#padayatra

Do you know the second largest Iskon Temple of the world?

Read this - https://www.livingwithabhi.com/post/iskon-temple-of-kanpur-second-largest-iskon-in-the-world

This arranged new 100,000 square foot sanctuary in Kanpur is the second-biggest in ISKCON

The second-biggest ISKCON sanctuary on the planet, after ISKCON's central command in Mayapur, was opened in Kanpur on October third, 2014. The celebration was relied upon to draw more than 100,000 individuals including more than 500 ISKCON fans.

Development on the sanctuary started in October 2011 and finished up in August 2014. Set on a fifteen-section of land site, the intricate 100,000 square-foot sanctuaries, with their grand pinnacles, incorporated an open-sky patio and enormous sanctuary corridor.

On the sanctuary's three special stepped areas lovers will revere Sri Gaura Nitai, Sri Radha Madhava, and Sri Sita Rama, Lakshman, and Hanuman. What's more, folding over the structure will be a Parikrama marg or journey way.

In its first period of development, the undertaking likewise incorporates a 60,000 square-foot Vedic Ashram, a visitor house, Food For Life focus, local area corridor, Bhaktivedanta Youth Academy, blessing shop, Govinda's café, a Goshala lodging sixty cows, and a Bhaktivedanta Book Library with a meeting lobby.

Engineer's drawing of the new Kanpur sanctuary mind-boggling, airborne view

Before the mind-boggling, two delightfully finished nurseries loaded up with trees, pathways, wellsprings, and an enormous "Dvaja Stambha," from which Garuda welcomes every one of the diving beings to take Darshan of the Lord. The entire task is planned by prestigious Mumbai modeler Prem Nathji.

Kanpur may have taken up to this point to completely fructify, yet it's constantly been on ISKCON's radar.

In 1968, Srila Prabhupada kept in touch with Brahmananda, "Kanpur is the following significant city after Calcutta and Bombay. Subsequently, his choice to begin promptly one focus at Kanpur is adequate." He followed this up with a few different letters similarly all through the 1970s.

ISKCON master Lokanath Swami was quick to lecture in Kanpur, taking his Padayatra bullock truck program there on Srila Prabhupada's immediate request. Throughout the long term, numerous fans drove there from Vrindavana to lecture.

The site design of the new Kanpur sanctuary complex, showing the fundamental sanctuary, Vedic Ashram, Goshala, and nurseries

At last, in 2004, aficionados leased a little one-room level in Kanpur and afterward began their first place in a place of business around there. They moved to a leased house in 2005, where they started some effort exercises and love of little Deities of Sri Radha Madhava.

Yet, there were a few difficulties to come. "In May 2006, we moved to a one-story fabricating that had three rooms, a kitchen, and a brief sanctuary room without a rooftop," says Kanpur sanctuary opening facilitator Priyank Krishnatre. "The spot resembled a town and a permanent place to stay for snakes."

The fans kept spreading Krishna awareness unflinching, in any case – that very year, Radha Govinda Swami gave seven days in length class on the Srimad-Bhagavatam, and the first since forever ISKCON Kanpur Rathayatra drew numerous individuals from the city.

"In the meantime, a greater construction was made for the enormous Deities of Sri Radha Madhava, on a similar five-section of land real estate parcel that Srila Prabhupada had his eye on during the 1970s,". "It was opened on January 31st, 2009."

The new Kanpur sanctuary under development

Sometime thereafter, Kanpur was overwhelmed, and fans directed a powerful Food For Life program, taking care of 5,000 individuals two dinners every day for an entire month.

"The actual sanctuary was additionally overflowed, however, we took our sanctuary out and about with our Deities and kept serving Radha Madhava and their lovers,".

Today, around 54 fans live at ISKCON Kanpur, with 300 to 500 individuals visiting week after week and 8,000 to 10,000 on celebration days.

When the mega new sanctuary opens just before Vijayadashmi in October of this current year, fans are expecting around 2,000 guests on non-weekend days and 3,000 on ends of the week, with swarms expected to expand past 30,000 on celebrations.

ISKCON Kanpur's new Vedic Ashram under development

Aficionados are now doing an assortment of effort projects, and these will extend when the new sanctuary opens. Youth lecturing programs at colleges like IIT Kanpur, HBTI Kanpur, IIM Lucknow, and NIT Allahabad, for example, have effectively associated 200 young people to the sanctuary, and fifty are rehearsing Krishna cognizance day by day.

"A portion of the chief instructive establishments of India are arranged in and around Kanpur, and hence Kanpur has extraordinary potential in improving the group of people yet to come and in this way drawing in hundreds and thousands of youthful taught eager lovers to the mission of Srila Prabhupada,".

As indicated by guidelines Srila Prabhupada himself gave, fans will wander out from the new sanctuary on a bullock truck to adjoining towns to recite the Holy Name and disperse prasadam. They'll likewise zero in on congregational lecturing, cow security, Food For Life, and qualities training at close-by schools.

As Kanpur is a business city, aficionados feel there is a lot of possibilities there to make life benefactors. At the point when Srila Prabhupada initially started attempting to set up a sanctuary in New York, truth be told, he looked for subsidizing from Kanpur financial specialist Padampat Singhania.

During a 2009 flood, Kanpur aficionados took care of 5,000 individuals two times per day for a month

For various reasons, Kanpur is an overall prime possibility for the second-biggest sanctuary in ISKCON. Other than Srila Prabhupada's craving to have a sanctuary there, it's one of the modern and instructive centers of North India; has a populace of over two million, and is home to the absolute most noble families in India.

It's additionally the site of a few key blessed spots, for example, the ashram of Ramayana creator Valmiki Muni, who was an interstate looter prior to being told to recite the name of Sri Rama by the sage Narada; and where Ajamila kicked the bucket and was taken to the otherworldly world in the wake of reciting his child's name "Narayan."

"The Kanpur sanctuary will be ISKCON's Uttar Pradesh central command,". "As Lord Chaitanya needed, this sanctuary will be a clinic for individuals' otherworldly amnesia, a government office of Goloka Vrindavan with Radha and Krishna in the middle. Furthermore, it will disperse profound information, and will rouse individuals in the study of Krishna awareness through culture, schooling, and preparing."

The world's first river parliament...

There is a small river (45kms long) in Alwar district of Rajasthan called Arvari, which by 1985, had completely dried out and was deemed dead.

By 1996, due to the leadership of one man and the concerted efforts of his organization and the local villagers, River Arvari became a perennial river once again. A perennial river is one that has water flowing throughout the year, as against a seasonal river, that has water flowing in rainy season only. So, basically a few human beings brought a dead river back to life!

Therein lies a tale. But that's not all.

River bodies are government properties. That is, they come under the State government jurisdiction. So when the river, with its teeming fish, became vibrant once again, the government started issuing fishing licenses to outside contractors. This put the river back at risk. So the villagers along the river basin came together and created such a hue and cry that the government had to rescind its allotted contracts.

What's more, the villagers formed what happens to be the world's first river parliament - the Arvari River Parliament - comprising 162 members from 72 villages. Today, this river parliament, and not the state government, owns the river.

So, how did a dead river come back to life? Who is this one man under whose leadership this became possible? And what exactly does a river parliament do?

Therein lies a most interesting tale!

Meet Rajendra Singh and his organization Tarun Bharat Sangh, the architects of this miracle.

Rajendra Singh was born in a village called Daula, near Meerut, in Uttar Pradesh. He did his Bachelors degree in Ayurvedic Medicine (BAMS) and took up a government job in Jaipur. This was 1980 and he was 21 years old. His job was to oversee adult education schools in Dausa district in Rajasthan.

Parallelly, he joined Tarun Bharat Sangha (Young India Association) or TBS, an organization formed by officer and students of Jaipur University. In three years, he became General Secretary of TBS.

In 1984, frustrated with the apathy of his superiors towards developmental issues and his own inability to have a larger impact, he left his job, sold all his worldly possessions for Rs 23,000 and boarded a bus going into interior of Rajasthan, with a bus ticket for the last stop!!! Four of his equally crazy colleagues joined him. The last stop turned out to be Kishori village in Alwar district, and the date was 2nd October 1985.

He started an Ayurvedic medicine practice in nearby village Gopalpura, while his colleagues went out about promoting education in the villages. That's when he met Mangu Lal Meena, an elderly villager, who told him that water was a bigger priority than education for them.

Alwar district had a grain market at one time, but was now largely dry and barren, as years of deforestation, mining and alternate cycles of drought and floods, had led to a dwindling water table. Also, use of 'modern' borewells pushed underground water table further down each year.

Mangu Lal Meena encouraged Rajendra Singh to work on a Johad, an earthen check dam. Johads have traditionally been used to store rainwater and recharge groundwater.

Eventually, with the help of local youth, he started desilting the Gopalpura johad, lying neglected after years of disuse. When the monsoon arrived that year, the johad filled up and soon wells which had been dry for years had water.

Seeing this early success, Rajendra Singh formed the Tarun Ashram, the headquarters of TBS, and started first padayatras (walkathons) through all the villages of the area, educating villagers to rebuild old check dams.

Their biggest success was yet to come. In 1986, people of Bhanota-Kolyala village, through shramdaan (voluntary labour) and with the help of TBS volunteers, constructed a johad at the source of a dried Arvari River. Following this, some 375 johads were constructed in villages that lay in its catchment area, with largest being a 244-meter-long and 7-meter-high concrete dam in the Aravalli hills.

But still water levels didn't go up as expected. TBS found out that water got evaporated from mining pits left unfilled by the miners after their operations in the area. They filed a public interest petition in the Supreme Court, which in 1991, banned mining in the Aravallis. Soon, the Ministry of Environment and Forests closed 470 mines operating in that area. The efforts paid off. By 1995, Aravri became a perennial river!

This is the crux of the amazing story of how a group of people brought a river, dead for the past 60 years, back to life in just 10 years, by using technology already available with us for the past 2000 years!

When there was plenty of water in River Arvari, there was natural growth of fish. The government wanted to get hold of the fish and brought in a contractor. The people resisted. It is not that the local people wanted control over the fish. Far from it! They are mostly vegetarians and did not eat fish, but they realized that today it was fish, tomorrow it would be water.

So, they formed the Arvari Sansad (Arvari River Parliament). The Sansad represents 72 villages, each of which sends two representatives, who are nominated by their respective Gram Sabhas.

The primary objective of the Sansad was to safeguard the integrated water management efforts of the communities along the river basin. The Sansad had no legal authority. But the moral authority it had over its members was enough.

The Sansad convened its general meeting twice a year. Its agreed charter is as follows.

The river was awarded the `International River Prize' in 2000, and the-then President, K R Narayanan visited the area to present the "Down to Earth - Joseph. C. John Award" to the villagers.

Subsequently, rivers like Ruparel, Sarsa, Bhagani and Jahajwali were also revived after remaining dry for decades. Abandoned villages in the areas got populated and farming activities resumed once again in hundreds of drought-prone villages in districts of Jaipur, Dausa, Sawai Madhopur, Bharatpur and Karauli. In all, TBS touched 850 villages in 11 districts in Rajasthan. By 2001, TBS had spread over to Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. Rajendra Singh is today affectionately called The Waterman of India.

While all this magic was happening on the ground, the world sat up and took notice. And applauded. Wikipedia lists down the following awards and accolades that the Waterman of India received.

Notice how lightly the Nobel Prize of Asia - Magsaysay Award, and the Nobel Prize of Water - The Stockholm Water Prize, sit on him. In its citation, The Stockholm Water Prize Committee says that “Today’s water problems cannot be solved by science or technology alone. They are instead human problems of governance, policy, leadership, and social resilience." Rajendra Singh and Tarun Bharat Sangh are true examples of how to solve such problems.

Last year, I played a small part in the Cauvery Calling movement, championed by Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev and his Isha volunteers, by contributing to planting 200 trees. Though small, I take pride in my gesture because I know that history is proof - civilizations are born around river systems, and civilizations are wiped out when river systems die.