A new report by the Reactionary International research consortium argues that the Hindu organisation BAPS has grown wealthier and more politically connected since an FBI raid on its New Jersey temple site in 2021, while a civil lawsuit brought by rescued workers has stalled. BAPS denies wrongdoing, and the allegations have not been tested at trial.
The raid, the lawsuit and a stalled case
The report, Behind BAPS, was first published in June 2026 on behindbaps.com and republished by the consortium, which was launched in 2024 by Progressive International, CLACSO and transform! europe. It is an advocacy research project rather than a neutral newsroom, and its authors are not named.
Its starting point is well documented. In May 2021 the FBI raided a BAPS temple construction site in Robbinsville, New Jersey, and about one hundred workers were taken from conditions the report calls exploitative. The raid and the workers’ allegations were reported by the New York Times that month. Rescued workers then filed a civil suit alleging forced labour, trafficking, immigration fraud, wage theft and caste discrimination. They say they worked more than twelve hours a day, seven days a week, for about US$1.20 an hour. All are Dalit or Adivasi.
Five years on, the report says, nothing has been resolved. Twelve plaintiffs withdrew in 2023, though the majority remain. In September 2025 BAPS announced that the US investigation had been closed, a claim reported widely in India. The report notes that the news surfaced through BAPS lawyers’ court filings rather than a Justice Department statement. BAPS then moved to have the civil case dismissed, which the plaintiffs oppose.
Political access on two continents
A large part of the report documents how closely BAPS keeps company with elected officials. It counts more than forty current and former US representatives at the October 2023 inauguration of the Robbinsville temple, as publicised by BAPS, among them Steny Hoyer, Frank Pallone, Raja Krishnamoorthi and Ro Khanna.
BAPS’s political action committee, BAPS Public Affairs, was set up in 2020 and, according to the report, has given more than US$135,000 to candidates of both parties, slightly more to Republicans. After the 2024 election the organisation hosted Tulsi Gabbard at Robbinsville and Vice President JD Vance at its Delhi temple.
In India, the report tallies at least seven publicised meetings between BAPS leaders and Prime Minister Narendra Modi since the raid, including one in April 2025. The authors argue the access is cultivated to be noticed and to shore up BAPS’s standing. The report does not allege that any official acted improperly, and attending a temple event is routine for politicians.
Money and a web of entities
The authors then turned to public records. Using Form 990 filings on ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer, they estimate that three BAPS-linked charities (BAPS Charities, Swaminarayan Aksharpith and BAPS Endowment) hold about US$52 million, more than five times the 2010 figure. BAPS Charities’ foreign grants rose from US$1.5 million in 2022 to US$6.3 million in 2024, and over the period studied foreign grants (about US$40 million) far outstripped domestic ones (about US$11.5 million). The recipients of the foreign grants are not named in the filings.
The report also searched state business registries in six states and found 251 limited liability companies it considers likely linked to BAPS, many sharing addresses or registered agents. At least 97 were registered in Delaware by one agent. The land under five major temples is held by LLCs and valued by the report at close to US$250 million. Adding other temple properties, it puts BAPS’s US assets at about US$340 million, a figure it calls conservative.
Two cautions apply. The LLC links are inferred from shared addresses and agents, and the property values come from online aggregators and tax records rather than audited accounts. The report’s own annexure also shows a lower 2024 total of about US$43 million for the three charities, because the larger figure uses a different measure for the endowment.
Deaths, silicosis and the contractors’ records
The report says at least thirteen people have died in connection with the Robbinsville project. The tally mixes very different circumstances: plaintiffs said to have died of silicosis after stonework, workers who died soon after returning to India, a contractor’s foreman killed in a 2023 accident, a 15-year-old volunteer who fell in 2017, and a man in India who died after prolonged distress.
Silicosis is an incurable lung disease caused by inhaling stone dust, and reporting on India’s stone industry has documented it among workers without protective equipment. The report says six rescued workers have died of illnesses linked to silica exposure, and that BAPS has acknowledged none of the deaths.
The authors also point to contractors. In April 2021 the New Jersey Department of Labor issued a company-wide stop-work order against Cunha Construction after finding it paid workers cash off the books and lacked workers’ compensation cover. The report says it was the first time the department had halted all of one firm’s work rather than a single project. It also cites a 2014 Justice Department indictment of the head of My Baps Construction Corp, a Chicago company it describes as BAPS-related, over underpaid wages and unpaid benefit contributions. The report says he pleaded guilty.
BAPS in Australia
The report does not examine Australia, but BAPS has a large and growing presence here. Indian Link reports that BAPS Australia was established in 1984, has mandirs in all major cities and more than 50 assembly centres, and works with BAPS Charities, which is registered with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission. Temples operate in places including Sydney’s Rosehill, Melbourne’s Mill Park and Perth.
The flagship is a 25-acre precinct at Kemps Creek in Sydney’s south-west, near the Western Sydney Airport site. Its first phase opened in March 2025 with a 49-foot statue, and the temple proper is yet to be built. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese attended the opening celebrations, House Speaker Milton Dick visited, and Mr Albanese and Minister Chris Bowen later joined a Holi festival there.
BAPS temples here have also been targets. In 2023 the Mill Park and Rosehill temples were defaced with anti-India graffiti, and Mr Bowen condemned the Rosehill attack in Parliament.
In the coverage we reviewed, we found no reports of the US forced-labour or caste allegations being made about BAPS in Australia. That is not proof that none exist. The report’s central questions, about who builds BAPS temples and on what terms, simply have not been put to the Australian projects in anything we found.
What BAPS says, and the report’s limits
BAPS has consistently denied wrongdoing. The Wire reported that its officials rejected the allegations and that a spokesman said the workers did specialised work fitting hand-carved stones together. The Organiser, which is sympathetic to BAPS, argued at the time that the labour department’s action targeted a contractor rather than temple management.
Readers should weigh the report accordingly. It is the work of an advocacy consortium with unnamed authors, it infers some links rather than proving them, and several of its figures do not match across its own pages. The lawsuit’s claims are allegations, and Kumar v. BAPS remains before the US District Court for the District of New Jersey, where the docket is public. So are the Form 990 filings and registry records the authors relied on, which makes their central claims checkable by anyone prepared to do the work.
