Arulmigu Sri Rajakaliamman Glass Temple

The Arulmigu Sri Rajakaliamman Glass Temple in Johor Bahru began in 1922 as a modest shelter built on land granted by the Sultan of Johor, serving the city’s Tamil Hindu community with worship of the goddess Kaliamman. It takes its present, better-known form from a major renovation project begun in 1991 under temple leader Sri Sinnathamby Sivasamy, which saw the original structure rebuilt and reopened in 1996; a further transformation followed in 2008-2009, when the temple’s walls and surfaces were covered in an elaborate mosaic of roughly 300,000 pieces of red, blue, yellow, green, purple, and white glass, reportedly inspired after the temple’s leader saw similarly glass-clad artwork at a temple in Bangkok. The inner Athma Lingam shrine is separately notable for walls covered in roughly 300,000 rudraksha beads sourced from Nepal, said to be the first such installation in Malaysia.

On 12 May 2010, the temple was listed in the Malaysian Book of Records as the country’s first and only glass temple. It remains an active site of daily Hindu worship alongside its role as a tourist attraction, with separate visiting hours set aside for non-worshipping visitors.