Lara Zijl By Zealandia News
South Auckland is preparing for one of its biggest community gatherings of the year, with the Hindu Organisations, Temples and Associations (HOTA) Forum NZ inviting community leaders and the wider public to its 16th annual Raksha Bandhan Community Celebration next month.
The event, hosted this year by ISSO Swaminarayan NZ, will be held at the Swaminarayan Complex on Wentworth Avenue, Papatoetoe, from 4pm to 7pm on Saturday 12 September. Organisers are expecting more than 1,000 people through the doors, and entry is free.
Raksha Bandhan is traditionally a festival celebrating the bond between brothers and sisters, tied together through the ritual of a rakhi thread. But in Aotearoa, HOTA has spent well over a decade broadening that meaning into something distinctly local: a chance for the Hindu community to say thank you to the people who keep the rest of us safe.
This year’s celebration will pay tribute to NZ Police, Fire and Emergency New Zealand, St John, and other frontline personnel, alongside civic and community leaders, with a traditional rakhi-tying ceremony forming the heart of the evening. There will also be cultural dance and music performances and food stalls serving up regional cuisine, with an unlimited buffet available to purchase.
It’s the kind of event that’s easy to admire, not just for the scale of it, but for what it represents. Since 2010, HOTA has quietly built one of the more effective bridges between New Zealand’s Hindu communities and the wider public, turning a religious festival into an occasion that welcomes everyone, regardless of background or belief. That’s no small thing in a country still working out how to hold its increasing diversity together with a shared sense of belonging.
Credit where it’s due: taking a festival rooted in family ties and stretching it to include the police officer on the beat, the firefighter on call, and the paramedic on shift is a genuinely thoughtful piece of community building. It says something about gratitude, but it also says something about civic responsibility, and about a community that sees itself as part of the national fabric rather than separate from it.
The Raksha Bandhan evening is one of two events HOTA and its affiliates are running on the same Saturday. Earlier that day, Hindu Youth New Zealand, in partnership with ISSO, will host DharmaFest at the same venue from 10am to 2.30pm, a free, family-friendly morning built around yoga, cultural performances, art and craft workshops, spiritual sessions, and a spot of bhajan jamming for those keen to sing along. Both events are open to all, with free registration encouraged via the HCNZ website.
Behind both occasions sits the Hindu Council of New Zealand, established in 1996 and formally registered a decade later, which describes itself not as a religious body but as a community organisation serving society through the values of Hindu Dharma. Under its “One Dharma, Many Paths, One Humanity” banner, HCNZ and its service arms have carved out a reputation for exactly the kind of grassroots social cohesion work that’s often talked about in policy documents but rarely delivered with this much warmth on the ground.
For a country grappling with how to knit together a growing patchwork of cultures, HOTA’s approach offers a pretty simple lesson: invite everyone, feed everyone, and say thank you to the people who look after us all. It’s hard to argue with that.
Registration Link for Dharma Fest: https://hcnz.org/event/dharma-fest/
Registration Link for Raksha Bandhan: https://hcnz.org/event/raksha-bandhan/
