
In the way it marginalizes ritual value in favour of exhibition value, Akshardhâm then is less like a
shrine and more attuned to the logic of the archaeological park or museum, which strips away ritual
context in order to allow the viewer total scopic access.42

40 In Benedict Anderson’s analysis, the most important benefit that a state derives from caring for antiquities is that this
allows the state to present itself as the guardian and custodian of the nation’s legacy. Benedict Anderson, Imagined
Communities (Reprint, London and New York: Verso, 2003), “Census-Map-Museum.”
41 Alois Riegl, “The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Origins” (first published in German in 1903), Oppo-
sitions 25 (Fall 1982): 21–51.
42 Akshardhâm’s liminal status as a building that looks like a temple but does not quite function like one, is one of the
foci of Brosius’ analysis in “Mega-Experience.” In the first three years of its public life, the central structure of the

57
 This complex also resembles archaeological parks and museums in the way that it ceaselessly tex-
tualizes itself. As in a museum, its objects are not simply present to be viewed and perhaps admired.
Instead, they are framed by texts that explain them and praise them, telling the viewers about the great-
ness, beauty, or value of what they are seeing. We have seen how the sculptures in the Garden of India
have explanatory labels and an audio-track played by outdoor speakers. Other parts of the site are
labeled as well. Near the entrance, for instance, a text panel reads, ‘Swâminârâyan Akshardhâm in New
Delhi epitomises 10,000 years of Indian culture.’ The elephant plinth is framed by texts that articu-
late its three themes (elephants in nature, elephants in culture, and elephants in legend and myth) so
that one may understand its curatorial programme. Gateways and fountains too have text panels beside
them that explain the symbolic significance of the structures and their decorative motifs. Borrowing
from museological modes, the process of spectatorship in this complex is anticipated, guided, and artic-
ulated from the beginning, for the visitor enters the Akshardhâm through an orientation center with
an elaborate display of panoramic photographs, text panels, and plasma screens that preview the site’s
attractions, telling visitors what to see, even suggesting how much time to allot to each section,43 while
extolling their qualities and the role of the BAPS and its leader in creating such a site.
These text panels and object labels carry a value in excess of the words written upon them. In India,
audiences would have seen such didactic material only in museums; and museums in that country,
typically, carry with them the authority of a (supposedly) secular and impartial state. Redeployed
within Akshardhâm, these museological devices bring with them the authority of the museum, an
authority that the museum has earned in its secular avatar, where it declares itself as the teller of
truths.44

Delhi Akshardhâm complex was referred to as a ‘monument’ on the Akshardhâm website, http://www.akshardham.com
and in official publications such as Ishwarcharandâs, Making and Experience; at the time of writing, the Gandhinagar
Akshardhâm is still referred to as a monument on its site at http://www.akshardham.com/gujarat/monument/
index.htm (accessed 27 July 2009). However, the sect seems to have revised the nomenclature for the Delhi complex;
by July 2009, its website had begun to call the central structure a ‘mandir’ or ‘temple,’ possibly because the icon of
Swâminârâyan within this structure is consecrated, and thus ritually ‘alive.’ Yet it is offered only a truncated form of
worship in the morning and evening, rather than full diurnal rituals that would include putting the deity to rest in
the afternoon, at which time the monument would have to be closed to visitors.
43 This itinerary is reinforced within the complex through the presence of labeling, signage, and human attendants, all
of which continually direct the viewers’ movement, urging them not to miss any of the sights.
44 For a fuller discussion of this, see Saloni Mathur and Kavita Singh, “Reincarnations of the Museum: The Museum in
an Age of Religious Revivalism,” in Asian Art History in the 21st Century, ed. Vishakha Desai (Williamstown, Mass.:
Clark Art Institute, 2007), 149–68.

58
 PITRUBHÛMI, THE FATHERLAND

The central shrine at Akshardhâm closely follows the architectural vocabulary of historic temples. But
it also diverges from them in significant ways. For one thing, this structure is not arranged, as most
medieval Hindu temples are, along a single axis that leads from porch to garbha griha.45 In fact, it does
not have a garbha griha at all, nor is it surmounted by a ªikhara.46 Instead this square-plan building,
topped with a family of domes, resembles the dâdâbâris, memorial shrines that are sometimes built in
Jain complexes in honour of departed gurus. Inside the structure, the central square is occupied by a
large dais on which an immense gold-plated figure of Swâminârâyan sits, adored by life-sized, gold-
plated figures of the succession of male swâmis who have led the BAPS subsect. Visitors approach the
dais and then process around it in a broad circumambulatory path that leads them past every ornate
pillar and under each sumptuous ceiling slab.
Looking up, visitors might see the way in which a depiction of Swâminârâyan lies at the heart of
each intricately carved ceiling, which otherwise might have been mistaken for a ceiling from the
Vimala Vâshi temple on Mount Âbû. In one ceiling slab, Swâminârâyan is shown performing auster-
ities on a mountain-top as a young ascetic; in another, he is a mature swâmi seated under a tree, preach-
ing. Around him swirl non-figural, decorative patterns. And on the pillars, in place of the sensuous,
feminine apsarâses or surasundarîs – celestial musicians and dancers – that one sees in medieval tem-
ples, visitors may note the presence of male devotees, often fully draped and standing with hands
folded in worship, or playing cymbals or harmoniums in a markedly chaste celebration (fig. 19).47
Lacking the lush sensuality so abundant in medieval Indian sculpture, the bowdlerized iconogra-
phy of the interior of the Akshardhâm monument reflects the place of women within the Swâminârâyan
sect. It is said that Swâminârâyan’s celibacy was so strict that when the shadow of a woman fell upon
him, he fell sick.48 Ascetics from the Swâminârâyan sampradâya too take a vow of chastity after which
they avoid looking at women for the rest of their lives.49 Images of women are similarly proscribed: in
his ·ikªapatri, or code of conduct, Swâminârâyan forbids his ascetics from looking at sculptures or
paintings of women other than goddesses.50 One might say that the swâmis inhabit a world without
women; and the iconography of their temples very nearly mimics such a world.
45 The garbha griha, or ‘womb-house’, is the shrine chamber within the temple. Usually a windowless room that houses
the icon, it is placed at the end of a sequence of antechambers; the devotee thus comes face to face with the deity as
the climax of a journey through the temple. The classic description of the symbolism of the garbha griha within the
temple is given in Stella Kramrisch, “The Image of the Mountain and the Cavern,” in The Hindu Temple (Calcutta:
University of Calcutta Press, 1946), 1:161–77.
46 The ªikhara, or tall parabolic tower that surmounts the garbha griha, became a common feature in Hindu and Jain
(and some Buddhist) temples from about the seventh century CE onward. This ªikhara is the ‘mountain’ that holds
the garbha griha’s ‘cavern’ in Kramrisch’s analogy.
47 The avoidance of sensuous carvings in modern temples is not unique to the BAPS . In her study of temples built by
diasporic Indian communities in the United States, Vasudha Narayanan notes that most new temples are careful to
avoid erotic sculpture. Vasudha Narayan, “Show Temples and Public Worship,” paper presented at the 20th Euro-
pean Conference on Modern South Asian Studies, Manchester, 11 July 2008.
48 Williams, Introduction, 150.
49 Accordingly, the genders do not mingle in the congregation, and women and men are allowed into different parts of
the Swâminârâyan temples or are allowed in at different times.

59
 SCULPTING THE SELF

The absence of sensuous imagery in the Akshardhâm monument points to an interesting tension
between the desire both to adhere to tradition and to edit out its undesirable parts. A similar selec-
tiveness is also seen in the architecture, whose hybrid elements are chosen only from certain layers of
the Indian past. When the Delhi Akshardhâm was first being planned in about 1990, the BAPS
approached a prominent temple architect, Amritlal Trivedi, to take on the project. The senior archi-
tect was working with his son Krishnachandra and grandson Virendra; this family also designed the
BAPS temples intended for Houston and Chicago. After the older architects’ death, it was Virendra
Trivedi who brought the project to completion. From the Sansthâ’s side, the project’s planners were
a core group of seven swâmis headed by Swâmi Ishwarcharandâs. The process of designing the Delhi
Akshardhâm began long before the site was identified and the land acquired, and Mr Trivedi recalls
being asked to make something ‘very good and very big.’51
Mr. Trivedi and his father developed drawings for twelve alternative monuments. While all shared
a floor plan with a nine-square grid, the elevations were each imagined differently. One option quoted
the Dravida (South Indian) temple style, with a stepped pyramidal structure resembling a gopuram ris-
ing over its central square (fig. 15). Another brought North and South Indian traditions together, plac-
ing a Dravida ªikhara among western Indian domes. A third hybrid had a Dravida-style stepped
ªikhara, western Indian domes, and late-Mughal floriated arches along the façade. A fourth imagined
a Nâgara (North Indian) temple with three tall ªikharas and low domes over the porches (fig. 16). And
a fifth placed a hemispherical dome over a thicket of bânglâ arches, melon domes, jharokâ windows,
and floriated arches in a variation on the late Mughal style (fig. 17).
Eventually, after studying these options, the swâmis elaborated their brief: the monument would
be in a pure Nâgara style, and would use elements only from the tenth to the twelfth century, ‘the
golden age of temple architecture,’ as Mr Trivedi says. ‘No external influence was to be there, no
Mughal arches, nothing from a later stage.’52 Unlike the Gandhinagar Akshardhâm, whose jharokâs
might be mistaken for Mughal elements (fig. 3), this structure was to have no trace of hybridity. It was
to be a pure Hindu temple design deriving from the distant past. Since this would not be a temple
with a garbha griha, a ªikhara would be inappropriate; instead the cluster of nine domes would create
their own visual crescendo. Together, architect and council of swâmis arrived at the final plan (fig. 18).
Having established that the architecture was to draw on entirely pre-Islamic, Hindu sources, the
council of swâmis noted that the figures on the Gandhinagar Akshardhâm, which had been carved in
a traditional western Indian style, were angular and stiff. To remedy this in the Delhi project, the
swâmis called upon Vasudeo Kamath, an artist and former gold medallist from Mumbai’s J.J. School
of Art who was known for the sweetness of his portraits in the academic-naturalistic style that was first
brought into India in the nineteenth century by colonial art schools. Mr. Kamath made drawings for

50 ·ikªapatri, ªloka 177: ‘Brahmachari must not touch or intentionally look at paintings, statues, or other images of
females. These restrictions do not apply to images of deities’; http://www.swaminarayangadi.eu/scriptures/shiksha-
patri/shikshapatri_slok_177.php (accessed 6 August 2009).
51 Interview with Virendra Trivedi, 17 April 2009.
52 Ibid.

60
Fig. 1 The 2001 Annakûta festival at Swâmi-
nârâyan temple, Neasden, U.K. Devotees
have baked a cake in the shape of the
Akshardhâm monument, still in the early
stages of construction in Delhi.
Fig. 2 The Swâminârâyan temple, Neasden, Fig. 3 The Akshardhâm complex at Gandhi-
photographed in winter. nagar, inaugurated in 1992, the first Ak-
shardhâm complex built by the BAPS sect.
Photo courtesy C. B. Sompura.

Fig. 4 The central monument of the Akshardhâm complex at Delhi.

Fig. 5 Mandir, view of rear jalis, waterbody, and circumabulatory

passage, Akshardhâm, Delhi.
Fig. 6 Garden of India, showing the sculptural group Great Leaders of India. Sardar Patel is in the foreground, and Gandhi stands stooped next
to him. The main Akshardhâm monument is visible in the background.

Fig. 7 Diorama of the Vedic Marketplace from the boatride,

or Sanskruti Vihar.
 Fig. 9 Wall surface, with niches and mouldings, at Akshardhâm, Delhi.

Fig. 8 Wall surface, with niches and mouldings, at the Sun Temple at
Modherâ. Photo courtesy Virendra Trivedi.

Fig. 11 Aedicular patterns forming

niches for figures at Akshardhâm,
Delhi.

Fig. 10 Aedicular patterns forming niches for figures at the Sun

Temple, Modherâ. Photo courtesy Virendra Trivedi.
Fig. 12 Porch pillars at Modherâ. Photo courtesy Virendra Trivedi. Fig. 13 Porch pillars at Akshardhâm, Delhi.

Fig. 14 Ghanashyam Mandapam, inside the Delhi Akshardhâm

Monument.
Figs. 15–18 Preliminary drawings for
various alternative design ideas for the Delhi
Akshardhâm by Virendra Trivedi:
– Dravidian style monument
– North Indian style monument
– Rajput-Mughal style monument
– The Akshardhâm monument in its
final form
 Fig. 19 A bhakta depicted on an
interior pillar at the Delhi Akshar-
dhâm monument.

Fig. 20 ‘You are the chisel, you are the stone.’ Exhibit in the Sahajanand Darshan audio-animatronics show.
Fig. 21 Somanâtha temple, at Prabhâs Pâtan in Gujarat, 1970. The temple has a ªikhara and one ma∑∂apa at this stage.
Photo courtesy C. B. Sompura.

Fig. 22 Somanâtha temple, at Prabhâs Pâtan in Gujarat, 1991. An ardhama∑∂apa has been added to the temple by this date.
Photo courtesy C. B. Sompura.
Fig. 23 Ram Janmabhûmi temple (Râm Mandir), elevation and plan for a reconstruction at Ayodhya.
Drawing courtesy C. B. Sompura.

All images courtesy BAPS Swâminârâyan Sanstha, unless otherwise specified.

all the figures, human, divine, and elephantine, that we see in the complex.53 These drawings were
translated by a team of Bengali artisans into clay models, which then formed the basis for carvings in
stone.
It might seem incongruous that a project that rejected ‘late’ and ‘external’ influences from, say,
the Mughal period, in its architecture, would invite into its sculpture an even later style that came
from an even more external, colonial source. But as Kajri Jain points out in her study of calendar art,
since the late nineteenth century, popular religious art in India has enthusiastically and unproblem-
atically appropriated western naturalism, which helps its gods and goddesses appear as dimpled babies,
ravishing women, and well-muscled men. As she says, naturalism has a ‘personalizing, affective, libid-
inal aspect, making the divine accessible to devotees as an empathetic presence.’54 By humanizing the
divine image, making it fleshy and real, western-style naturalism answers a very Indian, bhaktic, need:
it makes possible a direct relationship between the worshipper and his god. The same holds true in
Akshardhâm, where the human figures seem to detach themselves from the flat patterning of the pil-
lar or the wall in their three-dimensional plasticity, to reach out and connect with viewers and devo-
tees.
In Akshardhâm, we are even invited to take this identification with the sculpted image further. In
the first room of the very first of the ticketed exhibits, the audio-animatronic show Sahajânand Darªan,
the audience enters a dark chamber that seems to be empty except for a single spot-lit boulder. Sud-
denly, the boulder spins around on its base, revealing on its other side a half-formed figure that emerges
from the stone. This figure is reminiscent of Michelangelo’s late Slave sculptures, in which bodies strug-
gle against the marble that seeks to engulf them. But here in Akshardhâm the figure is quiet and con-
templative, as its hands hold hammer and chisel and chip away at its own stone (fig. 20). A deep and
resonant voice begins to speak, urging the audience to shape their own lives: to choose to be beauti-
ful, like a perfected sculpture; or to remain dross, unfinished stone. ‘You are the chisel, and you are
the stone,’ the voice intones, a message repeated on t-shirts on sale in the gift shop. Seen in this light,
the overwhelming superabundance of sculpture and carving everywhere in the site becomes not just
an aesthetic choice or the sign of a cultural revival; it becomes a moral imperative as well.

53 Interview with Vasudeo Kamath, 17 May 2009. Mr Kamath’s website, http://www.vasudeokamath.com (accessed
20 November 2009), offers some examples of his style.
54 Kajri Jain, Gods in the Bazaar: The Economies of Indian Calendar Art (Durham, N.C ., and London: Duke University
Press, 2007), 138. See chapter 3, “Naturalizing the Popular,” for an extended and careful discussion of the issue. As
Jain makes clear, early-twentieth-century debates about the relevance and appropriateness of naturalism to India were
confined to a circle of the nationalist intelligentsia, while the wider public, and the print culture that served their
needs, embraced it. It is worth noting that Vasudeo Kamath’s alma mater, the J. J. School of Art in Mumbai, strove
to develop an ‘Indian’ naturalism, as reflected in the works of artists such as Dhurandhar and Baburao Painter.

69
 LOVE, LABOUR, LASER: MAKING AKSHARDHÂM

Today the literature produced by the BAPS recounts the complex process by which this mammoth
project – something that ‘should have taken fifty years’ – was completed in just five. ‘ “The project
was beyond human capacity,” says Ishwarcharandâs Swami, the coordinator of the project. “But . . .
through God’s and the guru’s divine powers, everything is accomplished.” ‘ 55 Although physical con-
struction was achieved in five years, planning for the complex began much in advance. Six years before
the land was acquired, the architect was already preparing a concept. Teams of swâmis and volunteers
were traveling all over the world to temples and theme parks to gain inspiration for the monument
and the exhibits.56 Once the BAPS occupied the site, strong foundations had to be built so that the
sandy riverbed would bear the buildings’ weight. The architect’s office prepared measured drawings
of all the structures, and worked out a scheme to divide walls and ceilings into individual pieces of
stone that could be separately carved and flawlessly joined. Marble and sandstone were quarried and
transported to more than twenty worksites at Sikandra and Pindwara in Rajasthan. There, the BAPS
purchased sophisticated laser cutting machines and diamond saws and engaged more than seven thou-
sand artisans and labourers to carve the stone in accordance with the architectural drawings. Eventu-
ally, three hundred thousand pieces of carved stone were assembled on-site like a giant jigsaw puzzle.
Reportedly only a single twenty-three-centimeter piece turned out to have the wrong dimensions;
every other piece was a perfect fit.57 Meanwhile, colossal bronze statues were ordered, cast, and gilded
in Thailand; and engineers and software experts coordinated with firms in Australia and the United
States for the development and installation of the high-tech exhibits.
Text panels displayed in the complex extol the efforts that made the complex possible: the ‘300
million man-hours of service of epic proportions rendered by 11,000 volunteers, sâdhûs, and artisans,
and the immense sacrifice, austerities, and prayers of hundreds of thousands of devotees of the
Swâminârâyan Sansthâ.’58 Passages such as these – which occur in BAPS publications as well as in dis-
plays within the complex – highlight the efforts of the many volunteers from within the congrega-
tion who dedicated months or years to help with the project, the skills of the artisans and traditional
craftsmen in carving and building the monument, and above all, the role of Sansthâ’s swâmis in con-
ceiving and constructing the site, especially the council of seven swâmis who oversaw the project. But
the language used speaks of the ‘giving’ of time and skills, suggesting that for all concerned, the proj-
ect was a labour of love. This may have been the case for many involved, but for others, it would have
been a professional transaction. The didactic panels within the complex tend to gloss over these.When
I asked the chief public relations officer about individuals and corporations who might have been
involved – the complex’s architect, the engineers of the computer-controlled dancing fountain, the
designers of the robotics in the audio-animatronic show – I was told in each case that ‘the swâmis had
done it.’ It was only by following leads from sources outside the BAPS that I was able to discover the

55 Ishwarcharandâs, Making and Experience, 55.

56 Among the temple sites visited were Ellorâ and Angkor Wat; theme parks included Disneyland in the U.S ., and Win-
dow on the World in Shenzen, Guangdong province, China.
57 Ishwarcharandâs, Making and Experience, 31.
58 Ibid., 11.

70
role of Virendra Trivedi in designing the monument; of Vasudeo Kamath in conceptualizing the
figures; of the American company SallyCorp in developing the audio-animatronic display; and of the
Australian company LaserVision in designing the dancing fountain.
This containment of the agency of individual players creates a vision of Akshardhâm being built
in a Coomaraswamyan world,59 where the individual artist subsumes his individual ego into the com-
mon good. Work is no longer labour, but becomes a form of worship. Difficulties become ‘sacrifice,
austerities, and prayers’, conjuring up images of tapasya and yajna in which the abnegation of bodily
needs or material goods leads to a miraculous manifestation: through the power of prayer Akshardhâm
appears, swayambhu, or self-manifest.

A DIALOGUE OF DOMES
Delhi’s Akshardhâm occupies a hundred acres on the bank of the Yamuna River, close to the heart of
the city. To find a site like this, so large and so central, in the crowded megacity of Delhi, is no less
than a miracle – or perhaps one should think of it as a magic trick accomplished with a deft pass of the
hand. Akshardhâm occupies land that was not found by it so much as invented for it, for the site lies in
the Yamuna River’s flood plain, on which it had always been forbidden to build. When a sympathetic
government was in power, the Master Plan of Delhi was altered so that the Swâminârâyan BAPS could
construct Akshardhâm upon it.60 Today, other agencies have laid claim to nearby land, and Akshar-
dhâm will soon be surrounded by an elevated metro rail track, a shopping mall, and a housing com-
plex.61 But even a year ago, Akshardhâm appeared like an otherworldly apparition at the heart of the
crowded city, as its dome arose over a vast and empty plain.

59 Nationalist ideologues A. K. Coomaraswamy and E. B. Havell built the picture of an ego-less Indian artist who wished
for his work to merge into a civilizational tradition. This was an idealistic interpretation of the relatively few textual
sources available at the time that preserved the names of artists. See, for instance, A. K. Coomaraswamy, The Indian
Craftsman (London: Probasthain, 1909), and E. B. Havell, Ideals of Indian Art (London: John Murray, 1911). Akshar-
dhâm’s attitude is in interesting contrast to another mega-site being planned in India by a transnational religious
group, the Maitreya Project, which will build a 153-meter-tall Buddha figure in Kushinagara; there will be shrines,
prayer halls, and displays inside this mammoth figure. Currently in its planning and fund-raising stages, the Maitreya
Project is steered by the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition, reputedly the largest Buddhist
organization worldwide. The Maitreya Project prominently foregrounds the role of highly qualified professionals such
as architects, engineers, sculptors, metallurgists, and project managers in their enterprise. By describing these con-
sultants, the Maitreya Project probably wishes to reassure potential donors about the feasibility of their vision.
60 See Rakesh Bhatnagar, “Akshardham Temple to Adorn River Yamuna Bed,” The Times of India, 11 October 2004,
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Delhi/Akshardham-temple-to-adorn-river-Yamuna-bed/articleshow/
881405.cms (accessed 28 July 2009). The land was acquired when the coalition led by the Bhâratiya Janatâ Party ( BJP )
formed the central government. The BJP is seen as the political arm of the consortium of Hindu right-wing cultural,
religious, and other volunteer groups known as the Sangh Parivar.
61 The alterations to Delhi’s Master Plan that allowed the construction of this complex have now been used by other
groups, including the Indian government, to develop nearby land. Fearing that Akshardhâm would be eclipsed by
these newer developments, the BAPS appealed to the Delhi government to at least restrict the height of the five-star
hotels and Games Village being constructed nearby for the Commonwealth Games scheduled for 2010. The govern-
ment agreed so that the Akhardhâm monument could retain its place in the Delhi skyline. Esha Roy, “Akshardham

71
 The site lies directly across the river from another great domed building, the tomb of Humâyun.
Out of sight, but still palpable, is the distant presence of yet another domed edifice built on the
Yamuna’s banks, India’s monument par excellence, the Tâj Mahal in Agra. In its siting, in the invoca-
tion of the river bank and the prominence of the dome, in the great paeans of praise that the makers
offer to the building, and in the discourse of the love that caused it to be built, Akshardhâm appears
before us as a Hindu equivalent to the Tâj. This likeness is repeatedly invoked by visitors when they
see this complex; indeed even at the inauguration, Bhâratiya Janatâ Party ( BJP ) leader and India’s for-
mer deputy prime minister L. K. Advani said, ‘[U]ntil now, visitors who are keen to see what are the
marvels of India . . . go to Agra, to Tâj Mahal . . . if they come to Akshardhâm they would see how . . .
India has become a spiritual giant.’62 And on a recent trip to the site, I heard a visitor gasp as he entered
the filigreed marble hall, and exclaim to his companion, ‘Tâj ko hatâ do, is ko lagâ do’ – ‘Get rid of the
Tâj and put this in its place.’
To the Persian dome of these great Mughal monuments, Akshardhâm offers its own counterpart
of an ‘Indian’ dome, based on the corbelled domes that had been in use in eleventh-, twelfth-, and
thirteenth-century temples in western India.63 This reassertion of the Indian dome does at least two
things. First, it reminds us that pre-Islamic India knew how to make domes, that this is not a tech-
nology that she needed to learn from ‘Islamic outsiders’. And second, in showing us that we have for-
gotten this fact, it shows us how we have forgotten it. It makes visible the absence in our landscape of
this kind of temple; it reminds us of the temples that would have stood in India had they not been
destroyed by Muslim iconoclasts in the twelfth through the sixteenth century. In Akshardhâm, then,
we are seeing the apparition of a temple risen from the rubble – a reincarnation of the temple, as it
were. But Akshardhâm reincarnates not a specific temple, but a generic one that stands for many tem-
ples that were destroyed all over North India in that period of India’s past. Now that the long millen-
nium of foreign rule – first Islamic, then British – is over, Akshardhâm seems to say, it should be pos-
sible to undo some chapters of history.64

Imposes Vertical Limits,” Indian Express, 20 April 2007, http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid= 232459

(accessed 11 July 2009).
62 Brosius, “Mega-Experience,” citing http://www.akshardham.com/opinions/national.htm (accessed 7 July 2009).
63 I am grateful to the architect K. T. Ravindran for bringing up this point in a discussion. Ravindran also pointed to a
third domical structure that now stands between Humâyun’s tomb, on the west bank of the Yamuna, and Akshar-
dhâm, on the east. This is the Viªwa ·ânti Stûpa, a stûpa for world peace, erected in 2007 through the efforts of a Japan-
ese Buddhist nun. Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim domical monuments now raise their rounded heads in the same cor-
ner of Delhi, offering three civilizational takes on one form.
64 Expressing his desire for a temple on the banks of the Yamuna, Yogîji Mahâraj said, ‘The land which has been per-
forming penance shall be acquired. Now Yamunaji is waiting. She has become restless. With certain surety, land on
the banks of Yamunaji will be acquired. The Lord will fulfil this in his divine way’; cited on http://www.swami-
narayan.org/news/2000/11/delhi/introduction.htm (accessed 6 August 2009). The references to ‘land which has been
performing penance’ and a river which has been ‘waiting’ underscore the sense of the landscape’s long-thwarted des-
tiny finally being fulfilled.

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 REINCARNATION OF THE TEMPLE

If Akshardhâm is not just a new structure but an imaginative reinstatement of old and destroyed ones,
it might be compared with another such project to reincarnate a razed temple, one that is intended to
replace a quite specific temple in a specific place. This is the Somanâtha temple, at Prabhâs Pâtan in
Gujarat (figs. 21, 22). This important Hindu temple was destroyed by Mahmûd of Ghaznî, an Afghan
invader in 1026 CE . The destruction of Somanâtha has been remembered and mythologized over the
centuries – by Muslims as a triumph over idolatrous Hindus, by Hindus as a shameful event that
needed redressal, and by Jains as proof of their own faith’s blessed status, as their nearby temples sur-
vived even when Somanâtha was destroyed.65
At the moment of Independence, Somanâtha became an emotive issue in Indian public life. For
some groups, the end of colonial rule presented the opportunity to remake India, bringing back the
glories of its pre-colonial and pre-Islamic past. ‘We would never genuinely feel that freedom had come,
nor develop faith in our future, unless Somanâtha was restored,’ said K. M. Munshi, historian and ide-
ologue who led the campaign for the temple’s rebuilding.66 In Lives of Indian Images, Richard Davis
tells the story of Somanâtha’s modern reconstruction: how India’s first Home Minister, Sardar Patel,
took a public pledge to rebuild this temple; and how Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister,
bitterly opposed the plan but in the end allowed the rebuilding to occur under private patronage, estab-
lishing a precedent that many others have tried to follow.67
Another temple which is still seeking be reincarnated is of course the Râm Mandir at Ayodhya,
the campaign for which has been one of the most contentious issues in India in recent years.68 In one
way or another, the movement to build the Râm Mandir has sparked off almost all the communal riots
in India in the last fifteen years and has claimed literally thousands of lives. And Hindutva groups
speak of other sites that they would like to ‘recapture’ at Mathurâ and Varanasi after the temple at
Ayodhya is built. Today the issue of the Râm Mandir is in limbo, awaiting a decision from the law
courts. This temple may never be built, but it has been planned in intricate detail, and about half of
the stones needed for it have been carved and kept ready. The proposed Râm Mandir uses the archi-
tectural vocabulary of Marû-Gurjara temples built in western India between the tenth and twelfth
centuries (fig. 23). This is precisely the architectural vocabulary that is used by the rebuilt Somanâtha
temple, and by the Swâminârâyan sect, not just in Akshardhâm but in most of its temples worldwide.
While the use of Marû-Gurjara architecture by the rebuilt Somanâtha temple is appropriate to the

65 See Richard Davis, “Reconstructions of Somanatha,” in Lives of Indian Images (Princeton, N.J .: Princeton University
Press, 1997). This chapter is a brilliant and wide-ranging study of the ‘Somanâtha phenomenon’.
66 K. M. Munshi, Somanatha: Shrine Eternal (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1976), 90, cited in Picturing the Nation:
Iconographies of Modern India, ed. Richard Davis (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2007), 14.
67 Davis, “Reconstructions.” For another study of the site’s history and discourses surrounding it, see Romila Thapar,
Somanatha: Many Voices of a History (New Delhi: Penguin Viking, 2004).
68 In order to whip up feelings for the Râm Mandir project, in 1990 L. K. Advani of the BJP embarked upon a rathayâtrâ,
or ‘chariot trip’, across the breadth of north India. This yâtrâ commenced at Somanâtha and was to end at Ayodhya,
drawing an invisible line across India, joining one temple reconstruction site to another. It is another matter that
Advani was arrested for arousing communal passions in this trip; the subsequent sympathy wave resulted in the first-
ever general elections in India in which the BJP won a majority and was able to come to power.

73
kind of temple that it is replacing, and the style also relates well to the roots of the Swâminârâyan sect
in Gujarat, this is not the most obvious choice for the Râm Mandir intended for northern India. Why
then do its sponsors make this choice?
If this style recurs across these diverse projects, it is because they all use the services of the Som-
purâs, a clan of traditional temple architects and sculptors who claim to have constructed the legendary
original Somanâtha temple.69 Members of this clan are credited with the design and construction of
the most intricate Marû-Gurjara temples of western India, such as the twelfth-to-fifteenth-century
temples at Mount Âbû and Ranakpur, and tenth-century temples at Chittor.70 While few temples were
built in the later medieval period, the Sompurâs continued to practice architecture, designing mosques
for Muslim patrons,71 making palaces and other public buildings for princely states, and carrying out
the jhirnoddhar, or repair, of older temples. Today, the Sompurâs dominate the stone-carving, temple-
designing, and allied businesses in Gujarat and Rajasthan. In many families the younger generation
has trained in architecture or engineering school, and they run up-to-date practices that execute a range
of stone-building projects, making marble screens and fountains for wealthy homes or memorial sculp-
tures for politicians. The mainstay of their work, however, is the construction of temples, for commu-
nities in India and in the Indian diaspora.72
To design the Râm Mandir, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad chose a famous temple architect, Chandra-
kânt B. Sompurâ, whose notable projects include the first Akshardhâm, built in Gandhinagar, and the
Swâminârâyan temple at Neasden. Chandrakânt Sompurâ’s own grandfather, the late Prabhâshankar
Sompurâ, had been the architect who rebuilt the Somanâtha temple after Independence. And Viren-
dra Trivedi, architect of the Delhi Akshardhâm, is a member of the same Sompurâ community; his
grandfather Amritlâl Mûlshankar Trivedi reportedly turned down the offer to rebuild the Somanâtha

69 During fieldwork, I heard two versions of the community’s origin myth from two Sompurâ families. In both, the Som-
purâs were summoned to the yajna performed by the gods in the mythic past to ameliorate the sufferings of Soma, the
moon-god who had been cursed by ·iva. The first Somanâtha temple was then built to appease ·iva.
70 See D. R. Bhandarkar, “Chaumukh Temple at Ranpur,” Archaeological Survey of India, Annual Report, 1907–08 (Cal-
cutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, India, 1911), 205–18. See also K. F. Sompurâ, The Structural Temples of
Gujarat (Ahmedabad: Gujarat University, 1968); and John Cort, “Communities, Temples, Identities: Art Histories
and Social Histories in Western India,” in Ethnography and Personhood: Notes from the Field, ed. Michael Meister (Jaipur
and New Delhi: Rawat Publications, 2000), 101–29.
71 Although the involvement in building mosques was not mentioned by the Sompurâ families I interviewed in Ahmed-
abad, Alka Patel’s recent study of the architecture for Muslim communities in medieval Gujarat points to the close
continuities between tenth- and twelfth-century stone temple architecture in the region, and eleventh- to fifteenth-
century mosques made of carved stone in the same area. Comparing the techniques and motifs used in both, she sug-
gests that the Sompurâ community constructed the early mosques in the region, ‘in the Maru-Gurjara style’. Further,
she shows that an eleventh-century ªilpa ªâstra from the Malava region, the Jayap®ccha, had chapters not just on the
construction of Hindu temples, but on the rahmâna prâsada, or ‘abode of the merciful’, i.e. a mosque. Alka Patel, Build-
ing Communities in Gujarat: Architecture and Society during the 12th–14th Centuries (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2004), 83.
72 It should be stressed here that the mainstay of most Sompura architectural firms today is the Jain community, which
commissions numerous elaborate but low-profile projects. The Sompurâs themselves take projects for a range of clients
and are not necessarily aligned with ‘hard’ Hindutva ideology. In an interview with me, Chandrakânt Sompurâ stressed
that he was ideologically opposed to the demolition of the Babri Masjid, and has publically stated that the Râm
Mandir could and should have been built ‘anywhere’ and not at the disputed spot. See also Debashish Mukherji and
Ajay Upreti, “The Making of the Mandir,” The Week, 7 June 1998.

74
temple before it was offered to Prabhâshankhar. Instead, as the Somanâtha project was commencing,
Amritlâl Trivedi embarked upon an equally important reconstruction and renovation of the Vimala
Vâshi temple at Dilwârâ in the 1950s.73
In a recent essay, Jyotindra Jain has analysed new and emergent Hindu temples and pilgrimage
sites in Gujarat, a state that has been ruled by the right-wing BJP for the past decade, and which is
regarded as the laboratory of political Hindutva today.74 Jain describes a number of nearly life-sized
reproductions of sacred sites, both buildings and natural features such as mountains and caves, that
have been erected within Gujarat in the last few years. Gujarat now has its own ‘Amarnâth’ (the orig-
inal in southern Kashmir), ‘Vaiªno Devi’ (the original near Jammu), ‘Mînakªî temple’ (the original
in Madurai), and will soon have a ‘Govardhan Hill’ (the original in Brindavan) and a ‘Bâlâjî temple’
(the original in Tirupati). The condensation of these sites within the territory of Gujarat, Jain sug-
gests, allows that state to ‘assume the role of interpreter and guardian of Hinduism.’75 At the same
time, and flowing in the opposite direction, is the stream of ‘Gujarati-looking’ temples that are now
being built, or are being sought to be built, outside Gujarat, elsewhere in India, and indeed all over
the world. By chance and by design, through the will of politicians, the enthusiasm of the BAPS , and
the availability of Sompurâ skills, the reincarnated temples of a resurgent Hinduism – within India
and beyond – seem destined to have a Gujarati face.76

73 For a brief but fascinating discussion of Amritlâl and Krishnachandra Trivedi and this restoration project, see Cort,
“Communities, Temples, Identities,” 113–18. Cort points to the complicated and delicate dynamics between private
and government initiatives in the restoration of monuments. The Vimala Vâshi temple restoration was sponsored by
the wealthy Jain Anandji-Kalyanji Trust, which worked with utmost caution for fear that the Archaeological Survey
of India ( ASI ) might one day order their removal and take up the work itself. As Cort points out, the quality of work
produced by the Trivedis would have been simply unaffordable for the ASI , who would have used inferior artisans.
However, the ASI ’s insistence on preserving the ‘authentic’ monument and the Trust’s desire to ‘repair’ the temple,
replacing damaged sections with new structures, would have been at variance with each other. According to Viren-
dra Trivedi, his grandfather turned down the Somanâtha project because its sponsors wanted the architect to remove
all vestiges of the tenth-century structure from the site and build an ‘authentic-looking’ temple afresh, something
that he ethically opposed.
74 Jyotindra Jain, “Curating Culture, Curating Territory: Religio-Political Mobility in India,” in Art and Visual Cul-
ture in India, 1857–2007, ed. Gayatri Sinha (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2009), 219–35.
75 Ibid., 226.
76 While the Sompurâs of Gujarat-Rajasthan seem today to dominate the field in North Indian (Nâgara) style temple
architecture, other groups serve the need for South Indian (Dravida) temple architecture; Ganapathi Sthapathi, long
the principal of the Government College of Architecture and Sculpture at Mamallapuram, is the most famous of these.

75
 NOSTALGIA AND HISTORY: A CONCLUSION

What then, is Akshardhâm, and what does it portend? If Akshardhâm’s monument, as I have sug-
gested, rises from the rubble of temples long razed, at least it does so metaphorically: unlike the Râm
Janmabhûmi Mandir, Akshardhâm does not require the erasure of other monuments and others’ his-
tories for its sake. Instead, Akshardhâm is a ‘greenfield project’ – engineering parlance for a project
built on land that has no prior structures to hamper its growth. Like other greenfield projects, Akshar-
dhâm is a site unencumbered by history. It is at the same time a site suffused – or, more accurately,
produced – by nostalgia, a yearning for what the past should have been. With its multimillion dollar
revival of age-old skills, Akshardhâm marks the precise point of convergence of a diasporic nostalgic
‘nationalism’ and local ‘religious revivalism,’ both brought to unison by the opportunities and threats
that globalization brings.77 Through the extraordinary transnational structure of the Bochâsanwâsi
Akshar Purushottam Swâminârâyan Sansthâ, Hindus in India who wish for a renewal of their com-
munity’s pride, and their brothers in the diaspora who need India to be that imagined place of their
roots, are able to give each other a helping hand. Together, they take up the task of making India a
Hindu wonderland. Extraordinary as Akshardhâm may seem today, it will not long be unique. As a
site that condenses so many of the cultural forces at play today, it may well be the archetype for the
Hindu temples to be built in the third millennium.78

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to have had the opportunity to ‘give’ this paper to Joanna Williams, whose brilliance and generosity have
touched us all. I am grateful to Jyotindra Jain for stimulating discussions that shaped the direction of this paper, and I
would like to thank Christiane Brosius for her generosity in sharing her unpublished chapter on the Akshardhâm com-
plex with me. I am also grateful to Shri Yogesh Patel, a volunteer for the Swâminârâyan temple at Neasden, who painstak-
ingly went over portions of this paper and offered many suggestions. Any remaining inaccuracies are mine, as are the opin-
ions and interpretations offered in this work.

77 It is now well understood that much as globalization ‘flattens’ the earth, making the same tools and cultural forms
available to groups across the world, it also raises fears of the loss of identity, resulting in sharp reactions including
fundamentalism in various forms. This is concisely articulated in Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural
Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).
78 And indeed, the Akshardhâm model is proliferating within India, with numerous temples adding sound-and-light
shows, theme parks, and entertainment centres in a bid to increase footfalls and develop their real estate. For a glimpse
of some of these projects, see www.livemint.com/2008/01/01234733/Temples-turn-into-mega-centres.html (accessed
20 November 2009).

76