Vedic Temple, world’s largest, may open by 2016

Alfred Brush Ford, a great-grandson of Ford Motors’ founder Henry Ford is investing $35 million (nearly Rs 189 crore) to spread Vedic Knowledge.

A follower of the International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), the Ford family scion has been overseeing the development of the $75-million Temple of The Vedic Planetarium at Mayapur in West Bengal for the last couple of years.

“The temple (will be) like a gateway to the spiritual world,” Ford told reporters here on Monday. The ISKCON temple currently receives four million visitors a year and is expected to receive around 10 million visitors once the Vedic temple is opened by 2016, he added.

While the entire built-up area of the temple would be 4.25 lakh sq ft, Ford has financed construction of around 1.75 lakh sq ft , Anand Poddar , Deputy Chairman of Vedic Temple said.

With a capacity to accommodate 10,000 devotees, the 340 ft-tall temple will have a 75 ft-domed Planetarium. It will also house an Institute of Vedic Cosmology.

Even though ISKCON had sought 400 acres of land from the West Bengal Government in 2004, the society was not given such a big chunk of land. “We scrapped the old plan as it was quite expensive. We decided to build the temple in the existing premises at Mayapur,” Ford said.

ISKCON has said devotees would now be able to contribute for developing 2.5 lakh sq ft of the temple at Rs 7,000 per sq ft. Each contributor would be acknowledged , Poddar said.