Mumbai, Jan 28 (IANS) – The International Temple Summit 2006 has representatives from the management committees of 25 prominent temples in India and from the Pashupatinath Temple of Nepal.
“We will be releasing a vision document at the end of the summit in which we will mention the formation of a common organisation as a priority,” said Sanjay Bhagwat, CEO of the Siddhivinayak Temple trust, which organised the summit.
“Such an organisation would be a positive step towards sharing of ideas and solutions to common problems faced by temples in India,” Bhagwat told IANS.
The summit will organise workshops and presentations on various subjects related to temple management such as security issues, finance and training of personnel.
It will also address issues like waste generated at pilgrim centres, terrorist threats and creation of a common web portal to disseminate information on all major shrines.
Some of the temples represented at the meet are those at Pazhani (Tamil Nadu), Guruvayoor (Kerala), Tirupati (Andhra Pradesh), Vaishnodevi (Jammu and Kashmir) and at Badrinath in Uttaranchal.
“The meet is a platform to share expertise in the use of technology in security and crowd management, apart from disaster management,” Bhagwat said.
“This is the first time such a summit has been organised. We feel an umbrella organisation for temples across the country has now become imperative,” Bhagwat said.
© 2006 IANS India Private Limited, New Delhi. Posted on Religioscope with permission. — Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) is India’s first multinational and multilingual wire service. Website: www.ians.in. Subscription enquiries: contact IANS (mention Religioscope).