On Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India inaugurated the inaugural Hindu temple in Abu Dhabi.
Spanning 27 acres in the desert, the BAPS Hindu Mandir is located just off the main highway connecting Abu Dhabi to Dubai. It has been meticulously crafted from over 25,000 pieces of pink sandstone sourced from Rajasthan, along with white Italian marble expertly carved by artisans in India and then assembled in the UAE.
Modi arrived at the site on Wednesday afternoon to conduct consecration rituals alongside the temple’s priests.
Among the attendees were Bollywood luminaries such as actor Akshay Kumar and singer Shankar Mahadevan, as well as members of the Indian diaspora in the UAE, who gathered to witness the historic ceremony.
The temple was erected by BAPS, also known as Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, a Hindu organization headquartered in Modi’s home state of Gujarat.
Navdeep Suri, who served as India’s ambassador to the UAE from 2016 to 2019, described the temple’s inauguration as a significant moment in India’s relationship with the UAE under Modi’s leadership, marking a key milestone in bilateral ties.
He noted that Modi’s first visit to the Gulf nation in August 2015 set the groundwork for a remarkable transformation in India’s relations with the UAE, culminating in the allocation of land for the construction of the temple.
The land for the temple was donated by the UAE government, with the groundbreaking ceremony taking place in 2019, coinciding with the UAE’s Year of Tolerance.
As the country with the largest population of Indian citizens outside of India, the UAE has long been home to Hindu temples, with the first temple in Dubai dating back to the 1950s. However, the BAPS Hindu Mandir in Abu Dhabi is the first to be built using traditional techniques and is the largest, capable of accommodating up to 10,000 worshippers.
Anil Trigunayat, a former diplomat and distinguished fellow at the Vivekananda International Foundation, highlighted the temple’s significance in meeting the spiritual needs of the 3.5 million-strong Indian community in the UAE and as a symbol of India’s cultural diplomacy.
For Muddassir Quamar, an associate professor at the Center for West Asian Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, the temple underscores India’s deepening cultural relations with the Gulf region and its efforts to enhance its soft power through cultural diplomacy.
Modi’s visit to the UAE also saw the signing of several memoranda covering digital infrastructure, investment, electricity interconnection, and trade, underscoring the robust development of UAE-Indian relations during his tenure.
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