The National Hindu Students Forum (UK) are taking a leaping initiative at their next annual conference entitled ‘Hindu Times: Be The News You Wish To See’ to be held on Saturday 21^st November at the City University, London. The conference is to tackle the misconceptions of the Hindu faith that are commonly assumed by the wider world and to teach the future of our community the opportunities to act. The conference will be split up into workshops about spirituality, the Hindu community (samaj) and politics. The workshops on spirituality include educating students on whether or not the Ramayana and Mahabharata are still relevant or just myths based on fiction. The Hindu community workshops aim to explore caste discrimination, the inequality of men and women and whether or not our Hindu dharma is becoming too influenced by bollywood. The political workshops will speak out directly on the most current political issues including the underrepresentation of Hindus in British politics, the rise of the BNP and its affect on the Hindu Community and the human rights and civil rights that should be invested to Hindus around the world.

The educating, exploring and empowering form part of the core aim to get our students to stand up and speak up on some of the most important issues that will govern the future of our Hindu community. That to me is real politics! For too long now the Hindu community has been passive, silent and inactive. It is this inactiveness and passiveness that has resulted in the Hindu community being taken for granted on so many different levels from the misconceptions of Idol worshipping to caste discrimination and the misguided representation of Hindus in British political life. There are many choices and decisions that need to be made correctly and this conference will engage with these choices and decisions with the people that influence this country.

Baroness Verma, Virendra Sharma MP and Seema Malhotra (Former Chair of the Young Fabians) are all speaking on the day by giving workshops and taking part in a Question Time panel that will address the issues discussed at the conference and enable questions from the students. Keith Vaz MP, Barry Gardiner MP, Angela Watkinson MP and other senior politicians and figures are also attending on the day. Tony Blair, former Prime Minister, will be providing us with his views on the conference through a video link.

The conference will pave the way for a variety of initiatives to engineer the Hindu community and its students to be more active on issues that affect us most.

If you are interested in attending please visit www.nhsf.org.uk/hindutimes for further information and opportunities to register.

Alternatively, please contact Kishan.bhatt@nhsf.org.uk