Worshipping more than 33,000 gods

Some of the gods Hindus pray to at Shree Sarnatan Darna Mandir near Nakasero Market. The different gods have different aspects of life they take charge of

What you need to know:

HINDUISM. The denomination is said to have a deity believed to have created everything, a deity to sustain everything, a deity of death and destruction, a deity of fertility, a deity of war, a deity of peace, a deity of rain, a deity of music; almost a deity for everything. Joseph Ssemutooke explores this faith in Uganda

Of the multitude places of worship standing on Ugandan soil, it shares a niggardly portion of less than 15. Of the many famed religious leaders in the country, it hardly has a representative. And if you asked 10 random people off the street to list all the religions they know to exist in the country, you are almost certain none will mention Hinduism.

Hinduism is unquestionably one of the obscure religions in Uganda, yet it is a faith that arrived in the country about the same time as Islam in the 1880s. Its subscribers from the Indian subcontinent first arrived as traders. Moreover, ever since the turn of the last century, Hindu faithful have always settled in the country in bigger numbers than both the Arabs and Europeans who respectively imported Islam and Christianity.

Narayan Nehru, a Nkrumah Road-based trader whose priestly-line Hindu family arrived and settled in the country in 1902, attempts to explain why Hinduism has remained a peripheral religion in Uganda after all these years.

“Unlike Islam and Christianity, Hinduism wasn’t spread among the natives because it is a faith where the concept of preaching to win converts has always been absent,” Nehru says. “While other faiths began preaching and winning converts once they arrived, the Hindus quietly went about their worship.”

Nehru adds that Hinduism remained totally out of the public eye in the 1800s and early 1900s when foreign arrivals were selling their faith to Ugandans, because there was neither a temple nor an organised movement of the faithful to make their presence known.

“There had to first arise enough believers to organise into a movement and pool funds to construct the temple,” Nehru says, “And that sufficient number only came in the 1920s when many Indians who had come as construction labourers on the Kenya-Uganda railway settled in the then emerging towns like Entebbe and Kampala.”

Nehru names the oldest Hindu temple in Uganda as Entebbe’s Shree Ganesh Mandir, established in 1922. His narrative is sanctioned by Ritaben Karia, one of the most reliable Spiritual Principals of the faith’s largest and most revered temple in the country, the Shree Sarnatan Darna Mandir, a few metres below Nakasero Market.

Karia says after Entebbe’s Ganesh temple, the Sarnatan Darna Mandir was the second Hindu to be established in Uganda, coming in 1926. Over the following decades Hindus went on constructing more temples in Kampala and in other towns such as Jinja, Mbale and Tororo, adding up to Nehru’s present estimate of 13 temples across the country.

While Hinduism didn’t become one of the major religions in Uganda, it introduced the country to the biggest number of deities ever worshipped by a single faith in the Pearl.

Pantheon of gods
The total number of Hindu gods and goddesses in existence is a contested issue, with different Hindu spiritual leaders across the world reckoning numbers between 33,000 to infinity. But whatever the actual number, it’s the astounding sum of gods that Hinduism imported into Uganda that strikes you.

Karia cautions that this doesn’t mean Hindus don’t believe in the existence of one Supreme Being as God. Hindus believe there is a supreme being, called Brahma, but Brahma manifests in multiple forms according to his wish and to his people’s needs.
“For us, the many deities are all manifestations of Brahma, though each deity exists independent of the others and is in charge of a specific aspect of the universe,” Karia says.

Perhaps this is why Hindus have a deity believed to have created everything, a deity to sustain everything, a deity of death and destruction, a deity of wealth, a deity of fertility, a deity of war, a deity of peace, a deity of rain, a deity of music, a deity for almost everything.

How Hindus worship
According to Nehru, a person has no obligation to worship all the gods. One only has to devote themselves to one or two, then for the others simply to acknowledge their existence and worship them when they come in contact.

Then one will be well in one’s present and next life, for the many gods are just like innumerable roads all leading to one destination.

Nehru explains, one normally pays primary allegiance to the deity who has been followed by one’s ancestors since time immemorial, or to the deity in charge of one’s profession, trade or specialty; the farmer to the god of farming, the musician to the god of music, the housewife to the goddess of family, and the like.

An array of sects
Hinduism accordingly has more denominations and sects than any other structured religion in the world, and Devi Maharan, an elder at Dewinton Road temple, explains that Hindus in Uganda inevitably fall under denominations and sects.

Maharan says the different sects are a result of different believers –especially the faith’s scholars and leaders– having different interpretations of God’s message, or even God revealing himself to different people in different ways.

Maharan says the temple he belongs to is the Dewinton Road-based International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), a denomination that reckons that Krishna is the supreme God. The Ganesh Temple in Entebbe is for a sect who reckon that their beloved Lord Ganesha is the principal deity.

Then that gigantic temple opposite Shoprite Mall on Nakivubo Mews, at whose entrance majestically lies a pair of gargantuan lion sculptures, is for a school that worships the deity Krishna in yet another different way.

However, Karia points out that Hindu denominations aren’t of the incorrigibly conflicting forms found in other religions.

“In Hinduism, everyone worships whichever way they feel they ought to, without one condemning the other that they are wrong. You could say our sects are more of groupings of people with similar preferences or divine guidelines on how to worship, rather than groupings of people who think they are on the only right way and all others lost.

I can go and worship at ISKCON without any problem, Lord Ganesha devotees always come and worship with us devotees of Lord Shiva, still without any trouble,” he says.

Rigorous worship routines


Nehru says though the plethora of deities and apparent liberty to worship one’s own style might suggest a faith without any rigours in practice, to the contrary, Hinduism has one of the most rigorous worship routines around. With innumerable everyday-life rituals and temple worship.

“With the ultimate goal of building an unbroken strong bond with one’s God, a Hindu has to make worship a lifestyle. One worships not just on occasion, but also through one’s everyday actions and thoughts.

For us, when you keep hygiene by bathing, you are worshipping. When a married woman marks her forehead with a red dot to indicate she is taken, she is worshipping. Even wearing symbolic wristbands is worship.”

What about temple worship?


Karia says every Hindu is expected to have a temple at home. It might be a separate room set aside with sculptures and images of deities, or it can just be a corner of the bedroom where there is an image of one’s personal deity.

There, one sits down and worships as regularly as possible. At one’s personal temple, they also have a duty to physically express adoration to the gods, by dressing them in the best possible garments, offering them food, bathing them, changing the clothing as often as possible, even embracing and cuddling, among other acts.

Particularly the hour of seven in the morning and evening is a special time for prayer among the devout.

The main role of going to the public temple, according to Nehru, is because there, one will find not only a sacred atmosphere and more gods, but will also meet the priests and priestesses to offer guidance and counselling, and will also get to build a social network with other faithful.

Nehru says doing good deeds and having good thoughts is central to the Hindu lifestyle. For one of the principal Hindu philosophies is Karma, a belief that whatever happens to you is a result of your actions and thoughts –you do bad things and bad things will happen to you, you do good things and good things will happen to you.

Native Ugandans in the ranks
Maharan laments the fact that there are scarcely any Ugandans in the local Hindu ranks: “At most of our temples, you will hardly find a native Ugandan among the faithful,” he says. “This is terrible, because Hinduism is a good religion which everyone should be a part of. Also because this makes us remain a minority that is generally misunderstood.”

Maharan says the denomination he belongs to is trying to have native Ugandans join the faith, but adds that it is nonetheless still a long way from getting Ugandans to understand and appreciate Hinduism.

Did you know?
Once a Hindu baby is born, Jatakarma is performed to welcome the child into the family, by putting some honey in the child’s mouth and whispering the name of God in the child’s ear.

The ear-piercing ceremony (Karnavedha) and first haircut (Mundan) ceremonies are also considered highly significant. These sacraments are performed on both sexes. Hindus believe that the piercing of a hole in the lower lobes of the ear has benefits of acupuncture.

Also, head shaving is connected to the removal of impurities. When the child reaches school-going age, the Upanayana (sacred thread) ceremony is performed. The three strands of the sacred thread represent the three vows (to respect knowledge, parents and the society) taken before formal education.