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LEICESTER, UNITED KINGDOM, July 05, 2004: Two separate organizers hoped that their club nights in Leicester would attract Indian youth in droves. Instead, they attracted insults, threats and abuse. Trying to be creative, each organiser had named the club-night, Jagraan — which is also the name of a religious fast observed for Goddess Durga. They had not reckoned with the increasingly vocal Hindu community in Britain. The Hindu Dharma Sabha is a large UK organisation of Hindus that aims to pinpoint areas where the Hindu name is tarnished. The Hindu Human Rights group, which has a successfully led high-profile campaigns (including recently one about sacred images on bikinis), posted a protest on its website. Community leaders quickly issued statements condemning the insult to Durga, urging the organisers to change the name of the events. The BBC requested Ramesh Kallidaime, General Secretary of the Hindu Forum of Britain, to appear on a show to comment on the controversy, asking him if a club night was an innovative way of attracting the younger generation to religion. He felt that an event of music, alcohol and dance could never emulate a peaceful arati (worship) ceremony.



The debate expanded to whether Hindu temples in Britain were making any attempts to reach out to youth, and whether young people found temples daunting. Most UK temples seem to attract a middle-aged clientele – usually female, and even this group is shrinking alarmingly, whilst British-born youngsters rarely attend temples. Vishal Thakrar, a 25-year-old graduate, said that humanitarian service was more important than service to God or temple rituals. He added that people preferred going to the gym or clubbing — he preferred cinema or watching football. To be fair, several Hindu and other groups are highly skilled in reaching out to youth. Their youth camps show a good response to morning meditation sessions, group discussions, role-plays, discourses, dramas and many other activities. Chinmayananda, the founder of the Chinmaya Mission said that the youth are not “useless, but just used less.” Three years ago, the youth wings of 30 Hindu organizations successfully came together to form the Hindu Youth UK (HYUK). HYUK organizes high profile Get Connected youth festivals. Other organizations could easily emulate this successful good practice, and this would perhaps be more important that merely protesting. One of the controversial Jagraan nights was eventually cancelled, its organiser expressing surprise at the outcry, for such events had been held successfully before – why are people suddenly protesting now?

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