Oshwal Centre, Potters Bar

The centre of the Oshwal community in Britain, many of whose families arrived from East Africa in the 1960s and 70s.

The Oshwal community in Britain is largely a twice-migrated one: Gujarat to Kenya and Uganda across the early twentieth century, then to Britain around the expulsions and upheavals of the late 1960s and 1970s.

The derasar at Potters Bar, opened in 2005, is the community’s principal temple, and the centre around it does the work an Indian town’s several institutions would otherwise divide between them.

Written for Jain Times. Corrections are welcome — see sources and licences.