East Meets West : Hindu Congregation Wins OK for Temple by Adopting Mission Design

The golden Indian domes have been replaced by a red tile roof, and the ornate Hindu carvings at the entrance have been scrapped in favor of curved archways.

But to Natoo Patel, the latest sketches of his congregation’s new place of worship in Norwalk are beautiful--even if the building will end up looking more like a Spanish mission than a Hindu temple.

The modified design was approved by the Norwalk City Council this week, despite continuing protests about parking and traffic from residents of the neighborhood near the temple site at Pioneer Boulevard and Ferina Street.

“Our intention was to use traditional Hindu architecture,” said Patel, a Diamond Bar resident who heads the small Hindu congregation. “But we want to be good neighbors, too.”

Patel’s group was forced to give up its original plans two years ago after dozens of residents complained that its distinctive, traditional design was incompatible with the surrounding area--a tract of small stucco homes built in the 1950s and two Christian churches from the same era.

The neighbors also worried that the $1.2-million temple would attract thousands of Hindu worshipers from all over Southern California, creating parking and traffic problems on their quiet residential streets.

After the first plan was rejected, Patel spent two years working with city planners, traffic engineers and residents to come up with a design that everyone could live with.

Besides removing the temple’s nine steeples, its gold domes and intricate carvings, they reduced the size of the two-story building to leave room for more parking spaces. They also removed one driveway, diverting traffic off residential streets to busy Pioneer Boulevard.

“I was surprised that they changed the design,” Councilwoman Eleanor Zimmerman said. “It doesn’t look Hindu, but it does fit the neighborhood.” Zimmerman, one of three new council members who has taken office since the project was turned down in 1992, voted in favor of the temple.

Construction on the still unnamed temple is expected to begin this year and be completed by the end of 1995.

Though Patel said most of his 110-member congregation will be relieved to finally have a permanent place to worship, he added that not everyone is pleased with the new Spanish mission-style design.

“We had to make a lot of concessions and we eliminated many of the proper ceremonial elements that we would have preferred,” Patel said. “The mission design was hard to swallow for some of the more orthodox members.”

But others, including 74-year-old congregation founder Dinker Inamdar, said finding the right spot--a centrally located piece of property large enough to accommodate the temple--was more important than the design.

“We are not disappointed; this is a gift from God,” he said. “What we needed was a place to worship, not a decoration or a monument to our religion. What is most important is that we now will have a place to offer prayers.”

The congregation, the International Swaminarayan Satsang Organization, is made up of 28 families that belong to a faction of Hinduism that worships Lord Swaminarayan, an incarnation of Krishna, as its god. Since Patel’s group was formed in 1982, they have been meeting in private homes or rented halls and schools, which many times did not meet their standards of cleanliness.

“We are strict vegetarians, and it is very important that we have the proper place to cook our meals,” Inamdar said.

After searching for years for a temple site, the congregation found the property in Norwalk in 1991. The families pooled their savings and bought the land for $630,000.

The group met immediate opposition when its plans to build a 15,000-square-foot, 530-seat temple were submitted to the city the next year. (It has now been reduced to 12,000 square feet, with a 322-person capacity)

In testimony before the Norwalk Planning Commission, the Rev. Nyal Royse, a pastor of the neighboring Church of Christ, called the temple a “grotesque monstrosity.” Others feared the neighborhood would be “inundated with Indians.” One woman asked if the plans included a crematory, a reference to Hindu funeral rites in which the dead are cremated. No crematory is planned.

Patel said such misconceptions did not bother him nor did they lessen his congregation’s determination to build their temple.

“What we mostly found was a fear of the unknown,” he said. “And our job was to communicate to them what we are and what we do. There is nothing to fear.”