LONDON, UK, December 14, 2007: Britain’s first state-funded Hindu school has been forced to take a U-turn on its strict ‘vegetarian-only’ admissions policy following widespread criticism from the local Indian community.
In its admissions policy document, the Krishna-Avanti School at Harrow in north-west London had stated that only those who subscribed to its definition of a practising Hindu would be considered in its first annual intake of 30 students next September. But sections of the local Indian community where the school is based and the Hindu Council-United Kingdom have come down heavily on the authorities, saying this would rule out nearly 15,000 Hindu children living in the borough.
In response, the school has decided to leave the responsibility of defining practising Hindus to the local temples. “The task of creating an admissions policy for a cross-community Hindu school was never going to be straight forward, and because of the widely held expectation that the school will be oversubscribed it was inevitable that it would be subject to great scrutiny. “Please, however, rest assured that the principles behind the Krishna-Avanti school remain the same,” said in a letter posted on the
school website.
The Hindu Council-UK has welcomed the school’s move to relax its definition to include more Hindus.