A Hindu Temple for the ‘Unheard and Unseen’
By Richa Karmarkar, originally published by Religion News Service.
NEW YORK (RNS) — Illuminated by a skylight at the center of a small factory-turned-Hindu temple in Queens sits a murti of the Divine Mother — a 1-ton, 6-foot-tall icon of the South Indian village goddess Mariamman, an incarnation of Kali, the deity of time and death. Smoke from cigarettes and incense fills the room, and bottles of rum sit next to fruit at the altar.
“Our religion is very rural, very villagelike,” said Chandni Kalu, 31, a priestess at the Richmond Hill temple. “It’s very raw.”
Even other Hindus might find Sunday worship services at the Shri Shakti Mariammaa temple unfamiliar. The mostly Indo-Caribbean congregants worship goddess Kali, who also represents transcendental knowledge that can manifest within, or spiritually possess, her followers. At a recent service, a young male pujari, or lay priest, shook and danced vigorously through the crowd, entranced with Shakti, the feminine energy that inhabits someone possessed by Kali.
“We are a healing temple,” said Sharda Ramsami, one of the original members of the temple when it was founded in 2008. “Whether it’s something physical or something spiritual, we are always the last resort, and when people come here, they’re desperate for help. I think that’s what’s most powerful: that desperation, and then here’s the answer that no one else could provide for them. Mother knows.”
But the temple is also known as one that is open to all. Its clergy have married same-sex couples after they were shunned or rejected from other Hindu temples in the area, and, uniquely, those clergy, the temple staff and congregants are mostly women. Women come to seek refuge at the temple, Ramsami explained, sometimes to escape dire situations. They have been quietly offered money from temple staff or even given the keys to the building to stay there.
Other temples, Ramsami said, would throw women out for menstruating or not allow women to approach the altar. “That’s just not something we believe in,” she said. “We worship a woman.”
“Even in mainstream Hinduism,” Kalu said, “there’s so much patriarchy. Women aren’t really given roles, and whenever they are, it’s just mediocre roles in the kitchen making prasadam (offerings). I was really given a platform here to become a priestess.”
This article was originally published by Religion News Service and is partially reproduced here without the permission of the author, who is not affiliated with this website or its views.
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