Temple congregations and communities: Hindu constructions in Edinburgh

Abstract

In a recent article Vertovec (1992) rightly draws attention to divergent trends among Hindu communities in Britain. He questions the assumption that all Hindu temples are taking on new roles as ‘community centres’, and provides evidence that although some British temples are obviously organised around particular communal groups, there are others which retain more ‘traditional’ Hindu roles. What appears to be at the heart of this is the notion of congregation, and of the role of temples as promoters of congregational worship. Nearly all Hindu temples in Britain make use of some type of congregational worship, but only certain temples are equating these congregations with actual communal groups, and in doing so are using the temple to create a sense of Hindu ‘community’. One example of this development is the Hindu temple in Edinburgh, where the temple congregation is becoming the focus of a city wide Hindu community.

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