News

19th November 2011

FOCHS Leicester – The City Rooms

Our Leicester Friends of the OCHS (FOCHS) hosted a gala dinner on 19 November to celebrate the achievements and milestones of the OCHS and the Leicester FOCHS.

The lively night began with a reception for guests to meet and mingle.

A talk by Lucian Wong Student of the Oxford Centre For Hindu Studies

Religious plurality is a pervasive feature of the multi-cultural society in which we live, presenting challenges and opportunities to persons of faith. The existence of multiple and divergent religious currents is, of course, nothing new to Hinduism. This talk will explore the ways in which Hindu texts and traditions address the issue of religious pluralism.

 Professor Gavin Flood, OCHS Academic Director and author of The Tantric Body: The Secret Tradition of Hindu Religion; The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory and Tradition; Beyond Phenomenology: Rethinking the Study of Religion; and the widely prescribed Introduction to Hinduism has published  with Wiley-Blackwell.

We now have a third conference to add to our list of achievements. The Sakta conference which took place on 10–11 September 2011 was highly successful with over fifty participants and twelve specialist scholars.

Fifteen bankers from the Barclays Non-Resident-Indian (NRI) banking team in the United Kingdom took part in a ten-kilometre bicycle and tricycle ride. The enthusiasm in supporting a good cause was inspiring. This transfer from the rich to the poor in a different age took place in Sherwood Forest, once home to the famous Robin Hood. The team were in high spirits and they all had a great time. We are pleased to report that no one fell of their bicycles.

The OCHS ‘Bridges and Barriers to Hindu-Christian Relations’ report, compiled by Dr Jessica Frazier, was launched at the Hindu-Christian Forum (HCF) at Lambeth Palace on 23 November.

The Hindu-Christian Forum was hosted by the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams. The event was introduced by the Chairs of the HCF: The Ven. Richard Atkinson, Archdeacon of Leicester, and an OCHS scholar, Ramesh Pattni, Interfaith Chair of the Hindu Forum of Britain. It was addressed by Andrew Stunell MP, Sri Shruti Dharma Das Ji, Baroness Richardson, and Lord Popat.

Karma Yoga. Jnana Yoga. Bhakti Yoga. Doing, Thinking, Feeling, respectively. This was the presenting paradigm or in other words, a way of thinking that I (at least) have brought home with me from the Oxford Hindu Centre on the 28th of July 2011. Later, when I was asked to sum up the day’s experience, two words instantly came to mind: thought provoking. Upon reflection I recognise the inspiration behind my selected words: Shaunaka Rishi Das ji, the speaker, informed us that Oxford University teaches its students to think.

We are happy to announce several scholarships awarded to students of the OCHS. These scholarships provide an opportunity for students to travel and pursue their research and they make a big difference to their morale and material needs.

The scholarships awarded are as follows.

The Pandit Abaji Scholarship sponsored by Raj and Ramila Chauhan, the founders of the Leicester Friends Group, was awarded to Meijia Ling. Meijia is studying India's scientific and medical traditions.

Legendary Indian film actor and producer Amitabh Bachchan visited Oxford University on Tuesday 17 May 2011, for a lecture and dinner hosted by the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies (OCHS).

In 2010 the nascent Hindu-Christian Forum won funding from the Department of Communities and Local Government to undertake a research project in the form of a 'listening exercise' exploring the relations between Hindu and Christian communities in the UK. This report is intended to guide the way for the future direction that the Hindu Christian Forum will take.