![]() In last year's Pew survey that gauged the general American sentiment towards different religions, Hindus score 50 on a 'feeling thermometer' of 1 to 100, two points ahead of Mormons and three below Buddhists, which means the US public is ambivalent towards Hinduism, exhibiting no greater positive or negative attitude toward it. Temples have always fostered inter-faith dialogue, which is why the five incidents of vandalism this year have unsettled the community. "They also want balavihars (Hindu moral and spiritual education to children) that move away from the didactic to more applied, interactive teaching styles," says Shukla. Many of them want temples to double up as centres of service. Second-generation Hindus in their late 30s and 40s are missing," Shukla points out. "Most temples are visited by older Hindu Americans and more recent immigrants. However, even as they signify progress in the community, some like Shukla worry that temples may soon suffer the same fate as churches with diminishing congregations. The Parashakthi Temple in Michigan, which started out with a built-up space of 6,000 sq ft in 1999, measures 15,000 sq ft today, its devotee count touching 20,000. As older Hindu-dominated enclaves expand, so do their holy houses. Soon, Indians in America will have no need to travel to India on pilgrimages," he says. "There are fabulous temples here, like the proposed Char Dham project in Houston and the Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in Robbinsville, NJ, which apparently sourced its marble from Italy and had it sculpted in India. While he is summoned to new constructions, Fadia is also called to fix old structures like the brick and cement stucco dome of the Sri Ranganatha Temple in Pomona, New York. "Extreme weather conditions cause cracks in the joints of traditional building material like sandstone or brick and mortar, allowing seepage," says Fadia. Vipul Fadia's company, FRP Accessories USA Inc, began producing garden furniture like gazebos, and later moved up to shikhars. Now, those American temples unable to shoulder the heavy outlay of traditional methods, are turning to climate-proof material like glass fibre reinforced concrete and fibre reinforced plastic. Since the days of Alagappan, craftsmen in India shipped prefabricated columns and cornices, vimanas and gopurams in granite, marble and sandstone to America, along with sthapatis (temple architects) and shilpis (craftsmen) who assembled them on site. "It meets specific needs of devotees, but at the same time, it risks creating insularity in an already small minority." Hindu temples have evolved not just in spirit and form, but in material as well. "With critical mass building in some regions across the US, it is only natural that we begin seeing more temples built along sectarian, even linguistic lines," says HAF's managing director, Suhag Shukla. However, with their growing social and financial agency, American Hindus are beginning to practise the devotional exclusivity typical of temples back home. Some, like the Shri Swaminarayan mandirs in New Jersey, Atlanta, and Los Angeles, are standout monuments, costing well over $100 million each. Today, the temple count in the US touches 800, according Hindu American Foundation (HAF). The Maha Vallabha Ganapati temple in Flushing Queens came next in 1977, built on the site of a Russian Orthodox church. In 1976 came one of the first Dravidian temples in the US, Sri Venkateswara Temple in Pittsburgh, built with a Rs 7-lakh endowment from the Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanam. This was when Alagappa Alagappan, one of the leaders of the temple movement in late 20th century America, helped establish the Hindu Temple Society in 1970. It was only in the 70s when the Indian migrant population began to expand on the back of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 that temples for ritualistic worship and cultural incubation developed. The institution first arrived on America's West Coast in 1906, via Swami Vivekananda's Vedanta Society in San Francisco, writes Karen Pechilis Prentiss for Harvard's Pluralism Project, and it concerned itself chiefly with scriptural study and meditation. As America's 3 million Hindus grow in stature, so do their symbols of ethnic identity - their temples. According to Pew, 36% say their annual family income exceeds $100,000, compared to 19% of the overall public. The Hindu demographic is doing quite well economically too. ![]()
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