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SAN FRANCISCO, Ca (July 14, 2006) –
The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) applauds the twelve year
effort of American Julian Parker to have a temple dedicated
to Lord Jagannath constructed at Kuansh village in Orissa,
India.
The thirty-year-old Julian Parker, who has
been a devotee of Lord Jagannath since childhood, came to
India in 1993 to further his religious pursuits. Unfortunately,
the Jagannath temple in the city of Puri, Orissa does not
allow foreigners to enter, even if they are devotees of Lord
Jagannath.
Therefore, Parker took it upon himself to
build a temple devoted to Lord Jagannath which would be open
to all. After over a decade of persistence, the 35-foot tall
temple was finally inaugurated last month. The $56,000 required
to build the temple was raised through donations, with Parker
contributing half the cost himself.
"There are so many Jagannath bhakts
(devotees) across the world. When they are not allowed inside
the temple, they feel bad like I did. So I have built this
temple," Parker told CNN-IBN news.
His plans do not stop with just building
this temple. Next year, Parker plans to complete the traditional
Rath Yatra, a festival when the murti of Lord Jagannath is
taken out of the temple and paraded through the streets of
Puri. He plans on building even larger temples if the just
completed proves to be popular.
Several temples in the state of Orissa continue
to have discriminatory practices. In November, HAF protested
the denial of entry to another American-born Hindu into another
temple in the city of Bhubaneswar. HAF also earlier condemned
multiple incidents where Harijan devotees were barred from
entering temples in other villages in the same state. In one
case, the Scheduled Caste Hadi community took a similar approach
to Parker and built their own temple in response to the unjust
treatment meted out by temple authorities.
“Discrimination has no place in Hinduism,
especially in a place of worship,” said Jay Patel, Member
of the Hindu American Foundation Executive Council. “We
support the creative efforts of Mr. Parker to make Hindu religious
places free of discrimination against any devotee based on
ethnicity, color or caste.”
The Hindu American Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3), non-partisan organization, promoting the Hindu
and American ideals of understanding, tolerance and pluralism.
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