The Meeting of Opposites?. Andrew Wingate
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within the building. East Ham was the next temple, and a Tamil professor said, ‘This is a place where I would not want to walk around at night.’ But by 2004 there were seven main Dravidian temples in London. These are in Highgate/Archway (Murugan-centred), Wimbledon (Ganapathi), East Ham (Murugan), Tooting (Maryamman), Stoneleigh (Rajeswari Amman) and Ealing (Kanaga Thurkkai Amman). There are also temples to Lakshmi, and other Vaishnavite deities, and this shows the balance between Tamil and Telegu communities. The influence of the female goddess cults can be seen here. Sampathkumar was asked: what makes a good temple? He replied, ‘A general feeling, a good atmosphere, a powerful deity, and good priests.’6 Going onto the streets is also important, an act of grace from the gods to reveal themselves to the general public. This is normal in India, and growing in the UK, with the growing acceptance of Hindus as part of British life.
Let us look first at the South Asian diaspora in the UK, as seen through the history of the Balaji Temple, in Sandwell, between Birmingham and Wolverhampton. The early South Indians and Sri Lankans who came to the UK were normally professionals, the majority doctors or business people. The Tamil community included both those from India and Sri Lanka. The latter were not refugees in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They initially used to meet in private homes, and they had before them a picture of Balaji (Vishnu as in Tirupati), in southern Andhra Pradesh. (The temple there is on the top of a significant hill, and is the most popular and richest temple in India and a great centre of pilgrimage. I visited once, and it is a phenomenon of religiosity and also a centre of business and education.) But after some time, it was difficult to host gatherings of this professional community in the house.
My friend and informant, and one of the two key trustees of the temple throughout its history as a project, Dr Rajah, from Jaffna, Sri Lanka, tells me how he asked the leaders of the first temple in Birmingham, Gita Bhavan, to allow this temple to be used on the first Sunday of the month, for a gathering on Sunday afternoon. I was present at the opening of Gita Bhavan, one of the earliest temples in the UK, whose congregation was from the beginning largely Punjabi. Ninety per cent of the South Indian worshippers were professional, very different from the Punjabis, and they wanted to keep up their practices and rituals. Many were Brahmins – but they had no priest, and so they relied on lay leadership, even in worship. And once a month was not really enough.
There began a long process towards a temple of their own. As early as 1978 they became a registered charity, and began all kinds of fundraising efforts. From 1985 they began to look for land, and searched all over the country, from London, to Derby, to Peterborough and even to Wales. Criteria included being near an airport, and having good road and rail transport links. It took them nine years to find a suitable plot, after several rejections, and to get planning permission. I remember being approached about whether they could buy a redundant church. I pointed out this could not be an Anglican church, because of Anglican rules about selling redundant churches for the worship of another faith, and we were about to approach the Methodist Church. But they then decided that Christians had destroyed temples in Sri Lanka to build churches, and they did not want to do a similar thing in the UK. Therefore, they would focus on a new build, rare at that time.
They ended up with an unprepossessing brown-field site, ex-industrial land, in Oldbury, which is part of Sandwell, between Birmingham and Walsall. Its strength was that it was near the M5, M6 and M42 motorways,7 and the Birmingham Airport and rail connections. They anticipated a national and even international clientele, which has indeed happened. They got planning permission, but then opposition developed, and I was told that the Bishop of Wolverhampton, who gave solid support, was nearly lynched when he arranged an open meeting in the nearby Tividale church. I faced a hostile crowd when I went for the laying of the foundation stone, with placards saying ‘Leave us our green fields’, and worse. I told the people gathered there that in India Hindus had given land and support for building churches throughout the country, but they replied that this was the UK and not India! I think there was a mixture of fear of the unknown, racism, religious bigotry and commercial apprehension. Spokespeople for the nearby Merry Hill mega shopping centre joined the battle, saying, in a slanderous way, that there would be half-burnt corpses in the nearby canal. There was also a genuine concern about parking.
The trustees acted with care and patience, and key was communication, and also such gestures as a very good Indian meal given to all the neighbours when the project was explained. They also gave a priority to a large car park in the big area they bought. In fact, visitors to the temple in large numbers have helped the economic regeneration of a declining area. It is reckoned that 2,500 come each weekend to visit the temple, and 5,000 are fed when there is a festival. What began as a temple for South Indians and Sri Lankans has broadened its appeal, with perhaps one third of visitors being from North India. Regular attenders are Gurkhas from a garrison in Stoke, not far away, and many IT workers from all over India, for whom temple-going is part of their way of life.
The temple itself has five shrines – to Siva, Balaji (Vishnu), Murugan, Ganesh and the planets (navagraha). There are nine to ten priests, five Telegu, four Tamil and one Malayali, and they all have quarters in the compound. Normal language used in the temple is English, with Tamil or Telegu interpretation, though of course the language of ritual is Sanskrit, understood by few except the priests. There is a gopuram (tower) in South Indian style, and there are plans for an auditorium for 1,500 people. They gained £3.4 million from a Millennium lottery grant, and the trustees, all doctors at the beginning, each gave £100,000 personally towards the matching funding required.
The age profile of British visitors (like in most churches!) is elderly or middle-aged. There are often more grandchildren than children. In Sri Lanka or South India, children and young people attend the temple. New arrivals tend to come with all the family, and regularly. The Rajahs say that the reasons people come to the temple are: to pray individually, as families, and to pray with the community; to make vows; to commission special pujas; to observe rituals for nanmai and thimai, ‘good and bad times’; for social reasons and to meet friends, and to eat well. Above all, temples are about handing on the faith and culture, and indeed language. There is a Vedic – scriptural – school for young people, and this is attended by 80–120 children during a summer camp. There is also football, classical dance teaching and other cultural activities. This is to try to counterbalance the way religion in the home is also dying in the UK, where weekly worship is no longer normal.
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