Hundreds of Southland Hindus are expected to...

Hundreds of Southland Hindus are expected to assemble in a first-ever “Unity Day” celebration today at Cerritos College in Norwalk. The evening program culminates lengthy planning to bring together disparate religious, cultural and secular Hindu groups for an annual celebration.

The event has no relationship to the recent escalation of Hindu-Muslim conflict in India, said a spokesman, engineer Shiva Subramanya of Torrance.

“None of us hold hatred toward Muslims or anyone else, and we are against all violence,” Subramanya said.

He said it was only “coincidental” that today’s event comes on the heels of the recent violent storming of a mosque site in Ayodhya, India, by thousands of militant Hindu pilgrims.

Hinduism, which is practiced by many sects and schools of thought, has no central organization. But when a famous Indian monk, Murari Bapu, visited Los Angeles last year, more than a dozen Hindu organizations cooperated in sponsoring and organizing his appearance.

Subramanya said that many people asked, “Why don’t we do this every year?” He said that the 40 or so groups sponsoring today’s celebration include, the Indian Dental Society, the Ananda Foundation, Art India and the International Society of Divine Love.

Although Swami Swahananda of the Vedanta Center will speak on Hinduism in the 21st Century and the program includes Vedic chanting, the event is not entirely a religious affair. Cultural dances and other entertainment are planned for the celebration, which begins at 4:15 p.m. and ends at 10 p.m.

Open to the public without charge, the event will take place in the Burnight Theatre on the Cerritos College campus.

PEOPLE

A rabbi and a priest who have spearheaded interfaith relations in the Los Angeles area for two decades will receive the North American “Interfaith Leadership Award” at the 12th National Workshop on Christian-Jewish Relations Tuesday night in Chicago. The award will go to Rabbi Alfred Wolf, director of the American Jewish Committee’s Skirball Institute on American Values, and Msgr. Royale M. Vadakin, the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese’s director for ecumenical and interreligious affairs. The two were founders of the multifaith Interreligious Council of Southern California and were instrumental in a series of Catholic-Jewish study dialogues and education exchanges.

PARADE

The Tournament of Roses Parade will have a second religious entry on Jan. 1, 1991--the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod’s laymen’s league has entered floats for many years, but this is the first time for the Adventists. Seen as a public relations device for national television exposure (however brief), the float will show “children of the world at play in a garden.”

DATES

The 42nd annual Ministers’ Convocation, to be held Monday and Tuesday at the School of Theology at Claremont, will be addressed by David Buttrick of Vanderbilt University Divinity School, Margaret R. Miles of Harvard Divinity School and M. Thomas Thangaraj at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. Registration, costing $18 and open to all clergy, begins at 9 a.m. Monday at the seminary’s Mudd Auditorium. A clergy and lay workshop on local church revitalization--added to the program at popular request--will be held on the campus Wednesday and Thursday.

Choirs from two “mega-churches” in Southern California will present Johannes Brahms’ “The Requiem” at 6 p.m. Sunday at one of the churches, the Lake Avenue Congregational Church in Pasadena. The Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove will contribute to the 300-voice combined choir and Frederick Swann, who is organist for the Crystal Cathedral, will accompany the choir on the 125-rank organ at the Congregational Church. Both congregations rank among the top 25 best-attended Protestant churches in California.