Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs in the New Religious Landscape of England Author(S): Ceri Peach and Richard Gale Reviewed Work(S): Source: Geographical Review, Vol

American Geographical Society

Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs in the New Religious Landscape of England Author(s): Ceri Peach and Richard Gale Reviewed work(s): Source: Geographical Review, Vol. 93, No. 4 (Oct., 2003), pp. 469-490 Published by: American Geographical Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30033938 . Accessed: 08/11/2012 16:34

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http://www.jstor.org MUSLIMS,HINDUS, AND SIKHSIN THE NEW RELIGIOUSLANDSCAPE OF ENGLAND*

CERI PEACH and RICHARD GALE

ABSTRACT. This article examines the dramatic changes brought to English townscapesby Islam, Hinduism, and Sikhism.These "new"religions have arrivedwith the large-scaleim- migration and subsequentnatural growth of the minority ethnic populations of GreatBrit- ain since the 1950s.The article tracesthe growth and distributionof these populations and religions,as well as the developmentof theirplaces of worshipfrom front-roomprayer rooms to cathedral-scalebuildings. It exploresthe way in which the Britishplanning process,dedicatedto preservingthe traditional,has engaged with the exotic.Keywords: England, Hindus, Muslims,Sikhs, urban planning.

In 2001 Wilbur Zelinsky published a stimulatingarticle in the GeographicalRe- view extolling the exceptional nature of the American cultural landscapeof religion. He arguedthat the United Statesis a land without the homogenizing effectof Europeanstate religions. New peopleshave brought new religionsand made a highly diversified and pluralistic impact on the American cultural landscape. Places of worship range from Episcopaliancathedrals to storefront churches,from mega- churches to ethnic churches,and an almost random scatter of sites where Chris- tians,Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and a wide varietyof other religionsare represented, with an equal variety of signage in the streetscape.Zelinsky described a unique pluralisticreligious landscape. On the other side of the Atlantic,dramatic changes are happeningas well to the European,particularly the English, Christiancultural landscapes of religion. The homogenizing effect of state religion, to which Zelinsky referred,is being decon- structedand in some casesreconsecrated under the impactof new religiousinfluxes. The ethnic minoritypopulations of the United Kingdom and other WesternEuro- pean countries have expanded dramatically(Peach 1997).Embedded within these minority ethnic populations, especially those of South Asian origin, has come a great expansionin "new"religions-Islam (Peach199ob), Hinduism, Sikhism-and with them the new "cathedrals"of the Englishcultural landscape: Muslim masjids, Hindu mandirsand Sikh gurdwaras.Exotic religious buildings, some of exquisite beauty,have been built on unlikelyinner-city sites. The Shri SwaminarayanMandir, handcraftedin the Gujaratin India from white Romanianmarble, was shipped to

* We aregrateful for the constructivesuggestions of threeanonymous referees. We would also like to thankthe followingthree funding agencies for researchgrants: ESRC grant ROOO239765, Social Geography of BritishSouth AsianMuslim, Sikh and Hindu Sub-Communities; the Leverhulme Trust grant F/773, Ethnicity and Cultural Land- scapes:Mosques, Temples and Gurdwaras:A DomesdaySurvey; and the NuffieldFoundation small grant SGS/ 01044/G, Muslimand Christian Places of Worshipand the PlanningProcess in Birmingham.We further gratefully acknowledgeour researchassociates on earlierparts of the continuingproject: Dariusz Wojcik, University of Oxford;James Ryan, now at Queen'sUniversity, Belfast; and Simon Naylor, now at BristolUniversity. DR. PEACHis a professorof social geographyat the Universityof Oxford,Oxford oxI 3TB,En- gland, where DR.GALE is a researchfellow.

TheGeographical Review 93 (4): 469-490, October2003 Copyright C 2005 by the AmericanGeographical Society of New York 470 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

Growth of Mosques, Gurdwaras, and Mandirs in England and Wales, 1964-1998 700 yMuslim 600 Sikh 500 -Hindu 400 300 200 100 0 1964 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 1999

FIG.1-Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu registeredplaces of worship in England and Wales, 1964-1998. Sources:Data transcribedby Simon Naylor from manuscriptrecords of the GeneralRegister Office Registerof Places of Worship,kept at Southport,Merseyside; data published annually in Marriage, Divorceand AdoptionStatistics, Series FM2(London: Office for National Statistics;see, for example, ONS2001). No separateHindu data are given in the publishedrecords. Our data differslightly from the published sources because our fieldworkrevealed disused sites. (Graphby Ceri Peach)

England and assembledinto an astonishinglybeautiful temple off London'sNorth Circularring road-opposite an IKEAfurniture store. The elegant Dawoodi Bohra Shi'a Masjid in Northolt is hidden awayin a London industrialestate. The largest Sikh gurdwarain the Westernworld has been built almost under the flight path of HeathrowAirport in suburbanSouthall.

PREVIOUS STUDIES The extent of the transformationbrought about by the appearanceof the Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh places of worship can be gauged from readingJohn Gay'saccount of The Geographyof Religionin England:"Hinduism has not made any real impres- sion on the English social landscape"(1971, 199). "The future for the EasternReli- gions in England ... rests almost entirelywith the Muslims and the Sikhs,... the Hindus leave their religion behind in India"(p. 201). Gay was correct about the Muslims'and Sikhs'future impact on the Englishsocial landscape.But although,of the three religions, the Hindus have produced the fewest places of worship (Fig- ure 1), their impact has been among the most spectacular(Figure 2). ENGLANDS NEW RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE 471

FIG.2-The ShriSwaminarayan Mandir in Neasden,North London, with springcrocuses in the foreground.(Photograph by MartinBarfoot, School of Geographyand the Environment,University of Oxford,spring 2001)

A considerableliterature has developedon the culturallandscape of religionin Englandsince Gay's 1971 book. Largely these studies are analyses of particularbuild- ings ratherthan an attemptat an overallgeography. Among the notablecontribu- tionsare those on a LondonHindu temple (Vertovec 1992, 2000), on theHare Krishna BhaktivedantaCenter set up by BeatleGeorge Harrison in a ruralmanor in Hert- fordshire(Nye 1998),on a Jaintemple in Leicester(Gale 1999), on an Ahmadiyya mosquein a Londonsuburb (Naylor and Ryan2002), and on the politicsof planning (Galeand Naylor 2002). Thisliterature links up with thatof scholarsin Aus- tralia(Dunn 2001), Canada(Isin and Siemiatycki 2002), and Singapore (Kong 1993a, 1993b,2002). Importantpapers have also been presentedat conferences(Dwyer 2ooo;Phillips and Brown 2000). This article follows more the NorthAmerican tra- dition of studyingthe religiouslandscape, that of Zelinsky(1961, 1988,2001) and DianaEck, the Harvardsociologist of religion(1997, 2002), but alsoDavid Sopher (1967, 1981), James Shortridge (1976), and G. J.Levine (1986). Thefirst decade of thetwenty-first century is anopportune time to analyzethese changesin the Englishcultural landscape. England and Wales have an officialregister of placesof worshipbeginning in 1854,which allows one to trackthe growthof Muslim,Sikh, and Hindu places of worship(oNs 2001). The 2001 decennialcensus forthe United Kingdom included questions on religionfor the firsttime and a question on ethnicityfor the secondtime.' 472 THE GEOGRAPHICAL. REVIEW

U.K. the Wales87.8 98.4 95.7 97.6 99.6 98.8 99.2 97.4 91.7 95.3 98.5 88.5 97.5 England of in and %

KINGDOM % 1.8 1.3 1.2 1.0 0.8 0.5 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.2 7.9 92.1 100.0

UNITED

97,585 No. 747,285677,117565,876 485,277 283,063 247,664 247,403 230,615 2001 1,053,411 4,635,296 54,153,898 58,789,194

GROUP,

666 255494 252 194 387 ETHNIC 1,567 3,319 4,1451,290 12,569 BY NORTHERNIRELAND1,672,698 1,685,267

KINGDOM, 1,7785,118 1,981 6,196 9,5711,129 15,03731,79312,764 16,310 101,677 SCOTLAND UNITED 4,960,334 5,062,011

THE OF 745 8,2618,287 17,661 2,5973,727 5,436 3,464 6,267 5,135 61,580 WALES 2,841,505 2,903,085

I-POPULATION

95,324 TABLE 706,539643,373561,246 475,938 275,394 237,810 220,681 214,619 1,028,546 4,459,470 ENGLAND44,679,361 49,138,831

individuals.

biracial ethnic to 2002. refers ONS GROUP populationminority CaribbeanAfricanAsian Other population "Mixed" TotalToral a Source: ETHNICWhiteIndian PakistaniMixeda Black Black Bangladeshi OtherChinese Other Black ENGLANDS NEW RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE 473

Thisstudy links these sources with a majorsurvey carried out at the University of Oxfordon Muslim,Sikh, and Hinduplaces of worship.Our project selected all 916 Muslim,Sikh, and Hinduplaces of worshiplisted in the Officefor National Statistics(oNs) officialregister for 1998.2Between 1999 and 2001, all siteswere vis- ited andphotographed. Details were collected on schoolsof thought,religious tra- ditionsand movements,patterns of worship,sizes and locations of congregations, datesof establishment,languages spoken, organization, sources of funding,com- munityfacilities and activities, details of architecturalstyle and locations of buildings,and manyother facets of thesefaith communities. This articleis dividedinto four sections.We discussfirst the minorityethnic populationof the UnitedKingdom in its demographic,geographical, and socio- economicposition. We then explorethe interrelationshipof religionand ethnicity and relatethe growthof the ethnoreligions'populations to the expansionof their placesof worship.Finally, we outlinehow Britishplanning laws, dedicated to the preservationof traditionalcultural landscapes, have been negotiatedin the developmentof dramatic,nontraditional architectural styles.

MINORITY ETHNIC POPULATIONS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM If the UnitedStates is a nationof immigrants,the United Kingdom is a countrythat hasacquired a smallerminority ethnic population, but withastonishing speed, one that has grownfrom about 50,000 in 1951to approaching5 millionin 2001, from o.i percentof the populationto nearly8 percent(Table I). Almosthalf of this minorityethnic population has its ancestralroots in India,Pakistan, or Bangladesh, but much of the populaceis fromthe Caribbean,Africa, or the MiddleEast, and, increasingly,European refugees from Eastern Europe and the Balkans,Arabs from the MiddleEast, Africans from sub-Saharan Africa, or migrantsfrom Western Eu- rope,North America, or Australasia(White 1998). Large-scale,non-European immigration into the UnitedKingdom is largelythe productof laborshortages in the postwarperiod after 1945. The British Nationality Act of 1948conferred British citizenship on all peoplesliving in the BritishCom- monwealthand colonies or in the formerBritish Empire. For example, the actgave citizenshipto peoplenot onlyfrom British colonies in the Caribbeanbut alsofrom newlyindependent India and Pakistan.Many Caribbeans, Indians, and Pakistanis had servedin the Britisharmed forces during the war (Glass1960; Spencer 1997) and so had experienceof GreatBritain and British contacts. British labor shortage in the postwarperiod led firstto a trickleof WestIndian immigration dating from 1948,then to directrecruitment by BritishRail, London Transport, and the British NationalHealth Service in the Caribbean,particularly Barbados, and finally to au- tonomousand large-scalelabor flows. Because these movements were closely re- lated to the Britishlabor market,they rose and fell with the economic cycles (Peach 1968; Robinson 1986). South Asian immigrationstarted later, peaked later, and lastedlonger than that from the Caribbean.It startedin the late 195osand early1960s, peakedin the 1970s, 474 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW but has not altogetherdied downsince then. In the earlydays it was overwhelm- inglymale and dominated by the"myth" of returnto Indiaor Pakistanuntil British immigration-controllegislation in 1962 led to a radicalchange. Faced with the diffi- cultyof reentryinto GreatBritain if theyreturned home, men brought their families fromthe subcontinentinstead. Family reunification had a significantpositive effecton religiousobservation. Indianand Pakistani migration came largely from just a fewareas in the Punjab and Gujarat,in the northwesternpart of the subcontinent.Although the flow of skilledprofessionals, particularly doctors and academics,had been and continues to be significant,the bulk of thepostwar migrants came from a peasantbackground. The migrationsource areas, in both the Indianand PakistaniPunjab and in the Afghanand Kashmiriborder areas of Pakistan,had been affectedby the flightof Muslimsfrom India to Pakistanand of Sikhsand Hindus from Pakistan into India in the 1947 partitionof BritishIndia (Spate 1963, 118-121). PakistaniMuslims had alsobeen uprooted by thebuilding of the ManglaDam on the JhelumRiver on the AzadKashmir border after independence. These areas had experiencedmassive transfersof population,primarily on the basisof faithcommunities. The Indianflow to GreatBritain was increasedby the expulsionof the large SouthAsian population from East Africa in the Africanizationprograms that fol- lowed decolonizationin the late 196osand early1970s (Twaddle 1990). The East AfricanIndian population was very different from the largelypeasant population thathad migrateddirectly from the subcontinent.East African Asians had formed the middleclass between Whites and Africansin EastAfrica. On the whole they wereEnglish speaking, professionalized, and entrepreneurial,had often accumu- latedcapital, and had no intentionof returningto India.The religious composition of the EastAfricans differed from those who camedirectly from India. Fifty-eight percentof themwere Hindus; 19 percent,Sikhs; and 15 percent, Muslim. In contrast, 32 percentof the Indianswere Hindus; 50 percent,Sikhs; and 6 percent,Muslims (Modood1997, 298).The EastAfrican Muslims were mostly Ismaili Shias, an ex- tremelysophisticated and organizedgroup (Bhachu 1985, 26), verydifferent from the peasantPakistani, Indian, and BangladeshiMuslims. Thelast South Asian immigrant group to arrivewas from Bangladesh. Like the Pakistanis,more than 90opercent of the Bangladeshiswere Muslim. Bangladesh, until its breakawayin 1971,had been the Muslimprovince of EastPakistan, sepa- ratedfrom West Pakistan by a thousandmiles of Indianterritory. Bangladeshi mi- grationto GreatBritain was primarilyfrom a poor, remoterural area in Sylhet District,northwestern Bangladesh. This migration peaked in the 1980sand entered GreatBritain at a time of declininglabor demand (Peach 1990oa). It remainsthe poorest, least educated, and most poorly housed minority group in the country. Since the 1990os,particularly, the arrivalof Bosnian, Kosovan,Somali, Afghan,Ira- nian, and Iraqirefugees has increasedthe number of Muslimsin the ethnic minority populations. ENGLAND'S NEW RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE 475

TABLE 11-POPULATION OF THE UNITED KINGDOM, BY RELIGION, 2001

UNITED KINGDOM No. RELIGION (in thousands) % Christian 42,079 71.6 Muslim 1,591 2.7 Hindu 559 1.0 Sikh 336 0.6 Jewish 267 0.5 Other religion 179 0.3 Buddhist 152 0.3 Totalall religions 45,163 76.8 No religion 9,104 15.5 Religion not stated 4,289 7.3 Totalno religion or not stated 13,626 23.2 Totalpopulation 58,789 100.0

Source:ONS 200oo3b.

TableI showsthe ethniccomposition of the UnitedKingdom population in 2001. SouthAsians or AsianBritish constituted almost half of the minorityethnic population,which was very unevenly distributed in theUnited Kingdom and highly concentrated(88 percent) in Englandand Wales but overwhelmingly so in England. Londonand the Southeast,the industrialWest and East Midlands, and the old tex- tile mill townson the Lancashireand Yorkshire flanks of the Penninesconstituted themajor concentrations; more specifically, five large urban agglomerations: Greater London,the WestMidlands Metropolitan County (the wider Birmingham conur- bation), GreaterManchester, and the WestYorkshire Metropolitan County (the Leeds-Bradfordconurbation), and Leicester.These five areasaccounted for one- quarterof thetotal population but nearlythree-quarters of theseminority populations.Within a differentialdistribution of the Indian,Pakistani, and Bangladeshi populations,Pakistanis had a muchmore northern distribution in Penninetextile towns,particularly Manchester and Bradford,but also in the Birminghamarea. Indianswere more evenly distributedamong London,Birmingham, and the Manchesterregion. Bangladeshis, the late arrivals,were concentrated in London; withinLondon, in thepoorest borough of thecity, Tower Hamlets, where one-quarter of theirtotal population in the UnitedKingdom lives.

ETHNICITY AND RELIGION The UnitedKingdom 2001 censuswas the firstto includea questionon religion. TableII showsthat 42 million,or 72 percent,of the UnitedKingdom's population professedChristianity. Islam was the secondlargest religion, with 1.6 million adher- ents;Hindus numbered 559,ooo; and Sikhs,336,ooo. 476 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

Regional Distribution Key of Muslims, Hindus, 610,000 and Sikhs in Northeast England and Wales, 2001 Sikh Hindu Muslim Yorkshire and The Humber

INorthweste East Midlands

East of England West Midlands

Wales

4L.ond6on

Southeast Southwest

0 50 100 N miles

FIG. 3-The regionaldistribution of Muslims,Hindus, and Sikhsin Englandand Walesin 2001. Sources:ONS 2003a, 2003b. (Cartography by the authors)

TheBritish Muslim population was 68 percentSouth Asian. Pakistanis, the core group,accounted for 42 percentof the total;Bangladeshis, for 17 percent;and Indi- ans,for 9 percent.Nearly 12 percent of the Muslimpopulation was white,mostly what the censusterms "Other White," a categorythat includes Turks, Arabs, and EastEuropeans from Bosnia, Kosovo, and Albania. Black Africans accounted for a further6 percentof theMuslim population. The distribution of theMuslim, Hindu, and Sikhpopulations broadly reflects the patternof the SouthAsian population ENGLAND'S NEW RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE 477

(Figure3). More than 52 percent of GreatBritain's Hindus, 39 percent of its Mus- lims, and 32 percentof its Sikhswere concentratedin London. One of the questions resolvedby the 2001 census was that of the religiouscom- position of the Indian population: 45 percent Hindu, 29 percent Sikh, and 13per- cent Muslim.Earlier estimates of the Hindu and Sikh populationshad placedthem much closer together in terms of size: 42 and 38 percent, respectively(calculated from Modood 1997,298). Previous estimatesof the Muslim proportion of the In- dian populationhad rangedfrom 19percent (Brown 1984, 24) to 6 percent(Modood 1997,298). Eventhough 2001 is the firstyear for which we have reliableethnoreligious data, we can use the data in that census to estimatethe religious composition of the ethnic population in prior years.Although these are approximations,they are not un- realistic.Table III suggeststhat the Muslim population of GreatBritain rose from 50,000 in 1961,to 553,000in 1981,to 950,000 in 1991,and to 1.6 million in 20ol. The Sikh population is estimated to have risen from 16,ooo in 1961to 340,000 in 2ool; the Hindu population,from 30,000 to 560,000 during the same period.

PLACES OF WORSHIP The 2001 Officefor NationalStatistics register revealed that Muslim,Sikh, and Hindu places of worship in England and Wales numbered just under a thousand (oNs 2001). Their growth over time mirrorsthe growth of the ethnic minority populations. The presenceof Indiansin GreatBritain dates back to the days of the empire and has ranged from princes, to doctors, lawyers,and students, to merchant sea- men, the "Lascars"of the East Indian ships (Robinson 1986). A small number of places of worship had been associatedwith them and also with Indian aristocrats and wealthy Englishconverts to Islam (Naylorand Ryan 2002). Registrationof places of worship is voluntary,but those that do registerreceive tax advantages.It is thought that about four-fifthsof the mosques and more than 90opercent of the gurdwarasare registered(Weller 1997, 450, 606), although the dates at which the first Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu places of worship were founded differ considerably.The first mosques in GreatBritain were establishedin Stepney, Liverpool,and at Woking,a suburb of London, in 1889 (Nielsen 1992,4-5; Naylor and Ryan2002), but their numbersdid not show much growth until the 1960s (Fig- ure 1, TableIII). The firstSikh gurdwara is believedto havebeen openedin Shepherd's Bush in London in 1908; the second, in Manchesterin 1947;and the third, in Small Heath, Birmingham,in 1960.The firstHindu mandirwas registeredin Liverpoolin 1962.By 1961there were still only 7 mosques,3 gurdwaras,and I mandirin England and Wales (TableIII). In the 1960s and 1970s very few places of worship existed relative to the numbers of Muslims,Sikhs, and Hindus.All groups show decreasingnumbers of personsper place of worship over time (TableIII) due to growing numbers of venues rather than to decreasingcongregations. The data suggestthat communities had to reach a critical size before places of worship could be establishedand that they had to 478 THE GEOGRAPHICALREVIEW satisfytheir domestic needs first. It also reflectsthe increasinglyfamily-structured demographicsof the latersettlement. Thevery large numbers of Hindusper mandir in 1961and 1971 (Table III) show thattemple building was slow compared with that by Muslimsand Sikhs. The dou- blingof thealready large figure for 1961 (30,000 Hindusin relationto a singlemandir) to 69,000 permandir in 1971is probablydue to the greatinflux of expelledEast Afri- can Hindusin the late 196osand early1970s. But Hinduismis also much morea domesticreligion than is Islamor Sikhism.Hindus tend to go to theirmandirs less frequentlyand to travelfarther to them.Lily Kong points to a similardifference in Hinduand Muslim numbers per place of worshipin Singapore(1993a, 1993b). In the earlydays of settlement,Punjabi Hindus and Sikhs cooperated to founda gurdwara in Leedsin 1958,but the venturedisintegrated in 1963 whentheological differences becamemore pronounced (Knott 2000, 91). Onejoint Hindu/Sikh temple still exists in Harrow,London. Hindu mandir construction also has an element of catch-uppres- tige displayin responseto Muslimsand Sikhs.It markeda reactionto the growing internationalprofile of Islamin thewake of theAyatollah's Iranian revolution in 1979 and also of the deteriorationin Hindu-Sikhrelations following the IndianArmy's assaulton the Sikh'sGolden Temple in Amritsarand Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's subsequentassassination by herSikh bodyguards in 1984. Thelarge expansion of the numberof mosques,gurdwaras, and mandirs after the early1960s also owes much to the arrivalof wivesand children after the restrictivelegislation on labormigration. Singlemen hadbeen notably less observant before their families joined them. Significantdifferences are still evident in the numberof placesof worshiprela- tive to the estimatedsize of the religiousgroups. In 2001 therewere three times as manyHindus per mandir as therewere Sikhs per gurdwara and half as manymore Muslimsper mosquethan Sikhsper gurdwara(Table III). Mosque attendance in GreatBritain is largelya maleactivity, although ladies' mosques and ladies' sections of mosquesexist. Mandirs are gender integrated but lessdemanding of community attendanceor participation.Gurdwaras are gender- and family-integratedinstitu- tions:The Sikhfaith requires community congregation, community cooking and eatingof food, and all membersof the community,irrespective of caste,gender, and social status,sitting in a row to sharethe communallycooked food. If one assumesthat only the malehalf of the Muslimpopulation is cateredto in mosques, thenit wouldappear that the provisionof mosquesrelative to the Muslimpopula- tion is fargreater than it is for the otherfaith groups. This would seem intuitively correct,because the injunctionto the SunniMuslim faithful to prayfive times a day requiresthe provisionof a largenumber of prayerrooms or a multiplicityof small mosques.In our surveywe foundthat 40 percentof the mosqueswere converted houses.For both Sikhsand Hindus, converted houses accounted for only 14 percent of gurdwarasand mandirs. The degreesto which the number of placesof worship correlateswith the number of members of the religion in each region vary.For Hindus the correlationin the ten government regions of England and Wales taken together is r = 0.81;for ENGLAND S NEW RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE 479

TABLE III-ESTIMATED NUMBERS OF MUSLIMS, SIKHS, AND HINDUS, AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION PER PLACE OF WORSHIP, IN ENGLAND AND WALES, 1961-2001

ESTIMATED NUMBER OF MUSLIMS, NUMBER OF ESTIMATED FAITH SIKHS, AND PLACES COMMUNITY PER YEAR HINDUS OF WORSHIP PLACE OF WORSHIP Muslims

1961 50,000 7 7,143 1971 226,000 30 7,533 1981 553,000 149 3,711 1991 950,000 443 2,144 2001 1,600,000 614 2,606 Sikhs

1961 16,000 3 5,333 1971 72,000 33 2,182 1981 144,000 69 2,087 1991 206,000 138 1,493 2001 340,000 193 1,762 Hindus

1961 30,000 1 30,000 1971 138,000 2 69,000 1981 278,000 25 11,120 1991 397,000 78 5,090 2001 560,000 109 5,138

Sources:Data transcribedby Simon Naylorfrom manuscriptrecords of the GeneralRegister Office Registerof Places of Worship,kept at South- port, Merseyside; data published annually in Marriage, Divorce and AdoptionStatistics, Series FM2 (London: Office for NationalStatistics; see, for example,ONS 2001). No separateHindu dataare given in the published records.Our data differ slightly from the published sources because our fieldworkrevealed disused sites.

Sikhs,r = 0.78;and for Muslims,r = 0.57.The low correlationfor Muslimsand mosquesis not easyto explain.The correlationbetween Pakistani Muslims and mosquesby regionis an almostperfect 0.93. Thus it is possiblethat Pakistanis, as the largestsingle Muslim group in GreatBritain, have been the leadersin mosque developmentand that smalleror morerecently established groups have been less active,are not yet fullyrepresented, or aresimply participating at existingPakistani placesof worship.

CONTESTEDNATURE OF MUSLIM, HINDU, AND SIKH PLACESOF WORSHIP Britishtown planning and zoning controls are universaland strictlyapplied. They are probablymore pervasiveand restrictivethan is generallythe case in the United 480 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

States. They are certainlydifferent in kind from what exists in India, Pakistan,or Bangladesh.The system of development control and zoning in Great Britain, as constituted by the Town and Country PlanningActs from 1947to 1990, performs an essentiallyconservative function. Any changein the existinguse of a given prop-

FIG. 4-The Sawia IslamiaAlouia in Balsall Heath, Birmingham.This Yemenimosque, in a convertedhouse, is typical of a largenumber of Mus- lim places of worship. (Photographby MartinBarfoot, School of Geogra- phy and the Environment,University of Oxford,spring 2000) erty or piece of land, or the construction of new premises, requirespermission. Such permission is granted at the discretion of local planning authorities (Nye 1998). In determiningapplications for planningpermission, planners take into account what impact the proposeddevelopment will have on the characterof the surround- ENGLAND'S NEW RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE 481 ingarea and what effects it mayhave on the other local landowners' amenities. Cru- cially,planning aims to ensurethe harmonization of new development with its ex- istingsurroundings (Hodgins 1981; Gale 1999; Dwyer 2000; Gale and Naylor 2002; Naylorand Ryan 2002). Thesepreoccupations of the planning system have repeat-

FIG. 5-A Sikhgurdwara in a convertedMethodist chapel in Roath, Cardiff.The degree of modificationis verysmall: Only the yellow Sikh flag, almostinvisible against the secondpillar from the left,and a discreettab- let in theSikh written form of Punjabibear witness to thechange of occu- pants.(Photograph by CeriPeach, summer 1999) edlyhad adverse impacts on the abilityof Hindu,Muslim, Sikh, and other minority faithgroups to establishpremises in whichto congregatefor religiousand social functions(Gale and Naylor 2002, 391-394). The history of negotiationof planning permissionsfor Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu places of worshipdiffers from city to city 482 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW accordingto the relativesize and composition of the faithcommunities, their length of residence,and the typesof proposalsthey have advanced. Generalizationis problematic,but it is possibleto describethe interactionbe- tweenminority faith groups and the Britishplanning process as a four-stagecycle. Althoughwe presentthe scenarioas sequential,the differentstages can exist simul- taneouslyin differentcities or evenwithin the samecity, according to the type of developmentproposed. In the firststage, "tacit change and planningdenial," houses are changedinto prayerrooms (Figure 4). Faithcommunities were often unaware that British plan- ningregulations require official permission to changethe use of premises.The change fromdomestic to nondomesticuse is oftenstrongly resisted by plannersand politicians.Disturbance to neighbors,car parking, shortage of affordablehousing, noise, andthe muezzin'scall to prayerare issues that cause resistance on the partof planners. The secondstage is the searchfor largerpremises. These are often conversions of disusedchapels or churchesor the conversionof factories,cinemas, or other commercialpremises to placesof worship.In oursurvey, 62 percent of the mandirs, 52 percentof the gurdwaras,and 41 percentof the mosqueswere in suchconver- sions.On the wholethese meet with greaterapproval from planners than do house conversions.The modificationsto buildingsare often cosmetic rather than architectural(Figure 5). We term this stage"larger-scale conversion with minimalist change."One of the consequencesof largerpremises, however, is thatthey are often fartheraway from their faith communities than are the smallerdomestic premises. Thethird and fourth stages accept the developmentof purpose-builtpremises. The arrivalof minarets,domes, and Hindu conical towers represents the truechal- lengeto the culturallandscape of Britishcities. These stages resolve into twooppos- ing planningstrategies. One of them,the thirdstage, is "hidingand displacement." Acceptanceof exoticarchitectural styles is accompaniedby eitherhiding the build- ingsfrom public view or truncatingtheir iconic features. Figure 6 showsthe Mehfil- e-AbbasShi'a Ithna Asheri Masjid in BalsallHeath, Birmingham. This mosque, built in 1982,demonstrates how British planners come to termswith purpose-built places of worship:The mosqueis hiddenbehind shops, and its domeand minaret cower beneaththe rooflineof neighboringolder houses. Trees screen the site.The local planningauthority supported the developmentwith the argumentthat the sitewas well chosento minimizeimpact on the generalpublic. Translated from planning- speak,this meansthat localWhite people will not see it. Figure6 showshow the buildingliterally keeps its head down. In this third stage of planning,either offending Orientalbuildings are pushed to the peripheryor theirfeatures are toned down. The ShriSwaminarayan Mandir (Figure 2) is anotherexample of hidingand displacementbut not of minimizing its appearance.Its wealthy Hindu sponsors bought a leafy,3o-acre site in the expensiveLondon Boroughof Harrowin orderto achieve an appropriatesetting for a building of its opulence. Planning permission was refused,so a downmarketsite in inner suburbanLondon was selectedinstead. ENGLAND'S NEW RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE 483

FIG.6-The Mehfil-e-AbbasShi'a Ithna Asheri Masjid in BalsallHeath, Birmingham. (Photograph by MartinBarfoot, School of Geographyand the Environment,University of Oxford,spring 2000)

FIG. 7-The ShreePragat Mandal-Krishna Mandir in Sparkbrook,Birmingham. (Photograph by MartinBarfoot, School of Geographyand the Environment,University of Oxford,spring 2001) 484 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

FIG.8-The Sri Singh Sabha Gurdwarain Hounslow, GreaterLondon. (Photograph by Martin Barfoot, School of Geographyand the Environment,University of Oxford,summer 2001)

This exotic and splendid building now sits off London'sNorth Circularring road, near a gas station and a retailpark. Not far awaythe elegantDawoodi Bohra Shi'a Masjid in Northolt is hidden in an industrialestate off London'sWestern Avenue, with its back to the GrandUnion Canal.The dramaticOxford Center for Islamic Studies,though not a mosque, has been dislodged from its proposed site, near the iconic tower of MagdalenCollege, to an exile on the far side of the RiverCherwell, away from the Christianspires of the historic universitycenter. Figure7, by contrast,shows the alternativedirection of the fourth stage,"em- bracingand celebration."The ShreePragat Mandal-Krishna Mandir in Sparkbrook, Birmingham,with its conicaltower, is unmistakablyHindu architecture.It was built in 199o and illustratesthe change from minimizing South Asian architecturalfea- turesto embracingthem. Figure8 showsthe purpose-builtSri Singh Sabha Gurdwara in Southallin the Borough of Hounslow at the center of the Sikh concentrationin London. The towers are characteristicof Sikh architecturalstyle; the yellow Sikh flag is flying, and the Sikh symbol, crossed swordsforming a circle struck through by a spear,appears in the centerof the top pediment and on top of the flagpole.The writing on the wall-"There is only one God"-is in the Sikh GurmukhiPunjabi script. Birmingham'sDar ul Uloom Islamia Masjid (Figure 9), which opened in 1997,marks the complete embrace-and-celebratephase of planning.The full range ENGLAND'S NEW RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE 485

FIG.9-The Dar ul Uloom IslamiaMasjid in BalsallHeath, Birmingham.(Photograph by Martin Barfoot,School of Geographyand the Environment,University of Oxford,summer 2001) of Islamicarchitectural features, particularly the dome and the minaret,are present on a grand scale,and the building is located on one of the main entrancearteries to Birminghamfrom the south. Such styles contest the images of English heritage conjured up by politicians and maintainedby the town and country planningsystem. The amount of purpose buildingto date is relativelysmall and comparativelyrecent. Of the buildingsin our survey,only 16 percentwere purpose built: 13percent of the mosques, 7 percent of the gurdwaras,but 24 percent of the mandirs. In the fourth "embraceand celebrate"stage, planners and politicians grasped the advantageof spectacle in reviving the image of a city. The BirminghamCity Council, for example, has abandoned attempts to flatten the offending minarets, squashthe domes, and minimize the conical towers.It has moved awayfrom tuck- ing exotic religiousbuildings into industrialwastelands. Instead, it has embraced the postmoderncelebration of differenceand advertisesits multiculturalism.In the 198os the PresidentSaddam Hussein Masjid in the Aston district of the city was hidden near a city overpass,whereas the 1997Dar ul Uloom IslamiaMasjid (Fig- ure 9) looms boldly over an arterialentrance to the city. Thus we see a four-stagedevelopment cycle: tacit change and planning denial, larger-scaleconversion with minimalist change,hiding and displacement,and em- 486 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW bracingand celebration.This sequencecan also be appliedto other Europeancoun- tries with new immigrationdevelopments, such as Italyand Spain, still in denial at the first stage, or Germanyand France,which are reluctantlymoving towardstages two and three.

MAKING A MARK Historically,religious buildings have often become imbuedwith symbolic status.As David Harvey's1979 work on the Sacr6Coeur demonstrates, these buildings have also been the focus of culturalcontestation. Paris's Sacre Coeur was not only a church but also a sort of Arc de Triomphe,monumentalizing the Catholicright wing'svic- tory over the communardsin 1871.Cultural contestation has been particularlyin- tense in relationto religiousbuildings that havebeen constructedas visible symbols of ethnic and religiousdifferences. The destructionof the BabriMasjid in Ayodhia by Hindu militants,and the constructionof a Hindu temple on the site, led to wide- spread communal violence in GujaratState in 2002.3 Islamic,Sikh, and Hindu architecturalstyles are commonly portrayedas "alien" additions to the built environmentin England.A British population that resisted the immigration of non-Europeanpeople and whose opposition to the wearingof turbans gave rise to legal action (Modood 1997,326) was unlikelyto accept the ar- rival of domes and minaretswithout dispute.The architecturalforms, the building materials,and the decorativecolors used are all potential sources of controversy. Thus, South Asian places of worship have been proposed in environmentsthat are strictly controlled by a system of planning the principlesof which were enshrined in law some years prior to the development of large diaspora communities. The planning system was never designedto be responsiveto such culturallydiverse social change (Gale 1999). It is possible to distinguishbetween the social and aestheticimpacts of planning on the religious buildings of South Asian groups.In terms of the social impact,in several instances planners'concern for preservingamenity and upholding prin- ciples embeddedin local planningpolicies have been set againstthe needs and prac- tices of faith communities. The effect of this has been to outlaw the customary religious practicesassociated with places of worship. One example is the Muslim call to prayer,which has frequentlybeen proscribedin GreatBritain by preventing the installationof amplificationequipment in minarets. The aesthetic impact of planning has arisen where local planning authorities either have sought to maintain the existing characterof a location or have translated the reactionsof local residentsto the proposed styles of South Asian religious buildings into the normalizinglanguage of planning discourse.In both cases the result has been to consider such buildings antitheticalrather than complementary to existinglandscapes. The significantconsequence has been to displacethese buildings from residentialareas into industrial or commercial districts. Similar issues have been describedfor the mosque planning-permissionprocess in Sydney,Aus- tralia (Dunn 2001), and in Toronto, Canada (Isin and Siemiatycki 2002). ENGLAND S NEW RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE 487

Thussome of thesedevelopments have a hiddenquality. In partthis reflects the natureof the inner-cityareas that manyof the minorityethnic populations, par- ticularlythe Pakistaniand Bangladeshi Muslims, inhabit (Peach 1996a, 1996b). Forty percentof the mosquesin our surveywere located in nineteenth-centuryterraced- housingareas (double the percentageof the mandirsand gurdwaras).Other con- trastsbetween the religionswere less notable,with the exceptionof the higher proportionof mandirslocated in commercialor industrialareas compared with the proportionof Sikhand Muslim places of worship. Overthe pastfifty years the SouthAsian population of GreatBritain has devel- opedfrom the initialperiod of chainmigration, through family reunion and social reconstruction,to the establishmentof stable,dynamic, and often highly successful communities.The construction of manyand varied sites of worshipto servicethese communities'religious and socialneeds can be seen as a culminationof this his- toricaldevelopment. Although such buildingshave often met with racistpublic opposition,much of it refractedthrough the languageof planning,the groupsbe- hindthem have nonetheless negotiated on theirown terms to ensurethe successful completionof theirbuilding projects (Ballard 1994, 5). Accordingly,these places of worshipdo not simplysymbolize the presenceof SouthAsians in GreatBritain. Rather,they express these communities' confident assertion of theirnegotiated terms of belongingwithin British society. Partlybecause the distributionof placesof worshipcorresponds to the distributionof theircongregations, some of the moreimpressive buildings are in areas thatexperience relative degrees of deprivation.But this does not detractfrom the significanceof these sites for their respectivecommunities, which have invested considerableresources in theirconstruction and ongoing development. Sometimes, as is the casewith the NortholtDawoodi Bohra Shi'a Masjid or the NeasdenShri SwaminarayanMandir, local resistance has forced the mostimpressive of theseedi- ficesto marginallocations. One can understand the passions involved in whatmany seeas the intrusion of newcultural forms into their home areas. But the multicultural realityof contemporaryGreat Britain necessitates recognition of therights of different groupswithin society to markpublic space. The socialand aesthetic trends explored in this studypresent a challengeto the planningprofession, whose responsibility for conservingthe existingiconography of urbanlandscapes needs to be reconciledwith the attemptsof differentgroups to signifytheir identities through the built environment. There is evidenceof a chang- ing senseof civicresponsibility toward these building schemes, suggesting a growing recognitionof the role playedby religiousinstitutions in contributingto the welfareof differentsectors of thepopulation. Even though tensions may result from the form this recognition takes, it perhaps signals the way toward unravelingthe patternsof marginalizationwe have referredto in this article.For some planners,it is the modestapproach of allowingdiscreet vestigial architectural embellishments, such as pinnaclesinstead of minaretson a mosque.However, the bold and the magnificentare now being acceptedtoo. The new culturallandscape of English 488 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW citieshas arrived. The homogenized, Christian landscape of statereligion, to which WilburZelinsky referred in 2001, is in retreat.

NOTES

1. A religious census of church attendancein the United Kingdomwas taken at the time of the 1851census. Religion has been a question on the census in Northern Irelandsince the first census, in 18l0. However,in 2001 the three constituentparts of the United Kingdomwere interestedin different questions.In Englandand Walesthe aim was to enumeratethe membersof the new religions,whereas all Protestantsand Roman Catholicswere combined into a single "Christian"category. In Scotland the new religionswere included,but more interestwas focused on the differenceswithin Christianity and on change over time. In Northern Irelandthe focus was on Christiandenominations and change, and the new religionswere relegatedto a write-in category. 2. Accessto the databasefrom the projectis availablefrom Ceri Peach.Plans for publicationon a CDof the listing, togetherwith maps and photographs,were abandonedafter 9/11. 3. The BabriMasjid in Ayodhia,Uttar PradeshState, India, was built in 1528by the Muslim Em- peror Baburon the site of a Hindu mandir.Babur destroyed the Hindu mandir to build the mosque. The mandir commemoratedthe birthplaceof the God Ram. In 1992the mosque was destroyedby Hindu militants in order to rebuild the mandir dedicatedto Ram. Ten yearslater Hindu volunteers returningto Gujaratby train from working on the new temple sparkeda confrontationby refusingto pay the Muslim watersellers for the waterthey bought from them. The watersellers rioted and set fire to the train.When 58 Hindus were burned to death, 2,000 Muslimswere massacredin the subsequent statewide reprisals(Hartung 2002).

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