The Hindu Temple of Toledo has always been a hub of both faith and culture. So it makes sense that it would incorporate both in a celebration of its 30th anniversary on Saturday.

“The temple is religious, it’s our place of worship,” Lakshmi Dalwalla, this year’s temple president, said. “But more than that, since we are so far away from our home country of India, it’s also a place for social activities, not just religious activities. It’s social, cultural, spiritual — it’s almost like a one-stop shop for everything for our Indian families here.”

“It’s everything under one roof,” she said. “It satisfies all our needs.”

The anniversary events this weekend are set to reflect that multi-faceted role, beginning with ritual chants, prayers and offerings and continuing into a secular celebration of Indian Independence Day. Indian Christians and Indian Muslims are invited and expected to attend, a reflection of the cross-religious relationships that have long characterized the temple.

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There will also be lunch. Ms. Dalwalla said food is a staple at temple gatherings.

Their 30th anniversary comes as an opportunity to reflect on a religious and cultural community that was a part of the fabric of the city long before the opening of the Hindu Temple of Toledo in Sylvania in 1989. Immigrants who began arriving in Toledo in the early 1960s set up the India Association of Toledo by 1964, according to an account written by a past temple president that was published in The Blade in 1991. By the 1970s, their community was growing as medical students were arriving for residencies with the former Medical College of Ohio, recalled Aji Jaggi, who was the secretary of the temple’s founding executive board. 

“At that time, most of the community wanted a cultural center, just a cultural center,” Mr. Jaggi said in an interview. “We were kind of a break-away from that. We said we needed religious center, as well as cultural.” 

Indian Hindus incorporated the Hindu Temple of Toledo in 1981, a first step toward a house of worship comparable to those that were already accessible in the area for Indian Christians and Muslims. (The country’s religious breakdown is about 80.5 percent Hindu, 13.4 percent Muslim, 2.3 percent Christian and 1.9 percent Sikh, according to the most recent census data available.) They always intended for the temple to cross religious lines as a cultural center, too.  

They purchased land in 1983, began construction in 1988 and inaugurated the temple on Aug. 15, 1989.

Members told reporters at the time that they hoped the temple would help them better share their heritage and their religion with their children. As the community’s numbers and lived experiences have shifted since then — there are notably more second- and third-generation Indian-Americans than there were in the 1960s or even 1980s — Ms. Dalwalla said it continues to serve that generational role.

She thinks about her own daughter, now a college sophomore, who grew up at the temple.

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“It’s almost effortless, thanks to this temple,” she said. “It’s a big luxury for people living in this area. It’s such a small city, and yet we have this beautiful structure and the whole organization that is geared toward serving the Indian community.”

Today, the Hindu Temple of Toledo is a hub for some 450 to 500 families, plus another 200 or so students from the University of Toledo and Bowling Green State University. As the only Hindu house of worship in the region, it draws a membership from throughout northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan, both for weekly religious services and for holidays like Diwali or Holi.

The Hindu Temple also serves the spiritual needs of a small local community of Jains. Among the murtis, or idols, in the shrine area of the temple is a representative of Jainism.

Mohini Billade is a recent graduate of the University of Toledo. She said she’s gone to the Hindu Temple regularly since she moved to the area two years ago to pursue a master’s degree in computer science and engineering. The temple community is engaged with the Indian Students Cultural Organization at UT, she said, and her campus community is active at the temple.

“We’re so far away from our own families,” Ms. Billade, who is from Maharashtra, India, said. “When interact with the people at the temple, the Indian community, it feels like home. It feels like we have our own people around. It’s nice to be there.”

Among her favorites religious festival to celebrate with the community is the Ganesh Puja. A 10-day festival that usually falls in August or September, it’s celebrated for one day on campus and for 10 at the temple.

Pandit Anant Dixit currently serves as the spiritual leader of the local temple. The Hindu Temple brought on its first full-time priest in 1993.

In thinking back to the community’s earliest days, when there were just five or six founding families and maybe 15 college students, Ms. Dalwalla, who moved to the area as a doctoral student in 1994, noted a significant growth in size and scope.

She said their increased numbers have helped them expand what they do, from organizing celebrations for holy days to the weekly lunches they serve after services on Sundays. These see an average of 150 people socializing over home-cooked meals each week.

There are also meditation classes and discussions of holy texts weekly. There’s a youth group with an active outreach. And the Sunday school, where children learn about religion and culture, remains popular among families.

With a more firmly established community than they had 30 years ago, the temple community is also able to reach out to a greater degree to the broader community, Ms. Dalwalla said.

“Now that we have reached a comfortable size, we can think about how we can help the larger Toledo community,” she said. “That’s something that’s been happening over the past few years.”

The Hindu Temple is active in the MultiFaith Council of Northwest Ohio. It hosted the first-ever MultiFaith Banquet in 2001. Ms. Dalwalla said the annual Festival of India is another form of outreach. While they schedule their annual festival to mark the anniversary of their temple, which was dedicated on Indian Independence Day, Aug. 15, in 1989, it’s always been community-minded.

“We wanted to share our culture, and show them a glimpse of India,” she said. “We wanted to basically share our culture and food and fun and the music and the dance with the rest of the people living in the Toledo area. And it’s been quite popular in the last 30 years.”

Since organizers moved the location of the festival from the temple to Centennial Terrace, they’ve seen upward of 5,000 people in attendance.

The Hindu Temple of Toledo hosted its Festival of India last weekend. The 30th Anniversary Lakshmi Narayan Puja and Homan and Independence Day Celebration, which is more geared toward the temple community, begins at 9 a.m. Saturday at the Hindu Temple of Toledo, 4336 King Rd., Sylvania. The public is welcome.

First Published August 17, 2019, 11:00 a.m.