The New York Daily News, Temple's fate up in the airTemple's fate up in the air
The New York Daily News
August 28, 2004
By Charles W. Bell
Inside the sanctuary, a dozen devotees sat barefoot before statues of familiar gods, some making offerings of fruit or flowers to their favorites, others meditating in silence while priests intoned prayers in Sanskrit.
The atmosphere inside the grand, gray-towered marble Ganesha Temple in Flushing, Queens, was as serene as the carved gods seated on ornate thrones beneath the gaze of the faithful - and protected by discreet signs reading, "Don't touch the deity."
But outside the marble-walled sanctuary, a long and bitter legal battle is disturbing the peace.
At stake is control of one of the largest Hindu temples in the United States and of a multimillion-dollar enterprise with thousands of followers and dozens of religious, social, educational and cultural activities.
This week, it became a federal case.
The latest twist was a hearing Thursday in Brooklyn Federal Court, where the temple's 11 unpaid trustees asked a judge to block an earlier state court decision that would force the temple to hold elections for trustees.
The temple argued that the earlier ruling violated constitutional protections against government interference in its operations.
No decision was reached and more arguments are scheduled for next week.
Among other things, the case raises the issue of democracy in Hindu temple life, where elections are not traditional, and a touchier constitutional issue - that of separation of church and state.
A state appeals court ordered a trustee election a year ago, but the legal battle has put the voting on hold. Then earlier this year, a decision by a Queens Supreme Court judge in effect put control of the temple in the hands of a Long Island lawyer he appointed as referee.
The ruling made the current trustees caretakers with diminished decision-making authority.
The referee, Anthony Piacentini of Port Washington, L.I., was appointed to determine who was eligible to vote and to oversee the election itself.
But who would vote?
According to Dr. Uma Mysorekar, a New York gynecologist and longtime president of the temple, there is no formal membership roll. But there is a mailing list of 21,000 people, among them many non-Hindus, who over the years have contacted the temple. Mysorekar said Piacentini wants to mail membership applications to all of them. Presumably, she added, those who responded, even the non-Hindus, would qualify to vote.
"Would state courts dare tell the Archdiocese of New York that parishioners must be able to vote [Edward] Cardinal Egan out of office?" said Roman Storzer, a lawyer for the Becket Fund for Religious Freedom, an interfaith public interest law firm that is representing the temple. "Of course not."
Yet, he said, that is what has happened in the case of the temple.
It is a complex, emotional case that could take months to resolve, no matter what decision comes eventually from the federal court. It already has dragged on for three years.
But in a way, the lawsuit dates back to 1970, when the governing Hindu Temple Society of North America began planning to build the Ganesha Temple, which is named for the popular elephant-headed god Lord Ganesha.
Revered for an ability to remove obstacles and to bring success and knowledge, he is the principal figure in the sanctuary. Carved from a massive black stone and weighing more than 16 tons, Ganesha occupies a special niche. Statues of his parents, Shiva and Parvati, are nearby.
When the project started 34 years ago, the temple's founders recruited seven non-Hindu American citizens as trustees - to comply with a U.S. law that bars foreigners from sitting on the boards of not-for-profit organizations.
The papers of incorporation filed at that time included voting rights for members.
By the time the temple was consecrated, on July 4, 1977, enough Hindus who were American citizens had been found to fill the board. They filed another set of papers of incorporation, but this time there was no mention of voting rights.
The lawsuit is partly about which papers of incorporation apply.
But it also is about the perceived authoritarian style of temple leadership and about the politics of a big, rich, vigorous institution caught between old traditions and modern ways.
For tonight, at least, the old traditions rule - the temple is presenting a classical Indian dance ballet based on various deeds in the life of Lord Krishna, one of the giant figures in Hinduism.
Charles W. (Bill) Bell writes about religion and the spiritual side of New York every Saturday. Relevant Cases
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