[Buddha-l] Calcutta celebration of Buddha's Birthday in Kolkata

[Richard P. Hayes]

For those of you who like birthday parties.

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City to celebrate Buddha's birthday
IANS, MARCH 29, 2005
KOLKATA, India -- International seminars, spiritual
discourses and religious festivities will be part of a
yearlong celebration planned in the city to mark the
2,550th birth anniversary of the Buddha next year.
 
The Mahabodhi Society, an umbrella organisation of
Buddhists, has planned the celebrations that would
kick off with a three-day international seminar in
January.
Society president B.K. Modi, the chief organiser of
the birth anniversary celebrations, has already
extended invitations to Buddhist groups in Japan, Sri
Lanka, Singapore, Bhutan, South Korea, Thailand and
Myanmar.
The city had led the 2,500th birth anniversary
celebrations of the Buddha as well in 1956. Then
Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had inaugurated
the festivities.
Besides marking the occasion with a plethora of
functions, 2006 would witness the launch of a film on
the Buddha to be directed by Indian filmmaker Shekhar
Kapur.
Modi, who will produce the English language film, is
hoping to rope in Hollywood stars Richard Gere, a
practising Buddhist, Sharon Stone and Goldie Hawn for
the project.
Sources in the society said besides seminars and
spiritual discourses in the city, several festivities
have been planned in monasteries and Buddhist
establishments around the country, including in
northern West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya
Pradesh.
"The details of the programmes would be finalised by
September," the sources said.
Plans are to open centres for practising and learning
the religion in Bodh Gaya and a cultural centre in
Kushinagar in Uttar Pradesh. 


-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico