A Hindu organization in Hawaii that spent the last 22 years worshiping the healing stone of Wahiawa were dissapointed that the stone has been removed by its traditional worshippers. The stone had been seen as sacred by two distinct religious cultures, one Hindu and the other traditional Hawaiian. Over the years the Hindu devotees built a temple for the sacred stone and observed Hindu worship rituals with large groups of devotees.
In recent years the traditional Hawaiian worshipers became unhappy with the Hindu rituals, which they felt offended the sacred stone. They wanted the stone to be left in the open, so that the sun and rain would fall on it, but Hindus built a temple, covering it from the sky. Also they objected to the Hindu’s worship ritual of abhishekam, where diferent liquids such as milk and yoghurt are poured over the sacred stone.
At one point a compromise had been made between the two religious groups, but now that seems to have come to an end. The traditional Hawaiian worshippers have taken the stone away from the land it had been on for decades. The move happened quite suddenly, as people holding the lease on the land received permission from the land owners to relocate the sacred stone to another location. It appears the reason is because they did not like the Hindu rituals being used to worship the sacred stone.
