World Peace Dome, Pune

Today's goal is to visit the World Peace Dome, featuring statues recognizing thinkers, scientists and religious leaders of the world in an effort to promote peace and dialogue. I'm dressing up for the occasion, but might regret wearing all black!

Even with the various little setbacks of travel we made it to the Maharashtra Institute of Technology campus and were directed to the guard shack / ticket booth where we were informed that all tickets needed to be bought online, and that foreigner tickets were 500 rupees a piece! The guard finally got permission from his supervisor to take cash and we were allowed inside. 



Now, I fully admit that there was one statue in particular that I came to see. Last year's press related to the unveiling of a statue recognizing the contributions of the American religious leader Joseph Smith was the only reason I had heard of the World Peace Dome. 


I was surprised at how much more is in the World Peace Dome: the importance of science in religion as partners, the value of each of the religions and peoples on this earth, that not only are each religion and faith acceptable but valuable. And it was amazing to see the contributions of Eastern thinkers religious leaders and scientists, ancient and modern along side Western and American thinkers, scientists and religious leaders as the peers that they were. 


The structure itself is reminiscent of a temple and a mosque, with a large dome and ornate minars but the minars are decorated with many different sacred symbols from world religions. In a layer below the dome is a meditation room and a library / reading room. This is still in progress and will eventually house materials about world faiths as well as sacred texts in print and digital formats. 



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