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| Online praying and blessings! | | Religious Web sites popular among Indians abroad | |
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
NEW DELHI, OCT. 4: Religious Web sites have become quite popular among Indians living abroad. Thousxands of them are logging on to these sites in the run-up to the very important Hindu festival of Diwali. A stream of portals are offering services like online praying and blesings.
A three-day Hindu festival of light begins from October 20. Some of the millions of Indians living in the USA, Canada and Britain are joining the celebrations back home electronically. For prices ranging from 8 dollars to 15 dollars, religious portals are offering prayer sessions for IT-savvy devotees at temples in India, sending them a DVD of the prayer and offerings like dried flowers or vermilion, blessed by the priest.
Worshippers can also pick up idols, incense sticks, religious books from these holy web malls all at the click of a mouse. Statistics available with Saranam, and India-based site, show that the number of people registering online for puja during this festival season has surged almost three to four times from the normal days.
It is reported that nearly 60 percent of Saranam's clients are living overseas. Most of them are Indian IT professionals in their thirties, who are too busy or too distant to get to a temple. Despite most major temples and religious organisations having their own Web sites, many are not happy with the modern version of worshipping God.
Some priests are sympathetic to the new breed of devotees. Gopal Pujari, a priest at the revered Vaishno Devi shrine in the Jammu region has been quoted as saying: "Time is changing and so are devotees. They do not have so much time and they live very far". He added: "But they have devotion in heart and despite all the constraints, they still remember God in any which way they can".
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