India Post News Service
LOUISVILLE, KY: Hundreds of members of the Indian American community and also sympathizers from others too in Louisville, Ky., arrived carrying paint supplies, ready to start a long day’s work on a recent Saturday morning. They were Hindus and Christians, Jews and Muslims, working side by side.
All had come for the same purpose: to clean up hate-filled graffiti scrawled on the walls and across the sanctum belonging to the Maninagar Shree Swaminarayan Gadi Sansthan.The vandalism occurred a few days earlier.
An intruder broke into the building and spent hours defiling the facility, spray painting messages like “Foreign B****es Whore F*** You C**!” on walls, windows and doors. The vandal also sprayed religious messages — “Jesus Is All Mighty is everything” with a Christian cross in the former church that had been converted to a Hindu house of worship.
At some point in the spree of destruction, the vandal stabbed a knife into a chair. The eyes of one murti (visual representation of the divine) on a poster were also blacked out with paint.
The incident traumatized the temple’s devotees and the broader community — a desecration of sacred images is especially painful for a community whose religious practices see deities as embodiments of the divine. Despite this trauma, the community was relieved that the damage was fixable and that no one was physically harmed.
Thanks to the diligent efforts of Louisville police and tips from members of the public, a suspect has already been arrested. This attack might seem like an isolated incident perpetrated by a bad apple. But it is actually part of an unacceptable national strain.
According to official FBI statistics published on hate crimes, those classified as “Anti-Hindu” are rising. In fact, they’ve tripled since 2015. While the number of anti-Hindu hate crimes seems trivial in comparison to numbers against other communities across the United States, it’s hardly a matter to overlook.
Hate crimes targeting Hindus, mainly immigrants or their first generation descendants from India, Nepal, and Bhutan, are often racially motivated or a case of mistaken identity (sometimes animus directed at Muslims or Arabs) — and both reasons for hate crimes are abhorrent.
But this case is not one of those.The vandalism was targeted at Hindus and their religion. The vandal wrote that out in plain black letters for his victims to see: They worship the wrong God, and he doesn’t like that they were using a former Christian church to do it.
His hatred was etched in spray paint over the eyes of Lord Swaminarayan, the main deity of this sect. This act was the most painful for members of this congregation, a direct affront to their right to worship and practice freely in this community.
The concerned citizens of Louisville weren’t having any of this in their city. In a matter of two days, Indian and Hindu Kentuckians worked with leaders across faith and cultural backgrounds to show a united front. They worked to repair the damage done by vandals. And they denounced the hate behind the attacks.
In the hall of the temple, filled to standing room only, a Christian pastor apologized on behalf of his faith and pledged to educate this young man about the love Jesus Christ showed his neighbors. He called the gathering “bahusundar,” or very beautiful, a Hindi phrase he learned while traveling throughout India.
Police Chief Steve Conrad pledged his full support to the Hindu community of Louisville. Democrats Nima Kulkarni (a state representative) and John Yarmuth (a U.S. congressman) and Andy Beshear (Kentucky’s attorney general) stood alongside Republican Governor Matt Bevin, who made a surprise visit to the temple.
Governor Bevin asked Kentucky to use this “as an opportunity to learn more about Hinduism.” We hope the state legislature, attorney general, and governor will now act to strengthen its existing hate crimes statutes to reflect federal laws.
The service culminated with the government leaders performing the traditional waving of lamps in front of the deities. Louisville is certainly full of love.
