There is a building nestled at the end of a cul-de-sac within a quiet residential community. Its understated exterior does not hint at the grandeur within where colourful paintings and garlands adorn the walls and figurines of deities feature prominently.
However, it is in this Welches, St Michael temple that some members of the Hindu community – those who adhere to Sanathan Dharma or Hinduism in its original form – gather regularly for worship. The temple is also used on rare occasions by the two other groups of Hindus who follow prophets Guru Nanack and Sai Baba.
Thakoor Prashad, the Guyanese priest in charge of the temple, estimated that there were more than 1 000 Hindus in Barbados and about half of them follow Sanathan Dharma. These devotees are mainly Guyanese but also include some Barbadians, Trinidadians and a few Indians.
Prashad noted that the number of people who worshipped at the temple has dropped since 2009 when several Guyanese left the country after Government toughened its stance on undocumented migrants.
Of those who currently attend services at the temple, Prashad said: “Some are born here, some have status and some are on work permit.” It is in this temple where several puja or rituals dedicated to various gods are performed. The priest stressed that rituals were critical to Hinduism.
“Rituals are very important because the first four books that were written said that to communicate spiritually with God we have these rituals where we offer various articles which include honey, fruits and sweets.
“We worship every week, sometimes once, sometimes many times, depending on the seasons,” he said.
In a separate interview, president of the Sindhi Association of Barbados, Mahesh Mahtani, said Sindhis, who are descendants of Hindus from the north of India, tend to practise their religion privately.
“Most Hindus have a small room in their house that they convert to sort of a prayer room or temple. Ordinarily, we don’t go to the temple every day or every week on a fixed schedule. On bigger occasions, like the birth of a god, we go to the temple,” he said.
Mahtani stressed that the religion is monotheistic.“We have all these different gods, that’s true, and we worship them at different times for different reasons, but in the end, we do know all of it comes back to [the belief] that there is only one God. In fact, going further than that, we believe there is only one God in the entire universe, that the same God that we are praying to, the Christians, the Muslims, the Buddhists and everyone in the world, prays to,” he said.
Mahtani noted that the different gods represented different aspects of life, including money, health and power and while Hinduism contains hundreds of sub-religions, he said there were about six gods to whom all Hindus pray.
He detailed the central beliefs of the religion. “In the Hindu religion, we believe that every living thing has a soul called the ‘atma’. This soul gives life to the body and so leaves the body when death occurs. The soul, however, never dies; it is eternal and goes from one birth to another for all time,” he said. “All living things, including plants, animals and, of course, humans, have a soul. When our soul is finally born in a human body, we now have a chance to break this cycle of birth and death.”
Mahtani noted that only humans have the ability to unite with God and break the cycle of life and death.
Good life
“Living a morally good life, worshipping God, doing your duty and helping the less fortunate are some of the main factors that will determine whether you will reunite with God at the end or be reborn again to go through the cycle once more,” he said.
This leads to the concept of Karma, which means that your deeds in previous lives have consequences in this life, he added.
“This explains the different circumstances people find themselves in, including suffering, pain, riches, even winning the lottery. All the actions of the present are predicated by our actions in our past life. Therefore, the human form is a blessing and an opportunity that God gives us to reunite with Him and become part of God ourselves.”
As Prashad summarized it: “According to our good or bad works, so we will be rewarded whenever we come back. We were here before. That is why we are back to continue that journey – to reap the consequences of the bad or the good that we have done before.”
As with many other religions, Hindu children tend to become less interested in the traditional practices of the religion as they grow up, Mahtani said.
“The younger people are not interested in rituals and in many cases, religion is just a set of rituals, things that you do every day or every month. They don’t believe in religion in that sense.
Big challenge
“They would say they believe in God and they are spiritual, but they don’t want to perform these rituals that a religion tells them that they should do. They don’t believe that it will benefit them. That’s a very big challenge that I think every religion faces,” he added.
Mahtani suggested that the only way to combat this problem was to teach children the importance and meaning of rituals from a young age.
He added that another challenge was to convince children to learn and speak Hindi or Sindhi, which is a dialect.
“We’re quickly losing our language in Barbados. The number of young people who speak Hindi or Sindhi is diminishing very rapidly. I believe within the next generation we’ll have less than ten per cent actually speaking the language,” he said, while suggesting that many Hindus who were born in Barbados do not speak Hindi.
“Many of these prayers are in a language that is foreign to them and they memorize them because they do them all the time, but sometimes they don’t even know what they are saying,” he said.
To tackle this situation, he said the Sindhi Association was trying to set up classes for children.
Both Prashad and Mahtani said Hindus integrated easily into Barbadian society, with the latter noting that Hindus were increasingly marrying outside of their religion.
“It’s been happening more and more often nowadays as the people that were born in Barbados mingle with the local Bajans, fall in love and decide to get married. Parents have their preferences but it’s not against the religion. Hinduism is very tolerant,” he stated.
He added: “Most of my children’s friends are Bajans. My own sister married a Bajan and my cousin married a Bajan as well.” Mahtani noted that the Hindu community has never noticed any animosity towards them or “any people interested in joining”.
“I think we’re pretty much left alone and accepted,” Mahtani said.
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