MAHWAH — When Ashish Pachauri moved to Bergen County from Pennsylvania one year ago, he, his wife, Saumya, and their 3-year-old daughter, Myra, didn’t feel at home until they found a Hindu temple where they could hold onto cultural traditions.
The Pachauris found that feeling of home at the Hindu Samaj Temple of Mahwah, which hosted a Diwali celebration Saturday and drew more than 800 from North Jersey’s growing Indian-American population.
Common in the immigrant experience is a desire to find institutions where traditions are not lost in the secularized, melting pot of American communities. And for many Indian-Americans, having a place to celebrate one of most important observances for Hindus is paramount.
“The moment we came in here, we realized that we needed to come for almost every occasion,” Pachauri said. “Diwali is the biggest celebration for a Hindu family — this is about good winning over evil and that’s why we celebrate.”
Diwali, also known as the Festival of Lights, marks the time of year when Hindus symbolically cast away evil and invite good and prosperity with the light of lamps and candles. Where darkness represents evil to Hindus, lighting the lamp is a metaphor for the attainment of knowledge and symbolizes the destruction of negative attitudes and behaviors.
Rani Kokate, a first-generation Indian American and co-organizer of Saturday’s Diwali mela, said the youngest generations within the community enjoy greater access to cultural traditions that she lacked growing up in an Alabama town where she and her parents were the only Indian family.
“We organize this event so that kids at a young age understand their religion and their festivals,” said Kokate, who is in her thirties and has three children. “Just like they know Christmas and Halloween, they should know their own cultures.”
Saturday’s celebration, also called a mela, included classic and religious music sung by children and adults in the temple community. Hindus prayed in the temple and received a blessing from a Hindu priest, or an archaka. Vendors sold traditional garments and other items typically used in the Hindu faith. When the sun set, there was a fireworks display to represent the significance of light in the darkness.
Dinesh Khosla is president of the temple and, along with his wife, Savita, was among the first 10 families to establish the temple in 1996. It relocated to Mahwah 10 years ago and boasts a membership of more than 2,000.
Saturday’s celebration attracted so many people that parking quickly became a problem at the temple, which sits right off of Route 202 on West Ramapo Avenue.
“I cannot tell you how thankful I am that our community has found this place as their home and they’re all coming,” Khosla said. “We wanted to build an institution and its becoming an institution now.”
Diwali is being observed more widely by a growing Indian American population in New Jersey. According the U.S. Census Bureau, an estimated 322,614 Asian Indians were living in the state in 2013. The last census showed a 39 percent and 28 percent increase in their population in Bergen and Passaic counties, respectively.
Not all Indian-Americans are Hindus, but most do celebrate Diwali, said Suryakant Shukla, who is chairman of the advisory council for Bergen County’s Division of Senior Services and works closely with the Indian community’s seniors.
The number of Hindus has also increased in the state. There were nearly 50,000 Hindus in New Jersey, according to a 2010 survey by the Association of Religious Data Archives. The number of congregations grew from 52 in 2000 to 94. In comparison to other religions, Hinduism represented 2 percent of religious observance in New Jersey, according to a 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center.
At Saturday’s celebration, children seemed to nearly outnumber adults. That was deliberate, said Darshana Tolani of Upper Saddle River, who has been bringing her son and daughter, Richa and Rishabh, both of primary school age, to Diwali celebrations since they were born.
“One of the toughest things living in this country is keeping them up to date with their culture,” Tolani said.
Savita Khosla, the wife of the temple’s president, said one of the most important benefits of the temple is to provide the younger generations with a sense of identity.
“Coming here, they realize that we all are one and that there are more kids like them,” she said. “It’s a sense of strength and a sense of community, and it’s really important for them.”