Hindus account for almost 2% of the UK population, and the Hindu civilisation is one of the oldest living, with a unique and well-documented worldview in issues concerning humanity. It is a culture that promotes synchronicity with nature and sees the oneness of everything through diversity. In particular, it has a unique reverence for the feminine.
The Hindu Women's Festival 2021 took place from April 7 to April 11 last week. It was hosted by Beyond the Bindi this year, in an attempt to celebrate British Hindu Women and Hindu perspectives on femininity and womanhood. Beyond the Bindi is a literary initiative nurturing ideas around Hindu femininity, and is due to publish their first anthology with independent publisher Tattva Press in Autumn 2021.
The festival brought together over 700 participants from across the world. The subjects being explored are wide-ranging and deeply personal, encompassing relationships, sex and sexuality, leadership, social and cultural barriers to political activism, access to education, motherhood, psychology, and rituals and practices around menstruation and pregnancy. There will also be interactive sessions on writing, cooking, yoga, and holistic wellbeing.
Vidhu Sharma, Commissioning Editor, Beyond the Bindi said, “There are many negative, misunderstood and stereotypical views about Hindus, perpetuated by the media and popular culture, and many of those that capture public attention are the ones involving women: arranged marriages, goddesses of fertility and death, subservience and docility, saris and bindis, Bollywood dancing queens and dowry. We seem forced to seek solace in the feminist views espoused by the west without understanding and appreciating the nuances of the Hindu cultural perspective. We have also grown to accept notions of feminism without critical examination. Is it really the most sustainable approach to gender? This festival will ask if there are more collaborative ways to understand gender and how indigenous Indian practises can help us to organise society.”
Bringing together 60+ speakers from around the world, a great many Indian and Hindu organisations that contributed to the festival, included NHSF UK, PwC Hindu Network, City Hindus Network, HSS UK, Chinmaya Mission, The Jai Jais, Jammu Kashmir Festival, Vichaar Manthan UK, Voice of Dogras, Utho, Kaho, Sangamam, Yog Foundation, Sewa Day, Another Mother Story, The VM Podcast and many more.
