Hindus in US hold car rally ahead of Ram temple opening

New Delhi/Washington: Ahead of the inauguration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya next month, members of the Hindu American community have kicked off the month-long celebrations to commemorate the event by organising a car rally in a suburb of Washington DC. Several community members on Saturday afternoon gathered at the Shri Bhakta Anjaneya Temple in Ayodhya Way, near Frederick City Maryland, for the rally.

The grand inauguration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya is set for January 22, 2024. The rally, the organisers said, started the month-long celebrations of the Ram Mandir in India. “After 500 years of struggle by Hindus, Bhagwan Shri Ram Mandir is being inaugurated and so we are organising a historic celebration of the same in the Washington, DC area on January 20 next year with about 1,000 American Hindu families,” said Mahendra Sapa, the president of Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America DC chapter.

“The celebration will include Ram Leela, stories of Shri Ram, Hindu prayers to Shri Ram, bhajans (devotional songs) to Bhagawan Shri Ram and his family,” Sapa said. “The celebration will feature the enactment on the life of God Shri Ram by kids of various ages for about 45 minutes in a manner understandable to kids born in America,” he said. Co-organiser and a local Tamil Hindu leader, Premkumar Swaminathan, sang a song praising Lord Shri Rama in Tamil language and gave invitations to all families for the January 20 celebration in the USA as well as the actual inauguration in Ayodhya on January 22 next year.

Other organisers spoke in Kannada, Telugu, and other languages, describing the importance of Bhagawan Shri Ram, who is exemplary to Hindus living all over the world. The rally organiser Krishna Gudipati invited all devotees of Shri Ram to celebrate the Ayodhya Mandir with a bigger car and motorbike rally. Local Hindu leader Ankur Mishra explained how important it is to remember the historic inauguration of Ayodhya Mandir for many Hindu generations and families to become model citizens of American culture. A Supreme Court verdict in 2019 paved the way for the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, a city situated on the banks of the Sarayu River in Uttar Pradesh. The foundation stone for the temple was laid by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 5, 2020.