By Murari Das
The 4th Annual Tamil Bhagavad Darishanam, or Tamil edition of Back To Godhead Festival took place in Vellore on Saturday, 9th May 2015 at the Jayaram Chetty Hall in Vellore city, Tamil Nadu. This festival is held every year to present a forum where the Magazine production team and distributors can motivate the members of the Tamil devotee community to spread this magazine more and more in terms of subscriptions and readership. The past year is reviewed, discussions on overcoming obstacles and strategies made on how to increase the readership.
The Tamil edition of Back to Godhead has now become the second most circulated edition out of all the various editions of Back to Godhead magazines circulated wordwide, as the monthly distribution now crosses 30,000 which is quite close to Hindi, the most widely spoken language in India. This is due, in part to promotional events and festivals such as this one.
His Holiness Bhakti Vikasa Maharaja, the main inspiration behind the Tamil Edition of Back to Godhead Magazine, was the chief guest of the program, and several Tamil Nadu leaders were present there. The devotees arrived from various parts of Tamil Nadu; Chennai, Coimbatore, Salem, Vellore, Kumbakonam, Pondichery, Maraimalai Nagar, Erode, Tirunelvelli, etc. There were also international attendees from Dubai and USA.
Accommodation was provided for in the hall which had a number of rooms spread around the 1st and 2nd floor, however many devotees opted to rest overnight in the large and airy prasadam hall on the 1st floor and on the terrace, in an effort to escape the legendary Vellore heat. Prasadam was served at the custom made Prasadam Hall at the Venue.
The Schedule for the festival held on Saturday was as follows:
5:00am – Mangal Arati
7:15am – Guru Puja
8:00am – Breakfast Prasadam
9:30am – Srimad Bhagavatam class on SB 1.2.9; Bhagavad Darishanam to teach the highest Dharma, BTG festival. Available for download soon at www.bvks.com
10:50am – Presentation by various leaders on Tamil BTG. This included the temple presidents for ISKCON Kumbakonam, H.G. Vanamali Gopal Prabhu and ISKCON Pondicherry, H.G. Sarvananda Prabhu.
This was followed by a presentation by H.G. Sri Giridhari Prabhu, the Editor of BTG Tamil on the purpose of BTG Tamil, its importance in fulfilling Srila Prabhupada’s aims and the future projections for the project.
12:00noon – Prizes for the highest number of subscriptions signed up by various devotees. The highest was by H.G. Varadaraja Prabhu from Namakkal, Tamil nadu who is a college teacher by profession. He had signed up 1,100 subscriptions in a year.
All in all 140 participants were awarded prizes. The 5 highest participants were invited to share their experiences and realizations in trying to signup readers to BTG Tamil.
1:30pm – LUNCH PRASADAM. Arguably the highlight of the event. This consisted of a traditional style Tamil feast on Banana leaves of 18 items. We were told that preparations for this offering started the evening before.
5:00pm – All the participants went out on the street for Nagar Sankirtan including Maharaja. Men, women, young, old, boys, and girls went out to drown the city center of Vellore with the holy names, the transcendental teachings of BTG Tamil as well as Srila Prabhupada’s Bhagavad-gita and his other books. This was also a highlight of the whole festival.
7:30pm – The Festival ended with a lecture delivered by H.H. Bhakti Vikasa Swami.
Luckily this multi-purpose hall, Kalyana Mandapam was owned by an intiated devotee family and so everything went smoothly in terms of facilities. Devotees of ISKCON Vellore helped the Bhagavad Darshanam team in so many ways in organizing the festival.
All in all by the mercy of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, the King of Dancers, there were about 500 attendees and many boxes of magazines and books distributed and tons of Krishna Prasadam honored. We invite all members to our next year’s festival, especially the Tamil Devotee community (the festival is conducted in Tamil language).
Srila Prabhupada ki Jaya. Srila Prabhupada’sTamil Back to Godhead magazine ki Jaya.
PICTURES available here: