Photography & Story: INDIA 2, LOTUS TEMPLE-Baháí House of Worship & Baháí Faith

I visited the Lotus Temple in India at the end of 2015. It was built in 1986 by Iranian architect Fariborz Sahba and is the Baháí Faith Mother Temple on the Indian subcontinent. The temple has been completed for a total cost of $10 million.

The weather was very gloomy and gray. There is a beautiful park around the temple, but it takes very long to be let in the temple itself.

When I think of a temple, I connect it with candles, sacred objects, a feeling of connection with a power beyond our understanding or imagination. The Lotus Temple is a very different kind. It feels much more like an empty conference hall. On a spiritual level, I found it very cold and unwelcoming. The architecture of the building is for sure very special, so as the story of the Baháí Faith is.

The temple has won numerous architectural awards. As written in the Baháí Faith tradition, nine doors open on to a central hall, capable holding up to 2,500 people.

A Bahá'í House of Worship is a temple, originally called mašriqu-l-'aḏkār (مشرق اﻻذكار), an Arabic phrase meaning "Dawning-place of the remembrances of God".

They believe such houses should be built in each city and its doors must be open to all regardless of religion, or any other distinction.

All Bahá'í temples share certain architectural elements, some of which are specified by Bahá'í scripture. 'Abdu'l-Bahá, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith was born on 23.Mai 1844 in an aristocratic family in Teheran. He specified that an architectural character of a House of Worship be that it requires to have a nine-sided circular shape (Nonagon).

When he was eight years old his father was imprisoned and the family's possessions were looted, leaving them in virtual poverty. In 1863, Bahá'u'lláh and his family were banished from Baghdad to Istanbul. During the 1860s the family was further banished from Constantinople to Adrianople, and then finally to the penal colony of Acre, Palestine.
In 1908, at the age of 64 and after forty years imprisonment, `Abdu’l-Bahá was freed by the Young Turks and he and his family began to live in relative safety.

In December 4, 1919, being conferred his knighthood "for valuable services rendered to the British Government in the early days of the Occupation." He was ceremonially knighted on April 27, 1920. `Abdu'l-Bahá died on November 28, 1921.

The total estimated number of tablets that `Abdu'l-Bahá wrote are over 27,000, of which only a fraction have been translated into English.

If you ever go to visit the Lotus Temple, plan a lot of time. As many big temples in India, one has to give away all belongings and shoes, be controled a few times, and be patient.

Love & light
Bella