Hindu Voice UK, August 2007

I doubt many of you have served or been remanded and enjoyed the hospitality of Her Majesty's Prison Services. Spiritual well-being is important to me and I was glad to find out there was a Hindu Service once a week.

I started off in HMP Pentonville, which is a holding prison for all categories of prisoners to be detained until they have been allocated another prison (hopefully) after they have been risk assessed. It is a tough place to say the least, especially for someone like me who was there for minor offences and was forced to live with murderers and violent criminals.

During induction I was told that there is a Hindu service which takes place on Friday at 9.30. The priest Mr Trivedi came to collect each inmate separately, took us to a room and played the Hanuman Chalisa on a CD, I sang along in my mind after quickly realizing no one else knew the words. It was a good break from the prison routine once a week, Mr Trivedi seemed fairly dedicated, and offered simple explanations to some of our traditions. For example, an explanation of why we should not eat beef and generally answering any questions we had.

The second half of my sentence I was in HMP Maidstone in Kent. Here the Hindu service was to be honest – pathetic. The priest Mr Prem did not pray, when I asked why he replied “God is sleeping during the day, one does not gain any credit with the lord for prayers done between 12pm and 6pm.” This is just the type of backward thinking Hindu mentality which will cause inmates to turn to other religions for their spiritual needs. You may ask, if he did not pray what did he do in the service. I have one answer for you – Bollywood. Yes that’s right; the 3 hour Hindu service in Maidstone was a Hindi Film session (therefore excluding the Tamils). However the priest may not have been doing his job properly this did not mean the time was not beneficial. For one you get to know all the other Hindu’s and Sikhs in the prison.

The last thing I would like to comment on and was very impressed by was the unity amongst Hindu’s and Sikh’s inside which is seldom found outside nowadays. In fact Maidstone had only 3 Hindu inmates, the others attending the Hindu service were all Sikh.

So I also attended the Sikh service, which did have prayers. I am sorry I do not remember the Gyani’s name (priest) however it was interesting to hear him recite and explain a historic Sikh story which made reference both to Shri Rama and the Mahabharata.