Hindu Americans: The Surprising, Hidden Population Trends of Hinduism in the U.S.

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David Briggs
David Briggs

Writer, Association of Religion Data Archives
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Hindu Americans: The Surprising, Hidden Population Trends of Hinduism
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Posted: 04/28/11 12:00 AM ET
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The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 opens up Asian
immigration. Transcendental Meditation takes off. Young people in
shaved heads and saffron robes chant "Hare Krishna" at airports.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Hinduism seemed on the path to spectacular
growth in the United States as immigration laws eased and some Indian
spiritual leaders were embraced by the counterculture of the l960s.

The forecasts were half right.

Transcendental Meditation and movements such as the International
Society for Krishna Consciousness would face growing anti-cult
opposition, among other obstacles. They would not be the path to
lasting growth in Western converts to Hinduism.

What is propelling Hinduism in the United States into a role as one of
the nation's largest minority religions is a steady stream of Indian
immigrants who have built hundreds of temples across the nation,
according to a new study.

In what it calls the first effort to conduct a Hindu census in the
United States, the Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Institute of American
Religion discovered some 1,600 temples and centers with an estimated
600,000 practicing Hindus.

That number could easily rise up to the estimated 1.2 million who self-
identify as Hindus in national studies by adding in the mostly Indian
Americans who limit their involvement to private spiritual practices
or celebrations of semi-secularized holy days such as Diwali, said J.
Gordon Melton, the institute executive director. Melton announced the
results of the census at the recent annual meeting of the Association
for the Study of Religion, Economics and Culture in Washington.

For better and worse, however, the latest incarnation of Hinduism in
the United States has gone largely unnoticed by most Americans.

Immigration Gains

Hinduism was introduced to the United States through the 19th century
translation of texts such as the Bhagavad Gita. The first Indian
teacher to visit the U.S., P.C. Mozoomdar, spoke in 1830 at the home
of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Melton and Constance Jones of the California
Institute for Integral Studies noted in a paper presented at the
Washington conference.

Other gurus followed, but the growth of the Hindu community was cut
short by the Asian Exclusion Act in 1924, Melton and Jones said.

The comeback began in 1965 with the new immigration law opening the
U.S. to Indian immigrants. Among the prominent spiritual leaders to
come over were Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of the Transcendental
Meditation movement, and Swami Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada of the Krishna
society.

Many Americans welcomed the gurus, but interest among non-Indians
faded in the 1970s amid lawsuits, scandals and an emerging anti-cult
movement.

At the same time, a growing Indian immigrant community began building
temples and centers to meet its spiritual needs. In its census, the
Institute of American Religion found 258 traditional Hindu temples
with an estimated 268,000 adherents. The study estimated there are
also 400 temples and centers from Hindu sub-traditions that have an
estimated 282,000 participants and some 940 centers with an estimated
55,000 members associated with smaller movements across the country.

Yet much of this growth, Melton and Jones said, has occurred "almost
invisibly" on the edge of the larger American religious community.

While there is at least one Hindu center in every state, they are
largely concentrated in Indian American communities, Melton and Jones
report. A third of all Hindus are found in clusters in California, New
York and New Jersey. Hindu temples or centers can be found in only 13
percent of U.S. counties, according to the census.

Hinduism does not enter the consciouness of most Americans in their
daily lives. A 2001 Research Opinion Corp. survey found 95 percent of
Americans have little or no knowledge of Hindu beliefs and practices.

But that is about to change, scholars and observers say.

Finding Its Voice

The encouraging news for Hindus is they have avoided much of the
hostility that has challeged other large groups of religious
immigrants to America, including Catholics, Jews and, more recently,
Muslims.

Too small to be a threat to the status quo, and lacking some of the
international baggage that followed other immigrants, Hindus have been
largely left alone to meet the internal needs of finding and
maintaining spiritual homes for a growing membership.

Even the interfaith movement, which slowly built up to include
Protestants, Catholics and Jews, and has more recently reached out to
Muslims, is still largely associated with what are considered the
"Abrahamic" faiths.

Yet as it grows, Hinduism is not expected to remain under the radar
too much longer.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-briggs/first-hindu-census-reveal_b_853758.html

Hindus are gaining political sophistication through groups such as the
Hindu American Foundation, and their geographical concentration holds
the potential for building influential voting blocs in some regions,
Melton said.

Hindu leaders in the U.S. also realize there is a much greater need
for outreach in a country where Hinduism is not ingrained in the
culture, said Anant Rambachan, chair of the Religion Department at St.
Olaf College in Northfield, Minn.

Hindu summer camps have become popular, and most large temples offer
classes on a weekend to educate young people, many of whom were born
in the United States, Rambachan said. More worship manuals and
doctrinal materials are being printed in English.

"My own sense of the future is we are going to see a certain
flourishing of the Hindu tradition in the United States," Rambachan
said.

The days of the Beatles and pop stars like Donovan making highly
publicized trips to India to study with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi are
over.

But it turns out Hinduism never needed the buzz to succeed here.

"A much more substantial movement of highly committed people," Melton
and Jones state, "has created a more permanent religious community
that has taken its place as a primary American minority religious
tradition."

David Briggs writes the Ahead of the Trend column for the Association
of Religion Data Archives.