Hanuman Temple, Connaught Place
— the name that has not gone quiet since 1964.
Not only on a wall.
“A small saffron temple at the western edge of Connaught Place, in central Delhi. Inside, a recitation of Sri Ram, Jai Ram, Jai Jai Ram has run without pause since August 1964, kept going by a rotating chorus of devotees. The doors stay open on Tuesdays and Saturdays from before dawn, and the queue moves slowly along the pavement. Outside, the traffic of central Delhi. Inside, the same syllables.
Hanuman Temple, Connaught Place, on ceramic.
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The place, in three passes.
The Hanuman Temple sits on Baba Kharak Singh Marg at the western edge of Connaught Place, a few minutes' walk from Rajiv Chowk metro station. Local tradition traces the shrine to the Pandavas of the Mahabharata era and credits Maharaja Jai Singh II of Jaipur with its 1724 restoration, alongside the nearby Jantar Mantar observatory. The murti of Hanuman is regarded as Swayambhu, self-manifested rather than carved. The triangular shikhara and saffron face mark the temple out from the colonial circle of Connaught Place that grew around it two centuries later.
On 1 August 1964, an unbroken chant of Sri Ram, Jai Ram, Jai Jai Ram began here. Devotees take rotating shifts so the recitation has not stopped since. Guinness World Records lists the temple as the site of the longest continuous chanting of a mantra in modern history. The largest crowds gather on Tuesdays and Saturdays, the days sacred to Hanuman, and during Hanuman Jayanti in spring, when the temple stays open through the night and the lanes outside fill with vendors of marigold and bel leaves.
The temple opens around five in the morning and closes near ten at night, with no admission fee. On Tuesdays and Saturdays the doors stay open continuously and queues stretch along Baba Kharak Singh Marg. Phones and cameras are discouraged inside the inner shrine; lockers hold shoes and bags. Rajiv Chowk metro station, two minutes east, links the temple to the rest of central Delhi. Mehndi artists work the pavement outside in the late afternoon, a tradition that has built up around the temple over the past several decades.