Harvard University’s Pluralism Project has many interesting resources concerning minority religions in the USA. Here, for example, is their map of mandirs across America:
To some extent, this map can be read as a proxy for the distribution of Hindus across the country, although only crudely. Because the map indicates the number of temples and not the size of their congregations, a state with a large number of small temples will show up as darker brown (I love their coloring scheme) than one with a smaller number of large temples. That is, there might be more Hindus in Illinois than New York, but they simply worship at a few very large temples.
Despite this limitation, there is still much to be learned from reading these maps. I was surprised to see, for example, that there were more mandirs in Georgia than in the state of Washington, or Michigan. Who knew there were so many mandirs in the south?
The site also includes maps of the 89 Jain temples, 236 Sikh gurdwaras, 2039 Buddhist temples, and the 1855 Islamic mosques that they have catalogued.
nice ‘brown’ map ennis.. good find… actually i used the ‘mandir factor’ when i ranked my residency match list.. since culture/restaurants/etc were important too me.. ended up in atlanta from california.. and i live 1 mile away from the swami narayan temple, and a few more miles away from the gujarati samaj, and the shiv temple.. atlanta has great temples/places of worship… just like cali and their iskon temple, malibu temple, etc…
Check out North Dakota. We chose well for our world blogging headquarters.
Obeservation from a detached FOB: isn’t everyone just more religious in the south?
I was checking out the Pluralism project website. Interestingly, there is very little “plurality” in the organization itself… 🙂
A few years ago my mayn and me decided to drive the cali coast and we were driving around Malibu in our khatara bug when I spotted a temple top in the distance. I squealed, he took some turns and we ended up at the Malibu temple with our jaws hanging to the floor. I couldn’t believe my eyes, it was awesome. We hung out and talked to the priest. Then I met an aunty who pinched my cheeks and said she knew my parents from back in the day. Classic desi connection.
memories
isn’t everyone just more religious in the south?
yes. but the west coasts tends to be the most notable in terms of lack of religious affiliation.
I have always wondered – why are you guys located in North Dakota?
Because of its Sepiate density.
alaska and hawaii have hindu mandirs too.
my modest contribution to the vernacular. ahh… as i look through the search windo… such a long journey it has been… my grand plan to achieve harmony in a division-less sepiate world… please excuse me -choke- … my glasses just fogged up .
It would be interesting to see percent of total religious centers to see where higher concentrations are. Of course there are lots of temples in California, New York, and Texas. they’re the three most populaous states.
What does sepiate destiny mean?
Data need to be population adjusted…can’t believe the stuff that comes of out Harvard!
Population adjustment would be nonsensical here – why do we want to know how many mandirs there are for each Californian, most of whom are non-Hindu? Population adjustment would make sense if we were looking at the Hindu population as a percentage of Californians, but that’s not the data we have here at all.
Heh! Ennis, down here in Texas, we have a town named Temple. All ye temples, belong to us!
Ennis, I don’t think the way the map is shown now is all that informative. What about the geographic distribution within the state? Why not just represent the mandirs with dots for where they are really located and not aggregate it for the entire state? There are lots of manidirs in CA, but most are probably in SF and LA area, so why not make a map that doesn’t leave this important piece of information out?
Also, why do you think population adjustment is so wrong? Yes, there are more mandirs in CA because there are more people there, and more Hindus. I think it could be informative to see the number of mandirs for the hindu population in the state to give you an idea of where Hindus are most active.
Thanks for sharing.