The biggest festival for young Hindus ever held outside India opened yesterday in a giant marquee stretching for more than 200 yards across a park in north-west London.
The 10 day gathering in Roundwood Park, Harlesden, is expected to receive more than 15,000 people a day during the weekend.
Coaches are being laid on to bring members of Britain's 400,000-strong Hindu community from as far as Edinburgh and Glasgow to attend the festival.
The organisers said yesterday that not only were visitors going to be meeting co-religionists from elsewhere in Britain, but that they would be mingling with those from other Indian communities - including Gujaratis with Bengalis - who would not normally associate.
"All the Patels mix together like one family, but they would normally be Gujarati Patels not Bengali ones. It's very tribal - a bit like the Irish," said Shaunaka Rishi Das, one of the organisers from the Oxford Centre for Vaishnava and Hindu studies.
He should know.
Shaunaka was originally Timothy Kiernan from Wexford who had planned to train for the Catholic priesthood before joining Hare Krishna instead. A distant relative by marriage of the Irish nationalist leader Michael Collins, he is now a Hindu priest and has spent time trying to bring Hindu principles of peace to Belfast.
Among those attending the festival are a number of swamis, saints and dignitaries, some of whom have never previously left India.
One will spend the festival reciting all 18,000 verses of the great religious work the Bhagavat.
The festival has received blessings from the archbishop of Canterbury and Prince Charles. In a message, Tony Blair said: "This event provides British Hindus with an important opportunity to explore their culture and their faith. It will also give ... the opportunity to discuss what it means to be a young Hindu in Britain today."
In marquees, the faithful will be able to buy silver-gilt temples and statuettes of saints, books, CDs, and pictures, and fireworks and Diwali cards to take home with them. Stalls selling mogo chips, pao bhaji, vegetable biryani, samosas and chilli paneer will feed the inner pilgrim.
The proceedings are being filmed for broadcasting on the Gurjari satellite channel and transmission to India and to Hindu communities in the US, South Africa and Australia.
But it will be each evening, when youth organisers take over, that the debate is expected to be keenest as younger members of the community take on issues such as sexuality, drugs and alcohol, caste and race.
Although Hindus were not involved in recent riots in Bradford and Oldham, the questions of identity confronting them are similar to those in the Muslim community.