Shri Krishna Janmabhoomi

This is the janmasthan of Krishna himself — the ground where the Bhagavata's story begins, and, with Ayodhya's Ram Janmabhoomi, one of the two supreme birthplace shrines of Hinduism. Mathura is counted among the Sapta Puri, the seven cities that bestow liberation, and stands at the centre of Braj, the beloved country of Krishna's childhood that spreads from here to Gokul, Vrindavan, Govardhan and Barsana.

The emotional heart of the complex is the Garbha Griha shrine — the prison cell itself. Pilgrims descend to a small, austere chamber marked as the very spot of the birth, and the contrast with the marble halls above is the theology of Krishna in miniature: the Lord of the universe choosing to arrive in a dungeon, under the shadow of chains, at midnight.

Janmashtami here is among the greatest festival nights of India. At midnight the deity receives abhisheka to the sound of bells and conches and cries of 'Nand ke anand bhayo, Jai Kanhaiya Lal ki', and lakhs keep vigil through the night; the rest of Braj follows through the year with Holi, Radha Ashtami and the parikramas — every pilgrim path of the region beginning, in spirit, from this ground.

Tradition holds that Krishna, Vishnu's eighth avatar, was born here at midnight on the dark eighth of Bhadrapada — Janmashtami — in the prison of the tyrant Kamsa, to the captive Devaki and Vasudeva. The first shrine over the spot is ascribed to Vajranabha, Krishna's own great-grandson, and the ground has been known ever since as the Katra Keshav Dev — the precinct of Keshav Dev, the Lord Krishna of this place.

The site has risen and fallen with the ages. A great temple stood here in the Gupta era, magnificent by the time of Chandragupta II around 400 CE; it was sacked by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1017, rebuilt, and raised again to unprecedented splendour in 1618 by Raja Bir Singh Deo Bundela of Orchha at a cost of thirty-three lakh rupees. In 1670 Aurangzeb had that temple demolished and the Shahi Idgah mosque was raised over part of the site, where it stands adjacent to this day; through it all, the ground itself remained fixed in Hindu memory as the janmasthan.

In the colonial period the land passed at auction to Raja Patnimal of Benares, and in February 1944 Madan Mohan Malaviya secured it with the help of the industrialist Jugal Kishore Birla. After Malaviya's passing, Birla formed the trust — today's Shri Krishna Janmasthan Seva Sansthan — in 1951; construction of the present complex began in October 1953, supported by the Birla and Dalmia families among others, and was completed with the opening of the Bhagavata Bhavan in February 1982.

Unlike a single-spired temple, the Janmabhoomi is a walled complex of shrines built between 1953 and 1982. Its principal building, the Bhagavata Bhavan, enshrines Keshav Dev with Radha in a lofty marble hall; verses of the Bhagavata Purana and the Gita line its walls, and its painted ceilings and carved balconies narrate the lila of Krishna. A separate Keshav Dev temple continues the historic name, and smaller shrines complete the court.

The Garbha Griha shrine is deliberately plain — a low stone chamber styled as the prison of the birth. Beside the complex lies the Potara Kund, the great stepped tank where, tradition says, the newborn's clothes were washed; and adjacent stands the Shahi Idgah mosque, raised in the 1670s over part of the old temple's site — an adjacency that remains the subject of ongoing litigation, noted here simply as a fact of the site's layered history.