A grand spectacle With 600 pounds of gold, Hindu sect opens first U.S. temple
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Hoboken's crack SWAT team stood guard in Secaucus in the sweltering heat on Aug. 5, dressed in camouflage, body armor and helmets. Several members wielded automatic rifles. Others sat on rooftops across Penhorne Avenue, eyeing the double domes of the newly constructed Hindu temple, their radios rasping warnings of approaching people - while below, Secaucus police officers lined the street, wary and watchful, all waiting for an armored truck to retrieve 600 pounds of gold bullion used in a temple ceremony hours before.
"We do this routinely," said Sgt. Enrico Gnassi of the Hoboken police. The Hoboken SWAT team is the only one in Hudson County, and the members on the scene resembled Marines with crewcut hair styles, muscular builds and stern expressions. "Any time there is a security issue, we can handle it," Gnassi said. "We are often used to maintain security for large shipments of cash or other situations in which there might be a significant threat."
The SWAT team had come to watch over the gold used in a special ceremony to open the new Hindu temple. The ceremony had capped off five days of prayer and celebration.
Between 7 and 8 a.m., temple priests went through a ceremony of weighing statues before their official installation. This goes to the roots of Hindu culture where Indian priests weighed their maharajas against gold as a show of devotion. There are more than a million Hindus worldwide.
The statues and scale had been brought from India for the occasion. The scale, according to Shailesh Vyas, media advisor for the temple, would be kept in Secaucus for future temple openings round the country. Each white marble statute stood four feet tall and sat on one plate of a huge two-plate scale. Priests dressed in orange robes placed 25-pound bars of gold bullion onto the other plate.
HSBC Bank USA, of Manhattan loaned the gold to the sect. It arrived via Brinks armored truck shortly before 7 a.m. and brought into the temple in canvas bags.
Dilip Patel, of North Bergen, called the weighing ceremony the highest point of the five days.
"Seeing the last gold brick tip the scale was very emotional," he said. "We waited a long time for this moment. It gives you chills."
Hundreds of members of the sect, including its spiritual leader, came to Secaucus from India to help in these ceremonies.
The priests then removed the gold bars in order to weigh the next statue until all three were done. Then, in their eyes, the statues became gods and saints. The gold was valued in excess of $3 million.
"His holiness brought energy from his heart and poured some of this into these statues," Vyas said. "His energy comes from years of meditation and serving God. It is a very sacred moment."
This ceremony is done each time an idol is installed in a temple, Vyas said.
"It is the most historical of events in the Hindu religion," he said.
For the most part, idols are installed only when a temple is opened.
First of its kind in U.S.
The 22,500-square-foot facility, built in classic Indian-style architecture with pointed domes and indoor niches for religious paintings, houses a prayer hall. Some aspects are modern such as the skylights and picture window seats. With multipurpose room, administrative offices, and priests' quarters, the temple sits on 3.7 acres. The temple, fashioned after a similar structure in Ahmadabad, India, has taken five years to build, said Dilip Patel, a member of the construction committee.
The temple was designed by Uday Purushe, of Laurel Design Alliance architects of Baltimore, which has become one of the leading firms in the country for Hindu temple design.
The $7 million Secaucus temple is the first Swaminarayan temple built in the United States and was funded almost entirely by donations from members of the congregation. Valley National Bank helped finance the temple's construction.
Vyas said that although many smaller temples had existed previously in major cities throughout the United States, the Secaucus temple is the largest and the most representative of temples elsewhere in the world.
Many of the 200 members of the new temple are first-generation Indian-Americans who have settled in North Bergen, Secaucus, and Jersey City since the 1980s. The sect has about 900 members in the United States and millions in India, England, and Kenya. The sect espouses a simple lifestyle and an ideology based on compassion, love, and high moral standards. Members are strict vegetarians. The also do not use alcohol, tobacco, tea, or coffee.
Culture shock?
During the ceremonies that highlighted the weekend, the colorfully dressed worshippers carefully removed their shoes before entering the temple, bowing before the statues that are revered as gods by members of the Swaminarayan denomination of Hinduism.
Board of Education member Tom Troyer said he went to the event out of respect, but wondered what would happen. He was a little startled when they asked him to remove his shoes, yet found the worshipers remarkably courteous.
"I was shocked by how well they treated me," he said.
They put a garland of flowers around his neck, and allowed him to speak before the assembly - although he said he hadn't intended to represent the Board of Education at the event.
"I thought they wanted to take my picture," Troyer said. "The next thing I knew I was speaking before everybody there."
He said it was a remarkable crowd. Among those who attended events during the five-day celebration were Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell, Jersey City Mayor Glenn Cunningham, state Assemblyman Anthony Impreveduto, (D-32nd Dist.), U.S. Rep. Steven Rothman, (D-9th Dist.) and other Hudson County dignitaries, wearing elaborately tied white turbans called pagadis.
Troyer noted one sharp cultural difference. Board of Education member Eleanor Reinl was not allowed to sit on the dais with the men.
"She had to sit down below with the women," Troyer said.
Some traffic concerns
Town Administrator Anthony Iacono said for the most part the multiple day event went smoothly.
"The parade created some traffic, but no more than the town's bi-yearly fire parade," he said.
In the absence of Vincent Massaro, Sr., coordinator for the Secaucus Office of Emergency Management, Councilman Robert Kickey - who serves as assistant coordinator for the Secaucus OEM and the Secaucus Representative for the County OEM - provided assistance to the police during the some of celebrations.
"There was some concern about the parade on Saturday," Kickey said. "The county was worried about its facilities at Meadowview Hospital. They were worried about the change of shifts for doctors and nurses and about access to the facility in case of an emergency."
The Saturday parade, which featured, floats and marching band as well as numerous people went passed the front gate of Meadowview, but Kickey said everything went without a hitch.
"For the most part we helped local police with traffic," he said.
On Sunday, when the gold was scheduled to arrive and leave, Secaucus and Hoboken police took over, using the OEM truck for communications.
"There were no problems," said Iacono. "The temple people paid all the costs for security, including the costs for police."
Iacono said the price tag for traffic and security duty was in excess of $30,000.
"The taxpayers paid none of it," he said.
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