Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
PALANPUR, INDIA, May 27, 2009: Devotion doesn’t know recession, and Hindu generosity is alive and well. Especially in the town of Unjha, about 50 miles north of Ahmedabad, known for its trading community. On Tuesday, a temple here raised over US$1 million in seven hours flat — around $2550 every minute.
The occasion was a fund-raising for the 18th centenary celebration of the Umiya Maa temple, which has a large Patel following, to be held in November this year. About 21 donors, most of them industrialists belonging to Kadva Patel community, contributed to the main corpus collected through a bidding process called “uchamani.”