Hinduism in the United Kingdom

Hinduism in the UK has been shaped by Britain’s invasion and occupation of much of the South Asian subcontinent during the colonial period, leading to early migrations and associated transmission of Hinduism to British shores via travelling gurus, lascars and Indian servants of wealthy British families, and later via the large-scale post-WWII arrival of Commonwealth migrants from India and Pakistan who included Hindus among their number. A further significant migration flow occurred in the late 1960 and early 1970s, when South Asian communities established under colonialism in East Africa, fled discriminatory policies in these newly independent states – including the expulsion of the South Asian community from Uganda in 1962 by Idi Amin. The majority of these approximately 70,000 new arrivals were Hindus of Gujarati heritage, who, as discussed later in this bibliography, as well as significantly bolstering the number of Hindus in the UK, also strongly influenced the establishment of representational bodies and public places of worship. According to the most recently available data from national censuses, England and Wales have a combined Hindu population of 1 million (1.7% of the overall population) - an increase from 818,000 (1.5%) at the last census point of 2011 . This makes Hinduism the second largest religious affiliation among people of South Asian origin or heritage in the UK; with 27% of British South Asians identifying as Hindu, behind Islam (57%) and ahead of Sikhism (14%) . The majority of the UK’s Hindus live in England and, along with other British South Asians, are a predominantly urban population. The largest number by far live in the Greater London area, where they comprise almost 6% of the overall population (with particular concentrations of over 50,000 individuals in the boroughs of Brent and Harrow), while the largest population outside of the capital (50,807) is found in the East Midlands city of Leicester – an important destination for the aforementioned East African-Gujarati arrivals of the 1960s and 1970s. Outside of England, in the UK’s less populous nations, there are 16,379 Hindus in Scotland (0.4% of the total population) concentrated in the cities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen ; 10,434 in Wales (0.3% of the population), with the largest number in the capital Cardiff; and 2,382 in Northern Ireland (0.1% of the population), with most residing in the capital city of Belfast and its surrounding area.