Between 19 January 1984 and 23 January 1988, a remarkable new temple was established in Gwalior (Image 12.1). According to a placard positioned at its entrance, the monument was commissioned by Basant Kumar (B. K.) Birla at the request of his famous philanthropist-industrialist father, Ghanshyam Das (G. D.) Birla, who had passed away on 11 June 1983, just seven months before the laying of the temple’s first foundation stone. That G. D. Birla would have been an inspiration for the monument is not surprising as it was he who had initiated a longer tradition of building monumental complexes popularly known today as ‘Birla temples’. Frequently located in cities and towns associated with the family business interests, these temples represent revivalist efforts to bring together architectural traditions rooted in ancient and medieval India with new visions concerning the role of religion within modern industrial society. Whereas the monuments themselves represented abstracted appropriations of traditional Nagara temple forms, the vast landscaped grounds provided respite for the increasingly crowded conditions of urban life by creating inviting spaces for burgeoning middle-class leisure.

At first glance, the temple at Gwalior follows the typical Birla temple pattern. It was built to serve the community that had grown around the city’s long-standing textile mills, and its design hearkens back to India’s architectural past. However, whereas the revivalist impulse in earlier Birla temples had been realized by combining references to multiple histories and regional styles in order to project a totalizing new vision, the temple at Gwalior was intended to recreate a specific monument, the famed Sun Temple at Konarak, originally built in the thirteenth century along the coast of eastern India (Image 12.2). The choice to model the Gwalior temple on Konarak is curious. Not only are the two removed by over 1,400 kilometres (or nearly 900 miles), but the two places also share very little in terms of their local or regional history. Built on a grand scale by King Narasimha Deva of the Eastern Ganga dynasty, the original temple at Konarak had been largely destroyed over the centuries. Very little remains of the main sanctum, and all that exists is its preceding mandapa (pillared hall) and a large dancing hall.