Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 38, No.

4, Winter 1999

Hindu Counselling
in the Netherlands
ALPHONS M. G. VAN DIJK
ABSTRACT: Increasing participation of Muslims and Hindus in church-state relations in the
Netherlands is bringing about a slow change in the different cultural and historical backgrounds
of "non-indigenous" religious traditions and in their self-esteem and religious attitudes. We may
call this participation, and especially the changes it causes, a good example of Systemzwang, the
systematic power of the dominant but historically grown social and cultural order in which new-
comers are expected to fit. This process of external influence will be demonstrated by the exam-
ple of the development of the traditional Hindu priest, the pandit, to a modern professional
pastoral or Hindu-spiritual counsellor and by the mutual-learning process of the religiously dif-
ferent pastoral professionals in the semi-governmental service organizations.

Introduction

The integration of Europe today is often considered a macro process among

states or nations, socio-economic systems, religions, and larger cultural
groups and languages. Some people believe in the new dimensions; others are
highly critical and distrust all over-centralized power. Individual citizens
have their own sometimes highly critical experiences and opinions of this
integration, which they feel as having been imposed on them. These different
visions are a part of the ongoing tension between the tendency of globaliza-
tion of life styles, attitudes and organizational structures and the opposite
tendency of "going local," paying attention to local groups or minority rights.
A comparable tension exists between the tendencies of unification and plural-
ism, even multiculturalism. These tensions do not merely exist on the so-
called macro or micro levels. In-between there are also meso processes going
on, some on a larger, some on a smaller scale, where after a time newcomers
meet and even try to participate in existing intermediary systems. One of
these smaller intermediary systems is the professional organization of pas-
toral or spiritual counsellors in the Netherlands. The newcomers are Hindu
pandits.

Alphons M. G. van Dijk, Ph.D., is at the University of Humanist Studies in Utrecht, Nether-
lands.
319 1999 Blanton-Peale Institute
320 Journal of Religion and Health

Religion or world-view in the Netherlands

as a statistical, social, or cultural phenomenon

More than half the Dutch citizens no longer consider themselves members of
one of the Christian churches. For the majority of them, religiosity or world-
view has become a matter of individual choice and subjective attitude. For
some years now the government has no longer been registering citizens ac-
cording to their membership in an acknowledged church or world-view orga-
nization. The churches have to rely on their own administration system for
membership roles. For reasons of privacy, some big state-university hospitals
also no longer register the religion or worldview of their patients, who in turn
are supposed to express their own desire for pastoral or spiritual counselling.
Upon their arrival, they are informed about all facilities.
Because the government does not gather data on religious preferences the
statistical number of the Muslim and Hindu minorities in the Netherlands,
who have migrated from other countries with different administrative sys-
tems and historical and religion state relations, is not known and can only be
guessed at. At the same time these groups lack their own reliable system of
registration as Muslims or Hindus within their own circle, at least from the
government viewpoint. To date, and notwithstanding their quest for some
unifying organization, Muslims and Hindus still do not have any church-like
model of organization and administration such as Dutch society and the
governmental system are accustomed to. The question for minority religious
groups is how to go about this task, particularly if they want to be treated
and financially supported by the national or local government in the same
way and to the same degree as the churches and the Humanist League and
as was officially supported by a governmental commission (Hirsch Ballin,
1988). This commission considered equal treatment to be a logical consequence
of the Dutch Constitution. In order to be able to subsidize or pay the sal-
aries—directly or indirectly by semi-governmental institutions—of official
Muslim or Hindu professional pastoral counsellors in the Army, in the Peni-
tentiary or the Health System, as is the case with their Catholic, Protestant,
humanist and Jewish colleagues, the government demands an official repre-
sentative body, an acknowledged religious or world-view organization with a
recognized membership. Until now the migrant religions of Islam and Hindu-
ism, with their different historical and cultural traditions, have lacked any
such organization. Hinduism as a typical orthopraxis lacks even basic decla-
ration of what it stands for. Together with large differences in socio-religious
organization, this may be one of the most important points of comparison
between the new Dutch Hinduism and the long-term indigenous Christian
churches, with their historically developed systems of organization and theo-
logical reflection.