Radj Bhondoe, President of the Hindu Council of the Netherlands was recently invited to the New Years Eve Reception by the Dutch Royal Family. Here he writes about it. Orginal in Dutch with a translation in English underneath. Op verzoek van vrienden hierbij dan een verslagje van de nieuwjaarsreceptie van de koning en koningin. Ik heb er inmiddels vier bijgewoond (alsook de inhuldiging van de huidige koning). Mijn gemengde gevoelens over het koninklijk huis daargelaten, zijn het bijzondere bijeenkomsten en ook bijzonder dat ik daar deel van kon uitmaken. Voor de receptie worden uitgenodigd ongeveer 200 vertegenwoordige... At the request of these friends than a story about the new years reception of the King and Queen. I have now four attended (as well as the inauguration of the present King). My mixed feelings about the Royal family, are the special meetings and that I could be part of this. For the reception are invited about 200 representatives of the Dutch society. Members of the Cabinet, group leaders, business representatives, of civil society organisations (thats how I ended up there), the mayors of major cities, selected top officials and others such as the ministers of State, the Vice President of the Council of State etc (MPs, Councillors and Council members are not listed). Get a warm welcome at the Palace (red carpet, guard of honor, several greetings and verwelkomingen by employees and members of the Royal family. If you have your jacket issued to about nice ladies dressing room, you walk through corridors and stairways to meet a queue where you must connect. Through a narrow gate to the throne room where (if its your turn) you will go through to the master of ceremonies, about 10 meters away are the King and Queen, the master of ceremonies Announces loudly to you, then you walk to the King and Queen where you may exchange greetings and congratulations. Then you walk through to the reception area. Where you should spend a little over an hour with the top of the Dutch society. Previous years were at the greeting except the Queen, the Crown Prince and Princess Maxima also present Princess Margriet and her husband. HRH Princess margriet of the Netherlands gave preferably no hand, they got me a Namaste with folded hands, I got the same way a Namaste neatly back then. The guests are not a reflection of the Dutch society. The most part consists of white old men, when women (lets say 15%) and almost no migrants. On these meetings is you painful with the turmoil there are no top executives and migrants if they are than their number is negligible. At the top we play absolutely no role of significance. Hindus have wrongly the reputation that they do very well ... a top official asked me with the the now-cliché phrase ... but Hindus do well huh? I was sufficient with the question: where are they??? (Translated by Bing)
Posted on: Thu, 16 Jan 2014 10:23:01 +0000
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