Anyone who's spent some time in India has seen God out parading. On special festival days, Hindus take the murti out of the temple and parade it through town. If the murti is too large or unwieldy to take for a ride, a special substitute image goes instead.
The substitute is just as good as the real thing because during a special ceremony, the priest transfers the living presence of God from the main murti in the temple into the smaller portal one. After all, it's the living presence of God or the Goddess that Hindus worship, not the physical "idol".
The most famous divine parade happens every June or July (the exact date varies from year to year depending on the lunar calendar) in Puri in the state of Orissa. The murtis from the world-famous Jagannath Temple are loaded onto huge carts to be dragged through town. The murtis are of Lord Jagannath (the name means the Lord of the world), his brother Balbhadra , and his sister Subhadra. Lord Jagannath's cart is the 14 meters high and 10 meters square. It has 16 wheels, each more than two meters in diameter. The carts are so heavy it takes over 4,000 strong men to pull them. Getting them rolling is a real chore. And stopping them once they start moving is, too! The English world "juggernaut" came from British observers who watched this procession.
The three murtis are among the best loved in India. You may be interested to know that every decade or the two murtis are destroyed and new ones fashioned from three trunks replace them. Let me make my point again : It is not the "idol" itself that is worshipped but the divine presence in it.
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