{"id":2659,"date":"2002-12-06T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-12-06T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2002\/12\/06\/2002-12-06-puri-priests-learn-martial-arts\/"},"modified":"2002-12-06T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2002-12-06T12:00:00","slug":"2002-12-06-puri-priests-learn-martial-arts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2002\/12\/06\/2002-12-06-puri-priests-learn-martial-arts\/","title":{"rendered":"Puri Priests Learn Martial Arts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.hindustantimes.com\/news\/printedition\/301102\/detNAT25.shtml\">GO TO SOURCE<\/A><\/P><br \/>\n<P><\/p>\n<p>BHUBANESWAR, INDIA, November 29, 2002: Servants of Puri&#8217;s Lord Jagannath might soon have an added qualification on their resumes. Priests who have spent a lifetime fine-tuning ritual supplication will now learn the art of resistance. Wary of an Akshardham or a Raghunath temple-style attack, administrators of Puri&#8217;s most famous landmark have decided to impart martial arts training to the temple&#8217;s priests. The way temple administrators see it, should terrorists manage to breach the outer security cordon of gun-toting personnel, the priests with their newly acquired karate, judo or kung-fu skills will present a second line of defense. &#8220;We are now initiating efforts to revive the traditional security system keeping in view modern needs. Thousands of devotees visit the shrine daily for a darshan of Lord Jagannath, Lord Balabhadra and Goddess Subhadra. Entry and exit of so many people makes the shrine vulnerable to terrorists,&#8221; temple administrator B. S. Panda said. The priests seemed enthusiastic saying, &#8220;It (physical training) will be very good,&#8221; said R.C. Dasmohapatra, president of the Daitapati Nijog. The temple administrator did not explain how an unarmed priest, however skilled in martial arts, could successfully overcome a heavily armed terrorist.<br \/>\n<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GO TO SOURCE BHUBANESWAR, INDIA, November 29, 2002: Servants of Puri&#8217;s Lord Jagannath might soon have an added qualification on,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}