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ISKON – A case study in temple management ?

“If you visit Bangalore, you ought to have visited ISKON at least once”. Having lived at Bangalore for almost a year, I was having a feeling of, not exactly guilt … but definitely felt that I have missed some part of Bangalore. I always wanted to be there once, and yesterday was the day.

Sunday, 14th May 2006 :

I was sitting at Forum shopping mall with a friend, and as usual doing nothing. Suddenly the idea struck … Why don’t we go to ISKON … and then began a long ride through he crowded streets of the city. Braving he heavy traffic, and an overdose of the likes of carbon monoxide, SPM, nitrogen dioxide etc. we finally managed to reach there after an excruciating 45 minutes ride. There stood the ISKON temple, on a very small hill, in a very large area. Had it been a movie, the appropriate term would have been ‘magnum opus’. And began our journey negotiating the Sunday crowd of devotees...

I have never been too religious, in fact not too much of a believer, but occasionally I do visit a temple or a church. I don’t know whether I ll be granted what I ask for, but still I do ask for a wish or two, and obviously hope it gets true. Still I often believe that I need not necessarily go to a place of worship to ask for something which I desire from bottom of my heart and with a pure mind.
Anyway, we reached the temple and I was intimidated by the serpentine queue for ‘darshan’.

With great difficulty we managed to take out or shoes and hand it over. Apparently everything seemed to be too professionally managed, but still the service left us wanting, maybe just because of sheer number of people. There were few people shouting and abusing the person who collected the shoes. Anyway we proceeded with the security check and washing the hands and landed in a queue for the ‘darshan’, and meanwhile hearing the chant of

‘Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare’.

There were three levels to go. With a temple on all of them, two small and a big one … the one that housed ‘Radha Krishna’ and “Krishna Balaram’ temple . Only the pass holders were allowed a ‘darshan’ from close. Even the ‘parikrama’was not allowed. And there were volunteers taking care of each and every aspect. Then we made an exit … but there was a lot to go. Also the view of the city from that small hill-like structure was amazing.

As we went to ‘another level’ we were amazed by the complex network of shops (seemed more like stalls) selling devotional books to food to some decorative item to clothes… of course we expected it but never expected it to be so big. Yes, there was a small exhibition which mainly contained paintings and small and big idols of mostly Lord Krishna. And I could easily guess that those shops would be having a huge turnover, especially in the weekends. And before the ‘prasad’ as offered and we left, we had already been to a popcorn shop, countless sweet shops, cake shop, a restaurant and many other shops.

I was amazed by such a commercialization of the religious place. Well, I expected some of these shops, but the sheer number and magnitude of the same would take my breath away. In hindsight I thought “is religion so commercialized?”A place of worship with all those shops and even a restaurant!!. Everything there seemed too mechanical. But again a thought came “Ok … What’s wrong in that!!” … And maybe that “mechanical” or the systematic things might not be out of place but absolutely necessary due to sheer number of people visiting there. Maybe in some other big temple like Tirupati Balaji it might be even bigger. Anyway, I found the ISKON temple too crowded and cramped, but maybe that s the price for being too popular. Somehow, I expected much more from that place; maybe I was keeping my expectations too high.

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