Not direct Mahabharata

[Pia]

But pertains to our discussion/debate on Rajeev's blog (and I had
mentioned this poll, I think). Yaay for Hindu tolerance!

We Are All Hindus Now

By Lisa Miller | NEWSWEEK

Published Aug 15, 2009

From the magazine issue dated Aug 31, 2009


http://www.newsweek.com/id/212155?GT1=43002

America is not a Christian nation. We are, it is true, a nation
founded by Christians, and according to a 2008 survey, 76 percent of
us continue to identify as Christian (still, that's the lowest
percentage in American history). Of course, we are not a Hindu—or
Muslim, or Jewish, or Wiccan—nation, either. A million-plus Hindus
live in the United States, a fraction of the billion who live on
Earth. But recent poll data show that conceptually, at least, we are
slowly becoming more like Hindus and less like traditional Christians
in the ways we think about God, our selves, each other, and eternity.

The Rig Veda, the most ancient Hindu scripture, says this: "Truth is
One, but the sages speak of it by many names." A Hindu believes there
are many paths to God. Jesus is one way, the Qur'an is another, yoga
practice is a third. None is better than any other; all are equal. The
most traditional, conservative Christians have not been taught to
think like this. They learn in Sunday school that their religion is
true, and others are false. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and
the life. No one comes to the father except through me."

Americans are no longer buying it. According to a 2008 Pew Forum
survey, 65 percent of us believe that "many religions can lead to
eternal life"—including 37 percent of white evangelicals, the group
most likely to believe that salvation is theirs alone. Also, the
number of people who seek spiritual truth outside church is growing.
Thirty percent of Americans call themselves "spiritual, not
religious," according to a 2009 NEWSWEEK Poll, up from 24 percent in
2005. Stephen Prothero, religion professor at Boston University, has
long framed the American propensity for "the divine-deli-cafeteria
religion" as "very much in the spirit of Hinduism. You're not picking
and choosing from different religions, because they're all the same,"
he says. "It isn't about orthodoxy. It's about whatever works. If
going to yoga works, great—and if going to Catholic mass works, great.
And if going to Catholic mass plus the yoga plus the Buddhist retreat
works, that's great, too."

Then there's the question of what happens when you die. Christians
traditionally believe that bodies and souls are sacred, that together
they comprise the "self," and that at the end of time they will be
reunited in the Resurrection. You need both, in other words, and you
need them forever. Hindus believe no such thing. At death, the body
burns on a pyre, while the spirit—where identity resides—escapes. In
reincarnation, central to Hinduism, selves come back to earth again
and again in different bodies. So here is another way in which
Americans are becoming more Hindu: 24 percent of Americans say they
believe in reincarnation, according to a 2008 Harris poll. So agnostic
are we about the ultimate fates of our bodies that we're burning them—
like Hindus—after death. More than a third of Americans now choose
cremation, according to the Cremation Association of North America, up
from 6 percent in 1975. "I do think the more spiritual role of
religion tends to deemphasize some of the more starkly literal
interpretations of the Resurrection," agrees Diana Eck, professor of
comparative religion at Harvard. So let us all say "om."

[Anindya]

So, you pro-Hindu dudes in Amerca REALLY need to come up with a
nominal conversion ceremony to charm the market.

Imagine the faces of the evangelical Christians in India when they
find that 30% of the US has become Hindu. :-)