A prominent Hindu temple in Queens plans to file a motion in federal court today accusing a state judge of violating the separation of church and state by intervening in the temple's affairs.
The motion is the latest step in a growing legal struggle at the Hindu Temple Society of North America that is now being followed by Hindus throughout the country.
The motion, to be filed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, seeks to stop the state courts from forcing the temple to hold elections for its board of trustees. A state appellate panel ordered the elections a year ago, a bitter defeat for the temple's current 11-member board and a victory for the group of six disaffected members who had filed suit to demand the elections.
"We're trying to prevent the court from imposing a non-Hindu form of control on the largest Hindu temple in America," said Roman Storzer, a lawyer with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit law firm based in Washington that is representing the board of trustees.
Temple elections are unheard of in India, but they have become common in this country.
Krishnan Chittur, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said that the trustees' constitutional claims were groundless and that the court was merely trying to ensure that the temple is managed in a democratic way. Last week he filed a lawsuit against the trustees, seeking to recover the expenses they have cost the temple, which he estimates at $10 million.
Over the past year the dispute has grown more vitriolic. The judge, Joseph G. Golia of State Supreme Court in Queens, has expressed frustration with what he calls the obstructionist behavior of the trustees, and in June, he hinted that he might refer the case to the Queens district attorney's office to see if the trustees had some corrupt motive for their positions.
The trustees call Justice Golia's hint a crude effort to intimidate them. They say they have cooperated fully with him and have volunteered their financial information. They also say Justice Golia and the referee he appointed to oversee the elections, a Long Island lawyer named Anthony Piacentini, are consistently siding with the six plaintiffs against the temple's current leadership.
The plaintiffs say the lawsuit originated as an effort to dislodge Dr. Uma Mysorekar, the president of the temple, a magnificent gray-towered sanctuary on Bowne Street in Flushing. At issue is the temple's management, including decisions about its community center, school and canteen.
Mr. Piacentini, the trustees say, is in effect making decisions about how the temple should be run and has indicated that he will cast the deciding vote on such basic religious issues as who qualifies as a Hindu. Mr. Piacentini has the tie-breaking vote on a management council he has created with representatives from each side.
Those efforts amount to an invasion of religious terrain by the state, the trustees say.
Mr. Piacentini did not return phone calls yesterday.
Until recently, many of the temple's 20,000 devotees were unaware of the legal struggle, but Indian newspapers are covering it heavily, and the members are taking notice.
"It has hurt us personally," Dr. Mysorekar said, "and it threatens to hurt the institution."