My visit to Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in New Jersey

Visiting temples is not and was never a priority weekend activity for me, but that doesn't mean I don't visit temples. Most of my family is very religious and prefers to visit famous shrines and temples. I have visited many places out of curiosity or to enjoy the architecture and the general feel of the atmosphere. I really liked it when I visited the Ganga ghats of Varanasi, the temples in that city are also good. They can be maintained in a much better way and turned into very prominent tourist attractions of that city, but somehow state and local governments don't think like me. Even without much support and management many of these temples attract millions of visitors every year and help the economy of that place. A few days back I visited the Shri Swaminarayan temple in Robbinsville, NJ. My wife really wanted to visit this place as she heard a lot about it from some of her friends and also saw some spectacular pictures of the temple on social media. 

The temple is really beautiful, situated on very spacious land, with an ample amount of parking space. There is still a lot of construction going on, so I think they are still in the process of building more structures there as there is a lot of empty land around and I am sure temple authorities would like to use it all. People at the temple are very nice and polite, they allow photography everywhere except inside the central part of the main temple. If you are wearing shorts or sleeveless or something like that they will give you a cloth (something like a lungi and shawl) to cover your body. I was happy to see that this rule was not just for women, but for men also. I didn't understand the logic behind this rule, but at least it was not a gender-discriminatory rule. I wonder what will happen if someone enters the temple in shorts or a sleeveless top? This rule was not applied to kids, which made sense as parents would have struggled to explain to them why they had to wear lungi or shawl inside the temple. Inside the temple right in front of deities, there was an empty space for devotees and visitors to sit and pray. The area was divided into two sections, the front section belonged to men and the back section to females. My daughter was not happy to see the females being given a back seat, she was (and even I was) wondering, why didn't they divide the section into two halves which would have allowed each side to get a chance to sit in front of the deity. There was no prasad after aarti, I couldn't believe it, such a posh temple and no prasad after aarti? I love the taste of Prasad food offered at many temples, and most of them give it free after their pooja or aarti, but here it was different. It seems one has to buy Prasad from the temple cafeteria. I liked this business idea, after all, whether it's a temple, church, mosque, or any other religious place, they all are also business centers and have to generate income to maintain themselves. If you understand this simple basic thing, many of their policies make sense.

Our visit was short and sweet. We attended aarti and left for our next destination. My wife was really happy to visit the place and it made me very happy. The kids were also happy to see a beautiful structure and learned some mythological stories while we were at the temple. In general, it was quite an enjoyable trip.

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]

Links:

1. http://www.baps.org/Global-Network/North-America/Robbinsville.aspx