Om Center Divya Dham: a home of our own at last

For most of a generation, our community worshipped in borrowed spaces. Rented halls. Living rooms. Bamboo temples in the refugee camps that went up with whatever was at hand. Beautiful in their own way, but never ours, and never permanent.

That changed in 2022.

That year, the Global Bhutanese Hindu Organization acquired 150 acres of land in Galion, Ohio, to establish Om Center Divya Dham — a permanent religious, spiritual, and cultural home for the Bhutanese-Nepali Hindu diaspora in America. After decades without ground to stand on, our people finally have a place that belongs to us, dedicated to the dharma we carried through everything.

A place that breathes with prayer

Om Center is not a building that sits empty between festivals. It runs on a daily rhythm of devotion.

The day opens with Pratah Puja at 6:00 AM and closes with Sandhya Puja at 6:00 PM, the morning and evening prayers that have anchored Hindu life for thousands of years. Between and around them, the center holds yoga classes, Sanskrit education, and youth development programs for the children growing up here — many of whom were born in America and are meeting their heritage for the first time on these 150 acres. Through the year, the major Hindu festivals fill the grounds with the sounds, colors, and food that no rented hall could ever quite hold.

It is, in the truest sense, a sanctuary — a place to pray, to learn, to gather, and to belong.

Why a permanent home matters

The vision for Om Center grew straight out of the reason GBHO exists: to preserve, protect, and propagate the Vedic Sanatan Dharma for Bhutanese-Nepali Hindus.

Our families left their homeland with almost nothing. What they refused to leave behind was their faith. Through the long years of displacement, that faith was not a comfort on the side — it was the lifeline that held an entire people together when they had lost nearly everything else. A permanent home like Om Center is how we make sure that lifeline never frays again. Land cannot be taken from us the way it once was. The shlokas our elders memorized in the camps now have a roof, an altar, and acres of Ohio soil to be spoken over.

Come be part of it

Om Center Divya Dham is still growing, and it grows through the people who show up — for morning prayers, for a yoga class, for a festival, for the work of building what comes next.

If this is your faith and your story, there is a place for you here. Visit the center in Galion, join as a member, or give to help us develop the grounds and programs. GBHO is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, EIN 82-2341423. Donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.