A witness to UAE's first 50 years, the Shri Krishna temple in Bur Dubai has come a long way

Gulf News

As the UAE celebrates 50 years of its Federation, the Shri Krishna Temple on Al Fahidi Street has many reasons to celebrate. According to Lalit Karani, chairman of the Shri Krishna Temple in Bur Dubai, the temple, which has come a long way since its inception, is a symbol of the UAE’s tolerance and peaceful co-existence between people of different nationalities.  Read the full story here: https://bit.ly/2VYWsEI  See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km  Subscribe to Gulf News on YouTube and watch more of our videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/GulfNewsTV  #UAEnews #Dubai #temple

Transcript

00:00We are celebrating 50 years of the UAE Federation and we cannot be in a better place to do it.

00:10We are here at the Krishna Temple in Baradubai and with me is the Chairman of Mercantile

00:16Community Mr. Lalit Kairani and his team.

00:19The temple was established according to our documentation or whatever paperwork we have

00:25was 1935 but according to the government that this was established somewhere in 1903.

00:32So we are here since then, the temple is in the same place.

00:35It was like a small house where the seva was here, what we call it seva is the idols of

00:41the Lord, Lord Srirajji which is Krishna.

00:44We had cow in the temple, we had well in the temple and everything, all the business people.

00:52The name of the community where we say here is the Mercantile Hindu Community of Tata

00:57Sin.

00:58We come from a village called Tata and we merchants were here who were coming to the

01:04temple, cooking, doing the bhog and then distributing the prasad to everybody and then they would

01:11go to the work.

01:12They would open their businesses after that.

01:14That was the old times when the life was very slow and calm and nice but now with the growth

01:21of the city we have now staff called priests who do only seva inside, they are not going

01:27outside anywhere.

01:28There are two priests we have, we have one Kirtaniya, we have the other Pitariya what

01:33we call it, who cooks everything for the Lord and then the prasad is being distributed to

01:38the people.

01:39Then we have a lot of sevaks, we do our seva, we are here every day, literally every day.

01:45Even though we have business, we take out time and come and make sure that everything

01:50is doing well here.

01:51Since then the changes have happened where we have allowed even the foreigners, the tourists,

01:57which is a big crowd nowadays.

01:58A lot of other religious people come and they do the prayers here.

02:04They come and see what's happening.

02:07So it's like a semi-museum as well as temple for the prayers.

02:11In 365 days we have got 360 festivals.

02:14The festivals go from Holi which is the festival of colours, our new year which is Chetichand

02:22what Sindhis also called it.

02:23We have the Sawan Ke Jhule which goes for 30 days, Holi goes for 40 days when the colours

02:30are being thrown on people and on the God.

02:33We take that feeling as the Lord Krishna is playing Holi with us.

02:36Now the main important part is that we are basically Yadu Vanshis, Yadu Vanshis is the

02:42community where the Krishna came from.

02:45And then with the time we probably moved to Rajasthan so we come from Jaisalmer.

02:50What we have the history is from Jaisalmer.

02:53The tolerance and coexistence has always been the part of our religion and our community.

03:00Also the government, local authorities, the mosque which is exactly opposite us, just

03:0610 meter away from us and their main doors and our main doors are same, facing each other.

03:12What an interesting story is that.

03:14For more on this story please log on to www.gulfnews.com and if you know of other communities that

03:23need to be celebrated for the UAE Federation celebrations do let us know.

03:29For now this is Anjana Kumar for Gulf News, thank you.

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