Lal Mandir Jain Temple

In front of you is the Shri Digambar Jain Lal Mandir, the "red temple". It's the oldest Jain shrine in Old Delhi and proof that Shah Jahan's capital was never just a Muslim city. The emperor invited Jain merchant families of the Agarwal community to settle here and granted them land south of Chandni Chowk, around today's Dariba.

1A temple born in a camp

According to the Jain scholar Balbhadra Jain, a Jain officer in the Mughal army kept an image of a tirthankara, one of the great teachers of the faith, in his tent. Other soldiers began coming to pray, and in 1656 a temple was raised on this spot. That's why it was also called the Lashkari Mandir, from lashkar, "army camp", or the "Urdu" temple, after the army bazaar beside the fort.

The buildings you see today are later. They were rebuilt and enlarged from the 19th century onwards, after the Mughals had gone.

2A hospital for birds

Jainism preaches ahimsa, non-violence towards every living being. So behind the temple, since the 20th century, runs the Jain Birds Hospital, a veterinary hospital devoted to birds. Most of its patients are injured pigeons from the city.

A community that refuses to harm even an insect, a hundred metres from the fortress of an empire.

3What to look for

• The red spires, typical of north Indian temples.
• The column at the entrance, the manastambha, which marks a Jain temple.
• The door of the bird hospital, to one side of the complex.