ICNY’s International Delegation is in Glasgow on the third leg of the Sister Cities program. They’ll be reporting in daily with a blog for the day.
Visit to Hindu Temple, Glasgow
It has been great to reconnect- and in some cases, meet for the first
time-interfaith colleagues from Barcelona and Glasgow, as we meet for the
third and final leg of the James Parks Morton International Fellows
exchange program. In the evening on Saturday, when most of us had arrived
from our home cities, we met in the hotel lobby and walked a short block
to the Hindu Temple, a large mandir, and the only mandir in Glasgow.
Previously a Christian Science Church, the building was apparently built
in 1857 as the Queen’s Rooms. It is large, with ash At the top of the
facade is a sculpture relief of a Greek war, and the entrance is an
imposing wooden door, ornately carved with visibly Hindu symbols. We were
welcomed inside the temple by Accharyaji and many women leaders in the
community. They performed aarti, a ritual incorporating beautiful
devotional song and lamps offered to the deities.
Our group went into a smaller meeting room in the lower level of the
temple, where we learned about the temple and the Hindu community. We met
several women leaders, who were introduced as the ‘backbone’ of the
community. Looking back at the history,
http://hindumandirglasgow.org.uk/hmg/temp_history.html, women were central
to the founding of the community, as the temple was founded starting with
a group pioneering mothers who got together in their homes for ritual
worship.
