LONDON, ENGLAND, June 8, 2004: The Home Office invited a delegation from Hindu Council UK for a consultation on the oncoming legislation for “Ministers of Religion from abroad.” Dr. Stadlen, Head of the Faith Communities Unit, chaired the meeting and explained that the White Paper, “Secure Borders, Safe Haven,” undertook to review the existing arrangements whereby they would like to look at the proposal for allowing appropriately qualified persons to be allowed an entry clearance. One of the proposals for an entry clearance is that the Minister of Religion has sufficient knowledge of English (IELTS Band 6 Competent User). Such a requirement would have a drastic impact on Hindus as few priests could meet such a requirement. The complete report of the meeting follows.
O. P. Sharma responded to explain that there are about 140 temples, each having its own Executive Committee of volunteers from the community and that these are the people who actually run the temples and arrange community activities. The priests take a secondary role of performing various rituals and carrying out worship activities. They are not preachers as such and each temple on average has 2 to 3 priests only, in fact very few come to the UK, at least, in comparison to other faiths. Mr. Sharma said that these priests, although highly educated and trained to perform the temple duties, may not know English at all and that while we are trying to get them trained in English also it will take about 10 years to achieve that requirement, which we too prefer.
Dr. Stadlen commented that English is a useful tool to communicate to the younger members of the community and in addition the requirement would be complimentary to the community cohesion program. Raj Bali said that for community work in the north Midlands he is an active member in every society/organisation one could name but he could not expect the priest to take any such participation. He said that we are concerned more about the priest’s scriptural education and his command of Sanskrit rather than any other language. Ishwer Taylor also continued that community cohesion is the responsibility of the community, not so much of the priest. In Preston, he said that they do encourage the priests to attend college for English as a second language course but it is more important to them that he speaks Gujarati and Hindi. Community activities like visits by schools etc. are always dealt with by one of the Executive persons. Dr. Rao clarified that a Hindu priest is not a preacher, nor does he give sermons. He said that in his Ventakeshwar Balaji temple they have 6 priests and none of them preach, which is left to the monks.
Kishore Ruperalia elaborated that someone like Morari Bapu, who is a spiritual leader, would travel to various countries and give sermons/lectures but he is not a priest, nor can be termed as a high priest. However, these leaders come only as visitors and do not require a work permit. Jitu Patel then explained that at Swaminarayan they have various categories, e.g., a) Sadhus, who will preach and most know English well; b) Pujaries, who do the worship and ritual duties (actually, are the priests); c) Puraanies, who read and analyze the scriptures; d) Bhandaries, who cook for the Deities. Mr. Patel explained that actually the categories b, c and d have little or no contact with the public and they would like to maintain that.
Mr. Ratnasingham then added that in a Sri Lankan temple they observe many more rituals in comparison to the North Indian customs and they need a minimum of 6 priests to observe all the duties. Currently their senior priest does not know English and some of the junior category priests do but the senior priest is a highly educated scholar in the Hindu scriptures, Sanskrit and temple duties, which the junior priests cannot match. Mr. Ruperalia added that the priests are for practical work in the temple and that there is a lot of symbolism in Hinduism. Mr. Taylor continued that for us the Deities, once consecrated in the shrine, have life infused in them and therefore we need priests to look after them, to feed them, to bathe them, to clothe them and so on.
Dr. Stadlen enquired whether the priests were in two categories, a) where they provide a moral leadership role and b) where they just do the ritual work of the temples. Mr. Bhanot tried to sum up saying that probably only 5% of the priests take up the leadership role, where they do actually start giving sermons and go out to the community but the other 95% remain basically in the temple and would give moral and scriptural guidance on an individual basis. He continued on Raj Bali’s comment that our priest is consulted by the community on an individual basis and although he commands respect from the congregation he does not lead it as would be the case, for instance, by an Imam in a mosque, who actually acts as their leader. He clarified that the Hindu priest does not get involved with community issues, nor does he comment on them.
Mr. Sharma gave an example of the Wolverhampton temple where recently they held a congregation where the priest, who speaks broken English, did all the religious duties but lectures and talks were given by the community leaders and the congregation included three MEP’s and fifteen councillors and he reminded that that is community cohesion at work. Dr. Rao, finally made a point that actually switching does not happen in Hindu priesthood; it is not that an I T engineer can switch to becoming a priest; the training is long and arduous. He enquired at the end from Dr. Stadlen whether it was now clear that such a law would undermine our system totally and although efforts can be made in future to request the schools to train the priests in English also that at the very least Hindus should be exempted in a transitional period of say 10 years.
Dr. Rao said that if our youngsters demand that the priests speak English the system will automatically begin to cater for that and this legislation is not seen as necessary for the Hindu priestly roles; that would be the case for our exemption. Dr Stadlen thanked the delegation and said that it has been very interesting for him to learn the differences and that he will keep the Ministers informed for a further review and another possible consultation. He briefly touched on considering the downgrading of the IELTS Band 4 limited user requirement for English but there was still no consensus on that by the delegation.
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