BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, Chino HillsBAPS ਸ੍ਰੀ ਸਵਾਮੀਨਾਰਾਇਣ ਮੰਦਰ, ਚੀਨੋ ਹਿਲਜ਼

Beside the 71 Freeway in Chino Hills, California, a palace of pink sandstone and white marble climbs into five carved spires. The BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, inaugurated on 23 December 2012, is a traditional Hindu temple built to ancient design rules by the BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha, and it holds a world first that has nothing to do with carving: it is described as the first earthquake proof mandir in the world, a stone temple engineered to ride out a California earthquake on 40 base isolator units. Some 35,000 hand carved pieces of Italian Carrara marble and Indian pink sandstone, shaped by around 1,500 craftsmen in India, were assembled here by hundreds of volunteers. It is the Los Angeles area counterpart to the BAPS stone mandirs at Robbinsville and Delhi.

What is the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, Chino Hills?

The BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir is a Hindu temple complex at 15100 Fairfield Ranch Road in Chino Hills, in southwestern San Bernardino County, Southern California, United States. It belongs to the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, the Hindu fellowship that worships Swaminarayan with his successor Gunatitanand Swami, and its shrines honour Swaminarayan together with Radha Krishna, Sita Ram and Shiva Parvati. The mandir is open to visitors of all faiths. Around it, on a 20 acre site, stand a 91 foot lotus shaped reflection pond and fountain, a traditional wooden haveli style welcome centre with an exhibition, gift shop and cafe, a cultural centre, gymnasium and classrooms. Its design follows the Shilpa Shastra architectural treatises, in the North Indian tradition traced in Jugti's guide to Nagara temple architecture.

A fourteen year road: how was the mandir approved?

The mandir's roots reach back to 1977, when Pramukh Swami Maharaj, then spiritual leader of BAPS, first visited California and encouraged a small group of devotees to hold regular assemblies; a small centre opened in Whittier in 1984. In 1996 the growing congregation proposed a larger home with a traditional stone mandir, and after reviewing several parcels they settled, with their guru's guidance, on land beside the 71 Freeway in Chino Hills. Approval proved long and hard: the group first approached the city in 1998, and on 14 September 2004, after a meeting of seven and a half hours before a crowd of well over a thousand, the Chino Hills City Council voted 4 to 1 to deny the code change a traditionally built temple needed, amid residents' objections about traffic, height and change to the city's rural feel. A groundbreaking ceremony went ahead on 4 September 2005, and opinion slowly turned: in August 2011 the council voted unanimously to allow a traditional mandir with spires up to 78 feet, with 200 supporters signed up to speak. The finished mandir was consecrated and inaugurated over four days of festivities, culminating on 23 December 2012.

How is a stone temple made earthquake proof?

Chino Hills sits in earthquake country, and a temple built of stacked carved stone, intended by its builders to last 1,000 years, had to answer that fact with engineering rather than hope. The solution separates the mandir from the ground it stands on: the upper structure rests on 40 base isolator units, devices that absorb and dissipate seismic movement so the building above moves far less than the earth below. Beneath them, the foundation was designed as a mat three feet thick covering the whole footprint of the temple, reinforced with fibreglass rebar rather than steel. The same modern thinking runs through the campus's green systems: a solar power system of about 597 kilowatts generates electricity for the complex and is expected to save about 1,556 tons of carbon dioxide emissions over 25 years, a figure BAPS equates to planting some 62,244 trees, while 20 skylights bring in natural light. Ancient form, contemporary engineering: that pairing is the mandir's signature.

35,000 pieces of carved stone

Counted out, the mandir is a jigsaw on a monumental scale: 35,000 individual pieces of hand carved Italian Carrara marble and Indian pink sandstone, five pinnacles or shikhars, two large intricately carved domes, four balconies, 122 hand carved pillars and 129 archways, and 6,600 hand carved motifs and images telling stories of devotion and dedication and portraying figures from Hindu tradition. The carving was done in India by about 1,500 craftsmen, and the pieces were shipped to Chino Hills and fitted together. On site, about 900 volunteers, many of them second generation Indian American students, gave roughly 1.3 million hours of work to the construction. At the opening, Chino Hills Mayor Peter Rogers called the mandir a testament to the congregation's hard work and a place the city could be proud of for many generations. The carvings are delicate, and visitors are asked not to touch or lean against them.

Service beyond the sanctum

Like other BAPS mandirs, Chino Hills runs a programme of community service through BAPS Charities. Its health fairs, part of a network of more than 40 such fairs across North America, have offered free check ups and tests to hundreds of local participants, with blood drives alongside; its annual walkathons have raised money for beneficiaries including the American Cancer Society and local schools, among them a 5,000 dollar donation to Chino Hills High School students. During the COVID 19 pandemic the mandir joined the wider BAPS response: on 29 March 2020 its swamis took part in a special prayer broadcast shared by all six BAPS shikharbaddha mandirs in North America, and on 17 April 2021 the mandir hosted a vaccination drive with Walmart at which 450 people were vaccinated. The pattern matches the teaching the fellowship repeats: service to society is part of worship, not an extra to it.

Visiting the Chino Hills mandir

The mandir stands at 15100 Fairfield Ranch Road, Chino Hills, California 91709, reached from Highway 71 at the Soquel Canyon Parkway and Central Avenue exit. BAPS lists visitor hours of 9 in the morning to 7:30 in the evening daily, with tours meeting at the welcome centre and advance reservations needed for school and group visits. It is a working temple with a clear visitor code: register at the visitor centre, dress so shoulders, back and knees are covered, remove footwear before entering the mandir building, keep phones switched off inside, and take photographs only outside, since photography is not allowed in the upper mandir or the exhibition. Leave large bags in the car and food in the designated areas. Read it with its sister stone mandirs, Robbinsville in New Jersey and Akshardham in Delhi, and the three together show how one fellowship rebuilt India's classical stone temple tradition on three continents in a single generation.