Ekalavya Temple, Gurugram

The Ekalavya temple in Khandsa village, Gurugram, is described as the only Hindu temple dedicated to Ekalavya, the archer of the Mahabharata. In the epic, Drona had promised Arjuna he would become the greatest archer of his age; when Ekalavya proved more skilled, Drona asked for the young man's right thumb as his fee, and Ekalavya cut it off. The thumb is said to have been buried on this spot, and a well-off villager built a shrine over it in 1721.

The temple is a single room with space for only a couple of people, and the village panchayat has added a two-room dharamshala for pilgrims. It is cared for by the Gurugram Sanskritik Gourav Samiti and is visited mostly by local villagers and by Bhil people from Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and elsewhere. A special puja led by the Nishada community, to which Ekalavya belonged, has been started on 14 January each year. Gurugram's Bhima Kund and a Dronacharya temple are nearby.