c. 2003 Religion News Service

BURTONSVILLE, Md. _ Here, as in India, the annual festival of lights is celebrated with equal parts gaiety and reverence. Festive gatherings follow special pujas, or prayer rituals, throughout the five days of Diwali (also called Deepavali), which this year begins Oct. 25.

Different legends surround this holiest of holidays, but all commemorate the victory of good over evil. In the eastern Indian state of Bengal, where Kali is the most revered goddess, Hindu devotees perform a Kali puja to celebrate her destruction of evil.

“She is both as frightful as loving, too, as a mother,” said Kamanashish Chakravorty, one of the founding members of the new Washington Kali Temple here. “We believe that she is the cosmic energy” behind the universe, he said.

Diwali is also a time of new beginnings, a meaning not lost on the Washington Kali Temple community. Chakravorty, 61, said Bengalis in the Washington-Baltimore area had talked of building a temple since he arrived from India in the mid-1970s, but the project only recently took root.

A turning point came two years ago, when a tree-lined eight-acre lot in Burtonsville _ just 15 miles northeast of Washington _ became available. When a member, Dr. Pradip Ghosh, offered to purchase the site, Chakravorty explained, “we jumped on the idea, and in about three months the temple got started.”

The temple opened late last year with a special dedication ceremony performed by two monks from the Sri Ramakrishna Adyapith Center in Calcutta. The devotees will begin a weekend of Diwali celebrations Friday (Oct. 24) with a Kali puja, followed by a traditional Bengali dinner.

The modest structure _ which Chakravorty believes is the only public temple dedicated to Kali in the eastern United States _ houses a prayer hall that can seat 350 people, a large foyer for community events and an interfaith center where yoga classes and lectures are held. Living quarters for the resident priest are adjacent to the main building.

There are hopes for a grander structure in the future, Chakravorty said, but “we are very pleased with the progress we have made so far,” he added, looking around the sunlit prayer hall.

At the front is a stone-carved image of Kali, flanked by Durga and Shiva. Along the sides and back of the hall, images of other central Hindu deities alternate with windows offering generous views of the nearby woods.

The genesis of this Burtonsville temple is mirrored in Hindu communities across the United States. Temples are becoming more numerous and more diverse as American Hindus become more established, according to Vasudha Narayanan, a professor of religion at the University of Florida in Gainesville and a recent president of the American Academy of Religion. Narayanan has written extensively on Hindu life and practice in America.

“In many places, you have a community hall first. And out of that, you have a temple growing up,” she said in an interview with RNS.

In the past month alone, the first Hindu temple in Yonkers, N.Y., opened, and ground was broken for temples in Indianapolis and near Minnesota’s Twin Cities.

Narayanan believes this trend is significant for the nation’s Hindus, most of whom trace their roots to the Indian subcontinent.

“The temple is a piece of home in this country,” she said. “You go there for familiar sights, familiar aromas and familiar sounds. It touches a deep chord within you. And it’s also the way in which we transmit our culture to the next generation.”

In many ways, she added, the temple in America acts as a cultural center, as in pre-colonial India _ “almost like a town square.” Besides hosting religious activities, American temples frequently function as a place for children to learn Hindu culture, music and dance _ and even participate in SAT classes and spelling bees _ she said.

A new dimension of the temple in America is Sunday school.

“In India it wasn’t needed,” Narayanan explained. “(Hinduism) is in the air we breathe, in the morning newspapers, in the billboards … it’s learned by osmosis.”

But for Rina Chakrabarty, who moved to suburban Maryland from India in the 1960s, the new Washington Kali Temple is primarily a place for prayer.

“To me, it’s the spirituality that matters, so I like to go there at times when I can have peace,” she said, adding that she enjoys being able to visit the temple for quiet worship during the day and to watch the Brahman priest perform the puja.

“To have the puja done by a priest is meaningful to me,” she said.

And although Chakrabarty, 61, has long participated in the local Vedanta society, she values Washington Kali Temple too as a center for area Bengali Hindus.

“It’s one place where everyone can gather and worship,” she said.

(To learn more about the Washington Kali Temple, visit http://www.kalitemple-washington.org or call Sisir Mukherjee, who handles media relations, at (703) 904-9489.)

DEA END DENNY