How a massive hand-carved Hindu monastery ended up in Hawaii

Paramacharya Sadasivanatha Palaniswami sits on a picnic table surrounded by Rudraksha trees, chanting a Sanskrit verse in honour of his guru, at Kauai’s Hindu Monastery. Photo: AP

It is the only all-granite, hand-carved Hindu temple in the West built without power tools or electricity, and it’s nestled on one of the smaller islands in Hawaii surrounded by lush gardens and forests.

On the island of Kauai, the presence of the Iraivan Temple – a white granite edifice with gold-leafed domes, modelled after millennia-old temples in South India – is unexpected and stunning. Less than 1% of Hawaii’s 1.4 million residents are Hindus and on Kauai, the number of Hindus may not even exceed 50, according to some estimates.