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A
Short History Of Sree Narayana Guru Mission Of the Uk
There were very few Malayalees in England up to the latter
half of the sixties, and of them; the majority had come here
for the purpose of higher studies. The end of the sixties
saw the migration of number of Malayalees who had been working
for years under the British Government and who came here,
accepting British citizenship. The vast majority had families
in Kerala and their aim was to work for a while here, save
money and ultimately return home.
By
the middle of seventies, many of them started to bring their
families here. Even then only few had their own place of residence
here. But with the arrival of their families, accommodation
became a main problem and hence many started to buy homes
of their own. But the majority still dreamt of returning to
their native land, one day.
During
these years, although many organisations had sprung up among
Malayalees, none of them were active. As mentioned, it was
towards the end of seventies, that the number of Malayalees
here rapidly increased. At this time people started realising
that, for the younger generation who had been born and brought
up here, to go back and adjust to life in their homeland was
going to be extremely difficult.
Some
of the Malayalees here, had been wanting to celebrate the
birthday of Sree Narayana Guru in London, for many years.
Most of them had been responsible for establishing the Sree
Narayana Guru Mission in Singapore. About this time a group
of people (Mr. Vasudevan, Mr P Bhaskaran, Mr N. Parameswaran
Pillai, Mr M Vidhyadharan, Mr.S Sakthidharan, Mr S. Suresh,
Mr S. Sugathan, Mr P Madhusudhanan,) under the leadership
of Mr VK Narayanan called together a meeting a meeting of
Sree Narayana Guru devotees on the 22nd of October 1978 at
Trinity Church hall, East Avenue, London, E12.
At
the meeting, which was chaired by Mr K T V Sreedharan,
not only celebrate yearly the birthday of the Guru but also
to organise an association in the name of the Guru and establish
a centre for its working. It was decided to name the organisation,
Sree Narayana Guru Mission of the UK. And a temporary Executive
Committee of twenty-one members was formulated.
From
then on matters progressed rapidly and within the short span
of five months, the Sree Narayana mission was established
with three hundred and twenty six members. The first general
body meeting was held on the 14th of April 1979,
which approved the constitution of the mission and also amended
the name to Sree Narayana Guru Mission of the UK. As suggested
by Guru Nitya Chaithanya Yati. Along with that a building
sub committee was elected with the aim of establishing a permanent
centre. The same year also saw the first ever celebration
of the birthday of the Sree Narayana Guru at East Ham Town
hall in London on September 15th, which is also known as 'Chathayam'.
This
was 125th birth day anniversary of the Guru and was attended
by people of all religious. The celebration lasted more than
7 hours and included an All Religion Conference in addition
to various arts programmes. This organization had definite
and clear-cut aims from the very beginning, which were to
spread the gospel of the Guru, among the people of Britain
first and then worldwide. They also aimed to make the organization,
which would rise above the barriers of religion, cast, creed
etc., and to put the ideals of the Guru into practice through
charitable activities.
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