The Middle East’s largest Hindu place of worship is in a country that is home to 3.6 million Indian workers. Its ruler, Mohammad bin Zayed, wants to make it a crossroads for interfaith dialogue. During his visit to the Gulf country, Modi also said laid the foundation stone of Bharat Mart, a huge "Indian market" in Dubai, hosting logistics services for exports from India to Europe and Africa.
Abu Dhabi (AisaNews) – A few days after the lavish ceremony for the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated another monumental Hindu temple today, this time in Abu Dhabi.
The opening of the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) Hindu Mandir is another event of great symbolic value, as it is the first Hindu temple in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
“The BAPS temple will be an enduring tribute to the values of harmony, peace and tolerance, which both India and the UAE share,” PM Modi said in a statement.
The pink sandstone temple, which stands on a 27-acre plot of land in Abu Dhabi, is one of the largest in the Middle East.
Although Islam is the UAE’s official religion, the country is home to about 3.6 million Indian workers.
Having a Hindu temple in the same city as the Abrahamic House also confirms the ambition of Emir Mohammad bin Zayed (who provided the land) to turn Abu Dhabi into a global crossroads of interfaith dialogue.
The new temple bears the name of the Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS), a Hindu association with a global network of 3,850 Hindu centres, based in Gujarat, the Indian state where Modi built his political career.
Its millions of followers around the world are inspired by the teachings of Swami Narayan.
This is Modi's seventh visit to the UAE, a Gulf country with increasingly important ties to India. In fact, the Arab country is already India's third-largest trading partner and second-largest export market, with trade expected to double to US$ 100 billion in the next decade.
It is also no accident that the Indian prime minister took part in a virtual ceremony during which he laid the first stone of a completely different "temple": the Bharat Mart (the Indian market), a huge, 100,000-square-metre structure that will combine retail, warehousing, and logistics facilities in Dubai's Jebel Ali Free Trade Zone.
Bharat Mart is a joint venture by DP World – a Dubai-based multinational specialising in logistics, port operations, and maritime services - and India’s Ministry of Commerce, to boost exports by Indian small and medium-sized enterprises.
The facility is designed to reduce the cost and time of shipping goods from India to Africa and Europe.