INTRODUCTION
Background
Marianne (2018) in her empirical study confirms that there are about 8 million Hindus around the globe, and 1.3 million living in Europe. These figures confirm that Hindus today are one of the largest religious minorities in Europe. With such high numbers of Hindus living in Europe, they must be having significant influence on the European cultures and traditions and vice versa. Both Hindus and Europeans have festivals and sacred times. The Hindu festivals are a mixture of worship, religious ceremonies, prayer, processions, music and dances, eating and drinking, rituals, lovemaking, and even eating. The most important Hindu festivals include Kama celebration, the god of love, a festival related to the spring equinox and the wheat harvest in western India. Diwali is another important festival occurring in October of November in honour of the Lakshmi, the goddess of good fortune and wealth. Other festivals include Holi, Onam, Maha Shivaratri, Krishna Janmashtami, and Makar Sankranti. As can be seen above, the Hindu festivals are more around their religious practices, ancient traditions, and their gods and spirituality. The European festivals, on the contrary, are more of musical festivals, commemoration festivals, partying festivals and practices borrowed from other religions. European common festivals include the Carnival of Venice where people wear masks as a way to revive the old city culture, St Patrick's Day celebrating the arrival of Christianity into Ireland, Maslenitsa and Carnival amongst others ( Hefner, 1998 ). The arrival of the Hindus to Europe has significantly shaped the European cultures, religions and traditions.
Purpose of the Study
This research looks forward to examining Hinduism traditions, culture and festivals and how they have impacted on the European society.
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Objectives
The objective of the research includes the following:
To explore the Hindu traditions, culture and festivals and how they have impacted on European traditions, culture and festivals.
To explore the European traditions, culture and festivals and how they have impacted on Europe traditions, culture and festivals.
To study the similarities and differences between Hindu and European traditions, culture and festivals.
To determine whether there has been an exchange of culture between Hindu and Europe
To determine whether Hindu culture was also impacted by the European traditions, cultures and festivals
To determine the reasons for the rapid growth of the Hindu religion in the European region
LITERATURE REVIEW
The Hindus and the European Christians have engaged in cultural, traditional and ritual practice exchanges and dialogues. The religious dialogue and exchanges have specifically been greater between these two cultures. Hindus and Christians live together in Europe and as a result, his raises many questions and issues over a variety of topics ranging from the mall things like eating habits to a more complex thing like rituals and the views on deities.
When the Surinamese together with the Hindustanis arrived in the Netherlands in larger numbers in the mid-1970s to join their Indian ancestors who had come to this region between 1873 and 1917, they only caused a few problems; the need for food and good shelter. Hindus began to express their desire to spread their religious feelings to the natives of the land, and there were clear misunderstandings from the beginning. In the process, they rented classrooms and halls to come together and perform their rituals ( Jacobsen & Sardella, 2020 ). The local residents were surprised to see fire coming from the roofs, and they alerted the fire brigade to come to prevent the fire only to find that the Hindus were performing a havan, a fire offering to their gods.
The Netherlands has a tradition committing their dead to flames since the 20 th century. The Hindus also conduct a cremation of their dead bodies, a major similarity between the two traditions. During the cremation process, both Hindu and Netherlands also conduct a ceremony for their dead, but the contents are different. Unfortunately, when the Hindus came to the Netherlands, they began performing the same rituals of burial, only to realize that it is timed to 30minutes. This lead to Hindus being locked-out of time, they needed a lot of time to complete their rituals, yet the cremators only had 30minutes to put the body on flames. When the coffin was taken away, the Hindus were frustrated, leading to many protests.
Christianity has been practiced in Europe beginning the first century; it is, therefore, a predominant religion in the region. When the Hindus arrived in Europe, they felt the need to popularize their cultures and religions and as such, engaged the Europeans through the formation of a different group, writing books and through government factions ( Fibiger, 2020 ). Like the Christians read the passages in their churches, the Hindu read their passages from their ritual scriptures, and the same way Christian do, they performed liturgical acts. In some cases, the Hindus performed an arti in church, a light offering.
Father Cornelis Johannes De Klerk, a catholic Redemptorist and a Dutch theologian is popular for having a serious discussion regarding the relations between Hindu and the European Christianity (1903-2001). In the period 1930 to 1953, Father Cornelis worked as a missionary amongst the Hindustanis in Suriname. He later came to conclude that ultimately Hindu culture finds its origins with the same God as Christians ( Fibiger, 2020 ). The father was surprised at the level of similarities between samskaras Hindu and some liturgies in the Roman Catholic Church. Specifically, he was surprised at the Hinduism adoration of fire (Latin ignis, Sanskrit agni) similarity to the Holy Spirit fire in Christianity.
Education is one area that India has evidently become secular. At the tertiary levels, the religious leaders are not familiar with the Academy and its methodology. The Indian higher education colleges are driven by the market forces, and they thrive in medicine, engineering and information technology. At the school level, the classical learning is constrained to the traditional gurukula (the school of guru) that is normally maintained by the religious institutions ( Bakker, 2006 ). The state education looks like an outmoded type of British education.
The Hindu scholars, it looks like are guided by the need to pursue two objectives; first, to revitalize, enrich and reshape the Hindu traditions. Second, to contribute an alternative angle to contemporary academic debate.
Both Hindu and European traditions featured some form of teachers; the Christian chaplains and the Hindu priests. The priests and chaplain roles are not as similar as such, but the core role is to further education of the respective religious teachings ( Knott, 2000 ). In the period 1960-1970, there was a counter-culture where Guru Maharaj Ji (Divine Light Mission), Sathya Sai Baba (Sathya Sai Organization), Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Transcendental Meditation movement) and A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (ISKCON or "Hare Krishna") attracted a significant following by the Europeans, founding quasi-religious or religious movements that are still active even today.
Iyengar B and Pattabhi Jois popularized Hatha Yoga beginning 1960s. However, with time, the European yoga practice has mainly become detached from the mystic or religious context and is primarily practiced as alternative medicine or a regular exercise. But what remains essential is that Yoga is one of the main influences of the Hindu religious practices on the Europeans.
Hinduism has significantly impacted on Europeans, with the Dutch Hinduism emerging. Amongst the Dutch, the popular streams of Hinduism include the Arya Samaj and the Sanatam Dharm. Most of the Hindus are still adherent to the Sanatan Dharm practices. There are only a few currents in Dutch Hinduism, and these include several associations that adore the guru Sathya Sai Saba and the Hare Krishna's which a tiny group (Wilfred, 1998) is. Hare Krishna's constitutes the most significant part of the autochthonous Dutchmen, the other Hindustanis currents.
METHODOLOGY
Research Design
The research will adopt a descriptive research method. Descriptive research design is a type of research study that gives a description of a population, phenomena or a situation that is under study. A descriptive research method focuses on answering questions like how, what, when and where. The descriptive research design is the most appropriate for this study because it emphasizes the past and history; it does not empirically answer why questions. To this end, this study will use earlier research studies, databases and historical texts to describe the impact of Hinduism on European traditions, culture and festivals.
Limitations
The main limitation of this study is the fact that there are time constraints and resources constraints. This means that the researchers will not collect sufficient data to have a wholesome view of Europeans and Hindus living in Europe views regarding how these cultures impact on each other.
CONCLUSION
The Hindus and the Europeans has had a significant interaction beginning the time of mass migration from India to Europe. The religious interactions have specifically been greater between these two cultures. Hindus and Europeans have lived together for the longest period, and it cannot be ignored that these two close yet so different cultures have had lots of interactions which, no doubt, has significantly impacted upon each other. The Hindus in Europe has made a lot of deliberate actions to ensure their cultures are embraced by the Europeans, and no doubt, there are evident signals that the Europeans are responding by adopting some Hindu practices, like the yoga. The new generation especially are now experiencing new things, and are being associated to the Hindu cultural practices for different reasons. There has been a consistent interaction between the Hindu and Europe cultures, festivals and traditions. This interaction is believed to be having a significant impact on the Europeans and in the same manner on the Indians. This research looks forward to having a deeper understanding of the relations between these two different yet very close cultures in Europe.
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