(RNS) — Hindus in Los Angeles and beyond are experiencing concern and disappointment and hoping for peace after the essential temple in California used to be vandalized with threatening graffiti over the weekend.
On Saturday morning (March 8), police deputies within the Chino Hills space of L.A. spoke back to a call from BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir of L.A., reporting the temple had been vandalized. In step with the Chino Hills Police Division fable, the temple’s marble tag, brick wall and sidewalk were spray painted by no decrease than two unknown suspects considered on video surveillance, inflicting higher than $15,000 worth of anxiety.
“It’s practically adore a violation of kinds,” stated Mehul Patel, a lifelong devotee and volunteer on the mandir. “Even supposing they did it on the initiate air perimeter, it upright opens your thoughts up to, adore, what can happen next?”
The graffiti, such as other a linked assaults, displayed the words “F*** Modi, Hindustan Murdabad,” and “Demise to (Prime Minister) Modi, Hindustan.”
Graffiti on the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in Chino Hills, California. (Portray courtesy Mehul Patel)
The word Hindustan, a title historically given to India, translates to “land of the Hindus,” referencing Hindu identification and the Hindu folks, which Patel stated positively targets members of the minority religion.
On Monday (March 10), the incident used to be formally classified as a hate crime by native authorities and stays below investigation.
“I mediate folks are making divulge assumptions or looking out out for to power us to originate a conclusion that we’re representatives of the Indian executive,” Patel stated. “We’re not. We’re a Hindu neighborhood here within the United States. We’re People.”
The vandalism on the L.A. mandir marks the tenth reported incident of Hindu temple vandalism or burglarization within the United States since 2022, and the third focusing on a BAPS congregation.
In response, the mandir held a “prayer for unity and peace” on Sunday, at which native officers and clergy congregated in entrance of the temple.
“The BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in Chino Hills, adore every BAPS mandirs worldwide, serves as a image of peace, harmony, equality, selfless carrier and universal Hindu values,” stated Hetal Patel, a volunteer who spoke on behalf of the group on the occasion. “This mandir is home for my household.”
The Bochanaswami Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha neighborhood, regarded as the essential subset of Hindus within the United States, has constructed over 1,300 temples worldwide, including the first Hindu temple within the United Arab Emirates. Devotees of Swaminarayan, an 18th-century yogi and ascetic, and his divulge disciples pay particular attention to the Hindu tenet of seva, or selfless carrier.
Hetal Patel, left, speaks for the length of a prayer for unity and peace occasion on the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir on Sunday, March 9, 2025, in Chino Hills, California. (Portray courtesy Mehul Patel)
Many BAPS homes of worship, adore the Chino Hills mandir and the currently accomplished BAPS Swaminarayan Akshardham in Robbinsville, Soundless Jersey — the essential Hindu temple within the U.S. — are architectural feats, with intricate carvings and structures that resemble many of the volunteers’ place of origin.
Lenin Joshi, communications head for the BAPS Akshardham, stated he used to be “insecure and disheartened” to listen to 1 more temple had been attacked. The closing two reported vandalism incidents were in September 2024 in opposition to BAPS mandirs in Sacramento and Soundless York. The sect’s prominence, and therefore its publicity, may had been a part in its focusing on, Joshi instructed, taking into account the graffiti incorporated political grievances.
Nonetheless in step with the teachings of the religion’s lineage of swamis, or lecturers, Joshi stated it’s mandatory to “take care of our frigid” and not be reactionary. He recalled that after the Swaminarayan Akshardham in Gandhinagar, India, used to be attacked by terrorists in 2002, killing 33 folks and injuring 80, then-spiritual head of BAPS Pramukh Swami Maharaj straight appealed for peace, praying for the entire departed souls, including the two assailants.
“We’re not going to answer this in any approach that can anxiety more folks,” Joshi stated. “We can upright assist prayer and hope that the oldsters who’re doing this, they internet the best likely working out to end.”
To others within the broader Hindu American neighborhood, the influx of assaults on temples functions to a demanding building. In California, which has the very best inhabitants of Indians within the U.S., anti-Hindu hatred used to be stumbled on to be the second most general anti-religion-linked bias reported to the California Civil Rights Division’s non-emergency hate crime hotline, in step with Can also 2024 info that lined the year prior.
Democratic California assert Procure. Darshana Patel, the first Hindu girl to back within the assert legislature, shared a assertion on X March 9, responding to the assault.
“This act is mainly painful as Hindus are celebrating Holi — the competition of colours, adore and spring,” she wrote. “It is a time of pleasure, unity and renewal — values that stand in stark distinction to hate and division.”
Suhag Shukla, govt director of the advocacy team the Hindu American Foundation, stated seeing a “restful neighborhood focused adore here is so wholly unfair and heartbreaking.”
“BAPS is a mannequin institution by approach of surely offering the distance for families to examine their custom, but additionally to cross it on within the neighborhood,” Shukla stated. “Broadly, they’re upright considered as folks who’re residing appropriate, obvious lives which could be taking this thought of selfless carrier to the utmost degree.”
Suhag Shukla. (Courtesy photo)
Shukla infamous the assault occurred earlier than Los Angeles is to take care of up a non-binding vote that can attach a Sikh place of origin within the city destroy free India, incessantly called the Khalistan referendum, on March 23. The Khalistan race in most cases seeks a separate place of origin for Sikhs in Punjab that doesn’t fall below Hindu rule.
Khalistan race supporters in general criticize Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s executive for its suppression of Sikh separatist activists, whom it labels terrorists and extremists. A lot graffiti in opposition to Hindu temples has reflected professional-Khalistan and anti-Modi sentiments, which Shukla stated has contributed to a approach of “apathy” from federal agencies consequently of their political nature.
Despite the message, however, Shukla stated defacing a home of worship is positively an act of hate. With Kash Patel, who is Hindu, currently appointed head of the FBI, Shukla stated she and her group hope the manager agency pays more attention to such assaults, taking into account them a troubling building slightly than isolated incidents.
“Hindus are pissed off,” she stated. “A assert of worship wishes to be someplace where you come to hope, to be with neighborhood, to search out peace. You shouldn’t should always be retaining press conferences and having folks come and enable you to scrub down your partitions.”
by 
