Gita

[Anna A. Slaczka]

Dear Allen,

The Hindus in the Netherlands are for the major part of Surinamese origin. The forefathers of the 'Hindustani' (both Hindu and Moslims) living in the Netherlands today emigrated between 1873 and 1916 to the Dutch colony of Suriname (Dutch Guyana until 1948) as contract labourers. In 1975, when Suriname became independent, many Surinamese Hindus migrated to the Netherlands. The estimated number of the Hindus of Surinamese origin in the Netherlands is between 80.000 and 100.000. This is much more than the Hindus from the Subcontinent (perhaps under 15.000 thousand at the Netherlands at the moment).
I don't have at the moment access to the library, so I can't tell what's the number of Hindus of Indonesian origin in the Netherlands, but I guess it's much lower than the number of Hindus from Suriname. 

Best regards,

Anna Slaczka

Kern Institute
Leiden


--- On Thu, 1/15/09, Allen W Thrasher <athr at LOC.GOV> wrote:

> From: Allen W Thrasher <athr at LOC.GOV>
> Subject: Re: Gita
> To: INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk
> Date: Thursday, January 15, 2009, 7:15 PM
> Victor, 
> 
> You said,
> 
> " And this in spite of the fact
> that Hinduism is the second largest non-Christian religion
> in the
> Netherlands with approximately between 120,000 to 200,000
> adherents."
> 
> 
> I presume the largest is Islam.  Does this mean there are
> more Hindus than Jews?
> 
> Also, is it known how many are Hindus of Balinese or other
> Indonesian origin and how many from the subcontinent?
> 
> Allen
> 
> 
> Allen W. Thrasher, Ph.D.
> Senior Reference Librarian
> Team Coordinator
> South Asia Team, Asian Division
> Library of Congress, Jefferson Building 150
> 101 Independence Ave., S.E.
> Washington, DC 20540-4810
> tel. 202-707-3732; fax 202-707-1724; athr at loc.gov
> The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of
> the Library of Congress.