Unscheduled Rath Jatra In Mumbai Triggers Protests In Odisha

Puri/Bhubaneswar: Protesting against the unscheduled Rath Jatra at Shivaji Park in Mumbai, senior servitors and research schools of Odisha on Thursday urged the Odisha government to take stern action against the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) for violating the tradition of Jagannath Temple in Puri.

Talking to the media in Puri, eminent research scholar of Jagannath culture Prafulla Rath said ISKCON devotees are non-Hindus. “ISKCON is duping people in the name of religion. The motive behind organising the untimely Rath Jatra is to collect money from devotees abroad,” he maintained.

Demanding stern action against ISKCON, senior servitor and member of the Shree Jagannath Temple Managing Committee Rama Chandra Dasmohapatra, said the former went ahead with festival despite repeated reminders from Gajapati Maharaja Dibyasingha Deb to refrain from it. “The state government has to take exemplary action against ISKCON for commercialising this unique festival,” he added.

Terming the ISKCON’s Rath Jatra a telling blow to Hindu religion and sentiments of Jagannath devotees, another senior sevayat of Jagannath Temple, Damodar Padhani, said that the time has come for the state government to urgently intervene in the matter and take drastic action against ISKCON.

Public Relations Officer (PRO) of Odisha ISKCON unit Radhakanta Das said Odisha ISKCON wants Rath Jatra to be celebrated all over the world on a particular day as per the rituals and tradition of the Puri Jagannath Temple.

On the celebrations in Mumbai, he said the Maharashtra government should clarify why it was encouraging an untimely Jatra. He, however, said that the Odisha ISKCON unit was in talks with its Mumbai unit on this matter.

In a statement earlier in the day, Mangalprabhu Das of Mumbai ISKCON had said that while the Rath Jatra in Puri is held in July, it is oragnised in Mumbai on Basant Panchami (Saraswati Puja).

It may be mentioned here that the founder Acharya of ISKCON, Srila Prabhupada had organised the first Rath Jatra in 1968 in San Francisco and now, it has become an annual global event celebrated in 192 cities all over the world.

The Shree Jagannath Sanskruti Parishad had earlier urged ISKCON to come out with a resolution and give clear instructions to its affiliated religious organisations across the globe asking them to hold Rath Jatra only on the specified date.

It may be recalled that last year, in view of the Rath Jatra being celebrated on separate dates, at a meeting chaired by Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (STJA) Chief Administrator, Krishan Kumar, it was decided to conduct the world famous festival on one date in the country according to the Hindu almanac.

The committee came out in support of holding Rath Jatra nationwide on the second day of Ashadha month Suklua Paksha, when the nine-day sojourn of Lord Jagannath, Lord Balabhadra and Devi Subhadra outside the temple is celebrated in Puri.

In view of this intervention, ISKCON’s Ludhiana branch had postponed its proposed Rath Jatra in November last year and decided to hold it on the same day as it is held in Puri.

However, Shree Jagannath Sanskruti Parishad president Gopinath Mohanty, expressing his skepticism had told mediapersons that the organisation’s bureau at Mumbai and eastern zone headquarters at Mayapur in Kolkata should also come out with a resolution in this regard.