Digha Jagannath temple attracting more foreign tourists: ISKCON.

The newly-inaugurated Jagannath temple in West Bengal’s Digha is drawing more foreign tourists, mainly devotees of the ISKCON. The Digha temple demonstrating to be a blessing for foreigners who were not allowed to enter the famed 12^th. century Jagannath shrine in Puri, said Radharaman Das, vice president of Kolkata ISKCON.

The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) is managing the Digha temple which is a replica of the Jagannath shrine in Puri in neighbouring Odisha. “Lots of foreigners are coming from various countries. During the inauguration of the temple, people of nearly 150 nationalities from across the world have attended”, reiterated Radharaman Das, who is also the ISKCON Kolkata spokesperson.

He said that, as, many of these visitors & influencers had shared videos of the April 30 inauguration programme on social media, they were flooded with queries from people across different nations, seeking information about stay options at Digha, an extremely popular tourist destination by the Bay of

Bengal.

As Digha is blessed to have good hotels for every budget, and there are possibilities of more such facilities to come up as tourism is expected to boom after the temple was inaugurated. Generally, hotels are booked to the brim in Digha and neighbouring beach resorts during weekends.

Moreover, Digha Sankarpur Hoteliers’ Association president Susanta Patra said that expectations of an increase in tourist footfall following the inauguration of the temple are high.

Radharaman Das informed that Alfred Ford, great-grandson of American business tycoon Henry Ford and an ISKCON devotee, is expected to visit the Digha temple. Maintaining that the inauguration of the temple has led to a tourist boom in Digha, he expressed confidence that business people will be keen to invest in setting up hotels, from five-star category to budget facilities, and other allied supports like transportation, etc.

While, “Foreigners are considering this new temple as a blessing as they can have Jagannath Darshan and since the architecture is similar to Puri, they can experience how it looks from inside while visiting the temple at Digha. Many people from all over the world are looking forward to visit Digha” Das said.

He claimed that the Digha temple is becoming a part of the itinerary of foreign devotees of ISKCON for their visit to India. He maintained that a large part of western visitors to West Bengal are ISKCON devotees, who visit Mayapur and also Kolkata. Mayapur, which is located in West Bengal’s Nadia district, is the global headquarters of ISKCON, is waiting in anticipation for the inauguration of the largest temple in the World. The temple of the Vedic Planetarium, also known as Sri Mayapur Chandrodaya Mandir, is a grand structure under construction at Mayapur

“When the new temple at Mayapur will be inaugurated, West Bengal will take a quantum leap in foreign tourist footfall, thanks to the ISKCON devotees“, he said.

Meanwhile, Das said that around 20 lakh people visited the Jagannath temple at Digha in just over a fortnight since it was inaugurated on April 30 by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Since Digha is situated very close to the state border with Odisha, around 60% of the devotees visiting the Lord Jagannath temple are from the neighbouring state. The people visiting the temple are gratefully acknowledging the seamless darshan of Shri Jagannath, the principal deity, along with Balabhadra and Subhadra.

“Devotees start queuing up at least one hour before the temple opens in the morning. Similar devotions are witnessed in the evenings also. All these were possible due to the visionary Chief Minister Ms. Mamata Banerjee”, he said.

Team Maverick