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New lamps for old: The Enneagram Débâcle

a
James Moore
a
Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society
Published online: 25 Jun 2008.

To cite this article: James Moore (1992): New lamps for old: The Enneagram Débâcle, Religion Today, 8:1, 8-12

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 6 12
Towler,op.dt:31.
"ibid.
8
Leeds Study on Common Religion. Pamphlet 12,1984:48.
" Chancier, J. Adi Dev: The First Mm. San Francisco:
Brahmakumaris, 1981:249.
10
Barker, E The Mating of a Mamie: Bmnwaskmg or Choia.
Oxford: BtadcweO, 1985:KW7.
11
Chryarides, G. T h e Four Position Foundation.* Religion Today
2(3).Octoberl985:7.
New Lamps for Old: The Enneagram Débâcle
James Moore
Long, contentious centuries have buried our
traditional religions beneath a sediment of awe-
some scholarship- (Think say of Trimingham on
the Sufi Orders1^ or Bultmann on Judas Iscariot.)
Although the domains of exegesis and kerygma
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remain volatile (sufficiently so, cynics might com-
plain, to stir the pot of human misery), the textual
and historical substrate affords theologians scant
latitude. One solecism, one fatal slip in this grim
arena, signals the thumbs down to academic repu-
tation... How startingly different the realm of New
Religions! Neither the large self-advertisements of
its protagonists, nor the free-floating idealism of
its young adherents, nor the anti-cult organisa-
tions' delight in hearsay calumny, nor the all-
permeating influence of money, nor the cynicism
of the press and the innocent indifference of the
public - nothing here conduces to decent accuracy.
In so-to-say the no-man's land between reli-
gions new and old, between slack subjectivism
and scholarship of rabbinical nicety, there looms
today the enigmatic figure of George Ivanovitch
Gurdjieff. Given the redusion and a-historicism of
the Gurdjieffian nucleus and the chutzpah of his
denigrators, imitators, and peripheral fellow-trav-
ellers, it is hardly surprising to encounter wild
New Age distortions. And nevertheless a canon of
scholarshipbegins,slowlyandpainfully,toaccrete
about this Gurdjieff; increasingly, we his self-ap-
pointed 'judges' stand to be judged.
One fascinating proving-ground of relevant
scholarship is the burgeoning oeuvre sketched in
Anti* %ny C Edwards' welcome piece 'Competi-
ti cness and Apartheid in the New Age: The
Enneagram Schools'.2 It is only a pity that, wield-
ing the authority of Lancaster University, Edwards
no less than seven times binds Gurdjieff and the
enneagram to Sufistn. His core idea - namely:
'given Gurdjieff s interest in Sufism, it does seem
likely that the Enneagram was known to Sufi
scholars before Gurdjieff - is syllogistically re-
expressible thus:
VOLUME 8 NUMBER 1
Chrysaides, op.dt: 7.
13
ibid.
S
15 ibid,
16 ibid
* 7 Dhannachari Subhuti, formerly Alex Kennedy. Buddhism for
Today. A Portrrt of* NOD Buddhist Movement. WQtihin: Element
80010,1983:179-180.
Major Gurdjieff was essentially a 'Sufi-inspired
teacher' (Mr Edwards'definition).
Minor Gurdjieff propounded the enneagram.
Conclusion Therefore the enneagram probably has
Sufic antecedents. '
This seemingly innocuous proposition deserves,
both for its typicality and topicality, the compli-
ment of reasoned scrutiny.
One applauds, of course, the historically re-
spectable minor premiss: Gurdjieff did indeed
first propound the enneagram to his Petrograd
and Moscow groups in 1916, and all early
enneagrammatic commentaries (Ouspensky,
19493; Maurice Nicoll, 1952<; J.G. Bennett, 1956-
66s) salute Gurdjieff s pre-eminence... Contextu-
ally we do well to reinforce this premiss. Why?
Because in 1972, when the clever Bolivian ideo-
logical opportunist Oscar Ichazo initiated the cur-
rent trend with his luridly coloured booklet The
Human Process for Enlightenment and Freedom6, he
blandly presented the familiar diagram as the
'enneagon', vouchsaving Gurdjieff no acknowl-
edgement whatever. 'Oscar claims', explained
one of his lieutenants, 'to have worked out the
ancient meanings and uses of the enneagram
himself.7 Oscar did more than that: he actually
protested that others had stolen his idea and that,
in '...masking the plagiarism, some variations had
been introduced that... produce negative and
dangerous effects'8. A singular claim indeed!
Rather as though an irate Alfred Russel Wallace
had burst upon the public with the theory of
PAGE 8
 natural selection 50 years after Darwin. the Resurrection of Chrisf, etc. Once indeed,
Gurdjieff even defined his own self-referential
Gurdjieff's Multiplex Sources teachingas 'esoteric Christianity'.12Whenhedied,
high requiem mass was sung for his soul in the
Edwards' major premiss merits at least two
packed Alexandra Nevski Cathedral in Paris, and
cheers. Sufism undoubtedly did interest and in-
it was by hisown wish that he was buried at Avon
spire Gurdjieff. Like Richard Burton, he made a
withthefullritesoftheRussianOrthodoxChurch.
pilgrimage to Mecca - and plainly his monothe-
Space constraints alone forbid my advancing
ism and ample recognition of Muhammad as a
an equally persuasive and unbalanced case that
genuine messenger of God, satisfy the tashahud or
Gurdpeff s teaching flowed chiefly from Bud-
First Pillar of Islam (without which any profes-
dhism - with particular redolences of Ch'an (or
sion of Sufism is specious). Gurdjieff commends,
Zen). Nor can one blithely disregard elements
as the epicentre of practical esoteridsm, Persia,
evidently drawn from Pythagorean,Stoic,Essene,
Mesopotamia and Turkestan - regions permeated
Zoroastrian, and Shamanist materia... Since 1980,
by Sufic tradition. He accords a telling signifi-
when James Webbpublished TheHarmonious Cir-
cance to the 'incomparable Mullah Nassr Eddin',
cle13, with its complex chapter The Sources of the
mediaeval wise fool of Turkish literature. Pro-
System', no self-respecting critique of Gurdjieff s
gramme notes (Paris, 1923; New York, 1924) of
thought can rest on any single-source hypothesis
Gurdjieff s Sacred Dances hint at his contact with
whatever. Still less can the 'Sufi-inspired' drum
specific dervish orders: Qadiri, Naqshbandi,
be banged unaccompanied, in sheer disregard of
Kubravi, Yesevi, and - not least - Mevlevi. Certain
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L.P. Elwell-Sutton's magisterial 'Sufism and

dances could hardly parade their Sufic prov-
Pseudo-Sufism'14 and Robert Amadou's lucid
enance more openly: the 'Camel Dervish', the
'Gurdjieff et le soufisme'15... In formal terms, the
Trembling Dervish', the 'Ceremony for a Dead
major premiss that Gurdjieff was fundamentally
Dervish', etc. In his ballet The Struggle of the Magi-
a Sufi-inspired teacher' must politely be summed
cians, Gurdjieff incorporated a Persian dervish
up in one unavoidable adjective: false.
song. His whole life-style - which courted the
epithet 'charlatan' - recalls The Way of Blame' of
the Qalandaris9 and Shems-Eddin, the Sun of The Trap
Tabriz. How was this trap laid, which ensnares so
That Gurdjieff drew inspiration from Sufism is many honest commentators possessing no sub-
thus the truth, and nothing but the truth - yet it is stantial background in Sufic or Gurdjieffian stud-
light years from being the whole truth. The fault ies? 1966 was the year of grand misdirection. It
of Edwards' major premiss lies not in suggestio was then there appeared die distasteful fabrica-
/fl/sibutinsi^pressioDcn.OnlycomparetheChris- tion The Teachers of Gurdjieff16 by Rafael Lefort
tdan facet The boy Gurdjieff (a chorister at Kars (pseud.) asseverating - with marvellous chrono-
Cathedral and his education entrusted to Dean logical implausibility - that the youthful Gurdjieff
Borsh and Deacon Bogachevsky) came early un- had merely been an indifferent pupil to a succes-
der Christian influence. The youth's precocious sion of still living Sufi masters; it was then, in
pilgrimages to Echmiadzin and the monastery of "Special Problems in the Study of Sufi Ideas", that
Sanaine, presaged the man's longer journeys: seek- the Home County Sufi 'Sheikh', Idries Abutahir
ing in Cappadocia the origins of Christian liturgy; Shah,explidtlyasserted:"G.LGurdjieffleftabun-
in Mount Athos the legacy of Hesychasm; in dant clues to the Sufi origins of virtually every
Jerusalem the link with the Essenes, and in Coptic point in his 'system'."17 The ulterior and all-too-
Abyssinia the roots of Christian gnosis. Gurdjieffs human motive for this misdirection I have al-
first British pupil (Paul Dukes, 1913) received a ready examined in some detail in "Neo-Sufism:
teaching squarely grounded in Christianity: The Case of Idries Shah".18 Shah's self-advertise-
... the gospel became intensely personal, free of ments and invertebrate Sufism' signified less
any kind of dogma whatsoever, a living mes- than nothing in orthodox Islamic circles and were
sage, with the Lord's Prayer its emblem, the rejected wholesale by the British Gurdjieffian
parables its illustration.10 mainstream, which he schemed to divert. The
Venerating Jesus as a Divine Messenger with a canard would never have taken hold had not Shah
teaching ofunexampled love, Gurdjieff composed and his self-depiction (1) won flattering accept-
(in collaboration with a distinguished Russian ance among a small but influential coterie of
pupil, Thomas Alexandrovitch de Hartmann) a British intellectuals, and (2) chimed in with the
wealth of extant Christian liturgical music11: extravagant millenarian and messianic fervour of
'Hymn for Easter Thursday', 'Hymn for Good 69-year-old John Godolphin Bennett (1897-1974),
Friday*, 'Easter Night Procession', The Story of who had been among those close to Gurdjieff in

PAGE 9 VOLUME 8 NUMBER 1

 his final year. ism', either in books or in oral tradition"27 - evi-
A 'Sufi-inspired GurdjiefF now quickly crys- dently by an obdurate disregard, tantamount to
tallised as the by-product of 'Shah-School' pro- contradiction.
ductions (a homogeneous literary oeuvre eulogis- Descending now to the 'Enneagram of person-
ing Shah and his 'Sufism', produced by Shah ality', does not the spectacle of its self-interested
himself and his followers, both overtly and pseu- proponents, and its callow joy-riders, rigged out
donymously). In 1972 Robert B. Omstein, a dis- in enneagram T-shirts, give shuddering pause?
tinguished admirer of Shah, echoed the thesis in What could this conceivably have to do with
The Psychology of Consciousness19; in 1973 J.G. Sufism or with Gurdjieff? However variegated
Bennett lent his excited pen to the notion of Sufism's historical expression28 (a variegation
Gurdjieffs Sufic antecedents, in Gurdjieff: Making eluding most New Age commentators), it was
a New World20; in 1975 John C Lilly (an American never humanistic Its axis was and is: "abandon-
expert on the seemingly discrepant subject of ment of self-love for the loveof God, yearning for
dolphins) chimed in thoughtfully: "The union with and annihilation in God"29... And to
enneagram is a device used by the Sufi school and reduce Gurdjieff s enneagram to a symbol of per-
developed by Ichazo"21.Inl976KathleenRiordan sonality is exquisite irony. For him, personality
Speeth, trusting to Shah's partisan analysis, cheer- was the mask (Latin persona). His psychological
fully echoed: 'The enneagram is almost certainly address was to 'essence': the pupil's
of Sufi origin"22. like Bennett, Dr Speeth seemed, inexpungeable and fate-attracting particularity,
prima facie, to raise a Gurdjieffian voice. However,
her question-begging credentials ("I was bom underlying the behavioural veneer. Gurdpeff pr
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into the Gurdjieff work") are overtopped by the pounded his enneagram in 1916 not to titillate
uninhibited gratitude she expresses to "Qaudio narcissism but to reconcile at macrocosmic and
Naranjo who has for five years inspired, enriched microcosmic level his 'Law of Three' and *Law of
and mercilessly scourged me"23. (Naranjo was no Seven'. The 'cash value' of that complex
Gurdjieffian but had been under Ichazo's influ- metaphysic we cannot dream of debating here;
ence since 1969...) By now Shah's fib was being suffice that Gurdjieff s theme evokes the salutary
innocently re-promulgated in works of reference warning of G.K Chesterton: "A cosmic philoso-
used by journalists. Thus Katinka Matson in her phy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic 30
book The Encyclopaedia of Reality: A Guide to the philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos."
New Age24 assured her readers: "Gurdjieff was The 'Americanism' so brashly stamped all over
very much oriented in the Islamic Sufi tradition". Enneagram-of-personality literature is not the
Finally, in 1985, the Encyclopaedia Britannia (15th Americanism of H.L. Mencken but the American-
25
ed.) announced ex cathedra: "Gurdjieff spent his ism of Elmer Gantry. Sociologically viewed, its
early adult years... learning about spiritual tradi- tastrol-
tions, especially from teachers of Sufism (Islamic ltious,
mysticism)..." To the consternation of the nucleus and lacking any significant substrate of scholarly
of Gurdjieff s informed followers, the triumph of or empiric validation. It is finally defensible only
a lie - or at best a wonderfully partial truth - in the spirit that Roland Barthes defends all-in
seemed accomplished. wrestling31 - as the meretricious which briefly
purges signification of its inherent ambiguity. Of
such personality differentiation, Gurdjieff s dis-
A Reflection tinguished pupil Rene Daumal (whose orientalism
Even had the Encyclopaedia been correct; even was grounded in a command of Sanskrit) wrote
had Gurdjieff been overwhelmingly a 'Sufi-in- bleakly:
spired teacher' - Edwards' conclusion a propos Si nous convenons de signifier par le symbole
the enneagram strains credulity. How does one zero, le ne pas etre, tout ces somnabules different
explain the absence of this symbol from standard entre eux comme les expressions: 0 x 3,0 x 8,0 x 17,
reference books on Islamic geometrical design? etc different entre dies. D y a une infinite de
WhyhasnotasingleacademicauthorityonSufism modes de ne pas etre.32
even deigned to dignify the attribution with com- Given the lamentable history of misinforma-
ment? And - the corollary - how does one pass tion regarding the Islamic/Sufic relationship to
down a complex diagram by 'oral tradition' with- Gurdjieff s enneagram, a fastidious care seems
out any figurative trace? Last but not least, how indicated now in delineating Christian/Jesuit in-
does one accommodate Gurdjieff s own assur- volvement Since 1970 more than one idiosyn-
ance that this symbol "has been completely un- cratic tendency in Ignatian spirituality has mi-
known up to the present time"26 (1916) and "can- grated from South America to the USA and there
not be met with anywhere in the study of 'occult- seems no denying that the Enneagram of person-

VOLUME 8 NUMBER 1 PAGE 10

 ality has found significant Jesuit apologists (e.g. 7 Lilly, John C , and Hart, Joseph E. "The Arica Training". In Tart,
Patrick CLeary, Robert Ochs, Don Richard Riso) Charles T., ed. Transpersonal Psychologies. London: RKP, 1975: 331.
and important Jesuit havens (e.g. theological cen- Diagrams of the enneagram, with Spanish sub-texts, had in fact
tres at Berkeley/ California, and Loyola Univer- been available to Ichazo since 1952, when Edidones Sol (Mexico)
sity, Chicago). But does Edwards conceivably put out P.D. Ouspensky's En busca de lomilagroso:fragmentosde
una ensenanza desconocide and Rodney Coffin's El desarrollo de la
imply that the Society of Jesus worldwide is now lux. Ichazo's latest contention is that the enneagram (or enneagon)
committed to the enneagram? Has it actually figure
come to this - that the heirs of the three great octet tooriginated c500 B.C as a Pythagorean 'seal', relating the
the Monad. Unfortunately, like Edwards, Ichazo omits to
mediaeval systems of Bona venture, Aquinas, and support his theory of provenance with textual citation.
Duns Scotus need recourse to Gurdjieffs symbol 8 Ichazo, op.cit.: 2.
in Kitsch form? Does the Jesuit Father General 9 see Trimingham, op.cit.: 267-9.
. seriously believe this redounds ad majorem Dei 1 0 Dukes, Paul, Sir. The Unending Quest. London: Cassell, 1950:
gloriam? ...If the answer to these terrible questions 109.
is 'Yes', many traditionalists may feel it high time 11 Available from: Triangle Records, Triangle Editions Inc., P.O.
to dust off Pope Leo XIH's Encyclical Aeterni Box 452, Lenox Hill, New York, NY 10021, USA.
Patris33, or even send out a distress call for 1 2 Gurdjieff q. Ouspensky, op.cit.: 102. Striking parallels between
Thomism's natural
34
champions, the First Order of Gurdjieff s psychological ideas and Christian devotional practice
Dominicans . emerge in Early Fathers from thePhilokalia(London: Faber & Faber,
1954). Significantly a major role in translating this remarkable
Alike to Christians and Gurdjief fians, the cur- work, from the Russian of Bishop Theophan the Reduse, was
rent trend bears painful witness to a spiritual played by Eugenie Kadloubovsky, secretary to Gurdjieff s pupil
Downloaded by [Princeton University] at 19:14 20 June 2013

Gresham's Law in which the bad drives out the and apologist P.D. Ouspensky. For an insightful Gurdjieffian
good. Mr Edwards' survey is an admirable begin- exploration of the Gospels' esoteric and psychological meaning,
ning, but - as the Enneagram-cult burgeons, as the see Maurice Nicoll The New Man: An Interpretation of Some
great religious traditions are rashly prayed in aid, Parables and Miracles of Christ (London: Stuart Ic Richard, 1950).
and as the cash tills ring merrily - a more glacial For a wholesale, slack, and highly tendentious extrapolation of
these parallels, see Boris Mouravieff, Gnösis: Etude et commentaires
eye would not come amiss. sur la tradition ésotérique de l'orthodaxie orientale(Paris:La Colombe,
1961-65, 3 Vols.). Boris Petrovitch Mouravieff 0890-1966), chef de
This article complements the author's two preced- cabinet toAlexandreKerensky in 1917, was as-it-were Idries
ing pieces "Neo-Sufism: The Case of Idries Shah" Shah's less successful Christian counterpart rooting all
(Religion Today 3 (3)) and "The Enneagram: A Gurdjieff s ideas, including the enneagram, not in Sufbm but in
Developmental Study'' (Religion Today 5 (3)) - in St Paul and the Greek fathers. In the 1950s he propagated his
which latter some significant printing errors occurred. heterodox views from his Centre d'étudeschrétiennestsot&riaues
broadly within the ambiance of Geneva University. '
James Moore is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society 13
and author of the biography Gurdjieff:The Anatomy Webb, James. The Harmonious Circle: The lives and Work of Gl.
of a Myth. Gurdjieff, P.D. Ouspensky and Their Followers. London: Thames &
Hudson, 1980:499-542.
1* HweB-Sutton, UP. "Sufism and Pseudo-Sufism." Encounter
1 Trimingham, J. Spencer. The Sufi Orders in Islam. London:
XUV (5), May 1975:44-57.
O.U.P., 1971. 15
2 Amadou, Robert "Gurdjieff et le soufisme." Question de (Paris)
Edwards, Anthony C. "Competitiveness and Apartheid in the
50, Nov.-Dec 1982:44-57.
New Age: The Enneagram Schools", Religion Today 7 (2), Spring
1° Lefort, Rafael (pseud.). The Teachers of Curdjieff. London:
1992.
3 GoOancz, 1966. The persistent rumour and reasonable inference
Ouspensky, P.D. In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an
that Idries Shah is Rafael Lefort was first publidy bruited by
Unknown Teaching. London: RKP, 1949. Contains both Gurdjieff's
Nicholas Saunders in Alternative London. London: Nicholas
original exposition of the enneagram (pp. 286-95) and
Saunders, 1970:109.
Ouspensky's commentary (pp376-78). 17
4 Shah, Idries. The Way of the Sufi. New York: Dutton, 1970:43,
Nicoll, Maurice Psychological Commentaries in the Teaching of G.I.
note 35.
Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky. London: Vincent Stuart, 1952.
18 Moore, James. "Neo-Sufism: The Case of Idries Shah." Religion
5 Bennett, J.G. The Dramatic Universe. London: Hodder &
To4n/3(3),n.A:4-8. ^
Stoughton, 1956-1966. 19
Omstein, Robert E The Psychology of Consciousness. San
6 Ichazo, Oscar. The Human Process for Enlightenment and Freedom.
Francisco: W.H, Freeman, 1972.
New York: Arica Institute Inc., 1972. 20
Bennett, J.G Gurdjieff: Making a New World. London:
Turnstone, 1973. See especially chapters 2 and 3, pp. 24-79.
The opinions and views expressed in ReligionToday 2212 Lilly & Hart, op.cit.: 333.
Speeth, Kathleen Riordan. The Gurdjieff Work. Berkeley, CA:
are those of the contributors who take full And/Or Press, 1976: preface. Dr. Speeth's parents were distin-
responsibility for them, and do not necessarily guished Gurdjieffians; her claim to having been 'born into the
reflect the opinions of the editors. Gurdjieff work" admits this interpretation only.
23
idem.

PAGE 11 VOLUME 8 NUMBER 1

 24
M a t s o n ,Katinka.TheEncyclopaediaof Reality::AGuidetothe
New Age. St. Albans. Paladin/Granada Publishing, 1979:162.
25
Happily all Sufic ascription has been expunged from the 1987
imprint of the15thedition. This follows my correspondence with
Britannica (Lars Mahinske) Jun./Aug. 1985.
26
Gurdjieff q. Ouspensky, op.cit: 286.
27 ibid: 287.
28 Portmanteau allusion to 'Sufism' throughout Enneagram-of-
personality literature unhappily conflates quite disparate
elements: the transcendentalism of the 7th and 8th centuries and
the immanence of the 9th and 10th; the asceticism of the primary
epoch and the luxuriant mystical poetry of the 11th and 12th
century Persia. Nor does it differentiate the numerous dervish
orders (more than 100 in Gurdjieff's purview alone) ethnica'
regionally, or in terms of Surmi/Shia persuasion. Nudging
allusions to the Naqshabandi order, dutifully following Idries
Shah, have found no endorsement from Hamid Algar, the world
authority on this tariqa.
Constructing a Hindu temple community in Edin-
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burgh
Malory Nye
There is no doubt that Hindu religious tradi-
tions are developing and adapting amongst Brit-
ish Hindu groups, and that the ways in which
these developments are occurring are complex,
and differ from group to group across the coun-
try. The processes involved in the construction of
London Hindu temples are extremely different to
those in the north of England or in Scotland.
Hence, this discussion of the main themes devel-
oping within a temple community in Edinburgh
cannot be taken as representative of British Hin-
duism as a whole (although certain of the themes
may be applicable in a wider context). What I seek
to draw out from the example of the Edinburgh
temple is that there can be no single explanation
for the formation of an ethnic minority religious
group. Furthermore, the sociological forces help-
ing to shape such communities are themselves
shaped by other factors, such as the desire to
reproduce religious traditions, and the wish to
express devotion.
There have been small numbers of Indians
living in Edinburgh for a long time - probably as
far backastheearlynineteenth century. But these
were self-contained individuals, there was no
substantial population of Indians - and certainly
notacommunity-until the 1960sand70s. Around
this time a steady trickle of Indians made their
way to Edinburgh (usually after having lived in
other areas of Britain), and many of these people
are now settled and well established, so that in
1992 there areaboutonethousandHindus present
The traumas (for Indians) of decolonisation in
VOLUME 8 NUMBER 1
29
Elwell-Sutton, op.cit:11.
30
Chesterton,G.K.TheBook ofJob.London, 1929.
31
Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Paris, 1957.
32
Daumal, René Tu t'es toujours trompé. Paris: Mercure de
France, 1970:37.
33
Pope Leo XIII (Joachim Vincent Pecci) issued his Encyclical
Aeterni Patris in 1879 in hopes of Instigating aT h o m i s trevival
but among the intelligentsia, only Jacques Maritain (1882-1973)
responded with a significant body of relevant work.
34
Nor are the Dominicans uninformed as to Sufiam. Indeed, by
virtue of his book The Persian Sufis (London: George Allen &
Unwin, 1964), and his fruitful contact with the venerable
Nimatullah dervish Sheikh Shamsul'Urafa, Father Cyprian Rice
O.P. ranks with Arberry, Corbin, Massignon, and Nicholson
among the prime European authorities.
East Africa also led to this settlement of Indians in
Edinburgh, a number of whom were part of the
forced expulsion from Uganda by Idi Amin.
There were two important trends in the migra-
tion of Hindus to Edinburgh - that is, most (but not
all) Hindus living in the city originate from two
distinct regions in India. Those who had come to
Britain from East Africa are, on the whole, origi-
nally from the western Indian state of Gujarat.
And despite the fact that these people were born
and raised in East Africa, and may never have
been to India at all, they still preserve a distinct
sense of being 'Gujarati' - usually speaking the
Gujarati language as their first language, and
continuing Gujarati cultural traditions. On the
other hand, the majority of Hindus in Edinburgh
who did not come from East Africa, but who were
instead bom and raised in India itself, are from
the northern state of Panjab. This is about six to
seven hundred miles from Gujarat, and has a
quitedifferentcultureandlanguage. Thus Panjabi
Hindus may belong to the same 'religion' as
Gujarati Hindus, but there are many differences
between them.
The assumption that Hinduism may be a sin-
gle world 'religion' (on a par with Christianity,
Judaism, or Islam for example) is by no means
straightforward. What we in the west think of as
Hinduism is a mixture of extremely diverse reli-
gious traditions, possibly even religions. In many
cases different Hindus worship different gods, in
different ways, and for different reasons. They
may not even consider themselves to be co-
PAGE 12