Purushottama Bilimoria –
In terms of religious identity, Hinduism has been and continues to be the predominant faith of New Zealand Indians, followed by Sikhism.
In recent decades, Indians from varied Hindu family backgrounds from all over the subcontinent and the globe, have become more accepting of their public identity as Hindus.
They have also begun to assert their cultural difference and ‘felt uniqueness’ while continuing to access the possibilities and options provided by the liberalising host society that is increasingly self-conscious of its diverse ethnic and religious geography.
Some scholars note that there is a connection also between ethnic-religious identity and gender, noting that women ‘played a vital role in the re-establishment of religious traditions from Gujarat to New Zealand.’
Collective Prayers
Work-orientated Hindu males were hamstrung by their schedule from engaging in religious activities, and there were no Brahman priests.
Nevertheless, regular Sunday gathering for prayers and readings from the Bhagavad Gitā was instituted in 1925-1926, with meetings in different homes in the nation’s capital.
This became more formal with the Wellington Indian Association’s founding of its public hall, Bharat Bhavan in 1959.
Such reinforcements strengthened the Hindus’ religious identity hand in hand with their ethnic proclivity. The burden, however, of maintaining an ongoing engagement with Hindu religious activities, on a day-to-day basis, fell on the women (since their arrival in 1920 onward), who kept a small shrine in their homes where they could offer Poojas and recite prayers from scriptures that they had brought with them.
Rising occasions
Once the collective Indian associations were formed and centres opened in public precincts across major cities and Indian-populated towns in the 1970s, the occasion for gathering of Hindus presented itself with greater alacrity, especially on calendrical sacred days.
These included weddings, classes in Gujarati (in place since 1955) and Hindi (since 1945 with Pandit Amichand from Fiji) and lessons in Hindu teachings (with a cultural center, the Sanskar Kendra, since 1965 in Auckland).
There were also occasions for discourses by visiting dignitaries or scholars, language learning for the youth (until recently a prerogative of the Gujaratis), sports events, Bharata Natyam dance classes, yoga, film nights, fund-raising for celebrating major religious festivals such as Garbha (ceremonious fertility dance, a Gujarati innovation), Diwali and Durga Pooja.
Women power
These centres also became popular for holding Ganesh Chaturthi, Navaratri, Janmashtami, celebrations of the Mahila Samaj (Women’s Association, formed in 1976) and well as the Mathara Sangam of South Indian Kiwi women, Shakti Asian Women’s Support Group founded in 1995 (first Asian women’s refuge), and Shanti Niwas Charitable Trust (a welfare initiative).
In all of these, women play a key role as organisers, rally initiators, and participants.
The configuration of gender and negotiated ethnic vis-à-vis national identity has shifted with a larger percentage (close to 50%) of people of Indian origin actually born in New Zealand. They are therefore more grounded in Pakeha education and conscious of the expectations and challenges of modernity.
Women among them capitalise on equal access to education and communicate with the media in a rapidly globalising environment. Many also defer marriage, and do not always remain within the Indian fold. They have become concerned about and involved in issues of gender equity, the home environment, intellectual and cultural needs, family and aged welfare and social relations.
Hindu diversity
As the hitherto Gujarati dominance gave way to a greater diversity of Hindu identities, efforts have increased towards public expression of the faith and concerted movement to counter persisting prejudicial attitudes in the wider society.
The Auckland Indian Association with its Mahatma Gandhi Centre (established in 1955) and the Wellington Indian Association (1925), despite being secular organisations, began to facilitate religious gatherings, meetings, and visits of gurus.
There are now various Indian organisations, such as the New Zealand Muthamil Sangam, New Zealand Telugu Association, Fiji-Indian Satsang Mandal, the Auckland Marathi Association, New Zealand Kannada Koota, Probasee Bengalee Association, Wellington Durgotsav Committee, Prantik Durgotsab Committee and Ramayana Sanstha.
Religious ties
It has been noted that while most of these associations and organisations are outwardly secular, they maintain close ties with religious groups, providing them with social and cultural networks, venues for functions, and even an excuse to bring together their respective community members!
Thus the Hindu dominated WIA sees Hindu dharma as inextricably linked to Indian identity, without neglecting Sikh and Muslim presence.
The Mahatma Gandhi Centre in Auckland has grown from a community meeting precinct to accommodate a Hindu Temple in the adjacent plot, where large numbers of people gather for public celebration of religious festivals, weddings, and so on.
Ganesh Chaturthi, Navaratri, Diwali, Garbha, Holi and Raksha Bandhan are celebrated with great festive fanfare in each of the cities and tourist towns such as Rotorua or the mid-country Waikato.
Temples and Societies
There are more than 20 temples in New Zealand.
The Hare Krishna Movement (ISKCON) established Temples in Auckland and Wellington shortly after the first temple was opened in Melbourne in the mid-1970s. They now have five Temples.
The Swaminarayan group has the largest number; two in Auckland and one each in Wellington, Christchurch, Rotorua, and elsewhere. There is a Rām-Sītā temple in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch; Radha Krishna Temple in Auckland and Wellington; Śiva temple in Auckland.
Ecumenical Centres
Most temples, such as the Bharatiya Mandir in Auckland, are ecumenical in that besides the central deity, there are shrines to other prominent deities in the respective faith-group’s pantheon.
Since 1996, New Zealand has a national unifying forum for Hindu organisations scattered across the two islands called the Hindu Council of New Zealand. It organises Hindu Heritage Camps and Yogathons (which have spurred interest in Kiwis from all walks of life) and holds annual meetings at which members examine and deliberate over all manner of issues affecting the Hindu community and its image in New Zealand.
More Hindus
The 2006 census recorded Hindus numbering 64,400 people (an increase of 257% since 1991 and 62% since 2001). With calibrated estimates from available data, it is reported that the Hindu population in New Zealand is in the vicinity of 75,000 (the majority being from India and Fiji, including “transit” students, i.e., those arriving on student visa but will be permitted upon completion of their studies to make a transition toward resident status).
Despite its diversity and certain ambiguities in its teachings such as the taboo of crossing the ‘Kalapani’ (Dark off-shore waters) as Mahatma Gandhi had experienced when he wished to go abroad for higher studies, Hinduism has time and again functioned effectively as a sanctifying mechanism for the Indian community.
Community solidarity
The tradition has from within its own unique resources provided a solid bedrock for the community’s solidarity and a spring base for values in a predominantly white-colonial environment, and it has even brought together otherwise faction ridden groups divided along caste, regional, and linguistic lines.
Hinduism’s continuous religious and cultural traditions have worked together in cooperative spirit among its members (along with those from kindred Indian communities including Sikhs and Muslims), as it were, in exile in a distant land and also with the host society with its diverse communities.
It provides a kind of stability that the Western society with its shifting set of values; discarding of enchantment, ideas of the sacred, and adherence to tradition in deference to secular rationalism, and blind economic pursuits has increasingly failed to provide.
Flourishing Hinduism
In short, Hinduism is alive and thriving in the Pacific Ocean’s southernmost Indian diaspora. Over a century of hard work and struggle by migrant Indians, initially mostly from Gujarat and then Punjab, to maintain a niche and a stable presence of their ethnic and religious identity has resulted in a more defined and colourful integration within the mainstream landscape, while retaining their own distinctive, some say unique, cultural and religious identity and proclivity, which they brought from their roots in India, occasionally via other diasporic settlements.
Purushottama Bilimoria is Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, Senior Lecturer at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Chancellor’s Scholar and Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Honorary Professor at the Deakin University and Senior Fellow at Melbourne University in Australia.
The above article has been adapted from the author’s own contribution ‘Australia and New Zealand’ Chapter in Volume V of Brill’s Encyclopaedia of Hinduism edited by Knut A Jacobsen (Editor-in-Chief) and Helene Basu, Angelika Malinar, Vasudha Narayanan (Associate Editors) and published by Brill from Leiden and Boston, 2013).
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Photo Caption:
- Lord Ganesha with Chief Priest Parameswaran Chandru at the Ganesh Temple in Papakura
- The Main Deity at Thiru Subramaniyar Aalayam opened on May 3, 2015
- Tamil God honoured at Thiru Murugan Temple in Otahuhu
- Lord Balaji, His Concorts and other Deities at Balaji Temple in Hamilton
- Ram Mandir in West Auckland is a multi-million dollar community facility
- Shirdi Saibaba being ‘energised’ at the Onehunga Temple
