Shas­tri Boodan

Unit­ing Hin­du com­mu­ni­ties across ge­o­graph­i­cal bound­aries while pro­vid­ing so­cial sup­port to those in need is the dri­ving force be­hind the Hin­du Di­as­po­ra Foun­da­tion, a Unit­ed States-based or­gan­i­sa­tion seek­ing to strength­en Hin­du iden­ti­ty and sol­i­dar­i­ty around the world.

The foun­da­tion, which was es­tab­lished in New York in June 2023, has been ex­tend­ing its out­reach across sev­er­al coun­tries, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, Guyana, Suri­name, Mau­ri­tius, Fi­ji and South Africa, while al­so main­tain­ing links with In­dia.

Its mis­sion is to fos­ter greater uni­ty among Hin­dus glob­al­ly through col­lab­o­ra­tion, com­mu­ni­ty out­reach and so­cial ser­vice ini­tia­tives. This was out­lined by the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s vice-pres­i­dent and co-founder, Rad­ha Ramdeen, who spoke to WE Life and Cul­ture dur­ing a vis­it to Trinidad for the Di­vali Na­gar cel­e­bra­tions.

Ramdeen said the foun­da­tion was es­tab­lished to bring Hin­du com­mu­ni­ties to­geth­er, en­cour­ag­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions, tem­ples and in­di­vid­u­als to work col­lec­tive­ly to­wards com­mon goals.

“Our mis­sion is to unite Hin­dus glob­al­ly. We do a lot of col­lab­o­ra­tion work, and our goal is to just have Hin­du uni­ty,” she said.

Al­though based in the Unit­ed States, the foun­da­tion has main­tained an ac­tive in­ter­est in the Caribbean, par­tic­u­lar­ly Trinidad and To­ba­go, Guyana and Suri­name. “A lot of what we do is try to do work through so­cial ser­vices, be­cause we know a lot of Hin­du com­mu­ni­ties can be un­der­priv­i­leged, and they could face a lot of so­cial is­sues. Maybe they’re not get­ting the sup­port that they re­al­ly need,” she said.

The foun­da­tion’s ap­proach, she ex­plained, is not lim­it­ed to re­li­gious col­lab­o­ra­tion but al­so in­volves bring­ing peo­ple to­geth­er to ad­dress com­mu­ni­ty needs and build stronger sup­port net­works.

“What we’re do­ing is be­ing there for peo­ple, show­ing that you have sup­port, and we try to bring oth­er peo­ple to­geth­er to get the com­mu­ni­ty stronger as a union,” Ramdeen said. The or­gan­i­sa­tion cur­rent­ly op­er­ates with few­er than ten vol­un­teers but is grad­u­al­ly ex­pand­ing its mem­ber­ship.

Ramdeen said the foun­da­tion was en­cour­aged by the grow­ing num­ber of peo­ple vol­un­teer­ing their time and ex­per­tise to sup­port its work.

Look­ing ahead, she said the or­gan­i­sa­tion had both short-term out­reach pro­grammes and longer-term de­vel­op­ment plans.

While its an­nu­al ac­tiv­i­ties fo­cus on en­gag­ing com­mu­ni­ties and pro­vid­ing as­sis­tance, some of its more am­bi­tious projects, in­clud­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres, would re­quire sev­er­al years of plan­ning and de­vel­op­ment.

Ramdeen said her vis­it to Trinidad was part of the foun­da­tion’s con­tin­ued ef­forts to main­tain close re­la­tion­ships with lo­cal Hin­du or­gan­i­sa­tions and com­mu­ni­ties.

“We like to come, get in­volved, stay in touch with the peo­ple here,” she said.

She added that build­ing Hin­du uni­ty would re­quire con­sis­tent en­gage­ment rather than iso­lat­ed ini­tia­tives, with col­lab­o­ra­tion among or­gan­i­sa­tions and com­mu­ni­ties re­main­ing cen­tral to the foun­da­tion’s vi­sion.

Ramdeen said the ul­ti­mate ob­jec­tive is to cre­ate a glob­al net­work in which Hin­dus, re­gard­less of where they live, can draw on a com­mon sense of iden­ti­ty, co­op­er­a­tion and mu­tu­al sup­port. Ramdeen, who was trained in Bharatanatyam dance, showed off her tal­ents on the big stage at Di­vali Na­gar 2026.