[India] Hindus turn to the Internet for prayer

["Irfan Khan" <khania2@super.net.pk>]

Hindus turn to the Internet for prayer.  

When an astrologer warned an Indian stage designer and mother of 
three children that bad luck was on her horizon, she took the road 
increasingly traveled by modern Hindus looking to appease ancient 
divinities. Anasuya Dhanrajgir logged onto the Internet. She found 
that technology offered an easy way to keep the faith -- and a new 
means of communicating with at least some of her religion's myriad 
gods and goddesses. The site -- http://www.prarthana.com -- named 
after the Sanskrit word for worship -- offers to conduct prayer 
rituals for a fee at some 400 temples across India. With religion 
going high-tech, entrepreneurs are looking to cash in. The Indian 
software industry employs about 522,000 people, many of them pious 
Hindus. Some are driven to set up online puja services as much by 
religious faith as by entrepreneurial itch. Many of India's holy 
sites and holy people are also getting Net savvy. The Venkateswara 
temple in the southern town of Tirupati, reputed to be the world's 
richest Hindu temple, gets so many donations that workers use a 
conveyor belt to transfer the cash, jewels and other offerings to a 
separate storage building. Now, credit card donations are accepted, 
too, at: www.tirumala.org. Continuer 
http://asia.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/06/30/hindus.online.ap/index.ht
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