Best Indian Temples & Mandirs in The Hague (2026)

TL;DR

• 🛕 The Hague hosts six active Hindu and Dharmic worship spaces, reflecting the city's large Surinamese-Hindustani community.
• 🪔 Shri Sanatan Dharm Sabha Nederland on Mijtensstraat is one of the city's oldest established mandirs.
• 🌺 Dev Mandir and Stichting Shri Sai Mandir both operate from Gaslaan, making that street an informal spiritual cluster.
• 📿 Sewa Dhaam functions as both a worship space and a community service organisation.
• 🗺️ Shri Guru Ravidass Temple on Delftselaan serves the city's Punjabi Sikh community specifically.

The Hague is home to one of Europe's largest communities of Surinamese-Hindustani descent — families whose ancestors travelled from the Indian subcontinent to Suriname as indentured labourers in the nineteenth century and whose descendants later migrated to the Netherlands after Surinamese independence in 1975. This history has shaped the city's religious landscape profoundly. Hindu worship spaces, Dharmic organisations, and cultural-religious institutions are embedded throughout The Hague in ways that make it genuinely unusual among European capitals.

This guide covers six of the city's active temples, mandirs, and affiliated organisations. Each entry is drawn from verified data — no invented details about hours, events, or community affiliation.

A Community Shaped by History

To understand The Hague's temple network, it helps to understand who built it. The Surinamese-Hindustani community that settled in the city brought with it a form of Hinduism shaped by over a century of diaspora life in the Caribbean — a practice that had already adapted, preserved, and evolved far from the subcontinent. When these families arrived in the Netherlands, they brought their traditions with them and gradually established formal worship spaces in a country where Hindu institutions had no prior infrastructure.

Today, The Hague's mandirs serve multiple roles simultaneously: they are places of worship, community centres, cultural-preservation spaces, and social gathering points. For many Surinamese-Hindustani families, the mandir is as much a weekly community anchor as it is a religious one.

The Six Worship Spaces

Shri Sanatan Dharm Sabha Nederland on Mijtensstraat is linked to the Sanatanist tradition of Hinduism — the orthodox stream of Hindu practice that emphasises the Vedic scriptures, rituals around the major deities, and observance of the Hindu calendar. The Sanatana Dharma Sabha organisations were among the first formal Hindu institutions established in Suriname, and their Netherlands counterparts carry that legacy forward.

Stichting Shri Sai Mandir on Gaslaan is dedicated to Sai Baba of Shirdi, the nineteenth-century saint venerated across Hindu and Muslim communities in India and widely followed in the diaspora. The Sai devotional tradition is known for its emphasis on equality across caste and creed, making Sai mandirs particularly welcoming spaces. The Gaslaan address also places it within easy reach of Dev Mandir, which sits just two doors down at number 74.

Dev Mandir at 74 Gaslaan sits alongside Stichting Shri Sai Mandir on the same street, creating an informal concentration of Hindu worship space in this part of the city. Dev Mandir — the name translates roughly as Temple of the Divine — is a community mandir serving the broader Hindu population of The Hague.

Sewa Dhaam takes a different model. The name means approximately House of Service, and the organisation blends devotional practice with active community welfare work. It holds a website and email contact, suggesting a level of outward-facing engagement that some of the more traditional mandirs do not maintain. For newcomers to The Hague looking for a point of entry into the Hindu community, Sewa Dhaam's service orientation may make it particularly accessible.

Shri- Sanatan Dharm Sakha Sabha Den Haag on Regentesseplein is a branch (Sakha means branch) of the broader Sanatan Dharma Sabha network. Branch organisations of this kind typically serve a specific neighbourhood or quarter of a city, holding their own regular services and cultural events while remaining connected to the larger organisation's framework.

Shri Guru Ravidass Temple on Delftselaan is distinct from the others on this list. Rather than serving the Surinamese-Hindustani Hindu community, it is associated with the Ravidassia tradition — a spiritual movement originating in Punjab that venerates the fifteenth-century saint-poet Ravidas, who was himself born into a community facing caste discrimination. The Ravidassia community has established temples across European cities with significant Punjabi diaspora populations, and The Hague's temple on Delftselaan serves that community.

Navigating The Hague's Spiritual Geography

For visitors or residents new to The Hague, a few geographical notes are useful. The Gaslaan cluster — Stichting Shri Sai Mandir at number 72 and Dev Mandir at number 74 — is the most concentrated point of Hindu worship on this list. If you are attending services at both, you will not need to travel between them.

Regentesseplein, where Shri- Sanatan Dharm Sakha Sabha Den Haag is located, is in a central part of the city with good public transport links. Mijtensstraat and Delftselaan are both accessible by tram and bus from the central station.

One practical note: many of these spaces operate on a community-organisation model rather than a commercial one, which means phone lines and websites may not always be the fastest route to getting information about services and events. If you are planning to attend a specific puja or festival celebration, reaching out through community networks — asking within the Surinamese-Hindustani social circles of The Hague — often yields more reliable information than a website check.

Insider Tip

The major Hindu festivals — Diwali, Holi, Navratri — are celebrated with particular energy in The Hague given the size of the Surinamese-Hindustani community. If you are new to the city and want to connect with the community, attending a festival celebration at one of the larger mandirs is far more welcoming as a first visit than arriving at a quiet midweek service. Sewa Dhaam's contact information makes it a practical first point of call for orientation.

Understanding the Traditions Present

The six spaces on this list represent at least three distinct traditions within the broader Hindu and Dharmic world: Sanatana Dharma (Shri Sanatan Dharm Sabha Nederland and its branch), Sai devotionalism (Stichting Shri Sai Mandir), the Ravidassia movement (Shri Guru Ravidass Temple), and more general community Hinduism (Dev Mandir, Sewa Dhaam). This diversity reflects the layered nature of Indian spiritual practice in diaspora: communities do not arrive as a single tradition but bring the full variety of the subcontinent with them.

For anyone researching South Asian diaspora religious life in Europe, The Hague is one of the most significant cities to study. The depth of the Surinamese-Hindustani community here means the institutions are well-established, well-attended, and embedded in the city's social fabric in ways that newer diaspora communities in other European cities have not yet achieved.

FAQ

Are these temples open to non-Hindus? Most Hindu mandirs welcome respectful visitors of all backgrounds. Contact each temple directly beforehand if you are visiting as an outsider to understand their specific expectations around dress and behaviour.

Do all these spaces hold regular weekly services? Most community mandirs hold services on weekends, with additional services on festival days. For current schedules, contact each space directly — community mandirs sometimes shift their timings seasonally.

Is the Surinamese-Hindustani tradition different from Indian Hinduism? In broad terms, the doctrinal content is similar, but the lived practice has evolved distinctly through more than a century of diaspora life in Suriname. Music, ritual language, and cultural expression can differ noticeably from what you would find in a temple serving a recently-arrived Indian community.

Can I attend a puja at one of these mandirs without knowing anyone? Yes. Hindu puja is generally not a closed or members-only practice. Arriving with respect and a willingness to follow basic protocols — removing shoes, modest dress — is typically all that is required.

Where is the largest concentration of these temples? Gaslaan has two mandirs within two numbers of each other, making it the most concentrated point on this list.

Bottom Line

The Hague's six Hindu and Dharmic worship spaces — Shri Sanatan Dharm Sabha Nederland, Stichting Shri Sai Mandir, Sewa Dhaam, Shri Guru Ravidass Temple, Shri- Sanatan Dharm Sakha Sabha Den Haag, and Dev Mandir — represent a spiritual landscape built over decades by a community with a genuinely distinct history. The Surinamese-Hindustani connection makes The Hague's temple network unlike anything else in Europe: older, more deeply rooted, and more architecturally embedded in the city's neighbourhoods than you would find in any other Dutch city. For anyone seeking Hindu worship space, community connection, or simply a deeper understanding of what diaspora religious life looks like, these six spaces are the place to start.