Hot-off-the-press (so hot that it won’t even be available until July) is a book whose subject matter seems to tackle some of the same topics we often post on this site, as well as might contain some good explanations as to why our website sometimes attracts bigotry/ignorance of a certain persuasion. The book is titled, A Place at the Multicultural Table: The Development of an American Hinduism. The book is by author Prema A. Kurien (who I see has been denounced in some way or another on a smattering of websites). Indolink reports:
According to its publisher Rutgers University Press, the book offers an in-depth look at Hinduism in the United States and the Hindu Indian American community.
The book focuses on understanding the private devotions, practices, and beliefs of Hindu Americans as well as their political mobilization and activism. And it probes the differences between immigrant and American-born Hindu Americans, how both understand their religion and their identity, while it emphasizes the importance of the social and cultural context of the United States in influencing the development of an American Hinduism…
Drawing on the experiences of both immigrant and American-born Hindus, Kurien demonstrates how religious ideas and practices are being imported, exported, and reshaped in the process. The result of this transnational movement, according to Kurien, is an American Hinduism- an organized, politicized, and standardized version of that which is found in India.
The book explains that Hinduism has undergone several modifications in interpretation, practice, and organization in the United States in the process of being institutionalized as an American religion. Kurien argues that while Hindu American spokespersons espouse a genteel pluralism and attempt to use Hinduism to secure a place at the American multicultural table, they also use the ideology of multiculturalism to justify and legitimize a militant Hindu nationalism. Drawing on this contradiction, she develops a theoretical model to explain 1) why multiculturalism often seems to exacerbate émigré nationalism, and 2) why religion is often involved directly or indirectly in this process. [Link]
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I think it is interesting to consider how a religion brought to America would begin to mutate once here. America is one of the few places on Earth where so many religions compete in an essentially “free-market.” You can practice any religion you want to here with much less anxiety that in many countries. Since religion has always been (among many other things) a way to wield influence over a great many people, it would make sense that Hinduism in America would have to become a bit more aggressive (at least from a marketing standpoint) in order to get its “place at the multi-cultural table.” The irony of course is that Hinduism, by its very underlying principles, is not supposed to actively seek out converts. From just the synopsis of this book it seems like those being targeted for “conversion” may simply be second generation offspring who have “strayed from the fold” so to speak. Here is a quote that demonstrates the us vs. them siege mentality that some members of smaller religions in the U.S. may feel:
Rajesh, who was trying to set up a chapter of the Hindu Student Council (HSC) at his school, told Kurien that his motivation in establishing an organization that emphasized the importance of a Hindu identity was because as Indians, “You won’t be accepted into this culture, whatever you do.” So the club was to provide an alternate culture and identity for Hindu students. [Link]
An alternate identity? Isn’t that one of the problems with a portion of Muslim youth in Europe?
Kurien observes that whereas Indian Americans growing up in America are forced to define and come to terms with their racial and ethnic identity, Hindu Indian Americans face the additional burden of being practitioners of a religion that is little understood and often negatively perceived by Americans. ‘A nation-wide survey conducted in 2001 on behalf of a Hindu American group found that over 95 percent of Americans had little or no knowledge of Hinduism and that 71 percent had no contact with a Hindu of Indian origin. What was of even greater concern to the Hindu leaders who had commissioned the survey was that 59 percent of those surveyed indicated that they had no interest in learning more about the religion.’ [Link]
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If anyone ends up buying and reading this book please do let us know your thoughts. Also folks, given the topic please get in your substantive comments before this post gets shut down. Kind of a shame.
“that means by definition hinduism is a religion which will probably be an immigrant faith indefinitely, since native descendents will drift away (since there can’t be replenishment via conversion).”
I think this is another aspect that’s overblown to some extent. I’m not sure what the age range of SM readers are, but I think there is somewhat of an age gap between those of us in college currently and those in their late twenties/early thirties.
Granted I can only speak from a South Indian perspective, but I don’t think the attrition rates for my generation are that high, especially with regard to females. I guess I could be wrong, but I’d be interested to see how things work out once my generation starts settling down and having kids-I don’t see many of them just throwing religion, music, dance etc. out the door. But we’ll have to wait and see.
“What if that person came from Bali?”
My college roommate is actually Balinese! Or half Balinese, half Dutch rather. So I asked her your question. She says that its very possible to be well versed in their scriptures, myths, and rituals as well-and she would use that as requirement for a practicing Balinese Hindu. While Balinese Hinduism is quite different from Hinduism in India, there are some striking similarities, particularly with South Indian Shaivism. Apparently, while Javanese Hinduism is practiced by only a very small minority on that island, its much closer to hinduism in south india than it is to balinese hinduism.
but I don’t think the attrition rates for my generation are that high
outmarriage rates for 1 & 1.5 brownz is around 30%. do you think the kidz are all being raised hindu? defection on the order of 10-20% is serious. if you hold population size equal (plausible since browns have TFR around 2.0) then a 10% defection rate per generation would mean that 35% would leave in the religion in 4 generations.
“do you think the kidz are all being raised hindu? defection on the order of 10-20% is serious. if you hold population size equal (plausible since browns have TFR around 2.0) then a 10% defection rate per generation would mean that 35% would leave in the religion in 4 generations.”
My point is that there is pretty big difference between 1 and 1.5ers vs. second generation. Second, each generation isn’t necessarily going to follow the exact pattern as the previous. For example, I’d say there are a lot more people involved in religious activities in my age group than any of the 1 or 1.5ers and it seems even more so for the even younger ones who have a plethora of activities and classes that I didn’t have when growing up.
Also, I’ve seen a somewhat decreasing amount of mixed marriages when compared with the marriages 10 years back where almost all of them were mixed. But maybe that’s my experience. Like I said, I’m only speaking from a south indian perspective. I have no clue what the patterns are for Punjabi, Gujurati, bengali hindus etc. Certainly there is attrition, but the crowds and demands for sunday schools, music and dance teachers have grown exponentially.
But as I said earlier, whether Hinduism survives a few generations down is something we’ll just have to wait and see.
“Many of the teenagers and college students that I spoke with described the pain they experienced growing up with “brown skins†in a predominantly white environment. They said that their eagerness to be accepted had initially led them to turn away from their Indianness and to try to be as much like their white friends as possible. This, however, only increased their identity crisis and feeling of alienation since it became obvious to them that no matter what they did, they were not going to be accepted as “just American.â€
You know, I’m still surprised when I read something like this-it just seems like a left over relic of the people who grew up in the 70s and 80s.
I think she’s trying to hard to prove her identity argument. This just doesn’t sound like what college kids would say today.
People who grew up in the 80s are in their late teens and early 20s today. That’s not an insignificant, long-gone portion of the South Asian demographic 🙂
And I do think there are still major identity issues facing young Desis. Obviously it depends on the attitudes of parents, the specific tradition, and the general vibe of the local subpopulation. But, for example, if you’re a young South Asian woman and you’re interested in a non-Desi boy, obviously there are going to be hurdles for you to overcome even today. Sure, you could avoid that by simply limiting your social group only to Desis, but many people don’t want to do that. Your South Asian identity places behavioral demands on you just like larger American culture does.
I don’t want to nitpick on an extraneous point but its hard to resist.
Its often written that they are similar to S. Indian Shaivaites yet there isn’t any evidence that would relate what one sees when they visit both places.
In south India there is a more strict vaishnav-shaiv-adwait divide where often one has to choose one of them exclusively. Its not so in North India.
Java has more Hindus numerically than Bali(as a %age of population sure a tiny minority) Also in both there are strong pre-indic elements (often labeled as animist by scholars Yes I have problem with that label too).
Curiously MegaWati SukarnoPutri has an ambiguous relationship with her ancestry. Which demonstrates the problem when you use the religion label. Her ancestral makeup is Javanese Muslim and Hindu, and some Balinese Hindu. Indonesian UDP(united development party ~islamic org)often uses that as a talking point against her. For her to accept Islam as a religion means giving up the other stuff in their culture which is zahiliyat(in this the tenents of religion are clear), So she has decided to keep mum about the issue.
Too many stereotypes
“Its often written that they are similar to S. Indian Shaivaites yet there isn’t any evidence that would relate what one sees when they visit both places.”
In Bali, the supreme being or there version of Ishwara (in some cases nirguna brahman what have you) is Shangyang Widhi Wasa-when I was in Bali, I had no shortage of people identify him as Shiva or Ciwa. Any Indian hindu would see that even the caricatures of him resemble Shiva much more than Vishnu. The also title Shiva as god of destruction and creation simultaneously as do Shaiva Sidhhantists in Southern India. nevertheless, brahma is still represented in the trimurti. This goes pretty close with general Shaivite thought. Just like shaivism in Nepal and Kashmir is pretty different from that of South India in terms of theology, not surprising that Balinese religion differs from South Indian shaivism. According to their legends, it was also a Shaivite brahman nirartha who introduced new aspects of hinduism after the fall of the majapahit empire. Plus there is a strong tradition of their version of Saraswati vandhanam which Vaishnavites don’t have.
This is why people have deemed them as “Shaivite”
I agree though that its not as stark a divide as you see in Southern India, but there are people who identify themselves as Waisnawa on the island as well.
Javanese Hindus, while technically numerically larger than Balinese Hindus, have a large component of peoples who simply chose to go under the Agama Hindu Dharma to preserve animist beliefs or remain atheist under the governments requirement of belief in a “monotheistic” religion. In areas around Yogya and parts of East Java you get smaller communities and some newer converts who converted out of some sort “ethnic pride” type reasoning. You do see closer resemblances in their practices and older Javanese temple sites, like the presence of Ganesha as a deity of worship, the standing vishnu that resembles that of any Perumal temple down south, Durga, and even a slightly more explicit link of divinity accorded to Rama which you don’t see in Bali, although due to Indian influence and that of groups like ISKCON, there is some recognition of Rama as Vishnu-but that’s largely been a foreign introduction.
Ok, true, and I should have modified that with an “in my experience” or somesuch. But I have found that temple populations skew older. I also doubt that a temple truly reflective of American Hinduism would produce the kind of results MoorNam suggests.
My point is that there is pretty big difference between 1 and 1.5ers vs. second generation.
oh, i mistyped. i mean that the census 2000 data shows that born here and raised here had those outmarriage rates. of for whether things have changed/are changing, i don’t. i don’t put stock in peoples’ impressions because they’re sample biased by their own experience (as you imply).
hindu group in vietnam: chams. many are converting to islam, as the numerically preponderant cambodian chams are muslim (the chams are ethnically malay).
and as of 2000, most of those people would have been in their late twenties or early thirties, right? I actually thought that the mixed marriage rates for that group were higher than 30%.
stats won’t prove anything until at least the 2010 results are made public.
and as of 2000, most of those people would have been in their late twenties or early thirties, right? I actually thought that the mixed marriage rates for that group were higher than 30%. It was that group that I was referring to when I mentioned people who grew up in the 70s and 80s, i.e people who were nearing the end of high school in the late 80s or early 90s.
stats won’t prove anything until at least the 2010 results are made public.
what do the chams converting have to do with anything?
Could be. I’m not that deeply involved enough with them to know. From the outside they seem really “well-healed”.
I will say this – the “educated youth” of India really seem to take an interest in “hindu culture” when they see aspects of it being taken up by non-Indians, people who they see as “modern, cool” yada, yada, yada. I think the way to get the youth of India more into the POSITIVE and PROGRESSIVE aspects of traditional Indic schools of thought is via these types of people. There’s a synergy between the two groups. Neither seem to be able to relate to the older “auntie and uncle” versions of Hinduism which lay stress on behavioural codes more than philosophical precepts, yet both of them have a deep yearning for an authentic spiritual experience.
Hey, why did you delete my comment? I meant it sincerely, although not too happily. Abhi, of all people, I thought you might understand it…
Here are my early congratulations. Good luck! Get them tiger!
CLWAT: Sir Naipaul writes extensively about this. It goes beyond having to renounce your ancestry to rejecting the localized versions of the Ramayana & Mahabharata which had been part of Indonesian secular tradition.
MoS, I know only five strict Hindus who live a tradtional lifestyle. Three are sons of Indian immigrants and two are immigrants themselves. Four of them are totally chill and non-repressive. One I’m unsure of.
razib says:
Guilty as charged; where I was raised, it was often easier to begin a meaningful dialogue exchange on religous beliefs and practices by putting forth that point of view. Of course, those discussions were rare. The conversations were often one-sided harangues about finding Jesus (“why, is Jesus lost??” she asked, as an 8-year old.)
I haven’t glanced through all the comments, so perhaps this aculturation has already been mentioned: “going to temple on Sunday.” (Sunday??)
The temple I go to on occasion has cricket/ping pong/football teams, is forming a youth group as well as retreats for teens, has a ‘choir’ (er, a bhajan group), and ‘Sunday’ school for learning more about Hindu practices, cultural arts, and one’s “mother tongue”.
I happen to think these social structures have the capacity* to be positive, yet it’s amusing to have grown up worshipping primarily at home, because (a) there were no temples in small-town America, and (b) well, most of my family’s prayer took place at the family/home ashan anyway.
This particular brand of social structure centering around religous worship reminds me of midwestern-American Christianity, particular that of Baptist churches. I wonder how much of these social structures centering around a temple is because of American cultural influence, and how much is the old country’s influence, the need for ‘like’ to come together in a community forum.
Thanks for the recommendation, Abhi – ’tis on my reading list.
The protest against ‘Cricket Ganesha’ is totally ridiculous. These ppl need to go see any average Ganesh puja in Mumbai.
Kurma, I’m not even talking about “strictly religious” when I talk of “traditional”. They could even be atheists but they have alot of cultural taboos and rules of conduct. So whereas they may not be living a “traditional” lifestyle in terms of religion or whatever, they are living by the taboos that their parents/grandparents/culture have set up for them. This then creates a culture of denial regarding certain subjects which are usually not deemed as appropriate for conversation.
Anyway, since I deal mostly with Indians and non-Indians who follow certains branches of Hinduism, we are plagued not only by cultural/societal taboos, but religious taboos also, many surrounding sexuality, which, coming from a religion which more or less idealizes brahmacharya (celibacy), can prove to be quite troublesome on many levels, psychological being one of them, for us.
Celibacy is the ideal. If you can’t do that then sex only within marriage – not before. Even that is seen as something less than the ideal and something to be “overcome in time”.
Pardesi Gori, can’t you forget about what others do for once and just live your own life? You’re obsessed with Indian people and their habits! Get over it!
Very good advice. Since being over here for more than a year and having the space to do that, I have gotten better at living my own life. But my more than a decade long experience in India is still alive and well within me – so I still sometimes speak from that space – although alot less than I used to, so I’m improving with time – getting more self-focused and chilled – like the people around me.
MoS #71,
Let me quote what I said elsewhere on Celibacy.
Celibacy that is involuntary and imposed (either by oneself or by someone else) is not useful in any way. It may lead to frustration and increasing interest in sex, which defeats the purpose. If one is interested in sex, it is better to enjoy it and work it out rather than suppressing it. Abstention has to come from within oneself to be of any value. Abstaining from sex is only one part. Real abstention involves abstaining from all pleasure and pain of the senses and just be an objective observer of ones sensations (vedana). And this again is only one of the 8 yamas as prescribed by Patanjali in the Yogasutra for instance. There are of course 4 niyamas to complement these as well. Celibacy is helpful for someone on a single focused spiritual quest, it is not a taboo. Abstention from all desires not just sex in the single focused pursuit of a particular goal will lead to success in achieving that goal and most people have done that and continue doing that for a limited time in their lives and there is nothing unusual about that. The converse of that is true as well where one can pursue sex and sensory pleasures and abstain from everything else! That maybe a quicker path to spiritual self-discovery since one gets to know the fleeting nature of such pleasures and is forced to look elsewhere for paramaanandham. Of course we have Tantra that uses sex or more specifically maithunam as a tool for spiritual progress. Different strokes for different folks:) There is no one size fits all. So if it doesn’t yet work for you don’t force yourself into it and suppress the urges, work it out over time.
I agree with this in general but since it is the rare person, if any, who can be celibate their whole life without hypocrisy, I think celibacy should not be regarded as an “ideal” at all. I think the Prophet Muhammed was onto something when he practically forbade it. It just does not work for most (if not all) people. I find that happy couples who have a regular and healthy sex life are much more balanced, peaceful and less concerned with sex than the actual “celibates” I know.
I do not understand how making love every once in a while can ever be a substantial hindrance to spiritual progress.
Why is celibacy touted as an ideal in so many different religious systems?
It is not a hindrance as long as you are making progress on other elements involved in spiritual progress. At a point further along the spiritual path it naturally comes about that celibacy is helpful and one gives it up naturally, without feeling the pain of having given it up.
But eventually (may not be in this lifetime), one realises by direct experience (not through suppression) that in our dualistic existence all sensations, pleasurable or painful, including the sensations that we enjoy from sex are fleeting and impermanent. That is why most margas (paths) require celibacy, because it is a distraction from knowing the ultimate. This is true only for the renunciate, the monk or nun or ascetic and not everybody may be ready to truly renounce. For a householder, it may be an easier restriction to follow, by having sex with one committed loving partner and only renounce sex, when you truly have a platonic relationship that doesn’t need sex as an aid to keep the relationship truly loving and compassionate. The spiritual quest is the quest for paramaanandham (eternal joy), which comes from realising the truth as it is.
I understand the importance of sadhana. However, I do not see how making love is anymore distracting from one’s sadhana and progress to param-ananda than is having that platonic and compassionate relationship sans sex??? Why is it considered higher or more favorable to one’s progress to reach a point where you are platonic and no longing engaging in sex? One would still exchange affection via words and emotional support in times of need. Attachment is still there. How is that any more detached than having sex also?
In one’s sadhana, one tries to go from the gross to the subtle. Detachment from the gross is easier than from the subtle. Sex is an act that needs one’s volition and so it may be easier to give up than more subtle sensations and hence it comes earlier in the process. It is not considered any higher. Platonic love may be the wrong choice of words or maybe a station further along the path, but compassion and an all embracing love that expects nothing in return is even further along the path is what I was alluding to. Any how these are not something one does because x or y says so, although it may be helpful, but because one has progressed enough to realise onself directly that they are hindrances to the quest. So as long as you don’t innately feel so, I would say carry on, don’t suppress it.