India's muslim president to open hindu temple

India’s Muslim president and Sikh prime minister were today helping to open one of the biggest Hindu temples of modern times.

The sect that opened the pink sandstone temple – the length of a football field and the height of a 12-story building – runs another temple in Gujarat state, which was attacked by suspected Muslim militants in 2002, leaving 32 dead. Religious riots in the same state left more that 1000 dead earlier that year.

India’s President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was scheduled to inaugurate the £26 million Swaminarayan Akshardham Temple in New Delhi in a function to be attended by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other dignitaries.

More than 7,000 sculptors built the colonnaded temple over five years. It sits on 239 pillars topped by nine domes, and is bedecked by over 20,000 statues of gods and goddesses, encompassing the gamut of the Hindu pantheon.

Besides prayer sections, the temple, sitting on a 100-acre plot on the banks of the Yamuna River, also has electronically controlled exhibition halls, sound and light shows and an Imax theatre reviewing 10,000 years of Indian heritage.

The grounds also feature a 12-minute boat ride on a canal, taking visitors through models of Indian cultural monuments.

“A splendid ornate specimen, the Akshardham is much more than just a temple. Said to be a celebration of the past, embracement of the present and frame of the future, every part of the massive campus has a legend to it,” the Times of India newspaper reported.

The Indian landscape is dotted with sprawling old stone temple complexes dating back hundreds of years, but few big temples of Akshardham’s scale have been built in modern times.

The worst Hindu-Muslim riots since independence occurred in 1992 following the demolition of a mosque by Hindu fanatics. Nearly 2,000 people were killed in the rioting in many parts of India.