A billboard with an image of Lord Ram along with the Ram Mandir has gone live on New York's iconic Times Square as part of the Bhoomi Pujan celebrations which have been planned by the Hindu-American diaspora in the city. In the video one can see a huge digital billboard displaying images of the Bhavya Ram Mandir, Lord Ram and the Indian Tricolour as people can be heard chanting Jai Shri Ram in the background.
"It shows how successful Indians are in America that our RamTemple and tricolour are on the most iconic screen in the world. It is a proud moment for India and Indians," Jagdish Sewhani, President of the American India Public Affairs Committee told news agency ANI.
The display lit up at 10 am to 10 pm to celebrate the laying of the temple's foundation. The digital display of Lord Ram is one of the most expensive digital billboards of the Hindu deity at Times Square.
The groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of the temple took place on Wednesday in Ayodhya with Prime Minister Narendra Modi performing the ‘bhoomi pujan’ of the temple. The grand celebrations for the bhoomi pujan started at 8 am and PM Modi performed the Ayodhya Ram Mandir bhoomi pujan at the auspicious time of 12:40 pm.
Huge CCTV screens were set up across the holy city in order to allow the people to watch the ceremony live.
Earlier in the day, Several temples and members of the Indian diaspora in the UK marked the Bhoomi Pujan ceremony for Ram Mandir in India with prayer ceremonies. With COVID-19 lockdown restrictions still in place to curb large crowds at places of worship in Britain, many of the temples continued to make use of digital media to mark Prime Minister Modi leading the ceremony to lay the foundation stone for the new temple.
The National Council of Hindu Temples, a representative body for over 150 temples in the UK, claimed that nearly every temple in the country was marking the occasion in the form of prayers and kirtan.
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