Beyond Dichotomies: The Secular and Religious Interplay at the Swaminarayan Hindu Temple Inauguration in the USA

This paper examines the interplay between the secular and religious dimensions of the "Festival of Inspirations" at the Swaminarayan Hindu temple, Akshardham, in NJ, USA. As the largest Hindu temple in the Western hemisphere, Akshardham epitomizes Hindu art, architecture, culture, spirituality, and modern secular facets. Utilizing textual, media, and ethnographic research, this paper illustrates not only the mutual influence of the religious and secular but also the fluid and inseparable nature of these categories, and argues for the theoretical integration of these two categories. It contends that reshaping religious practices to address secular concerns and adapt to changing facets of modernity brings about everyday experiences among practitioners that are simultaneously immanent and transcendent, personal and political. Its data-driven arguments also raise crucial questions within the broader discourse on secularism and secularization, and address them from within the perspective of treating the secular and the religious as fundamentally inseparable theoretical categories.