ATLANTA, GEORGIA, June 20, 2007: (HPI note: the temple’s official opening ceremonies culminate August 26.) Philip Warner watches the white limestone wonder rising across the street from his vantage point at the UPS Store on Rockbridge Road in Liburn. The store manager keeps a pair of binoculars handy to observe construction on one of the largest Hindu temples in the United States. Customers constantly comment on the towering sanctuary that will open in late August. With hand-carved stone spires that tower 75 feet, it will be the tallest building in Liburn, dominating the intersection of Rockbridge Road and Lawrenceville Highway. The sanctuary belongs to members of the Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) sect of Hinduism. The Liburn location will be the largest temple in the United States for the BAPS sect. Built at an estimated cost of $19 million, the temple complex is only the third of its kind in the country, surpassing BAPS temples in Houston and Chicago.

The BAPS leadership says the temple’s sanctuary will be open to all. “You don’t have to be Hindu,” said Ritesh Desai, a spokesman for the BAPS community in metro Atlanta. About 1 million people worldwide follow the BAPS sect of Hinduism (out of perhaps 1 billion Hindus overall). the local 500-member BAPS congregation, which draws from the entire metro Atlanta area, has worshipped in a building in Clarkston for almost two decades. In late August, the spiritual leader of the BAPS, Pramukh Swami Maharaj, 86, of India, will come to Liburn to participate in the temple’s opening ceremonies. Desai compared the swami’s significance for the BAPS sect to that of the pope for Catholics. After the swami leaves, the temple will be open to the public, and a team of about eight sadhus, or monks, will run the complex, said temple member Mitesh Patel.

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