Sri Digambar Jain Lal Mandir

About

Sri Digambar Jain Lal Mandir stands at the heart of Old Delhi, facing the Red Fort across the historic thoroughfare of Chandni Chowk. Built of red sandstone whose hue gives the temple its name, the sanctuary is the oldest Jain shrine in the Indian capital and a long-standing focus of Digambar devotion in the city.

The foundation of the temple is dated by the Jain scholar Balbhadra Jain to 1656, during the reign of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, the builder of Shahjahanabad. Tradition relates that a Jain officer in the Mughal army kept a Tirthankara image within his tent for personal worship, and as fellow Jain officers gathered around the small shrine, a permanent temple gradually took shape upon the site within Shah Jahan's invited Agrawal Jain settlement south of Chandni Chowk.

In its early life the temple was known by other names that recall its origins in the imperial camp: the Urdu Mandir, after the Urdu Bazaar quarter, and the Lashkari Mandir, from lashkar, the word for an army encampment. The present buildings were raised after the close of the Mughal era, with the principal reconstruction completed in 1878.

A distinctive feature of the precinct is the Jain Birds Hospital located in a building behind the main shrine, where wounded and ill birds are nursed and released. This compassion for all sentient creatures, central to Jain ahimsa, draws visitors from across India and beyond, and lends the temple a living expression of the principles its rituals proclaim.

History

The temple's origins are intertwined with the founding of Shahjahanabad, the Mughal walled city laid out by Shah Jahan in the seventeenth century. Among the legends preserved by the community is the account of how the emperor Aurangzeb, having forbidden the playing of musical instruments at the temple, found that the sound of drums continued to be heard despite repeated inspections, and lifted his ban after witnessing the phenomenon himself. Following the eclipse of Mughal authority, the present temple buildings were raised in 1878 and the complex has been carefully maintained ever since, with the Birds Hospital established as an enduring institution of Jain compassion.

Significance

Sri Digambar Jain Lal Mandir is the foremost Digambar Jain sanctuary of Delhi, drawing devotees for daily darshan, festival processions and the observance of Paryushan and Das Lakshana. Through its Birds Hospital the temple expresses ahimsa as a continuing public practice, making the principle of non-harm visible at the very threshold of one of India's most historic streets.