When Saroj Sharma first moved to North Carolina in 1972, there were no places for her to pray. No temples she could go to for darshan or arti, religious practices central to Hinduism. No places to simply gather and talk with other Hindu or Indian people who lived in the area.
Today, that’s all changed. There are more than a dozen Hindu places of worship (or mandirs) across the Triangle, many concentrated in Western Wake County. Each follows its own tradition: from a large temple for Swaminarayan tucked along Aviation Parkway in Morrisville to a beautiful, intricate temple for Venkateswara in Cary, the largest in the state.
This week, priests, volunteers, and congregants at each temple are all busy preparing for Diwali, one of the largest and most universal Hindu festivals. The five-day celebration, this year spanning November 6-10, is also celebrated by Jains, Sikhs, and some Buddhists, and celebrated widely across India and Asia. In recent years, it has also become a major festival in Western Wake County.
But 50 years ago, it was a different story. Many of the mandirs can trace their history back to The Hindu Society of North Carolina (HSNC), co-founded by Saroj in 1976. For the last 50 years, Saroj and her husband Ganga Dhar Sharma have brought the Hindu community together, guiding many through the process of opening their own Hindu organizations and centers of worship.
Ganga Dhar died earlier this year at age 100, just before The Hindu Society of North Carolina celebrated the anniversary of its founding. But in the months since, Saroj has continued to visit HSNC every morning, for prayer services and bhog, an offering of food for the gods. And, most importantly, to be with the people who are family to her.
The Light That Grew
Diwali itself is “basically celebrating, you know, light over darkness, goodness over evil, knowledge over ignorance,” said Viren Patel, an outreach volunteer at the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, off Aviation Parkway in Morrisville.
The festival is also about new beginnings, according to Mahesh Verma, a newer member and active volunteer with The Hindu Society of North Carolina (HSNC). For the Gujarati people, from a region in western India, the New Year falls the day after Diwali, on November 10, according to the Hindu lunar calendar.
Verma and others perform a variety of traditions throughout the festival, mostly for “wealth, health, and prosperity,” he said. Families clean their home, “making it ready for new things,” he added. People also make fresh food and buy new clothes.
“When we were young, that was the time to get a new dress,” said Suvas Shah, treasurer and longtime member of HSNC.
At the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, Patel expects more than 15,000 items of food to be made during the festival: a way for families, including children, to show devotion to God. A mountain of food will be piled in the temple, including sweets like chocolate and motichoor laddu, a sweet ball of chickpea flour fried and soaked in sugar syrup.
Worship of Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth and prosperity, is also a significant part of the festival. Silver coins are often offered—Verma has a set he brought over from India that goes back seven generations, he said. Businessmen open new account books.
The lighting of lanterns is perhaps the most pervasive tradition, however. And in Western Wake County, the Indian and Hindu community is certainly creating light where there was once only darkness.
Fifty years ago, The Hindu Society of North Carolina started as only about a dozen people meeting in Saroj’s home for worship. Once or twice a month, they would get together for religious study, group prayer, and song. Over the years, the group grew, and soon people were asking the Sharma couple about forming an organization, Saroj said.
In 1976, 20 or so people gathered at the Sharma home and agreed to create The Hindu Society of North Carolina, a nonprofit religious organization. Ganga Dhar Sharma became HSNC’s first president, and continued to organize and lead gatherings.
As membership grew from 20 to 50 to 100, gatherings moved from homes to rented halls, and eventually to an old church near Pullen Park in Raleigh. The Sharma couple, along with three or four other families, put up their own homes as collateral to buy that first property, mortgaging their houses to secure a bank loan.
A few years later, they did the same thing to secure property in Morrisville and build the first Hindu temple in the Triangle. By that point, hundreds of people were coming together for religious festivals.
When asked why it was so important to build that first temple, Saroj talked about it being “necessary,” saying that “growing the community, we need[ed] a place. Because then anytime, people can come.”
“When you are happy, you need some people,” Saroj added. “When you sorrow, you need some people. … [At the temple], they worship when they are happy. They feel sorrow, they can also pray to God.”
A Found Family
In the main hall of HSNC, the scent of incense is thick and heady. Large bells ring out as people come and go, some bending down to touch the threshold of the door as they enter. Before entering the temple proper, people quickly slip off their shoes, an instinctive, ingrained habit to both maintain the cleanliness of the temple and mark the transition from daily life into a sacred space.
Inside, colorful statues of the gods, or murtis, draw the eye, decorated in shining red and gold. There’s a place for Vishnu, Brahma, Shiva, Hanuman, Rama, and many others, a relatively unusual sight.
When HSNC was founded, the Hindu community wasn’t big enough to create temples for each god, as are commonly found across India, said Shah. So the temple off Aviation Parkway became a place where everyone could worship, with gods for each tradition.
“I have 13 gods,” Saroj said with a smile. “And we follow all together.”
As people come and go, priests recite mantras, steady, chanting songs with a few rising and falling notes. Here, Saroj is known as “Auntie,” like Ganga Dhar was once known as “Uncle.”
Together, Ganga Dhar and Saroj watched hundreds of children grow up, teaching many Hindi. HSNC is a home to her, Saroj said, and the people there are her family.
“Her pride is like a mother, because she’s seen the community grow as the mother to everybody over here,” said Verma.
“She’s our icon,” said Morrisville Councilmember Satish Garimella, also a member of HSNC. Garimella is close to the Sharma family, and recalled having tea with Ganga Dhar just a few days before his death.
For decades, Ganga Dhar served as a priest to the Hindu community, presiding over weddings, births, and funerals. He married literally thousands of couples, Saroj said. In some cases, he would marry one couple and later officiate the weddings of their children.
“Perhaps his greatest contribution to the community came from thousands of ceremonies and pujas he presided over,” his obituary said, “giving blessings via marriages, childbirths, new homes or business ventures and equally sharing comfort and faith with families during times of distress, angst and tragedy.”
Ganga Dhar administered Garimella’s oath of office when he was first elected, he told The Line. It was the first swearing-in ceremony in Morrisville to use the Bhagavad Gita, a central text for Hinduism, Garimella added.
Ganga Dhar’s passing was recognized by hundreds across the Indian community, including other public officials like N.C. Senator Jay Chaudhuri, who credited the couple for creating what grew into “a hub for thousands of Indian Americans who now call Morrisville and the Triangle home.”
How Diwali Became a Growing Part of Western Wake’s Community Fabric
In the past 20 years, the Indian population in Wake County has nearly quintupled, growing from around 17,000 in 2010 to more than 80,000 in 2025, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
About 70% of people of Indian descent currently living in Wake County call Cary, Apex, or Morrisville home, according to the data. Detailed demographic information is not available for earlier years, including the 1970s or 1980s.
Cultural events celebrating the holiday were held last month. The towns of Morrisville and Cary sponsored or co-hosted various events in October—including the Hum Sub Diwali festival, which drew tens of thousands of people to Koka Booth Amphitheatre.
The Hum Sub Diwali festival has been growing for more than 20 years, but this was the first year the town of Cary hosted its own Diwali festival in Downtown Cary Park, said Cary Town Councilmember Sarika Bansal.
“Having this small celebration in this area gives us a cozy feeling, from a Cary perspective, that we hear you, we see you, and we appreciate you,” Bansal said.
At the same time, it was “a packed house,” she added. “There were 1,000 people in the park. It was a little bit chilly towards the end, but people were still there. They were dancing. They were having fun.”
Places like Fuquay-Varina and Holly Springs, too, have seen a big influx of Indian Americans in recent years, according to Garimella. As Wake County’s overall population continues to boom, Indian Americans, like many others, are moving into the area from across the country.
The county’s school system is a big attraction, Garimella and Bansal each noted. But the local community, with plenty of Indian food, social events, and places of worship, is also a pro, Garimella said.
The community here is more of a melting pot than anything else, he added—a blend of India’s many different cultural and religious traditions. That’s why HSNC, which is not affiliated with any particular region, is “the motherboard, because it carries a lot of communities,” Garimella said.
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