History
As we celebrate the Silver Jubilee of our Association of United Hindu Jain Temples, it may be appropriate to explain how this organization was formed or started so everyone is aware of the time sequence. Hindu Community in metropolitan Washington DC has been participating intermittently with Inter Faith Conference (IFC) from 1980 in their annual functions usually with a dance or singing. In 1991-1992 Dr. Clark Lobenstine, then the Executive Director of IFC, asked me as SSVT Chair at that time and another devotee of ISKCON Temple, Sri Purushothaman Ji, to become members of the IFC as Hindus. We both felt it would be more appropriate to convene a meeting of the representatives of all the other Temples existing at that time in Metropolitan Washington DC region along with Chinmaya Mission and Gayathri Parivar.
So in 1992 the representatives of these organizations met at SSVT and then had a subsequent meeting at ISKCON Temple. After extensive discussions, it was decided that we form a group of all the Temples and Hindu Organizations under an umbrella organization called Association of United Hindu Temples. United Hindu Temples Association was admitted as an ‘observer member’ at an Assembly meeting of IFC on September 22, 1992.
In a subsequent meeting at SSVT, the group met with representatives of Jain Temple at their request, and it was decided to combine both under Association of United Hindu-Jain Temples. This was acceptable to IFC. UHJT was admitted as a full member of IFC at its Assembly meeting on September 23, 1993. SSVT was the first coordinator of UHJT from 1992. The first program conducted by UHJT with the participation of all its member organizations was Siva Rathri at SSVT in February 1992 followed by Summer Camp 1992 at Chinmaya Mission.
In 1993, UHJT members decided to celebrate Deepavali/ Diwali as a unified event by all the Temples and Hindu Organizations. We searched for a place for quite some time and found that the Montgomery College Auditorium at Rockville, MD would be good because we expected only a few hundred people at the most to attend the event. We publicized it as Diwali Mela. It was celebrated with Lakshmi and Ganesh Puja performed by priests of several temples, and dances and music by several artists and representatives. Lo and behold, on that day people started arriving as soon as we opened the doors, and the Montgomery College venue was overflowing with people and the parking lot was full!! Crowds obviously exceeded our wildest expectations!! We had planned that we will give “Laddu Prasad” one per person but we had to settle for one packet per car as they drive out of the parking lot. Devotees who had come were so happy and were full of praise for the Mela!
