Interesting survey on American Hindus
In a challenge to the stereotypical view of confused ABCDs (”American Born Confused Desis”), recent research portrays Hindus living in the USA as quite a cohesive and strongly rooted set of communities.
An extensive survey into religion in the USA, found that Hindus have…
April 16th, 2008 at 5:42 am
I never grew up nor currently live in a highly populated Indian/Hindu area but I don’t think these numbers are indicative of “challenging the stereotypical view of confused ABCDs”.
In Hinduism, because we do not indoctrinate or force people to believe in certain things and because American society generally is not comfortable with atheists, Hindus will identify themselves as such.
How many Hindus in America have read the Upanishads, BG, Vedas, Mahabharata, Ramayana, or even Amar Chitra Kathas? I assume very few.
How many understand the threat of conversion or Indian history? How many know Chanakya, Ashoka, Baji Rao, Kunwar Singh, Shivaji, etc. ? My guess is - very few.
Because British Hindus came earlier to Britain than Hindus came to America, there was more racism, which ultimately forces a person to return to their community and their roots, thus, I would say there is more pride in Hinduism in the UK than in the USA.
In America, my experience has been of very little racism for my skin color and my religion and this being the case with other people it has a very potent affect of stripping a people of their culture if it doesn’t mean anything to them. Punjabis, who are intrinsically proud of who they are retain much of that here (and Gujuratis to a certain degree), but other groups do not exhibit the same pride in either their ethnicity or their religion.
April 16th, 2008 at 5:44 am
*My guess is, that of those 84% who chose to retain their Hinduism, it is primarily in name and not in truth.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:43 am
“My guess is, that of those 84% who chose to retain their Hinduism, it is primarily in name and not in truth”
Maybe, but the fact they still maintain the affiliation is something good. Most people, in my opinion, only maintain a nominal identity if it still means at least something for them.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:45 am
To illustrate, most other faith groups had much lower retention rates of people raised in these faiths who described themselves as belonging to that same faith in adulthood.
April 17th, 2008 at 3:00 am
Dangerous-
That’s true. Those numbers came up after a widely syndicated article which stated that nearly half of all Americans switch to a faith different than that of their childhood. I’m not disagreeing, just putting the numbers in context.
May 19th, 2008 at 10:04 am
What about those who have converted into Christianity? I mean, nearly 20 percent of Hindustani people I know in U.S.A. have abandoned their religions and become Christians because they married American Christian Girls. U.S.A., is vast and the generalisation is NOT possible nor is it appropriate even. However, it is possible to state that the discrimination in U.S.A. is not religious based as no one bothers really what one believes in. The American attitude is that of the right of human life, prosperity, growth and success in material terms. Most Hindu families living in the USA are wealthy and well to do earning nearly $100,000:00 per household. Take the literacy rate in U.S.A., most Hindus are top noche qualified engineers, doctors, MBA’S, accountants, and I.T. No Hindu in U.S.A. is without a qualification or a good job………If one is not qualified one will have a successful business like drycleaners, hotel, restaurant, property, plumbing, house call engineering {which earns such high call out fees bigger than doctors}; couriers, porters, and even personal shoppers.
May 19th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
“Because British Hindus came earlier to Britain than Hindus came to America, there was more racism, which ultimately forces a person to return to their community and their roots, thus, I would say there is more pride in Hinduism in the UK than in the USA.”
US is a big place, Hindus are way more spread out (except in certain cities of NJ) than UK, and most UK Hindus who came from India were working class. In contrast many US Hindus are in IT and were well off to begin with, and were pretty anglicised even before coming to US (for example they spoke Hinglish etc instead of speaking the language properly), those are the kinds you get in US and its no wonder by 3rd gen 91% can only speak English and people think they are confused.
Across the border is Canada, but we have more in common with UK Hindus than US ones, most Hindus here are not IT, many do general labour in the first generation, almost all of us are concentrated in 3 cities, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Most of us marry within the community, and even retain the language, I know 3rd generation Gujaratis who can still speak fluent Gujarati and still have connections to village families back in the old country.
Plus Canada unlike US is “multicultural”, bilingualism is the national policy (English & French) and multilingualism is considered an asset not a liability, that is why Italian is the 3rd most spoken language at workplaces in Canada.
In terms of awareness and cohesiveness as a community in the west, UK is the best for Hindus, Canada (or maybe Netherlands) comes second, and I am not aware about Hindus in OZ or NZ, so can’t comment where US is placed in comparison to them.
May 20th, 2008 at 2:23 am
Harish-
I would say that is a very correct portrayal of Hindus in the USA. I am certainly one of them.
Keshav
May 20th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
EVENTHOUGH IAM NOT LIVING IN USA, I HAVE GREAT INTEREST TO
KNOW ABOUT THE LIFE-STYLE OF THE HINDUS ALL OVER THE WORLD.
IT GIVES ME MUCH PLEASURE WHEN I KNOW THAT THE HINDUS
KEEP ALIVE THEIR CULTURAL & FAMILY VALUES.
REGARDS…. RAJGOPALAN NAIR FROM BAHRAIN.
June 5th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
This is in response to the long post of Kesava on April 16. Although it is true that many Hindus are not indoctrinated, many are. Of course, many Hindus learn about their religion from their grandparents, even more than their parents.
If your grandfather is a sampradaya Hindu–that is, committed to the views of Ramanuja, Madhva, Sankara, etc–he is likely to impart at least some of those views to his grandchildren.
And that is a form of indoctrination, literally. I see nothing wrong with that. In fact, at least some kind of instruction is vital to the transmission of religious culture.
In America, Hindus indoctrinate their children by bringing them to ISKCON temples, where indoctrination is the name of the game–they teach the Gita, the Bhagavatam, etc. Hindus also take their children to other temples, cultural centers, asramas, etc that use the Vedanta Society method of bal vihars, so that the children will know basic things about Hinduism. The spirit of Swami Vivekananda is present at these bal vihars.
June 6th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
This is also in response to Keshav’s post on April 16th:
“Because British Hindus came earlier to Britain than Hindus came to America, there was more racism, which ultimately forces a person to return to their community and their roots, thus, I would say there is more pride in Hinduism in the UK than in the USA.
In America, my experience has been of very little racism for my skin color and my religion and this being the case with other people it has a very potent affect of stripping a people of their culture if it doesn’t mean anything to them”.
I agree with the perspective that outside threats can cause a recourse various forms of self- or cultural or religious assertion, of which nationalism is but one form. But holding this as a reason for hinduism vanishing would predict a poor future for it, relying on outside threats and racism for survival. But as you suggest, it is because
“it doesn’t mean anything to them”
- so what is interesting is why it is so? What is then the reason that hinduism has become meaningless? (when not solely a question of racisms, or is it?)
June 6th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
This is a loose use of indoctrination. The word implies a certain control of ideas and thoughts. This is certainly true every time some one opens their mouth or behaves a certain way. But it also implies an opposition to free thought - thought control. It is onething to indoctrinate your loved ones to think freely and well, quite another to tell someone if you disagree with us your eternal soul will suffer in damnation.
hariaum