Shri Ram Mandir
The Hague (Den Haag), Netherlands
- Deities
- Rama
- Traditions
- vaishnava
- Worship status
- active
- Address
- Mijtensstraat 183, 2525 VC Den Haag
- Coordinates
- 52.0620331, 4.3068132
- Darshan hours
- Sunday service ('Zondagdienst') every Sunday 1:00-3:00 pm (doors open 12:45 pm), with puja, lecture, aarti, prasaad, and a communal meal (bhojan) around 3:00 pm; meals are also distributed to elderly and sick community members on Sundays and holy days. Consult shrirammandir.nl for the current schedule before visiting.
- Best time to visit
- Diwali and Holi are the major annual celebrations for the Hindustani community in The Hague; the temple is most active during these and other Hindu festival periods.
- How to reach
- In the Transvaal/Schilderswijk area of The Hague, neighborhoods with a large Hindustani (Indo-Surinamese) population; reachable by tram or bus from Den Haag Centraal station.
- Festivals
- Diwali (October/November), Holi (March)
Location
Open in Google MapsShri Ram Mandir sits in The Hague’s Transvaal district, part of a cluster of neighborhoods — along with adjoining Schilderswijk — that has been home to the city’s large Hindustani community since Surinamese-Indian immigration accelerated around Suriname’s 1975 independence. The Hague and its surrounding province of South Holland host the largest concentration of Hindus in the Netherlands, the great majority of Surinamese-Hindustani descent and following Sanatan Dharm; temples like this one function as neighborhood centers of worship, priestly service (pandits play a central organizing role in Hindustani religious life), and cultural continuity for that community, alongside a wider network of mandirs recorded across The Hague, Rotterdam, and other Dutch cities with sizable Hindustani populations.
As its name indicates, the temple is dedicated to Rama, though — as is common among Sanatan Dharm mandirs serving the Hindustani community — it likely also houses murtis of other deities such as Krishna, Shiva, or Hanuman; this has not been independently confirmed. Public sourcing on this specific temple’s founding date and institutional history is thin: it appears by name and address in Wikipedia’s general listing of Hindu temples outside India, but has no dedicated article of its own, so exact details of when and by whom it was established remain unverified here.
Sources
- historical record: Cross-checked against Wikipedia's 'List of Hindu temples outside India' (confirms the temple's name and address, Mijtensstraat 183, 2525 VC Den Haag) and against 'Hindostanen' and 'Hinduism in the Netherlands', which document the concentration of the Hindustani (Indo-Surinamese) Hindu community in The Hague's Transvaal and Schilderswijk neighborhoods (a 2003 study estimated roughly 60,000 Hindus in South Holland, over 70% Sanatan Dharm), and confirm Diwali and Holi as the community's major annual festivals. No Wikipedia article was found dedicated specifically to this temple.
- historical record: Wave 2 follow-up: cross-checked against the temple's own live official site, shrirammandir.nl, operated by Stichting Shri Sanatan Dharm Sabha Nederland (a Dutch foundation), which confirms the address, current Sunday service schedule, and contact details. Coordinates confirmed via an OpenStreetMap point-of-interest explicitly named 'Shri Sanatan Dharm Sabha Nederland,' whose tags also include a start_date of 1923 - this almost certainly reflects the construction date of the building itself (a typical 1920s Hague row-house/hall) rather than a documented founding date for the temple congregation, and is not asserted here as a founding year without further corroboration. The temple's officiating pandits are registered with the Hindoe Raad Nederland (Hindu Council Netherlands) and serve voluntarily, drawn from the Haaglanden/Rijnmond region.
For review
- This temple's founding year and detailed institutional history (e.g., founding organization's establishment date, exact denominational affiliation within Sanatan Dharm) were not confirmed by any source found; an OSM tag suggesting the building dates to 1923 reflects the structure's age, not a confirmed congregation founding date, and should not be read as the latter.