NEW YORK CITY (RNS)– The BAPS Melville Mandir has actually been a popular, serene location of praise and celebrations for Long Island's growing Hindu neighborhood because 2016.
Early Monday (Sept. 16), that peace was disrupted with the discovery of graffiti spray-painted on the temple's signs and driveway that checked out “Hindustan Murdabad,” implying “Death to India,” “F * ck Modi” and “Modi is a terrorist,” describing the Indian prime minister set up to go to on Sunday.
The vandals left “threatening messages” at some point in between 7 p.m. Sunday and 6:30 a.m. Monday, according to the Suffolk County Police dislike criminal offenses system.
“We highly promote peace, consistency, equality, generous service, and promote universal worths of Hindus,” stated Girish Patel, nationwide planner for BAPS Public Affairs. “That something like this would occur is a direct method of stating, ‘I dislike Hindus.'”
The Indian Consulate General is in touch with BAPS management, which represents the biggest sect of Hindus in the U.S., and has actually raised the matter with U.S. police authorities for “timely action versus the wrongdoers of this abhorrent act,” it stated in a declaration.
On Monday afternoon, regional legislators and clergy members from surrounding synagogues, churches and mosques provided their assistance and provided prayers at a press conference beyond the mandir.
U.S. Representative Tom Suozzi, at podium, addresses an assembly to require peace at the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Hindu temple in Melville, New York, on Monday, Sept. 17, 2024. (Photo courtesy BAPS)
“We highly condemn these acts and wish peace among all neighborhoods,” stated the BAPS Public Affairs group in its Appeal for Peace declaration. “We likewise use our inmost prayers for those who committed this criminal activity to be launched of their hatred and to see our typical mankind.”
This occurrence follows a thread of temple vandalizations that have actually taken place in the previous year throughout North America. Criminals have actually harmed residential or commercial property at mandirs from California to New York, consisting of statues of popular Hindu figures such as Mahatma Gandhi. And this previous July, a BAPS mandir in Edmonton, Canada, was likewise ruined.
Suhag Shukla, executive director of the Hindu American Foundation, wants to assist police comprehend what an anti-Hindu hate criminal offense can appear like.
What these attacks share, stated Shukla, is their rhetoric in the spray paint. The words are anti-Indian federal government and anti-Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and typically, she stated, clearly support the Khalistan motion: an extremist, separatist motion led by Sikhs to produce the independent state of Khalistan in Punjab, India.
“At an extremely shallow level, (police is) simply seeing, you understand, one set of Indians assaulting another,” she stated. “But let's take a look at the target. If there is a group that is promoting for a different state in the Indian subcontinent, why are they assaulting Hindu temples? What does BAPS relate to a different theocratic state?”
Shukla's company stays in talks with Hindu neighborhood members to track events of vandalism.
