Rajendra Pandey arrived in Adelaide in 2012, just before Christmas. He remembers calling his mother and saying, “It feels like someone has bombed the city; there’s no one on the streets.”
Coming from Delhi (though his family originally hails from Banaras, also known as Varanasi), where the Christmas season fills Connaught Place with people queuing at the church and the city buzzing with festive cheer, the emptiness in Adelaide was a stark contrast. “I felt lonely,” he recalls.
This loneliness spurred Pandey’s involvement in volunteer work. Just three days after arriving in Adelaide, he began volunteering with St John Ambulance, a leading provider of first aid with 140 years of experience serving the community.
To keep himself busy, he started assisting people at libraries with building their resumes. Later, he volunteered with the Adelaide City Council, helping elderly individuals learn to operate their phones and iPads.
Even after securing a job as a quality and compliance officer at the University of South Australia, Rajendra continued his volunteering activities. However, the turning point came when his mother arrived in Adelaide and started taking his son to school, forming connections with other Indian families whose children attended the same school.
“My mother is the inspiration behind everything I do,” says Pandey.
At that time, the Indian community was small and fragmented, lacking strong connections. Recognising this, Pandey’s mother, who taught Hindi to his son, saw an opportunity to extend her teaching to other children as well. Pandey, who always desired deeper connections with his culture and community, enthusiastically welcomed the idea.
But it was also his connection with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) in Delhi that he later sought to leverage as a means to reconnect with his culture and community.
Recalling this connection, Pandey shares, “My house was very close to the VHP office, and as a young boy, we used to go there on special occasions to serve food. It was like an organisation where I hung out with my friends and felt connected to the community.”
So, he reached out to VHP Australia, an organisation with over 30 years of history, and started the Adelaide chapter in 2015. This initiative allowed him to realise his mother’s idea of Hindi language classes, providing the organisational framework and securing public liability insurance, among other necessary arrangements. Today, he is the National Spokesperson and State President of VHP South Australia.
In 2017, Pandey also established the Hindu Organisation Temple and Association (HOTA) family, comprising 96 community groups in South Australia. HOTA is not a registered body but a forum where any representative of an organisation can freely join. In doing so, he also wanted to correct the narrative that Indian communities are divided.
“The reality is that we are not disconnected, and we need to work together and learn about each other’s cultures. You cannot help but appreciate the warmth in every culture; it is something that everyone needs to experience, and that’s why we have this forum,” he says.
The HOTA family includes 96 community groups, with representatives from Singapore, Malaysia, Bhutan, Nepal, Indonesia, among others. Being Hindu is not a criterion, Pandey explains, as there are also Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists, and members of other faiths.
The forum meets three times a year to get acquainted, address issues, and assist each other—from housing problems and homeland floods to organising events and beyond. Together, they work towards finding solutions without solely relying on the government.
The main event is Raksha Bandhan, a celebration of the bond between brothers and sisters, held at the end of the year.
Moreover, Pandey has been elected to the South Australian Multicultural Commission for a second term this year—an appointment he deeply values, providing him with further opportunities to pursue his passion.
“I am grateful to the Labor government for their trust in me to serve the multicultural community. This is significant because I was initially appointed by the Liberal government, making this a bipartisan recognition,” he adds.
“My primary goal is listening to people’s problems and solving them. This year, we initiated community engagement forums where we gather community leaders. We started with the Hindu Indian community and now with the Afghan Muslim community, to understand their needs and collaborate on solutions—reflecting the same ethos as HOTA,” says Pandey.
Pandey’s philosophy is simple. He believes in a multicultural country like Australia, it’s essential to connect with and care for your neighbours.
“My mother always taught me that if you live in a good neighbourhood, you must tend to your lawn and look after your surroundings. If your neighbour is facing challenges, it impacts us all. When we befriend our neighbours and ensure our fellow citizens are content and have their needs met, it creates a happier community. Our ancestors have taught us that a flower’s fragrance is its essence, no matter where it blooms.”
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