Nirmalya Chatterjee Elected Chairman of the Board of Hindu Temple & Jain Center of Las Vegas
The Board of Trustees of Hindu Temple and Jain Center unanimously elected Nirmalya Chatterjee Chairman of the Board at its meeting last week. Mr. Chatterjee and his wife Mrs. Saroj Chatterjee have been very active in the temple since they relocated to Las Vegas in 2008. Mrs. Chatterjee had been the Vice President and President of the temple.
Mr. Chatterjee had an accomplished career in corporate management. After finishing MBA at Rutgers University, he joined the cosmetics giant Revlon in New York where he ultimately rose to become the Chief Operating Officer of Revlon-India and launched Revlon products in India in the mid-nineties. After returning to the US, he became the Chief Financial Officer of Coors Brewing Company in Colorado. The family relocated to Las Vegas when Mr. Chatterjee accepted the Vice President position at Las Vegas Sands (The Venetian). He ended his professional career as the Senior Vice President of Finance at the $10B world’s second largest hospitality and gaming company Galaxy Entertainment at Macau. They returned to their home base in Las Vegas after Mr. Chatterjee’s retirement last year.
Mr. Chatterjee believes our community is blessed to have visionary leaders who conceived and built the spectacular temple we have. “The key is going to be growing visitation at the temple as the community continues to grow and mature,” Chatterjee said. “The temple has two outstanding priests in Pandit Brijesh Ji and Pandit Vishnu Ji. With their hard work and the hard work of the temple volunteers who bring a very positive attitude, I want to bolster the puja activities at the temple and build a strong feeling of ‘belonging at the temple’ for the community,” he continued. “I am confident that this is very achievable and as that happens, the dream projects of building the Hanuman Mandir & a Community Hall can be brought to reality in the near future.”
Our community will not think the temple belongs to all of us until it stops being run as a business, by arrogant people with money. They and the priests only care how much money the devotees give to the temple. The management and the priests do not provide an open, welcoming, temple to worship for everyone; only a place for rich and privileged to ask god for more money and power.