It’s about an Atlanta based swami named Selvam Sidhar, also called Dr. Commander Selvam (though his real name is apparently Annamalai?), who the reporter finds to be a fraud. There’s also a second part I would strongly recommend here, where the reporters went undercover to book a “beer bash and barbecue” in the Temple’s main hall, and Commander Selvam readily agreed to have meat and alcohol served on the premises. (That by itself seems like a big no no to me.) After the Fox reporters called the next day to “out” themselves, big banners reading “Hindus Only Allowed — No Trespassing” went up around the temple.
I’m not really sure what to think of this. On the one hand, the pattern of complaints from former employees, former Pandits, and patrons of the Hindu Temple of Georgia does strongly suggest that Commander Selvam is crooked.
But some of the footage they use, showing his house (heavily mortgaged), and his car, isn’t by itself an issue for me. If anything, the $900,000 mortgage on the house suggests he doesn’t actually have as much money in the bank as might be expected. Is this exposé overblown at times?
Ironically, there was an article on Rediff.com in 2005 about Commander Selvam before the temple opened, where he complained about his fellow Swamis, whom he described as follows: “They all come for money. If they only want to help people, why should they come to the US? They pretend to solve problems. If they could do that, why can’t they solve the problems in India?”
Finally, the reporter responsible for the recent story on Fox Atlanta, Randy Travis, has a blog post up, with 179 comments on the story. Most of them not worth reading, though on page 2 of the comments thread you see some readers tracking Commander Selvam’s various businesses in New York and California using publicly available information from those states. The businesses do look quite fishy. Someone who calls herself “vhpofusa” (!) also mentions the name of Commander Selvam’s H-1 sponsor in California.
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