As part of its economic profile, the New Jersey township of Robbinsville (population 13642, 12 per cent Asian) boasts of warehousing such well-known companies as Amazon.com, mattress specialists Sleepys, Green Mountain Coffee, and Scholastic Books, among others. On a similar scale, something very different will open this weekend in this suburb, an hour south of New York City — purportedly the biggest and most expensive Hindu temple complex in the United States.
That the Swaminarayan mandir and Akshardham complex of BAPS (which stands for Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha) took so long to come to New Jersey is itself a surprise. There are already some 70 BAPS temples in North America, including major, multi-million dollar structures in Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta and Toronto, each bigger and more ornate than the previous.
New Jersey is stomping ground for BAPS’ primarily Gujarati constituency, a fraternal state so steeped in the culture its Indian coastal counterpart that Navratri celebrations are a must-stop for its politicians, and some of its districts issue voter registration forms in Gujarati. Evidently, local reservations and zoning issues kept the long pending demand of New Jersey Indians at bay, but all that has now been sorted out.