focus upon two major temples, the Balaji Temple in the West Midlands, and the Murugan Temple in Manor Park, east London. I will also mention a new Tamil temple in Leicester, which is nearer in its development to how these major temples were in their origin. They are largely Tamil or Telegu in their administration, and in terms of devotees. But they are increasingly eclectic also, as other Hindus attend, particularly at festival times. I will also be reflecting on how they have related to the wider communities in which they are set, and to Christians in particular. What is evident throughout the British Hindu community is how few of them have a Dalit origin, particularly those coming from Gujarat, Tamil Nadu or Sri Lanka. Most Dalits are Punjabis, a proportion of whom have become neo-Buddhists in Wolverhampton, Birmingham or elsewhere.1 Some attend Guru Ravidas temples. This guru/god is on the border between Sikh and Hindu. There is a Ravidas temple in north Leicester.
There have been some studies of the South Asians as they have moved to the UK. One such study is Diaspora of the Gods,2 by Joanne Waghorne. She sees a movement to globalize what have been localized temple traditions. This applies particularly to the god Murugan, normally associated with Tamil Nadu, and with six hills there which house Murugan temples. These are Palani (the most important, in Madurai District, and second only to Tirupati, where the Balaji temple is on another hill, in Andhra Pradesh), Tiruchendur (by the sea in Tirunelveli District), Tiruparakundram (just five miles south of Madurai), Tiruttani (north of Chennai), Swamimalai (near Tanjore), and a sixth which is undefined, because Murugan is everywhere, and so this temple is found wherever there is a hill with a shrine to Murugan on its top. There are numerous candidates for this. They were not original national pilgrimage sites, but regional and local. These locations throughout the state help us to see how Murugan has become a symbol for Tamil religiosity, and also for the Dravidian consciousness that permeates culture and politics, where, since the 1960s, government has always been in the hands of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK – the Dravidian Progress Federation) or a split from this main party. Murugan is linked with the Sanskrit tradition, through his being the second son of Siva. There is a definitive study of Murugan by Frank Clothey, entitled The Many Faces of Murugan.3 The author’s conclusion is that many Tamilians see the god and the region as virtually inseparable. Murugan’s life has been mythically lived out in Tamil Nadu. Generic elements from both the Sanskrit and Tamil traditions have been fused with local and folk imageries in such a way as to make the god’s holy stead attractive to people from all walks of Tamil life. His exploits speak to all dimensions of the Tamil imagination – whether he is seen as teacher and philosopher par excellence, or the one who dispels misfortune; whether he is the giver of joy in life or release from it; be he the mischievous lover or ideal ascetic the full range of human needs and emotions are expressed in the contemporary mythology of Murugan.4
Clothey writes this before the development of the Murugan cult in the Tamil diaspora. Now this god is found globally, and Joanne Waghorne coins the phrase ‘transnational religion’. She quotes another sociologist, Susanne Rudolf, that ‘local devout groups through informal networks, keep alive these examples of religiosity in a new context, just as happens with the religion of Imams and Bishops.’ Another example: she looks at how worship of independent village goddesses is not found until the 1990s, being seen as low class and low caste. But now it has spread through London, including in the East Ham temple. This is a kind of neo-Hinduism and can be linked with Hindutva ideology. This British Hinduism has been described, by Burghart,5 as the perpetuation of religion in an alien cultural milieu. Recently, there has been another example, the wider development of the cult of Ayappan, a god normally associated with a major shrine on the top of a hill in Kerala called Subaramalai. This is a centre for an annual pilgrimage which involves much asceticism in preparation, and where pilgrims can be identified by their black clothes. I was surprised to hear of a doctor from the UK who was going on such a pilgrimage with his wife in 2014, normally engrossed as he is with the religion of the Tamil diaspora. This may be the next transnational import.
A major player in the development of Tamil religion in London was a Sri Lankan called Sabapathipillai, who felt a calling in the 1970s to unite all worshippers of Siva in the UK who were of Dravidian origin. This began in Archway, north London, and he encouraged Tamils from Fiji, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Sri Lanka, Mauritius and South Africa to come together with their families to follow the Saiva Siddhanta philosophy found in Tamil Nadu. But Archway was not an Indian area, and the worship was very restrained and confined within the building. East Ham was the next temple, and a Tamil professor said, ‘This is a place where I would not want to walk around at night.’ But by 2004 there were seven main Dravidian temples in London. These are in Highgate/Archway (Murugan-centred), Wimbledon (Ganapathi), East Ham (Murugan), Tooting (Maryamman), Stoneleigh (Rajeswari Amman) and Ealing (Kanaga Thurkkai Amman). There are also temples to Lakshmi, and other Vaishnavite deities, and this shows the balance between Tamil and Telegu communities. The influence of the female goddess cults can be seen here. Sampathkumar was asked: what makes a good temple? He replied, ‘A general feeling, a good atmosphere, a powerful deity, and good priests.’6 Going onto the streets is also important, an act of grace from the gods to reveal themselves to the general public. This is normal in India, and growing in the UK, with the growing acceptance of Hindus as part of British life.
Let us look first at the South Asian diaspora in the UK, as seen through the history of the Balaji Temple, in Sandwell, between Birmingham and Wolverhampton. The early South Indians and Sri Lankans who came to the UK were normally professionals, the majority doctors or business people. The Tamil community included both those from India and Sri Lanka. The latter were not refugees in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They initially used to meet in private homes, and they had before them a picture of Balaji (Vishnu as in Tirupati), in southern Andhra Pradesh. (The temple there is on the top of a significant hill, and is the most popular and richest temple in India and a great centre of pilgrimage. I visited once, and it is a phenomenon of religiosity and also a centre of business and education.) But after some time, it was difficult to host gatherings of this professional community in the house.
My friend and informant, and one of the two key trustees of the temple throughout its history as a project, Dr Rajah, from Jaffna, Sri Lanka, tells me how he asked the leaders of the first temple in Birmingham, Gita Bhavan, to allow this temple to be used on the first Sunday of the month, for a gathering on Sunday afternoon. I was present at the opening of Gita Bhavan, one of the earliest temples in the UK, whose congregation was from the beginning largely Punjabi. Ninety per cent of the South Indian worshippers were professional, very different from the Punjabis, and they wanted to keep up their practices and rituals. Many were Brahmins – but they had no priest, and so they relied on lay leadership, even in worship. And once a month was not really enough.
There began a long process towards a temple of their own. As early as 1978 they became a registered charity, and began all kinds of fundraising efforts. From 1985 they began to look for land, and searched all over the country, from London, to Derby, to Peterborough and even to Wales. Criteria included being near an airport, and having good road and rail transport links. It took them nine years to find a suitable plot, after several rejections, and to get planning permission. I remember being approached about whether they could buy a redundant church. I pointed out this could not be an Anglican church, because of Anglican rules about selling redundant churches for the worship of another faith, and we were about to approach the Methodist Church. But they then decided that Christians had destroyed temples in Sri Lanka to build churches, and they did not want to do a similar thing in the UK. Therefore, they would focus on a new build, rare at that time.
They ended up with an unprepossessing brown-field site, ex-industrial land, in Oldbury, which is part of Sandwell, between Birmingham and Walsall. Its strength was that it was near the M5, M6 and M42 motorways,7 and the Birmingham Airport and rail connections. They anticipated a national and even international clientele, which has indeed happened. They got planning permission, but then opposition developed, and I was told that the Bishop of Wolverhampton, who gave solid support, was nearly lynched when he arranged an open meeting
