CHAPTER 11 Temple Hinduism in Europe

Annette Wilke

Temples are a very important social and material feature of Hinduism in Europe. Their establishment has been judged, with good reason, as an im- portant milestone in the development of diaspora communities, because they are the major symbol of official Hinduism for both Hindu migrants and European society as a whole (see among others Knott 1987: 161; Vertovec 2000: 124; Baumann 2003: 250–55; Jacobsen 2003: 371; Fibiger 2003). Despite this sig- nificance, “temple Hinduism” is a fairly recent phenomenon in Europe. As far as “ethnic temples” are concerned, it started in Britain in the late 1960s and in continental Europe (Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France, Portugal, and Scandinavian countries) in the mid-1980s, whereas ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) created its first temples in both regions in the mid-1970s. Exceptions to this were the small number of public places of worship es- tablished by the Ramakrishna Mission or the Vedanta Society (founded by Swami Vivekananda) which constituted the first Hindu temples in several European countries; for instance, in Switzerland in the 1930s (Eulberg 2014: 116n16) and in Britain’s north London in 1949 (Burghart 1987: 7). Temples were, however, never at the centre of the Ramakrishna movement,1 nor did they exercise much influence among Hindu migrants, but rather they attracted a well-educated European audience that was interested in Indian philosophy. The Ramakrishna Mission represents what Kim Knott (1987: 158) called “intel- lectual Hinduism” (with an emphasis on teaching and universal ideas) in con- trast to the “popular” or devotional Hinduism which lies at the heart of Indian temple culture and the regional Hinduism implanted in Europe by Hindu migrants. Initially, for many decades, it was not temple culture but (Advaita) Vedānta—starting with the German Romantics’ infatuation with India and Vivekananda’s famous speech(es) at the 1893 World Parliament of Religions

1 In classical as well as reformed (Advaita) Vedānta there is potentially little concern with tem- ple Hinduism, although temples and services exist in monasteries and āśrams, but typically knowledge comes first (i.e., the knowledge of being the self of everything and that the soul and absolute spirit are ultimately one). From this tradition’s perspective, ritual and devotion are for the purification of the mind, so that it can grasp this ultimate truth.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004432284_012 216 Wilke in Chicago—which shaped the public image of Hinduism in the West. It was this orientalist, Vedānta-based image of mystical oneness, the harmony of the universe, tolerance, and nonviolence, which was still very prominent among the hippie India-lovers of the 1960s and 1970s. It was during this time that a number of Hindu-affiliated new religious movements, such as ISKCON (popularly known as “Hare Krishna”), TM (“Transcendental Meditation”), and the Sai Baba and Osho movements, began proselytising and became prominent in the United States and Western Europe. Knott (1987: 158) understands these new, guru-based, religious groups as a third strand of Hinduism in the West. In fact, until the mid-1990s, only modern Indian-based movements such as these represented the public face of Hinduism in many European countries, such as Germany and Switzerland. Among the larger public and media they were often coded very negatively and pejoratively but, along with Vedānta,2 they were very influential in the forma- tion of modern alternative spirituality. Except for ISKCON (and also, to a much lesser extent, the Sai Baba movement), these new Hindu-based groups have not been interested in temple building. But, at the same time as they were attract- ing young people from mainstream society (i.e., in the late 1960s and 1970s), a wave of new ethnic temple projects was also emerging in Britain. The first for- mal, ethnic Hindu temple in Britain was a Kṛṣṇa temple in Coventry (Vertovec 2000: 129), which was founded in 1967 by Hindu migrants from Kenya.3 It was

2 Vedānta was mainly spread through translations, rather than face-to-face contact. But there have been notable exceptions, such as Swami Vivekananda and the Ramakrishna Mission’s monks. Since the late 1960s and early 1970s, Swami Chinmayananda and his Chinmaya Mission was another highly influential, Vedānta-based, Indian reform movement. Founded in Chennai in 1953, this movement is very strong in India, and also in Britain; smaller cen- tres exist in the Netherlands, France, and Switzerland. Still later—beginning in the 1990s— Swami Dayananda (formerly belonging to the Chinmaya Mission) and his Arsha Vidya institution became very influential and famous in India, and among a minority in the West, for representing a very traditional Vedānta teaching (of course including the nontradition- al features of teaching women, lower castes, and non-Hindus). All these movements also trained Western teachers. 3 While it is uncontested that almost all the early temples in Britain were built by so-called “East African Hindus” (Hindus who migrated from South Asia to East Africa and then from East Africa to Britain), institutionalisation probably started prior to Coventry in Liverpool and proceeded at a rapid pace. According to Knott (2013: 336), the first temples were regis- tered in Liverpool in 1962, Coventry in 1967, London in 1968, and Leicester in 1969; by 1969, the first ISKCON temple in London’s Soho opened (ibid.; Knott 2009: 91)—and a little later, in the mid-1970s, the first Swaminarayan temple in a former church in Islington (Knott 2013: 336; Reifenrath 2009: 118). These early temple projects were the start of active temple building ac- tivities in the 1970s in many British cities, a vital time for the public face of Hinduism—often supported by government grants, and with inaugurations that local dignitaries attended and