Britain’s Hindu school

The school, named Krishna-Avanti Primary School, is located in the London borough of Harrow, which has the highest concentration of Hindus in any coun cil in Britain: 40,000.

The school is promoted by a charity organisation called the I-Foundation. The policy had earlier defined “practising Hindus” as those who performed daily prayer and deity worship either at a temple or at home, and accepted and followed Vedic scriptures, in particular the Bhagavad Gita.

It also said that practising Hindus must be involved in temple voluntary work, attend temple programmes at least fortnightly and abstain from non-vegetarian food, alcohol, smoking and drugs. Nitesh Gor, director of the I-Foundation, said, “As the intention of the school’s sponsors is to create a school open to all across the community, we have therefore decided to devolve responsibility for defining a practising Hindu to local temples, whatever branch of Hinduism they represent.”

 “This will give to the authorities at each individual temple the power to determine whether an individual is practising in line with the values a of their particular branch of Hinduism”.