The Story Behind is a CNT series that spotlights lesser known monuments across Incredible India
The road to the Gokulchand Temple in the tiny village of Gokulnagar in the Bankura district of Bengal is off the cliched path. A dirt track fringed by ponds, clucking chicken and errant goats veers off a state highway and passes into the lush cinematic perfection of rural Bengal. This is where laal maati or red earth abounds and the ponds run clear enough to spot a silver baby carp coming up to feed.
Gokulchand Temple, Bankura
The village itself befits a Ray trilogy with solitary fishermen-philosophers sitting with their rods dipped in ponds, waiting for a fish to bite, or not. The stillness of a muggy afternoon in Bengal is punctuated by a crow or a kokil. The serpentine road leads to a grassy clearing with a well and an open-air shrine to a many-headed snake god. Here, there is activity as children play and plan for an upcoming pujo, women gossip and daily chores unwind at a languorous pace. And beyond the whole tableau, looms larger than life, an impossibly gorgeous laterite stone structure—the Gokulchand Temple—rising from the red earth as if thrown up by a tectonic shift. The village and the temple feel both out of time and in perfect sync with each other. Apart from an occasional tinny-pitched Bollywood song emanating from a cell phone, there is nothing that brings the viewer back from the sensation of having teleported to another era. Nothing, apart from their own selves and the urgent need to Google their way back to reality.
Most visitors to these parts tend to overlook this magnificent terracotta-clad stone temple in favour of its better-known counterparts concentrated in the city of Bishnupur. Yet, this 17th-century gem dedicated to Krishna is not only historically significant as a structure, its preservation story is also one worth recording.
Built by Bishnupur’s ruling Malla dynasty in 1643, this is a traditional pancharatna temple with its decorative columns and turrets placed over its traditional four-sided curved roof. Apart from predating the Bishnupur temples, Gokulchand is also the largest temple in the entire district looming 64ft above the ground. The temple complex sprawls over 20,000sqft and is a serene, well-preserved slice of history without a single plastic wrapper, selfie-happy tourists or any other 21st-century intrusions.
A natmandir or performance hall with arched gateways stands across the main temple structure. The entire complex is surrounded by fortified walls and an overgrown tulsi mancha occupies a corner along with a nondescript tube well. (The latter is an extremely useful source of crystal clear drinking water for there are no shops dispensing mineral water bottles in these parts). The stairwells and balconies of the natmandir, though worn, are maintained well enough to be able to navigate one’s way to the roof to get that perfect vantage of the entire temple as well as Bengal's rural idyll that stretches out beyond.
Gokulchand Temple’s restoration is an ASI success story and one spearheaded by none other than Rakhal Das Banerji, the archaeologist most famously associated with the discoveries at Mohenjo Daro. It is through his efforts that the once ruined temple was brought to public attention in the 1920s and it was finally taken over by the ASI and restored to its current form in the 1990s.
A walk around the main temple’s perimeter yields a closer look at the magnificent terracotta art depicting gods and their myths on the walls. While the stone relief under shade is brushed with the occasional cobweb, those exposed to the elements glisten with the wetness of a recent spot of rain. The original Krishna idol has been relocated to the Malla dynasty's home in Bishnupur, befittingly, a simple photograph remains for the everyday prayers to keep the temple functional. Every year, during Holi and the Rathayatra, the idol is brought back for a grand puja.
The Gokulchand Temple is forlorn and magnificent all at once. It is a poetic ruin of time but also restored into a present where it stands awaiting new purpose.
Gokulchand Temple, Gokulnagar, Bankura, West Bengal 722138.
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