According to tradition, the temple is one of the five 'Pandava temples' of Delhi, believed to have been established by Yudhishthira after the Mahabharata war. The current structure was built in 1724 by Maharaja Jai Singh II of Jaipur, the same ruler who built the Jantar Mantar observatory nearby. The temple originally stood in a village called 'Hanuman Garhi' before the area was developed into Connaught Place by the British in the 1930s.
When the British built the New Delhi administrative complex, they intentionally preserved the temple, allowing it to remain at its original location despite the extensive redevelopment of the area. The temple gained its most distinctive feature in 1964 when the Hanuman Chalisa continuous chanting (Akhand Kirtan) was initiated by a group of devotees and has continued uninterrupted for over 60 years. The temple was renovated in the 1970s and the current marble structure dates to that period.
