[Reader-list] Disney and the new Akshardham Temple

[Anuj Bhuwania]

http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/06/08/travel/08letter.html?pagewanted=all

The Disney Touch at a Hindu Temple
By JONATHAN ALLEN
Published: June 8, 2006         			

It barely needs stating that India already has a lot of Hindu temples,
and so if you want to persuade people to slip their shoes off for a
new one, you've got to be imaginative.

The temple complex includes a hall of animatronic tableaux which
recount the life and philosophy of Bhagwan Swaminarayan.
 To this end, the creators of the new Swaminarayan Akshardham temple
complex that towers over east Delhi thought to include several
features not commonly found in Hindu architecture, including an indoor
boat ride, a large-format movie screen, a musical fountain and a hall
of animatronic characters that may well remind us that, really, it's a
small world after all. There are even pink (sandstone) elephants on
parade.

"There is no doubt about it — we have taken the concept from
Disneyland," said Jyotindra Dave, the chief public relations officer
for the organization that built the temple, which opened in November.
"We visited five or six times. As tourists, I mean. And then we went
away and worked out how they did everything."

The organization in question is Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam
Swaminarayan Sanstha (it calls itself BAPS), a Hindu
sect-cum-registered charity with a global reach and a list of
humanitarian activities as unwieldy as its name. The Delhi Akshardham
is not BAPS's first such venture, but it is certainly the largest.
(Another Akshardham temple in the nearby state of Gujarat was the site
of a deadly terrorist attack in 2002; and in 1995 the organization
opened the largest Hindu temple outside India in the London suburb of
Neasden.)

Like all BAPS centers, the Akshardham is devoted to Bhagwan
Swaminarayan. Followers believe that he was incarnated in 18th-century
India as Ghanshyam Pande (later called Neelkanth Varni), who at age 11
embarked upon an epic spiritual journey across the subcontinent,
preaching a message of peaceful compassion as he went. Or, as the
tagline to the center's giant-screen biopic has it, with inspired
concision: "12,000 km, 7 years, barefoot!" It is consoling to bear
this in mind while mired in the 300-yard two-hour Sunday line to
actually see the film.

The temple, carved by 7,000 sculptors out of pink sandstone and white
marble, is beautiful in the way that all elaborately ornate things are
beautiful. Visitors will probably be informed several times that it
has been built entirely without the use of steel, like in the good old
days.

Indeed, much of the building's impact comes from the pleasant shock of
discovering that some people are still going to the very great trouble
of building things that look like this. A kind of optical illusion is
established: from a distance, the intricate carvings look, in some
generic sense, old; close-up, all the hallmarks of the builders having
recently been in are still visible — the odd join still needs
grouting, and the raw, unweathered stone bears in many places a thin
sheen of masonry dust. On a recent visit, a half-dozen sculptors were
still plinking away with hammer and chisel, putting finishing touches
to the exterior.

The appeal of this might at first be lost on visitors to India, who
are usually coming to see the country's abundance of genuinely ancient
buildings; Indians, who are surrounded by them, will generally grab
any opportunity to escape from all that decrepitude for the afternoon,
ideally to a place with musical fountains. The crowds here aren't
pilgrims; they're day trippers.

But if one of the holy grails of the self-loathing tourist is shaking
loose from his fanny-packing peers and finding a delightful restaurant
patronized entirely by locals, then this, paradoxically, is the
tourist attraction equivalent. The members of the crowd, around half
of whom are dressed in their best saris, is almost entirely made up of
multigenerational middle-class Indian families escaping the city,
along with a small minority of posses of young men, escaping their
families.

And so, although Western tourists are welcome, they can expect to
receive the occasional look of benign giggly bemusement, the same kind
a gentleman receives upon joining the line for the ladies' toilets.
Over two visits, I encountered a Norwegian tour group, but otherwise
sightings of Westerners were distant and unconfirmed. Signs are in
both Hindi and English, but the English audio in the exhibition
buildings will usually be switched on only for groups of at least 20
who phoned ahead.

Smaller groups should not worry; it's never too difficult to get the
basic gist of the Hindi. A series of typically unnerving animatronic
tableaux recount the life and philosophy of Bhagwan Swaminarayan; the
boat ride is a mellow trip celebrating the scientific and cultural
achievements of ancient India; and the film adaptation of the Bhagwan
Swaminarayan's pilgrimage, with its lovely swooping shots of the
Himalayas, is a far less gory take on Mel Gibson's blockbuster
evangelism.

Hemmed in on four sides by impressive colonnades of red sandstone, the
temple itself manages to transcend the kitsch of the nearby exhibition
halls.

Wrapped around its base is a 1,070-foot-long carved pink sandstone
frieze of near-enough-to-life-size elephants in inspirational poses.
Many of them drill home the importance of family values and community
spirit. Sometimes the allegorical power of elephants is overestimated,
as in the tableau which, according to the caption, claims that: "One
problem elephants never face is the generation gap."

The one that most strikes me is the creature shown "equipoised and
nonchalant amidst barking dogs"; for the tourist sometimes overwhelmed
by the colorful chaos of India, this could well be the most relevant
elephant.

Inside the temple, stewards slumped in chairs forlornly hold up signs
on sticks imploring visitors to keep silent, all of which are ignored
by the cheery weekend crowds. Sometimes, when the din peaks, a steward
will jump to his feet and rapidly — yet silently — waggle his sign
toward the face of an especially loud visitor, temporarily stunning
the crowd into a low murmur.

The noise should not be mistaken for irreverence. Everyone, without
visible exception, will break from conversation in front of each of
the temple's five icons to seal his hands in prayer. Some bow deeply,
or perform a short sequence of crisscrossing movements in which they
touch their earlobes with alternating hands. Small children do all
this with particular relish.

At the center of the temple, near the large gold-plated icon of
Bhagwan Swaminarayan, an ever-renewing scrum churns around a hidden
nucleus. It's the donation box. Devotees leave a few rupees in a dish
beside a single small candle, briefly hold a hand over the flame, wipe
its warmth over their forehead, and then finally shove their way back
out to the open.

Elbows are similarly employed in the chaotic self-service refreshment
area. I bite my lip and try to think of my favorite elephant from the
frieze. People cut in line and tread on my toes, which strike me as
things Bhagwan Swaminarayan would not do. It seems the combined
efforts of the Akshardham's robots, elephants and talking boats in
relaying BAPS's essential message of humble compassion may still not
have been enough.

As I leave the temple, a horde of rickshaw drivers surrounds me,
loudly and physically hustling for my business. I again try to adopt
the posture of the unflappable elephant. Then it occurs to me that
that elephant must get ripped off all the time, and I argue furiously
with the drivers until one of them relents and agrees to take me back
to central Delhi on the meter.