Malibu Hindu Temple

The Lord enshrined in the upper temple at Malibu is Sri Venkateswara, the great deity of Tirumala, and his story is the story of the Seven Hills of Tirumala, the holiest of the Vaishnava shrines of the south. In the tradition of his sthala purana, Venkateswara is Vishnu himself, come down to the hill of Venkata to abide through the age of Kali and to grant the sight of the divine to all who come to him, when the older forms of grace have grown hard for the world to reach.

The tradition tells that Vishnu, as Srinivasa, came to dwell on the Venkata hill, and that there he was wedded to Padmavati, the daughter of the land, in a marriage of great splendour. To meet the cost of that wedding the Lord is said to have taken a loan from Kubera, the lord of wealth, and it is held that he stands upon the hill still, receiving the offerings of his devotees toward the debt he took for love, so that the giving of the pilgrims to Venkateswara is woven into the very story of the Lord. He is Balaji, the Lord of the Seven Hills, dark of form and crowned, standing in the sanctum of Tirumala with his consorts, the deity to whom more pilgrims come, and more is given, than to almost any shrine upon the earth.

Venkateswara is held to be the Lord of the Kali age above all, the form in which Vishnu makes himself near and reachable to a world grown distant from the older ways. The name of the hill, Venkata, is read in the tradition as that which burns away sins, and to come to the Lord of Venkata is held to be release from the burdens the devotee carries. He is worshipped in the strict Agamic manner, awakened each morning with the Suprabhatam, bathed, adorned, offered, and shown to his devotees in the darshan that is the heart of his worship.

Upon the same hillside, in the lower temple, Shiva is enshrined, the great Lord of the Shaivas, so that the sacred site holds both the Lord of Tirumala and the Lord of the ascetics, and the Hindus of the region may worship both at the one place. When the Hindu community of Los Angeles raised its temple in the Santa Monica Mountains, it was Venkateswara it enshrined as the presiding deity, brought in the traditional manner to a canyon hillside near Malibu. The tradition holds that the deity, once consecrated in the prescribed rites by the sthapatis and priests, is truly present in the sanctum, so that the Lord of the Seven Hills is held to dwell at Malibu as he dwells at Tirumala, near to the devotees who have carried his worship across the world, the great deity of the south made present in the new land.

The history of the Malibu Hindu Temple belongs to the modern story of Hinduism in the United States. Through the later twentieth century, as migration from India and the wider subcontinent to America grew after the reform of the immigration law, a Hindu community took root in Los Angeles, and with it the wish for a temple of its own, built and consecrated to the tradition rather than improvised.

The community came together as the Hindu Temple Society of Southern California and resolved to raise a temple to Venkateswara, the Lord of Tirumala, the deity to whom the largest devotion of the south is given, with a temple to Shiva alongside so that the sacred site would serve the whole community. Land was found in the Santa Monica Mountains near Malibu, in the canyon country of western Los Angeles County, a wooded hillside that answered in the new land to the hill-shrine of Tirumala. There the temple was built in the traditional South Indian Dravidian manner, with sthapatis and priests brought from the south of India to raise its gopuram towers and sanctums and to consecrate the deities in the prescribed rites.

The temple opened in 1981, its main upper temple dedicated to Sri Venkateswara and a lower temple upon the hillside to Shiva, and from that opening it grew across the decades. The buildings and facilities of the complex were expanded to serve a growing community, the sanctums adorned and the towers raised in traditional form, and the temple's calendar of worship deepened, with the great annual Brahmotsavam and the round of Vaishnava, Shaiva and pan-Hindu festivals drawing ever larger numbers. Renovations and re-consecrations marked the passage of the years, as is the way of a living temple.

Across these decades the Malibu Hindu Temple became a leading South Indian temple of Los Angeles and Southern California and a major centre for the Hindu community of the region, the place where its festivals are kept, its weddings, upanayanas and samskaras performed, and its tradition carried to a new generation born far from the temples of the homeland. It stands today as the Lord of the Seven Hills made present in the mountains above Malibu, the great deity of the south enshrined for the devotees who have carried his worship across the world to the coast of California.