By Prashanth Lakhihal
India Tribune, September 6, 2003

New York: In a landmark judgement that could impact how temples are managed in the United States, a New York appellate court has ordered fresh elections to the Board of Trustees of the Hindu Temple Society of North America, which governs the Ganesha temple in Flushing, Queens.

Upholding the removal of the Board Trustees under the New York law, the Appellate Division, Second Department, asked the Queens Supreme Court to appoint a referee to "direct and oversee a reorganization meeting of the Society for the purpose of electing a new Board."

The court reinstated members' rights in electing the management of the 33-year old temple as it was stated in the original 1970 bylaws. The Appellate Division said no evidence was presented establishing that any of the current Trustees was legally elected; thus, "those Trustees acquired no legal right to such offices."

Dr. Uma Mysorekar, president of the Society, told India Tribune over the phone that the Board may decide to appeal only to show the public that the basis of the judgement - the 1970 bylaws - wasn't strong enough.

"We never adopted the 1970 bylaws, based on which the current judgement was made. We gave this copy of the bylaw to the Internal Revenue Service only to get a tax-exempt status," asserted Mysorekar.

On the other hand, the petitioners are ecstatic. "We are very happy that our stand has been vindicated," said Sambasiva Rao Venigalla, one of the six petitioners who were agitating for what they say as bringing democratic norms to the temple management.

Krishnan Chittur, the attorney for the six petitioners who are long-standing devotees at the temple, said, "This decision reinstates elementary democracy to the oldest Hindu temple in the US. This phenomenal decision is a vindication to the decade-long agitation against converting a temple into a private fiefdom of one or two individuals."

The Ganesha temple at Flushing is among the largest in the United States with assets purportedly in excess of $11 million and annual gross revenues of $2.5 million.

  "Although the temple was built to its current level through the efforts, funds and sacrifices of thousands of Hindu devotees over the past three decades, it has never held any elections, and has been run by a self-appointed Board of Trustees," alleged Krishnamurthy Aiyer, a petitioner who says he has donated thousands of dollars to the temple over the years.

Aiyer and the other five petitioners - Venigalla, Kattinger V. Rao, Anand Mohan, Venkaih Dama and Nehru E. Cherukupalli - contend that through the decades, the temple trustees had consistently encouraged and invited Hindus to become members. Many paid $1,501 for life membership and others took annually renewable membership. The temple raised funds from the public on the basis of its growing membership. In filings with the SEC in 1997 for raising $1.6 million of general obligation bonds, the trustees allegedly represented that the temple has over 14,500 members in the first five months of 1997.

The temple authorities indulged in what attorney Chitoor terms as "legal chickenry," when it told the court in the current Venigalla vs. Alagappan case that the temple was a "no member" organization. It produced records purportedly showing a total of two members each in 1995 and 1996, and 14 in 1997.

The temple's Board has allegedly 'revised' the bylaws "unilaterally" to perpetuate themselves in office (including appointing some of themselves as 'Life Trustees'), arrogating to themselves increasing power over the Society's affairs and management, and excluding members' participation, the petitioners said.

The petitioners said, in separate interviews with India Tribune, that they collected 700 signatures in favor of holding elections in 1999. Later, they said the Board refused their request to disclose financial accounts or the registrar of members. The New York Attorney General's office finally intervened in favor of the petitioners, they added."

All efforts to bring transparency and democracy into the temple operation were thwarted. In turn, the temple Trustees slowly eroded the membership rights and in 2001 amended the bylaws so as to give spectator status to the members," said Chittur.

Mysorekar, who is accused of road rolling other members' opinion and who runs the temple with an iron fist, dismissed the allegations of a lack of transparence or accountability in the temple management. "Its not a political office we are holding. If this was a salaried office, they have a right to blame. But ours is a voluntary service to the God. Anybody can become the temple trustee, provided he or she picks up the broom and serves the God," she said.

The petitioners say they resorted to the courts as the last resort. They further assert that their stand were vindicated when the Queens Supreme Court said the bylaw amendments made from 1978 to 2002 were invalid for two reasons: first, they deprived all members of voting rights and second, New York law limited the size of the board to seven, whereas the temple board had 19 trustees.

Meanwhile, the Board amended the by-laws once again. The 19 trustees apparently decided amongst themselves - with no notice to anyone else - on which seven of them will stay and which 12 will go in order to comply with the Queens Supreme Court order. In addition, the Board eliminated all membership rights of everyone other than themselves, amending the bylaws to provide simply that trustees, i.e. respondents, were the only members of the Society. Those amendments led once again to another legal proceeding, which was filed by V M Gandhi of New York Gold and is pending before the Supreme court in Queens.

On appeal, the Second Department held that the 1970 bylaws, whose copies were obtained from the Internal Revenue Service by the petitioners, had never been lawfully amended. "It is undisputed that since the adoption of the 1970 bylaws, the Boar of Trustees, acting alone purported to adopt and amend subsequent by-laws beginning in 1978 and continuing through 2002. There is no evidence in the record that the required procedures were ever followed to amend the 1970 by-laws," the order stated.

Chittur said this landmark decision would set a precedent for all the temples in the US to observe the laws more carefully. And, the laws are clear that members have voting rights. "Members should no longer be ignored? its as simple as that," he quipped.

Brushing aside the court judgement as "least of our problems," Mysorekar said, "Our most important goal is to grow this institution (Ganesha temple) as a place of worship, culture and philosophy-not to make it a piece of museum."

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