Bharat Mata Temple Varanasi

Varanasi is located at the banks of river Ganga. Varanasi is the oldest and the most sacred place for the Hindus. It is also known as the abode of Lord Shiva and Parvati. The city is famous for its temples, silk sarees. It is also the land where many eminent personalities of India were born. Varanasi is a city where the past and present live side by side. It is a well known tourist spot in India and thousands of tourists not only from India but even abroad visit the city every year.

The Bharat Mata temple at Varanasi is the only temple dedicated to Mother India. Bharat Mata that is, Mother India, it is a personification of India as a mother goddess. She is usually depicted as a woman clad in an orange/saffron saree holding a flag.

The temple was gifted by the nationalists Babu Shiv Prasad Gupta and Shri Durga Prasad Khatri, leading numismatists and antiquarians. The Bharat Mata temple was inaugurated by Mahatma Gandhi in 1936. The statute of Bharat Mata is built in marble and is a model of undivided India, depicting the mountains, plains and oceans. The most peculiar thing about the Bharat Mata Temple is that instead of the customary gods and goddesses, it houses a relief map of the whole of Indian subcontinent and Tibetan plateau, carved out of marble in three dimension. The map is said to be perfectly to scale both vertically and horizontally with mountains, rivers, plains and oceans and the holy tirthas (pilgrimage centers) all clearly visible.

The upper structure of the temple starts with five at the base and it converges into one at the top, symbolizing that this world of five elements has ultimately to merge with the Supreme.

The temple is located about 3 km west of Godaulia, outside the old city. It is situated in the Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapeeth campus.

There are other tourist attractions in Varanasi like Banaras Hindu University, Alamgir Mosque, Jantar Mantar, Ramnagar Fort, Monkey Temple (Durga Temple), Sankat Mochan Temple, Bharat Mata Temple and Bharat Kala Bhavan etc.