By IANS,
Kolkata : Coinciding with Indian Prime Minister Manhoman Singh’s three-day Russia visit, over a hundred followers from different Hindu organisations here staged a protest against the demolition of a site where devotees of ISKCON used to offer prayers in Moscow.
Led by the members of International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), devotees gathered outside the Russian Consulate here demanding a plot of land be allotted to construct a new temple in the Russian capital.
“We think it is unfair and unjust to the Hindu community. We have been told by the Russian consulate that they will fax petitions to Moscow today (Sunday),” Radharam Das of ISKCON told IANS.
Das claimed the temporary site where Russian devotees of the Hare Krishna Movement pray (in the suburbs) was demolished in September.
“The devotees have been evicted and the land allotment cancelled. They have nowhere to go,” he said.
In 2004, the old ISKCON temple near the Begovaya metro station, in the Moscow city centre, was demolished to facilitate reconstruction, Das claimed.
A new piece of land was given to the followers in Leningradsky Prospekt, in the north of the city. That land was also subsequently taken away. After that another project to built a Hindu temple was called off.
There is a 25,000-strong Hindu community in Russia’s capital.