PM Narendra Modi to Visit Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon Today

Modi, in his address with Myanmar State State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, said he was excited to visit the temple and pay tributes to the monuments of religious and historical importance.

Nay Pyi Taw, September 7: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on Thursday visit Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon on the last day of his three-day visit to Myanmar. He will also visit Kalibari Temple and heavy security is in place. (In Pics: Narendra Modi Offers Prayers at Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, Myanmar)

Highlights

PM Modi will visit Kalibari Temple, heavy security in place
Modi visited Ananda Temple in Bagan on Wednesday
Modi is on three-day visit to Myanmar

On Wednesday, Modi visited the famous 11th-century Ananda Temple in Myanmar’s ancient city Bagan which was damaged in a tremor in 2016 and is being renovated with India’s assistance. The temple, one of the surviving masterpieces of the Mon architecture, is believed to have been built around 1105 by King Kyanzittha, one of the greatest Burmese monarchs.

The temple’s architecture shows Mon and Indian influence.

Myanmar: Heavy security outside Yangon’s Kalibari Temple ahead of PM Narendra Modi’s visit today pic.twitter.com/q6SrIdXZQ0

— ANI (@ANI) September 7, 2017

“Connecting with history. PM Narendra Modi pays respects at Ananda Temple, the most historical and venerated temple in Bagan, Myanmar,” External Affairs Ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar tweeted.

The temple was first damaged in an earthquake in 1975, and then last year when a 6.8 magnitude quake shook Myanmar. India and Myanmar had signed an agreement in 2010 to restore the Ananda Temple and New Delhi allocated US $3 million to the project being carried out by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).

The ASI will also restore a number of pagodas and murals damaged in the earthquake last year.

Modi, in his address with Myanmar State State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, said he was excited to visit the temple and pay tributes to the monuments of religious and historical importance.

According to a legend, King Kyanzittha built the temple after eight monks from India visited him and told him about a cave temple in the Himalayas. The vision of a snowy landscape so impressed the king that he decided to replicate the temple in Bagan.

With inputs from PTI