Hinduism first emerged in India as a complex constellation of religious systems. There is a long and checkered history of the spread of Hinduism outside India centuries before the emergence of the political nation as we know it today In 1893 Swami Vivekananda delivered a lecture about Hinduism at the first World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, IL. In more modern times, the growth of the Indian diaspora around the world led to a simultaneous spread of Hinduism outside India, most visibly as a set of cultural practices.

In the new millenium, one can conceivably study most of the world’s major religions in any of the metropolitan centers of the United States. The number of Asian Indians, a majority of them Hindus, in the United States has grown steadily since the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, and stands at about 1 million today Hindu immigrants and their religious institutions struggled against considerable racial prejudice and discrimination before they began to be accepted as an integral part of American society.

Outside its land of origin, Hinduism has undergone several transformations unique to the diasporic condition of its practitioners, both in terms of ritual practices as well as in the role it plays in fostering and reinforcing community solidarity. As Raymond Brady Williams suggests, emigration involves a “crisis of epistemology” that focuses people’s attention on their traditions or narrative in order to establish a “known world” (Williams 1988). One way in which Hindu immigrant groups in different parts of the world attempt to resolve this crisis is by building temples and maintaining indigenous social and cultural activities in the new society Hundreds of Hindu temples and religious centers now dot the American landscape, enriching its multicultural milieu.

Many Indian immigrants indicate that they are more religiously active in the United States than in India. As distinctive identity markers religions, in particular, are mobilized and re-energized in the process of negotiating their identities in the new cultural environment. Hinduism, which was not an organized religion until the late nineteenth century in India, was considered to be more a philosophy and a way of life. Practice of Hinduism did not require visiting temples on a regular basis; rather, worshipping at home shrines was more important. However, in the United States, Hinduism quickly assumed a formal structure as fairly affluent, professional Indian immigrants, concerned about the socialization of their American Indian children, started establishing temples. Hindu temples in the United States are not only places of worship, but also serve as broader cultural centers that function as surrogate extended families to the community Large Hindu temples like the ones in Pittsburgh, PA, Houston, TX and Chicago, IL are traditional in their architectural style and aim to replicate rituals in as “authentic” a manner as possible. As in its country of origin, Hinduism in the US takes various ethnic and sectarian forms, displaying enormous diversity in its iconographic representations and ritual practices. Apart from temples, there are quasi-religious groups that congregate to propagate the teachings of various gurus and religious leaders. Newsletters, brochures and other ethnic mass media, along with rapidly proliferating web-sites on the Internet, aid in promoting horizontal communication among the believers.

While religion, in general, has helped community solidarity in a positive way, since the early 1980s Hinduism in the diaspora, as in the home country has become increasingly politicized. The World Hindu Council (Vishwa Hindu Parishad) has established branches all over the world and supports religious nationalist forces in India. They hold summer camps in various parts of the US to socialize second-generation American Indians from a very young age, and the Hindu Students’ Councils attempt to further that process on college campuses. Many progressive Indians in the diaspora have organized themselves to challenge this pernicious process to destroy the secular ethos of the modern Indian nation. The struggle between these forces within the diasporic community represents an intense contestation over issues of identity.