Reconstructed Harmony Hindu temple welcomes 1000’s to sacred celebrations

CONCORD — The Hindu Shiva Murugan Temple stands resplendent, adorned by a mosaic of artwork, tradition and spirituality.

Inside, chants of vedic mantras echo alongside conventional songs from barrel-shaped Thavil drums and reeded nagaswaram devices. Shivacharyas, or Hindu religious leaders, distribute energizing Kalasa Puja holy water, carry out fireplace rituals referred to as homas and lead different hours-long sacred Hindu rituals to invoke divine power and sanctify the house.

Stylized deities tower from the four-story construction’s gilded facade, adorned in shades of osage orange, wooden violet, pink second and dynamic blue. A statue of the temple’s namesake — Murugan, a Hindu god of warfare — gleams from the rooftop, accompanied by his peacock poised at his facet, representing divine energy, magnificence, and style.

Hundreds of devotees, religious leaders and neighborhood members gathered Might 9 to consecrate their new 56,154-square-foot house of worship in an extravagant, multi-day Kumbabishekam Ceremony. After practically 70 years within the Bay Space — greater than half anchored in Harmony — the grand re-opening breathed new life into the neighborhood that fashioned one of many first Hindu temples for conventional worship within the U.S.

It took practically a decade of planning, 5 years of building and a $5 million endowment to finish the technicolor transformation at 1803 2nd St., constructed lower than a half-mile from Todos Santos Plaza, east of the Port Chicago Freeway.

The result’s the first-ever Panchavarna temple within the nation – a uncommon, five-color design rooted in historical Hindu traditions, usually present in South Indian temples to represent divine energies and cosmic stability. It was rebuilt within the Chola architectural fashion of Tamil Nadu, beneath the steerage of Kalaichemmal Dr. Ok. Dakshinamoorthy, a conventional architect, or Sthapati, from India, and Sharad Lal, an area architect.

The historic construction will take over operations from the previous Harmony Hindu Temple subsequent door, which has supplied a cornerstone of religious and cultural enrichment since Might 1987.

However the temple’s historical past dates again even additional, when an American-born Hindu guru, Gurudeva Sri Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, fashioned what was then generally known as the Palaniswami Sivan Temple in a former San Francisco retail outlet in 1957. Gurudeva, who was born in 1927 in Oakland, ultimately relocated the temple to the Harmony Boulevard web site — taking up a church beforehand crammed by Lutheran and Greek Orthodox congregations.

By 2010, the temple’s leaders and homeowners had dreamt up the imaginative and prescient for the revamped place of worship that stands immediately, which in the end required buying two adjoining properties and years of design approvals earlier than the Harmony Metropolis Council permitted a constructing allow in Might 2019.

The outdated temple constructing is ready to be demolished and transformed into parking and landscaping for the brand new construction — enlargement that neighborhood members say underscores the Hindu Shiva Murugan Temple’s position in preserving Tamil and Hindu traditions, whereas fostering cultural unity within the East Bay.

“After I came to the Bay Area in 1973, the thing I missed was the spiritual and cultural connections from back home,” stated Partha Parthasarathy, who volunteers on the group’s steering committee, whereas reflecting on his upbringing in India. “This is more than just the temple.”

The Kumbabishekam Ceremony on Might 9 was one in every of a number of occasions celebrating the newly reconstructed temple. Many extra are deliberate within the coming days.