The Temple of Vedic Planetarium in West Bengal’s Mayapur in Nadia district will soon join the country’s list of iconic buildings.
Key facts
- Once completed, it will be larger than the Taj Mahal and St. Paul’s Cathedral in the Vatican.
- The Vedic Planetarium temple will open in 2024, following a two-year delay brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
- It will purportedly replace Cambodia’s 400-acre-large Angkor Wat temple complex as the largest religious monument.
- The temple, believed to be the world’s largest religious monument, will be the headquarter of the International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKON).
- The Temple of Vedic Planetarium is ISKCON founder Srila Prabhupada’s vision and is apparently inspired by the design of the Capitol building in the United States.
- The head of this undertaking is Alfred Ford, the great-grandson of renowned businessman Henry Ford and the future owner of Ford Motor Company.
- He changed his name to Ambarish Das in 1975 after joining ISKCON.
- He gave $30 million for the infrastructure after becoming fully committed to Prabhupada’s idea of converting Mayapur into the home of ISKCON.
