A Place at the Multicultural Table: The Development of an American Hinduism

Notes

249 preface 1. Information on scholars who have been harassed obtained through private conversations with several scholars. See also the Web site of the Hindu Unity organization, which has a Black List (earlier called a Hit List) of people critical of Hindutva (www.hinduunity.org/ hitlist.html, retrieved June 4, 2001). Romila Thapar, an Indian historian, Paul Courtright, professor of religion at Emory University, Jeffrey Kripal, professor of religious studies at Rice University, and Michael Witzel, professor of Indology at Harvard have all written and spoken publicly about experiencing such harassment and threats. 2. I later discovered that this referred to the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University, from whom I received funding. 3. This report was subsequently archived on the Hindu Vivek Kendra Web site (www.hvk.org/articles/0301/113.html). 4. According to the Hindutva perspective, all contemporary non-Hindus in India are converts , although Indians of Muslim and Christian background have lived in India for well over 1,200 years. chapter 1 — the transformation of hinduism in the united states 1. Raymond Williams, who was one of the first to use the term “American Hinduism,” uses it to refer to the fact that the Hindu American community and their religious organizations are “made in the U.S.A.” by the assembling “of Hindu traditions in the United States from imported components by relatively unskilled labor (at least unskilled by traditional standards) and adapted to fit new designs to reach a new and growing market” (Williams 1992, 230). 2. From the turn of the twentieth century, immigration from Asian countries to the United States was virtually banned through exclusion acts. From the 1920s immigration was restricted on the basis of national origin, and quotas were set that favored immigrants from northern and western Europe. The 1965 Immigration Act dismantled the national-origins quotas and the Asian exclusion provisions and for the first time permitted immigration from countries around the world. 3. These organizations are also found among many other Hindu communities outside India. Notes Notes.qxd 4/20/07 12:40 PM Page 249 4. Satsang groups have become more widespread in India since the 1980s (see Hinduism Today 1998; Narayanan 1999a, 43–44), because of the resurgence of Hinduism there and frequently in imitation of diasporic satsang groups. 5. Most households have a small area in the home where pictures or images of deities are enshrined, and where they conduct regular puja. 6. The GHEN Web site was rated number one among religious sites by Lycos, and was selected as one of the best Web sites of the year in 1998 by Yahoo Internet Life Magazine. 7. “Focus, Activities, Structure and Programs” (www.vhp-america.org/activities.htm). 8. According to the HSC Web site, the organization became independent of the VHPA in 1993. However the VHP Web site listed the HSC as one of its programs even in 2001. chapter 2 — hinduism in india 1. The anthropologist Frits Staal (1983) notes that some elaborate rituals described in the later Vedic texts were still being performed by some Nambudri Brahmins in Kerala in the contemporary period. 2. Vac is described in the following way in one of the Brahmanas: “This, [in the beginning ] was only the Lord of the universe. His Word was with him. This Word was his second. He contemplated. He said, ‘I will deliver this Word so that she will produce and bring into being all this world’” (Tandya Maha Brahmana, XX, 14, 2, quoted in Panikkar 1977, 107). 3. The “linga” or “lingam” is often translated as “phallus,” but it literally means “distinguishing mark.” In this case, the distinguishing mark of Shiva, the male principle, is the phallus. 4. According to this doctrine, the human soul is part of the one divine power, Brahman, and has no separate existence. Salvation is obtained when the individual through meditation and enlightenment realizes this and merges with God. 5. Ramanuja accepts that the soul and God are of the same essence, but argues that the soul has its own individuality and can thus have a relationship with God. 6. The creation of the world is dated at 1,972,947,101 B.C.E. according to traditional Hindu sources (Klostermaier 1989, 415). 7. According to Genesis, the dispersal took place because of the confusion that ensued when a multitude of languages developed among a hitherto monolingual population (God’s punishment because people had built the Tower of...