Pravasi Bharatiya Divas: When A Mauritian Devotee Stood In Rapt Reverence For Lord Jagannath

ETV Bharat's Sanjeeb Kumar Das captures the moment when he saw a Mauritian gentleman, offering prayer to Lord Jagannath at the convention venue

Transcript

00:00Sir, welcome to EETV. You are from Mauritius. So, you are here in Odisha, Bhubaneswar. When

00:09you came here, we saw that you are holding your hands in front of Lord Jagannath. So,

00:16you are praising Lord Jagannath. Jagannath is a symbol of S. So, what you will say?

00:24Yes, I participate in the PBD first time here and I am first time in Odisha also. And yesterday

00:33with the group, I got to visit the site of Lord Jagannath temple and to see the religious

00:40site, to see how the people believe, etc. Because, you know, in Mauritius, our roots

00:47are from India and as all the people like Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, they said,

00:54we can't let religion to distort, to divide us. So, visiting the place to know the culture

01:04of people is very important so that we can have an open mind to look a people as a good

01:14humanity. This is my message is to bring peace and tolerance around the world. Because

01:20in Mauritius, we have lots of religious belief, Hindus, Christians, etc. Muslims. And we live

01:28in peace here, in harmony. We visit the place, people visit. It's not difficult for a Christian

01:36to visit a mosque. It's not difficult for a Hindu to visit a Christian church. Because

01:44in Mauritius, we have lots of diversity and lots of culture. And we are very small island

01:52and we know each other like we can say. And we bring, we don't let religion divide us.

02:00We bring peace and harmony. Lord Jagannath is a symbol of peace and harmony. Yes, I heard

02:06it. So, you are, see, you are from a different religion. And Lord Jagannath is a God of Hindu.

02:14Yes. He is a symbol of trust. He is a symbol of peace. So, you are praising him, you are in love

02:21with him. Yes, I heard lots of good things about the Lord Jagannath. How, I read about it on the

02:31posters and we can see that the Lord Jagannath already bring peace and harmony, bring love,

02:38affection, etc. So, that's, I do my best to come to visit it. Lord Jagannath is a living God. You

02:45know, he is a living God. He has a lot of ideologies. He has his family also. You will see,

02:51these three, his brother is there, his sister is there, his wife is also there, Malakmi. So,

02:57he is a living God. His ideologies are there, which we are working in the society, we are

03:02following his culture. So, a lot of things are there. So, would you like to look into all these

03:08things? Yes, of course, of course, of course. It's not difficult to look at these things because we

03:13are all human beings. And like we said, everyone take the God, give a name to the God, but everyone

03:22goes to the same God, to the same one Supreme God. So, will you visit Puri? I visit, I visit,

03:31I visit outside the Jagannath Mandir in Puri also. So, car festival is famous in the globe. So,

03:40different parts of the globe, the people come to that place, car festival. Lord Jagannath is

03:46sitting in a chariot. So, people will carry them. So, car will be going. So, it's a traditional

03:52thing. So, have you, you can see this one also, Ratha Yatra is there. Ratha means this one is a

03:59chariot. So, Lord is sitting there, people are carrying them, priests are carrying them. So,

04:05this one is a culture, this one is a tradition. So, how do you feel all these things? Yes,

04:10like I'm saying, in Mauritius, we have the Mahasurati festival. We can see the people

04:17used to carry the car to the Grand Bassin. In Mauritius, we have Grand Bassin, where there is

04:26a sacred lake for the Hindu faith. So, it's habitual because me, I'm a person who always

04:33learn to see what we can learn about other religion. So, it's better for us to, we learn

04:42this to bring people together, not to divide people. That's my main reason to visit this place.