00:00We are celebrating 50 years of the UAE Federation and we cannot be in a better place to do it.
00:10We are here at the Krishna Temple in Baradubai and with me is the Chairman of Mercantile
00:16Community Mr. Lalit Kairani and his team.
00:19The temple was established according to our documentation or whatever paperwork we have
00:25was 1935 but according to the government that this was established somewhere in 1903.
00:32So we are here since then, the temple is in the same place.
00:35It was like a small house where the seva was here, what we call it seva is the idols of
00:41the Lord, Lord Srirajji which is Krishna.
00:44We had cow in the temple, we had well in the temple and everything, all the business people.
00:52The name of the community where we say here is the Mercantile Hindu Community of Tata
00:57Sin.
00:58We come from a village called Tata and we merchants were here who were coming to the
01:04temple, cooking, doing the bhog and then distributing the prasad to everybody and then they would
01:11go to the work.
01:12They would open their businesses after that.
01:14That was the old times when the life was very slow and calm and nice but now with the growth
01:21of the city we have now staff called priests who do only seva inside, they are not going
01:27outside anywhere.
01:28There are two priests we have, we have one Kirtaniya, we have the other Pitariya what
01:33we call it, who cooks everything for the Lord and then the prasad is being distributed to
01:38the people.
01:39Then we have a lot of sevaks, we do our seva, we are here every day, literally every day.
01:45Even though we have business, we take out time and come and make sure that everything
01:50is doing well here.
01:51Since then the changes have happened where we have allowed even the foreigners, the tourists,
01:57which is a big crowd nowadays.
01:58A lot of other religious people come and they do the prayers here.
02:04They come and see what's happening.
02:07So it's like a semi-museum as well as temple for the prayers.
02:11In 365 days we have got 360 festivals.
02:14The festivals go from Holi which is the festival of colours, our new year which is Chetichand
02:22what Sindhis also called it.
02:23We have the Sawan Ke Jhule which goes for 30 days, Holi goes for 40 days when the colours
02:30are being thrown on people and on the God.
02:33We take that feeling as the Lord Krishna is playing Holi with us.
02:36Now the main important part is that we are basically Yadu Vanshis, Yadu Vanshis is the
02:42community where the Krishna came from.
02:45And then with the time we probably moved to Rajasthan so we come from Jaisalmer.
02:50What we have the history is from Jaisalmer.
02:53The tolerance and coexistence has always been the part of our religion and our community.
03:00Also the government, local authorities, the mosque which is exactly opposite us, just
03:0610 meter away from us and their main doors and our main doors are same, facing each other.
03:12What an interesting story is that.
03:14For more on this story please log on to www.gulfnews.com and if you know of other communities that
03:23need to be celebrated for the UAE Federation celebrations do let us know.
03:29For now this is Anjana Kumar for Gulf News, thank you.
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