Hindus travelling to various parts of the world now have the facility of locating online Temples, with details of the Deities, opening hours and other information.
More than 2000 Temples located outside India can be accessed by anyone with Internet connection, thanks to the innovative spirit of Hari Iyer, a young Design Engineer, employed at Boeing Australia based in Melbourne.
Personal initiative
Called, ‘The Global Hindu Temple Directory,’ the self-assigned project belongs to the 27-year-old Tamilian, born and raised in Mumbai, with a passion for providing the ‘Divine Service,’ hoping that it would benefit millions of travellers worldwide.
Many great initiatives and commercial enterprises were due the absence of a service or facility (DHL for example). Mr Iyer’s website on Hindu Temples was one such.
“I wanted to visit a Temple in Melbourne and no prior information was available anywhere including its website (which was temporarily down). The Temple was closed until evening. It was very frustrating. I thought that many others, not only in Melbourne but also in other parts of the world might have such experience. He began compiling information relating to Hindu Temples in Australia but later decided to include other parts of the world. The result was the Global Hindu Temples Directory.
His websites (www.allhindutemples.com; www.hindutemplesapp.com) and the connected
iOS app currently contains information (including address and contact details) on Hindu temples in New Zealand, Australia, Europe, Canada and US. For each of these temples the site also has their address, phone number, and opening hours and other details.
The listing however does not include Temples in South East Asia, including India.
“That is a mammoth exercise since every city, town and village has a Temple and not all of them provide all information required for my application. However, I am confident that this would also be available soon,” he said.
Updating challenge
According to Mr Iyer, the greatest challenge is to maintain the relevance of the Directory with regular updates. However, there may be listings that do not contain latest information or two addressed for the same Temple (if an older address has not been deleted) and hence visitors may like to contact the authorities of the concerned Temple in advance so as not to be disappointed later.
“By converting the information into a Mobile App, devotees can now have worldwide database on Hindu Temples in their pockets. By default, the app locates the Temples closest to your current location but you can also go on a worldwide virtual journey looking at Hindu temples all over the world as pins on a Google map.
“You can also register through the app and upload photos and comments to the temple listings, or upload religious events happening in temples so that more people can know about them. Temple managers can claim the ownership of the Temple listing and update it with whatever details they choose,” Mr Iyer said.
Android version
He is currently working on a free Android application. The iOS app is a priced at A$2.49, which will help fund further development of the site and mapping of all the large temples in India.
“The default mode of navigating to the Temples is through the Map. The app automatically locates and shows the temples nearest to the visitor’s location. The other way is to click ‘New Zealand’ or any other Country, State or City. The Search function is also user-friendly,” Mr Iyer said.
