BAPS, Worker Exploitation, and the Human Cost of Akshardham

No Sacred Space Should Be Built on Disposable Lives

Hindus for Human Rights calls on BAPS to provide compensation and long-term medical support to the workers who helped build BAPS Swaminarayan Akshardham in Robbinsville, New Jersey, the largest modern Hindu temple outside India. 

This call follows The Guardian’s latest investigation, which reports that more than 200 workers, many of them Dalit artisans brought from India, alleged 90-hour work weeks, pay as low as $1.20 an hour, inadequate protective equipment, medical neglect, and being sent back to India when they became ill. The report also states that at least two workers later died from silicosis, an irreversible lung disease caused by inhaling fine stone dust, and that the civil case against BAPS is now moving forward.

From the beginning of this shameful saga, Hindus for Human Rights has supported a full investigation into these allegations and accountability for those responsible. Although the Trump Department of Justice closed its criminal investigation without charges in September 2025, the civil case continues. 

This case also points to a broader labor and public-health crisis in Rajasthan’s temple-stone industry: reporting from Pindwara in Sirohi district, a major temple-building hub, describes roughly 15,000 laborers in the industry and cites local health officials saying more than 1,650 temple-building workers there have died after contracting silicosis.

We stand with Dalit Solidarity Forum USA, with the workers, and with the families seeking justice. DSF’s current statement calls for accountability for more than 200 workers from marginalized communities and warns against portraying BAPS as the victim while workers continue to seek redress.

We reject any attempt to hide exploitation behind the language of seva. There is nothing sacred about dangerous labor without safety, fair pay, rest, medical care, or dignity. A mandir cannot stand as a symbol of devotion if the people who built it were denied safety, dignity, and care.

We also reject efforts to push past these allegations by retreating into narrow official claims about caste inclusion or by treating the case as merely another episode of anti-Hindu provocation. When HAF and its leadership respond with flippant sarcasm or performative opposition to caste discrimination while covering for a temple regime built through the labor of caste-oppressed workers treated as disposable—brushing past allegations of brutal labor conditions, medical neglect, and death—they are not defending Hinduism, they are defending a casteist logic they refuse to own. Accountability is not anti-Hindu. It is the minimum that dharma demands. 

We call on BAPS to cooperate fully with the civil process and ensure that every worker involved in building Hindu institutions is treated with full dignity, protection, and fairness. We reject the reproduction of caste oppression on American soil and refuse any vision of Hindu life in the United States that depends on treating some workers as expendable.