The UAE’s first purpose-built Hindu temple opened in Dubai on Tuesday, providing a place of worship and a support network for the large Indian community, including migrant workers.
The large white marble building with Indian and Emirati architecture is officially located in the Islamic country’s Jebel Ali Port district, which is also home to churches and a Sikh temple.
Thousands of South Asian workers live in nearby labor camps and will be provided with special buses to visit the 2,300-square-meter (25,000-square-foot) temple and its community center.
Committee member Raju Shroff, who runs a textile business, said opening a dedicated temple in Dubai was the realization of his father’s five-decade dream.
“It’s an amazing feeling because it’s a dream come true, at least for my father, who has been in this country since 1960,” he told.
“I joined the project only five years ago, but he has been working on it for five decades. So the journey has been quite (long),” Shroff added.
The temple, with a distinctive lotus motif adorning the central skylight, was built at a cost of around 60 million dirhams ($16 million) and can accommodate 1,000 people at a time.
In anticipation of high demand, visitors must apply online for a QR code that they scan for entry. Indians are the largest expatriate community in the UAE, making up about 35 percent of the population of 10 million.
As well as a temple for all the different forms of Hinduism, it would serve as a support center for Indian migrants, especially labourers, with experts such as lawyers and medical doctors providing volunteer services.
When workers face problems or special needs, “they can reach out to us and we will reach out to the community at large,” Shroff said.
“There’s a lot of workers that we’d like to help. And there’s a lot of professionals that would like to help, so we’ve really become the platform … to bridge the gap,” he added. .
The UAE government has heavily promoted “tolerance” of different religious ideologies, appointing a Minister of State for Tolerance, holding an annual Tolerance Fair and declaring 2019 the Year of Tolerance.
