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659 l Hinduism HINDUISM IN NORTH AMERICA INCLUDING EMERGING ISSUES Vasudha Narayanan HINDUISM, WHICH IS the dominant religion of India, going back to sources that are more than 4,000 years old, is also the religion of more than 1.5 million people in the United States. While a substantial number are immigrants, primarily from India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and the Caribbean, there are also local people who either have converted to Hinduism or have adopted a significantly identifiable Hindu way of life. There is considerable diversity among the North American Hindu population : Some have come directly from South Asia; some are in a double diaspora—that is, descended from a Hindu immigrant community outside of South Asia and then moved to North America; and some have ancestors who came from Europe or Africa and initially had Judaeo-Christian backgrounds. The Hindus from India are further divided into communities based on the language (there are about eighteen official ones in India), caste, sectarian affiliation, professional groups, interest groups focusing on classical music or dance, and so on. The differences between the communities in the first few years after the migration are directly related to the caste, class, educational qualifications, place of origin of the community members, and their relationship to the host country. Through processes of assimilation, accretion, and adaption, some traditions are renewed and revitalized , while others are marginalized and discarded. Hindu women in America tend to conflate their religious traditions with their culture. Like other Hindu women who have migrated to other countries, they largely use performing arts to retain and preserve their culture. Retention of their Hindu names without Anglicizing them, Indian food habits, and pride in wearing ethnic clothes on festive occasions largely serve as markers of their Indian/Hindu identities. History Many American sailors encountered Hindu traditions and culture when they traveled to India in the eighteenth century and kept detailed logs of what they witnessed . While early translations of Hindu sacred texts influenced the New England Transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, it was through the visit of Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), a delegate to the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, that Americans came to know about at least one branch of Hindu teachings—the Vedanta philosophy —in a direct manner. The Vedanta philosophy looks primarily to sacred texts known as the Upanishads (c. 660 l ASIAN RELIGIONS—HINDUISM sixth century b.c.e.), the Bhagavad-gita (c. second century b.c.e.), and the Brahma Sutras as sources for its worldview. At Vivekananda’s behest, the first Hindu temple known as the “Vedanta” temple was built in San Francisco in 1905 and functioned primarily as a meditation center, and the Indian swamis in the Ramakrishna monastic order organized by Vivekananda came to North America and founded Vedanta Societies in major cities. A branch of women renunciants, following the tradition in India and a parallel order of women, have now established an interfaith ashram (retreat center) near the Vivekananda monastery in Ganges, Michigan. There are also monastic communities of women connected with the Vedanta Societies in California. Although Vivekananda is one of the better known religious figures who visited the United States, other holy men including Paramahansa Yogananda (1893– 1952) and Baba Premananda Bharati (1868–1914) also visited the country. In the early twentieth century, a few thousand Indian men, including Sikhs and Hindus, came to work on the West Coast of the United States and Canada. Since Hindu women did not migrate at that time, the men married Mexican American women. For several decades in the early part of the twentieth century, the United States closed its doors to Asian immigration . After the changes in the immigrant laws in 1965, the arrival of Indian professionals and their families led to the building of the first large South Asian Hindu temples . The first two temples that claimed to be “authentic ” were built in Flushing, New York, and in Penn Hills, Pennsylvania. They grew out of the many classes in performing arts that were being conducted for the new immigrants and young second-generation Indo-Americans. Many women who came in the mid-1960s were those whose husbands had migrated to Canada and the United States. After the mid-1970s, there has also been a steady flow of students and professional women from South Asia. The Hindu population now has large numbers of first- and second-generation immigrants from India. Although...

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