Boom in firms offering virtual religious services for Hindus far from home
With internet coverage improving across India and millions of believers living overseas for education or employment, companies offering online pujas - Hindu religious services – are thriving
Four Hindu priests sat cross-legged on the floor in front of silver trays of rice, flowers and vermilion powder, chanting in low baritones that reverberated off the bare walls of the old brick temple in Noida, India.
An iPhone propped on a chair captured the service – known as a puja – and beamed it via Skype to a home in San Francisco, where a middle-aged woman wearing a red bindi and a headscarf watched intently.
Every so often, the priests peered into the screen and instructed her to mimic a gesture or repeat an incantation.
In Hinduism, the dominant religion among India’s 1.2 billion people, there are elaborate pujas for virtually every life event – and now there are virtual pujas too, along with last rites and other religious ceremonies being sold over the internet.
This digital twist on a mystical, ancient faith is a growing part of India’s multibillion-dollar spirituality market. E-commerce sites have also popped up for Indian Muslims as well as minority Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists.
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Offering their services anywhere in the world, the companies are capitalising not only on improved internet connectivity throughout India but also on a growing diaspora as more citizens emigrate for higher education and employment, leaving behind their families and spiritual networks.