Hindu Temple of St. Louis

Registered as a Missouri nonprofit in 1988, the Hindu Temple of St. Louis held its Bhoomi Pooja groundbreaking on April 21, 1990, and had its main building completed by November 8, 1991, with the adjoining Mahatma Gandhi Cultural Center finished the same year. What began with painted images of the deities gave way to consecrated physical murtis in 1995, and sculptors brought from India in 2000 carved the temple’s gopuram. The shrines today house Vishnu, Shiva, Lakshmi and Ayyappa among other deities, with a full festival calendar spanning Ganesh Chaturthi, Krishna Janmashtami, Murugan Vizha and more, reflecting the pan-Indian character common to American temples serving a broad regional Hindu community. By 2010 the temple was serving more than 14,000 Hindus in the St. Louis metropolitan area. The community has also weathered hardship: in 2003, vandals threw Molotov cocktails at the temple’s front doors, though no one was injured. The temple later expanded its footprint, purchasing adjacent property in 2008 and reaching a 2012 agreement with local authorities on a protective wall and building setbacks.