Tantra Foundation Library opens in Delhi
A public library dedicated to Tantra and religious studies has opened within a scholar's farmhouse in Chhattarpur, Delhi, blending academic access with
The Tantra Foundation Library in Chhattarpur, Delhi, offers public access to a scholar's collection. It sits inside a working farmhouse, blending academia with unique architecture and a farmland setting.
Prof Madhu Khanna, one of India's foremost scholars of Tantra and a specialist in the goddess-centred Shakta traditions, lives there. She holds a doctorate in Indology and Religious Studies from Oxford and has curated Tantra art for institutions from the British Museum to MoMA. Her career built the foundation that now houses the library.
Architecture and Setting
The house has the plainness typical of 1970s farm construction in the area. It features earthy tones, limestone walls, clean lines, and a good set of stairs. The exterior is a peachy beige, with a staircase visible through windows that zigzag up the facade. Six large yellow windows front the entrance.
The approach is an unpaved dirt path lined with brick hedges. A walking path through the back garden seems meant for centring the mind before reading. Native planting along the boundary includes neem, curry patta, amaltas, and bougainvillea left to grow into each other.
Interior Spaces
The staircase leads to a first-floor living room lit by a skylight, a modernised roshandaan adapted from colonial form. The room is grounded by paintings, including Shakta Kalighat works and other art rooted in Tantra. From it, one enters the librarian’s room, full of shelves, or a terrace.
Kota stone, favoured in 1970s Delhi for staying cool, and tiled roofing complete the house. It was built to withstand the climate and declares a proud Delhi modernism.
Downstairs is a formal drawing room facing the garden, with a large verandah furnished in wrought iron chairs woven by a Bengal artisan. West of the main hall is a small breakfast room, its walls washed in the house yellow. The room holds her father's old, high-framed bed. Her own bedroom has a larger bed, an island where one could doze off among manuscripts.
Prof. Khanna maintains the property herself, with the attentiveness of someone who has watched Chhattarpur's transformation. The area has shifted from farmland to a settlement caught between temple pilgrimage routes and the edge of the Asola Wildlife Sanctuary.
A Library in the Landscape
The library is not simply a room of books attached to a residence. It asks a visitor to engage with three things at once: a body of scholarship, a house with intact architectural memory, and a working farmland setting. Step out from the barsati that holds the library and the fields are still there, open to a horizon.
The sun sets over cultivated land rather than rooftops. That view matters. Thought needs distance to work in. The library offers proof that the ability to see far is part of what makes serious thinking possible.
