HINDUS are campaigning to build a temple and cultural centre to serve more than 10,000 Swindon residents who are members of the faith.

An estimated five per cent of Swindon’s population are Hindus and thousands of practicing Hindus visit the town each year on work contracts, and yet there is no temple in the town or in the surrounding areas.

Practicing Hindus often need to travel as far as Birmingham and London to visit the temple and carry out various rites, including weddings and funerals.

Earlier this year Pradeep Bhardwaj established the Swindon Hindu Temple Trust and is now spearheading a campaign to bring the resource to the town and establish a cultural hub for the Hindu community.

The 46-year-old of Wroughton said: “There are more than 10,000 Hindus in Swindon but we haven’t got a single temple or cultural centre for people to pray in.

“So I set up the registered charity to raise money to build one and I have been having talks with Swindon Council about finding the land to build one on.

“There is a huge Asian population in Swindon – Nepalese, Goans, Bangladeshis and many others – and it doesn’t make sense that there isn’t a temple. There are mosques and there are churches but there is no Hindu temple, and it is the third biggest religion in the world.

“The plan is also to make a cultural centre alongside it and we’re planning for there to be all sorts of things there, including history of the population in Swindon, yoga classes, language classes, Asian dance and music groups, spiritual lessons, meditation groups and various classes as well as social and recreation facilities.

“It’s really important we have something like this because many in the community, especially the elderly, have nowhere to go to socialise or anything during the day, and a cultural centre like this would be very well received.”

The Swindon Hindu Temple Trust plans to hold a social and religious gathering at the Park South Community Centre in Cranmore Avenue to raise awareness of the campaign.

From 2.30pm on November 15 members of the trust will be on hand, and they will also play host to guest speaker Jay Lakhani, the head of Hindu Academy and well-known speaker on Religious Pluralism and Spiritual Humanism as well as a theoretical physicist.

He will be discussing the relevance of a temple for a community and the role the temple can play for the youth.

For more information about the trust and how you can get involved you can email Pradeep at swindonhindutemple@gmail.com.