HAMM, GERMANY, June 24, 2018 (WDR, autotranslated from German): According to the police about 13,500 Hindus peacefully celebrated the temple festival in Germany’s largest Hindu temple in Hamm on Sunday (24/06/2018). The highlight of the two-week temple festival is the procession in honor of the Goddess Kamadchi, after whom the temple is named. A statue of the Goddess is drawn in a cart around the temple. According to Hindu belief, the city and the people living there are blessed. The temple festival in Hamm is the largest Hindu festival in Germany to which Hindu Tamils from all over Europe have come.
The Sri Kamadchi Ampal Temple in Hamm was opened in 2002 and is Europe’s second largest Hindu temple after the Neasden Temple in London. The initiator of the approximately US$1.75 million and about 700 square meters large building is the Tamil priest Arumugam Paskaran, who fled from the Sri Lankan civil war in 1995 to the German Federal Republic. Hamm is considered the center of immigrant Hinduism in Germany. According to the Hindu community of Germany about 60,000 Tamil Hindus are living in the Federal Republic. The municipality in North Rhine-Westphalia has about 5,000 people.