"raghupati raghava rajaram, patitapawana sitaram,

iswara allah tero naam, sabko sanmati de bhagwan"

This Gandhi Mandir is perhaps the one and only temple, where the father of our nation is worshiped as a deity. It is situated in a "Harijan" village known as Bhatra in Sambalpur. And Bhatra belongs to the ward no. 1 of Sambalpur municipality and placed as the gateway to Sambalpur town, while coming from Bhubaneswar, the capital of Orissa state. It is identified as one of the most backward and undeveloped wards of Sambalpur municipality, where habitants are from scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. The locality is mostly deprived of developmental works and attention of the local administration.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, better known as Mahatma Gandhi, and his vision to make independent India, a secular nation. India is not only a country but also a sub-continent with its multi racial, multi religious, multi cast with multi lingual identification and living in harmony. It is a unique example of Unity in Diversity. Mahatma Gandhi dreamt this uniqueness comes true in the independent India.Mahatma propagated his vision to make it true. Unfortunately the Indian society used to be fragmented in the name of casteism and the worst part of it was untouchability.

He has said, “God never made man that he may consider another man as an untouchable”. He strove hard to remove the stigma of untouchables from Indian society to cast it as per his vision, as he said, “My fight against untouchables is a fight against the impure in humanity.” More over his success in practicing ahinsa (non-violence) has paved ways for peace in society and world as well. These experiments virtually made him a philosopher of new order and justified calling him a Mahatma, which means a great soul. Such was his greatness that some of his followers try to project him as a god. As a result of it he is placed in some temples as a deity, no doubt a rare phenomenon. Sambalpur, a growing urban centre in Orissa, one of the most backward states in India, enjoys the privilege to have such a temple with Mahatma Gandhi as its worshiped deity.