Temple run

 
If you read between the lines of the vandalized signboard in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, you'll see more than just 60 bullet holes perforating the blue sans serif lettering that reads 'Hindu Temple'. The punctures, though ominous, do little to threaten the place of the Hindu temple - in Forsyth County, and the rest of America.

For America's growing number of Indian immigrants - the Hindu population grew from 0.4% in 2007 to 0.7% in 2014, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center - a temple is a way to transplant a bit of home in the US. The Hindu demographic is doing quite well economically too. According to Pew, 36% say their annual family income exceeds $100,000, compared to 19% of the overall public. As America's 3 million Hindus grow in stature, so do their symbols of ethnic identity - their temples.

The institution first arrived on America's West Coast in 1906, via Swami Vivekananda's Vedanta Society in San Francisco, writes Karen Pechilis Prentiss for Harvard's Pluralism Project, and it concerned itself chiefly with scriptural study and meditation. It was only in the 70s when the Indian migrant population began to expand on the back of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 that temples for ritualistic worship and cultural incubation developed. This was when Alagappa Alagappan, one of the leaders of the temple movement in late 20th century America, helped establish the Hindu Temple Society in 1970. In 1976 came one of the first Dravidian temples in the US, Sri Venkateswara Temple in Pittsburgh, built with a Rs 7-lakh endowment from the Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanam. The Maha Vallabha Ganapati temple in Flushing Queens came next in 1977, built on the site of a Russian Orthodox church.
Today, the temple count in the US touches 800, according Hindu American Foundation (HAF). Some, like the Shri Swaminarayan mandirs in New Jersey, Atlanta, and Los Angeles, are standout monuments, costing well over $100 million each.