Reconstructed Concord Hindu temple welcomes thousands to sacred celebrations

CONCORD — The Hindu Shiva Murugan Temple stands resplendent, adorned by a mosaic of art, culture and spirituality.

Inside, chants of vedic mantras echo alongside traditional songs from barrel-shaped Thavil drums and reeded nagaswaram instruments. Shivacharyas, or Hindu spiritual leaders, distribute energizing Kalasa Puja holy water, perform fire rituals called homas and lead other hours-long sacred Hindu rituals to invoke divine energy and sanctify the space.

Stylized deities tower from the four-story structure’s gilded facade, adorned in shades of osage orange, wood violet, pink moment and dynamic blue. A statue of the temple’s namesake — Murugan, a Hindu god of war — gleams from the rooftop, accompanied by his peacock poised at his side, representing divine power, beauty, and grace.

Thousands of devotees, spiritual leaders and community members gathered May 9 to consecrate their new 56,154-square-foot home of worship in an extravagant, multi-day Kumbabishekam Ceremony. After nearly 70 years in the Bay Area — more than half anchored in Concord — the grand re-opening breathed new life into the community that formed one of the first Hindu temples for traditional worship in the U.S.

It took nearly a decade of planning, five years of construction and a $5 million endowment to complete the technicolor transformation at 1803 2nd St., built less than a half-mile from Todos Santos Plaza, east of the Port Chicago Highway.

The result is the first-ever Panchavarna temple in the nation – a rare, five-color design rooted in ancient Hindu traditions, often found in South Indian temples to symbolize divine energies and cosmic balance. It was rebuilt in the Chola architectural style of Tamil Nadu, under the guidance of Kalaichemmal Dr. K. Dakshinamoorthy, a traditional architect, or Sthapati, from India, and Sharad Lal, a local architect.

The historic structure will take over operations from the former Concord Hindu Temple next door, which has provided a cornerstone of spiritual and cultural enrichment since May 1987.

But the temple’s history dates back even further, when an American-born Hindu guru, Gurudeva Sri Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, formed what was then known as the Palaniswami Sivan Temple in a former San Francisco retail outlet in 1957. Gurudeva, who was born in 1927 in Oakland, eventually relocated the temple to the Concord Boulevard site — taking over a church previously filled by Lutheran and Greek Orthodox congregations.

By 2010, the temple’s leaders and owners had dreamt up the vision for the revamped place of worship that stands today, which ultimately required purchasing two adjacent properties and years of design approvals before the Concord City Council approved a building permit in May 2019.

The old temple building is set to be demolished and converted into parking and landscaping for the new structure — expansion that community members say underscores the Hindu Shiva Murugan Temple’s role in preserving Tamil and Hindu traditions, while fostering cultural unity in the East Bay.

“After I came to the Bay Area in 1973, the thing I missed was the spiritual and cultural connections from back home,” said Partha Parthasarathy, who volunteers on the organization’s steering committee, while reflecting on his upbringing in India. “This is more than just the temple.”

The Kumbabishekam Ceremony on May 9 was one of several events celebrating the newly reconstructed temple. Many more are planned in the coming days.