Female Swami Brings New Leadership to Hindu Temple : Faiths: Alice Coltrane, widow of the celebrated jazz musician John Coltrane, is leader at Chatsworth shrine.

The first Hindu temple in the San Fernando Valley has opened in a small, nondescript wooden building on a busy Chatsworth street.

Although its humble beginning doesn’t compare to the elegant complex of Hindu shrines near Malibu Canyon, the temple nevertheless has carved out a distinction in a uniquely Southern California way.

The swami for the Chatsworth temple is Alice Coltrane, a black convert to Hinduism and widow of celebrated jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. She is one of two women who are spiritual teachers at the temple.

Coltrane is already the leader of the Vedantic Center, a small commune in Agoura. At the Chatsworth temple, she gives Friday night religious talks to the largely Indian-born congregation.

“She is like a spiritual guru,” said Dinesh Lakhanpal, president of the Hindu Temple and Indian Cultural Center in Chatsworth.

“She has a very high scale of spiritualism and is highly respected here,” he said. “What God wants us to do is love his creation no matter what race or creed.”

Although women spiritual teachers are prominent in some Hindu organizations, especially outside India, the editor of a widely read Hindu newspaper termed Coltrane’s association with the Chatsworth temple a “remarkable but welcome” development.

“A black American swami teaching a group of Indian Hindus--sounds like Los Angeles,” said the Rev. Palaniswami, editor of Hinduism Today, which has offices in Hawaii and Concord, Calif.

Coltrane, who took the name Swami Turiyasangitananda in 1975 after studies and spiritual training in Hinduism, is showing a series of religious videotapes from India and expounding on them for the congregation.

“I am basically helping them develop themselves as a temple,” she said. “I think we will have an ongoing association.”

A male priest from a Hindu temple in Placentia presided over the 90-minute opening ceremonies for the Chatsworth building in March. But another priest who comes on a regular basis every other week is a woman, Santosh Rani, who goes by the honorific name Pandita.

“It is unusual for women in India to lead temple rites because womenfolk there usually don’t go to work and are at home under the protection of men,” said Pandita, who is single and lives in Cerritos.

Pandita said she has been well-accepted in Hindu circles in Southern California, where she has lived for six years after serving Hindus in England, Thailand and Burma.

In Hinduism, Lakhanpal indicated, people who develop a following because of their wisdom are bestowed with leadership roles, regardless of gender. “Women can teach if people ask questions and the group grows bigger and bigger,” he said.

Before the congregation bought the Chatsworth temple, the members had worshiped in homes or at the Sri Venkateshwara Temple on Las Virgenes Canyon Road, south of Calabasas. The $3-million complex, built by craftsmen from India under the aegis of the Hindu Temple Society of Southern California, recently marked its eighth anniversary.

More than 40,000 Hindus live in the Los Angeles area, which is served by about 15 temples.

The temple in Chatsworth can hold about 150 people, Lakhanpal said. Its mailing list includes about 700 people from the Simi and Santa Clarita valleys as well as communities throughout the San Fernando Valley, he said.

The 1,300-square-foot, single-story building fronts on Devonshire Street. An adjacent structure on the one-acre lot will be used in the future for classes in yoga, meditation and religious studies.

To offset the building’s plain interior of gray carpeting, white walls and fluorescent lights, temple leaders have strung crepe paper streamers along the low ceiling, adorned posts with shiny paper decorations and hung paintings of deities on the walls.

Sitting on a 25-foot-long altar are brightly dressed statues of Hindu deities: Krishna, Vishnu, Rama, Lord Ganesha and the Goddess Durga.

“All deities represent the same truth; truth is one, but people call them by different names,” Lakhanpal said.

Lakhanpal said organizers of the Chatsworth worship hall, in order to have a broad appeal, called it simply a Hindu temple rather than name it after a major deity or saint.

“You can come and worship any deity you want,” he said. “That creates harmony and gives to the public the message that God is one.”

In that same vein, Coltrane said she draws principally on the ancient Vedic, or Vedantic, writings of Hinduism for her teachings but also selects “exemplary narratives and texts” from the Bible, Koran and Buddhist writings.

“We have an appreciation for the contributions of all religions in the world,” she said.

Hindu places of worship in the United States have been few and far between compared with the number of religious centers established to serve Buddhists or Muslims. Part of the reason is that worship halls are not often seen as essential to the faith.

As Hinduism Today editor Palaniswami put it: “Every Hindu will have an interior spiritual life that the temple doesn’t fulfill.” For social contacts, he said, many Hindus in the United States may simply gather in homes to sing devotional songs, join a group practicing yoga or establish a relationship with a much-admired guru.

Lakhanpal said American Hindus of East Indian extraction are not as outgoing as the more visible Hare Krishna sect of Hindus that flourished in the 1970s and early 1980s. But they welcome the opportunity to espouse the virtues of their ancient religion.

“We believe in love, peace and nonviolence, and we like to give this message to the entire world,” he said.

“Hinduism is a way of life,” Pandita added. “The emphasis is on the right way of living.”