Hindu Americans face challenges, growth in following their faith

This community of Hindu immigrants is working hard to teach their faith to their children, who are growing up as Americans. - - Donna Poisl

By Michael Paulson, Globe Staff

The Hindu Temple of Minnesota is quite a sight - a massive boxy structure surrounding an ornate gray tower with a wedding cake top featuring layer upon layer of sculptured lotuses and icons. In one striking room, lit by a series of skylights, 21 shrines with statues of Hindu deities ring a large open floor area. This temple, in Maple Grove, claims to be the largest in the United States, and survived a horrific act of vandalism in 2006, in which two young men decapitated and dismembered the temple’s icons.

Remarkably, the Hindu community then reached out to and befriended the vandals, who are now college students, and even included them in a ceremony at which the destroyed icons were buried.
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