{"id":12597,"date":"2014-05-13T09:35:35","date_gmt":"2014-05-13T09:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=12597"},"modified":"2014-05-13T09:35:35","modified_gmt":"2014-05-13T09:35:35","slug":"the-first-ratha-yatra-in-surabaya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=12597","title":{"rendered":"The first Ratha yatra in Surabaya"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Hari Narayana Das<\/strong><\/p>\n

First Ratha Yatra in Surabaya-the second largest city in Indonsia<\/p>\n

Lord Jagannath is so merciful toward the fallen soul to came and render service to Him. Therefore the Lord gives intelligent to His devotees how to take every chance to distribute His mercy. Devotees in Indonesia especially in Surabaya read the good chance to distribute the Lord mercy by joining the culture parade and flowers festival in celebrating the 721 of Surabaya city birth day on May 4th, 2014.<\/p>\n

Surabaya is Indonesia<\/a>‘s second-largest city<\/a> with a population of over 3.1 million (5.6 million in the metropolitan area), and the capital of the province<\/a> of East Java<\/a>. It is located on the northern shore of eastern Java<\/a> at the mouth of the Mas River<\/a> and along the edge of the Madura Strait<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Once, in 2004 H.H. Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Swami instructed the student devotees to build a preaching center for the preaching in Surabaya. They rented a house as their preaching center there and Maharaj named the preaching center in Surabaya Sri Sri Radha Gopinath preaching center. After few years most of the students graduated from their universities and left for their home. Only some are still stay there, Sandya Avatar prabhu and some other devotees. Last year 2013, Sandya Avatara prabhu was instructed by H.H. Subhag Swami Maharaj in Tabanan, Bali where the last ratha yatra in Bali done, to make a ratha yatra in Surabaya. They were work hard in the middle of the hellish like city. By the mercy of Lord Jagannatha, Baladeva, and Subadra Devi, and causless mercy of Sri Sri Goura Nitai and Srila Prabhupada, the chance to introduce the Lord to the public arose along the celebration of Surabaya city birthday. The government of Surabaya does culture parade flower festival annually. It was the big chance to present the Krishna consciousness culture to the people in Surabaya. As srila Prabupada wrote in his letter that \u201cTo implement this transcendental bliss to the people of your country there is immense work to be done ahead and this Ratha-yatra festival is only a bit of sample. If we get opportunity we shall be able to overflood your country with the waves of transcendental bliss, by the grace of Krsna. We can introduce various other ceremonials in connection with Krsna and His different expansions or incarnations in such a nice way that people are sure to be attracted by such things and become immersed in Krsna consciousness.<\/b><\/i>” (SPL to Aniruddha, 7th July, 1968). <\/p>\n

Many ethnic groups reside in the city of Surabaya such as Chinese, people of Indian origin, and Muslim groups. All of them forgetting all external differences took part in the flowers festival parade where everyone present got opportunity to see the ratha of the Lord of the Universe which was very beautifully decorated with a huge amount of attractive flowers. Having decorated the ratha and the Lord, the devotees themselves were also looking exquisitely beautiful.<\/p>\n

Lord Jagannnath, along with His brother Balarama, and His sister Subadra devi then took long journey from Jember to Surabaya to give His mercy. The chariot also brought from Jember. Many devotees from outside Surabaya came to join Ratha yatra. Two busses full of devotees and H.H. Bhakti Bhakti Visramba Madhava Maharaja also came to Surabaya for Ratha yatra on the bus with devotees from Bali. Other devotees from Jakarta, Sulawesi, Jember, and other part of Indonesia also came. They all did seva to prepare the ratha yatra.<\/p>\n

The Ratha-yatra started at 13.00 pm. by bhoga offering and continued by arati to the Lord, then the devotees sang Sri Jaganatha astaka. Then the Lord was pulled to the place where all participants gather. Surabaya features a tropical wet and dry climate<\/a>, with distinct wet<\/a> and dry seasons<\/a>. On the day of the festival the dark cloud hung in the sky and it gave quite mild and shady. The festival was opened by the mayor of Surabaya Mrs. Tri Risma Harini. The route of the festival started from Tugu Pahlawan (Hero Monument) – Kramat Gantung – Gemblongan – Tunjungan – Gubernur Suryo – Yos Sudarso- Walikota Street Mustajab – Jaksa Agung Suprapto Street – Taman Surya.<\/p>\n

When the devotees started pulling the chariot the kirtan and the singing Mahamantra started filling the air and entering the ears of the attendances. They were so happy event they heard the Maha Mantra for the first time. The devotees dance and sang in front of the chariot. As the rath come midway of the route it started to rain heavily making everybody run for selter. But the the devotees become more ecstatic and continued chanting and dancing in the rain as if mercy of Lord Jagannath come down as showers of rain. In the finish line of the parade, Adi Purusha Prbhu, who is the leader of SAKKHI (SAKKHI is GBC Approval in Indonesia) had a chance to give Mrs. Tri Risma Harini a Bhagavad Gita and a flower garland from Lord Jagannath. Mrs. Risma was so happy receiving the Bhagavad \u2013gita. The devotees also distributed the prasadam and Srila Prabhupada\u2019s books along the parade. <\/p>\n

On behalf of all the devotees involved, we express our sincere feelings of gratitude to H.H. Kavichandra Swami and H.H. Ramai Swami, the GBCs of Indonesia for their support, guidance and encouragement at all times to increase the sankirtan movement in Indonesia. Our humble obeisances to H.H. Subhag Swami for inspiring us with the life and dedication of Sriman Jayananda Prabhu, for helping us realize the importance of Srila Prabhupada in our lives and keeping us united in family of ISKCON. Our humble obeisances to H.H. Bhakti Visramba Madhava Maharaj for personally presented in Surabaya. Our gratitude to Leader of Surabaya Hindu Parisad, SAKKHI, and all East Java Devotees, Maharatri das, Govardhan das, Balaram Bhakta das, Advaita das, Sundara Krishna das, Syama bandhu das, Satyasena das, Satyavesa das, Yasoda Putra das, Prataparuda das, and also Agastya Muni das and his team, Sundarananda and his team, Prema Dhana and his energetic kirtan team, and all devotees who supported the ratha yatra. We offer our humble obeisances to Srila Prabhupada again and again for showering his unlimited mercy upon the devotees and keeping us engaged in the movement of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu.<\/p>\n


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By Hari Narayana Das<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lord Jagannath is so merciful toward the fallen soul to came and render service to Him. Therefore the Lord gives intelligent to His devotees how to take every chance to distribute His mercy. Devotees in Indonesia especially in Surabaya read the good chance to distribute the Lord mercy by joining the culture parade and flowers festival in celebrating the 721 of Surabaya city birth day on May 4th, 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}