A Victim of Success

I am not a deeply religious person though I do have faith in my religion and do try to understand the basis for my religion so that I can at least speak intelligently about it. So it was with some interest that I ran across an article in the Washington Post that was discussing the Rajdhani Mandir of Chantilly, Virginia and how it has come under increasing levels of fire in recent days. The temple, located just off of Route 50 in Virginia is one of the most recent temples to be built in the area. Founded in 2000, it was built at a time when the IT boom was still doing quite well and an influx of Indians was on the rise.

At that time, the temple was built with 87 parking spaces and a reported capacity of 250 devotees inside the building at a given time. Now having been to the temple on occasion, I can tell you that it very often exceeds that estimate by a lot and therein lies the problem. Now I can understand that at the time the temple was built, there was not much of an Indian population that far out in Virginia. Once the campuses of companies like AOL, Verizon and such began moving into the Ashburn area, many Indians moved out that way as well and though other temples exist in the area, the Chantilly temple is probably the closest for them and so we flock there in droves. Now obviously, there is not enough capacity in the parking lot to hold more than a handful of cars at a time and that has led to an increasing problem whereby devotees are taking their cars into surrounding neighborhoods and parking them there disrupting traffic in those areas.

Now obviously the residents of those neighborhoods are a little ticked off at the fact that their streets are full of cars and pedestrians at odd times. They get aggravated at the fact that at times, despite their repeated requests, those going to attend services at the temple will park in front of their houses and walk through the streets to get to the temple. It's gotten to the point now that there have been so many complaints that the county (Fairfax in this case) has stepped in and informed the temple that they are in violation of their original building permit. At a meeting held last week, the temple officials were informed that even one more complaint from neighbors in the residential areas surrounding the temple would be sufficient grounds to shut the temple down; albeit temporarily. Now according to the original permit, the temple was supposed to provide sufficient parking to support the patrons and at the time, 87 spaces seemed like a lot, but it certainly isn't.

Daily there are services at different times during the day which means that so many people are visiting the site that they have no choice but to go into other neighborhoods and park their cars. The temple has provided shuttle services from nearby parking lots but some patrons of the temple are unwilling to take the time necessary to ride the bus from the parking lot to the temple (and vice versa). The said thing is that many devotees feel that despite the warning signs and requests, if it's just one car, what difference will it make? And therein likes the problem. If one person thinks like that then who's to say that others won't make that same assumption? It's the snowball effect and it leads to the same problem that residents have long been complaining about.

The temple is attempting to fix the problem by also buying up additional land and building a new parking lot but residents worry that this will mean even more traffic at times. As it is, the temple is a veritable hotbed of traffic during service times and it causes traffic to snarl quite badly on the small two-lane road that passes in front of the temple. Others question whether or not the temple can be moved and there is where devotion and beliefs come into question as well. According to temple officials and priests, once a deity's idol has been placed in a sanctified area, then it cannot be removed, it is apparently 'permanently' fixed to that position. I take issue with that statement. I understand the devotion to God's place once God's idol is placed there but if our Hindu Gods are as benevolent as we like to say They are then won't They understand why we would need to move their location?

Let's say for the sake of arguement that the temple decides that we have to move, the Indian community is affluent enough to support the construction of a larger facility someplace else in the community in roughly the same area but with a much larger facility meant to support the growing number of devotees. So if the temple moves, won't God understand? Some argue that it's just not possible which is why some temples in India have stood for 2,000 years; but I have also seen temples in places like Goa which were moved when the Portugese invaded and were enforcing Catholocism. How come it was acceptable then? If God wanted to punish the devout for moving Their temple then shouldn't that vengence have come already? I'm not saying that the residents of Chantilly and the surrounding area are doing this as a persecutive measure but to see if from their point of view, they are being inconvenienced and we Hindus may not be doing all we can to be good community members and helping allay the problems.