Saiva Siddhanta Church is a spiritual institution and identifies itself with the Śaivite Hindu religion. It is based on the precepts of the Nandinatha Sampradaya, and traces its origins to a two-thousand-year-old lineage of the Kailāsa Paramparā Gurus.
The Church was founded in 1949 by Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, a Saiva Hindu guru from the United States.[1] The name of the Church is from the Sanskrit language and could be roughly rendered in English as "The Church of God Śiva's Revealed Truth." The Saiva Siddhanta Church was incorporated under the laws of the United States of America in the State of California on December 30, 1957, and received recognition of its US Internal Revenue tax exempt status as a church on February 12, 1962. Among America’s oldest Hindu institutions, it established its international headquarters at Kauai Aadheenam, also known as Kauai's Hindu Monastery, on Kauai, Hawaii, on February 5, 1970.[2] While many of the members of Saiva Siddhanta Church living in the West are converts to Hinduism, more than 85% of the global membership are born Hindus living, mostly, in Mauritius, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Sri Lanka and South Africa. The Church is currently constructing the Iraivan Temple on Kauai.
The current head of the Church is Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami.
Referring to the Iraivan Temple, New York Times reporter Michelle Kayal wrote:[3]
This looks like India, but it is the Hawaiian island of Kauai, where members of the Saiva Siddhanta Church are erecting a white granite temple to the Hindu god Siva that fulfills the vision of their guru and is intended to last 1,000 years. For this act of devotion, every single piece of stone -- 1,600 tons in all -- is being pulled from the earth by hand in India and carved into intricately detailed blocks using nothing but hammer and iron chisel.
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