The Central Baptist Church in Chandni Chowk is a serene and calm oasis in the middle of the din of traffic and teeming population of this historical area. The church is one of the oldest in North India, going back to 1814 when it was set up by the Baptist Missionary Society. The church has been built in Roman style with a deep colonnade supported by thick columns on the side of the entrance facing the main road. However, what I found truly noteworthy about this church was the fact that the inscriptions behind the altar were in Urdu. Even the St. Stephen's Church near Cloth market in Chandni Chowk, another structure from the same era, has inscriptions in Hindi, Urdu and English.
The Baptist Church, however, has inscriptions in only Urdu and given the fact that this is probably the oldest Christian Mission in all of north India, that is saying a lot. This is a true treatise to the secular spirit of the people who were originally residing in this area. Speaking of secular, the ancient Gauri Shankar Mandir, Gurudwara sis Ganj are other places of worship within 100 metres of this church. Yet another noteworthy feature of this church are the plaques that have been put up to commemorate the service of various members of the church posthumously.
The older the plaque the more ornate the typography, the more dramatic and calligraphic the fonts used. The oldest plaque goes right back to the revolt of 1857, immortalising the memory of those who lost their lives in the revolt, etched on bronze. The ones put up more recently are less dramatic, in fact, almost vanila inscriptions with little drama of letter and style. A visit to Chandni Chowk is incomplete without a visit to the Central Baptist Church, especially if you want to experience first hand a very secular way of life, when people did not let religion get into the way of belief and sectarianism get into the way of culture.
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