History of Hindu Centre

Hindu Centre was formed on August 1978. Some months before this event, a group of concerned and dedicated Hindu professional, businessmen and academics met to decide on the formation of Hindu Centre. These pioneers had found that whilst temples were mainly dedicated to rituals and religious activities, no attempts were being made to explain these ancient mystical rituals to the young who wanted to know their religion. The lack of answers and guidance to the Hindu youths frustrated them and made them easy targets for evangelists and proselytizing groups. Thus, the founding fathers and pioneers of Hindu Centre knew that the prime objective of Hindu Centre should be the spiritual education for the Hindu youths, and the medium of instruction will be in English as the lingua franca of Singapore.

So in the early days of Hindu Centre many workshops, seminars, talks and conferences were held and Hindu Centre invited many prominent spiritual leaders like Swami Rama, Mata Amritanandamayi, Swami Chinmayananda, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Swami Haridas Giri, Satguru Ganapati Sachidananda, Mataji Nirmala Devi, Moraridas Prabhudas Hariyani, Karan Singh and Dada J P Vaswani to conduct these events. Hindu Centre was the pioneer organization for these spiritual courses.

•  Hindu Centre also took the first step in teaching Hinduism in 1980s in line with the MOE introduction of the study of religious knowledge in schools.
•  Along with education came the need to engage with the needs of the poor. Hindu Centre started the Prahavika programme to aid needy poor students with school fees, transport, books, etc.
•  The pioneers who had the vision and the mission to see Hindu Centre succeed were dedicated men like Dr V K Pillay, Prof A N Rao, Mr D D Sachdev, Mr Panachand Doshi, Dr T P Paran, Mr H Bhojwani, Mr K S Rajah, Mr Sat Pal Khattar and many others.
•  The early volunteers without whom Hindu Centre would not have succeeded were men and women who were so charged with the ideals of the pioneers. Some of these early young leaders were G V Nathan, B Shegar, S Doraraj, A Bannirchelvam, Rajkumar Nair, Maha, Nirmala and many others.
•  Whilst there are now many other Hindu organisations the importance of Hindu Centre is its programmes of education on Hinduism from Balagurukulam classes for the young to various courses for adults and Hindu Centre hopes to work closely with other organizations, Temples and HEB by conducting classes on understanding pujas/rituals, Thaipusam festivals, various Hindu festivals, etc.