Keeping Faith

Indian Religions in the United States

The United States is a nation of immigrants. While various exclusion laws once prohibited certain groups from entering the country and becoming citizens, the 1965 Immigration Act, passed in tandem with other landmark civil rights legislation, opened America’s door more widely to immigrants regardless of race, religion, or national origin. Paired with the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion and prohibits the “establishment” of state religion, this has created a formula for religious diversity and pluralism.  

In the fifty years since, the cultural and religious landscape of the United States has changed in remarkable ways. Between 1965 and 2000 alone, the U.S. welcomed nearly twenty million legal immigrants. Many came from India, especially those in the engineering and medical professions. Some were already in America as graduate students and decided to stay. Eventually, families of immigrants came as well. In addition to their economic and professional aspirations, these new Americans brought with them their Qur’ans and Bhagavad Gitas, their fasts and feasts, their bhajans and bhangras. Indian Americans have become part of the American fabric in schools and universities, in the workplace, in technology and innovation, in fashion and music, in city councils, and in the halls of Congress. Indian Americans number three million, around one percent of the U.S. population, and many have kept their Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Sikh, and Jain religious traditions intact.
 
Though much of the religious diversity in the United States is relatively new, Indian faiths have a long presence in the country. Among the first Indians to influence American thinking was Swami Vivekananda, whose attendance at the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions created a stir among all who heard him and who established Vedanta Societies in many cities to teach the foundations of Hindu philosophy. Beginning in the 1960s, there were yoga and meditation teachers, such as Swami Satchidananda, who founded the interfaith temple-ashram complex, Yogaville, in rural Virginia. In another vein, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada launched communities of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, where the emphasis is on bhakti, or devotional Hinduism. By the 1970s, new Hindu immigrants brought forms of practice that one might call “temple Hinduism,” focused on community gathering, murti puja, and later, temple building.
 
For many years, Hindu and Jain communities gathered for regular worship and observed holidays in one another’s homes or in rented halls. To counter the assimilative powers of American life, these immigrant faith communities chose to practice their religious life more intentionally, ensuring the continuation of their traditions with the next generation. For more than a decade, makeshift quarters were the rule&storefront mosques were used for Jumu’ah Prayers, an empty automotive supply warehouse became a gurdwara, a store in the suburban mall was transformed into a Hindu temple, a former Swedish Lutheran church was converted to a Jain temple.
 
The first generation of landmark houses of worship tells the story of Indian faith communities that have come to stay. Hindus are guided by shilpis from India, who situate the temple according to the shastras; priests trained in India perform the bhumi puja, honoring the earth at the time of groundbreaking. The permanent murtis, granite or marble images, come from India and, as the temple is completed, priests perform the consecration rites and build the fire altar to invoke the presence of the gods through the sacred flames. The water poured over the temple towers and images comes from the Ganga, mingled with the water of America’s own rivers. As they consecrate the images that are fixed in the temple sanctum, they also consecrate portable murtis that can be carried in procession outside the temple during festivals. The consecration and expansion of temples is one of the ways in which the Hindu community gathers and claims an identity. Hindu Americans across the country also share major festivals such as Diwali and Holi with their friends, neighbors, and classmates.
 
The Jain community has created temples and study circles. While new Jain temples have been built in Chicago, Illinois, and Houston, Texas, Jains share temple space in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and in Pomona, New Jersey, with their Hindu neighbors. The Jains of Boston, Massachusetts, who have their own center, celebrated finding a new home with a parade, bringing the Jain community through the streets to the temple and educating fellow citizens about the principles of Jainism along the way.
 
The Muslim American community is as diverse as global Islam and is growing steadily. About sixty-five percent of American Muslims are foreign born, the majority from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, while about one-third are African American. Indian Muslims in America maintain their distinctive culture in dress, cuisine, and celebration; they often congregate with Muslims from Pakistan and Bangladesh in Islamic centers where Urdu is the language most commonly heard, and their civic organizations bring Indian Muslim professionals together around broad social issues. More and more, Muslim American individuals and organizations engage the public in educational campaigns to share their faith, raise awareness, and combat stereotypes against Islam.
 
The Sikh community built its first U.S. temple, the Stockton Gurdwara, in California in 1912. At that time, most Sikhs were farmers in the Central Valley. Today, Sikhs may be found from coast to coast, with some gurdwaras created from other uses and some built afresh, gold domes and all, in American cities from San Diego and Phoenix to Detroit and New York. In addition to Sikhs of Indian origin, there are American-born, non-Indian Sikhs whose community was founded and inspired by the guru popularly known as Yogi Bhajan. Because of the sometimes-contested issue of the turban worn by observant Sikh men, Sikhs have had to press for the rights to workplace equality and for the understanding of a faith with which many in the American public are unfamiliar. Educating the police, for example, about the significance of the Sikh faith has been an important initiative for the community. Across the country, the Sikh-sponsored “Tie a Turban Day” engages students as well as young professionals, men as well as women, experimenting with how to wrap the yards of turban cloth on themselves.
 
The Zoroastrians of India also have a footprint in America. The Federation of Zoroastrian Associations of North America hosts national conferences, while regional groups such as the Zoroastrian Association of Greater Boston Area gather together at the local level. Membership is small worldwide, so each young initiate welcomed into the faith is a cause for celebration.
 
India was the birthplace of, and for many centuries, a vibrant center of Buddhism. Today, the largest Buddhist communities in India are the Dalits who follow B. R. Ambedkar, and the Tibetan communities that have made India their home-in-exile. Buddhists have settled in the United States from across Asia, including early but small communities from China and Japan. Following the Vietnam War, Buddhist refugees came to the United States from Vietnam and Cambodia, along with immigrants from Thailand, Taiwan, Korea, and mainland China. From India, the most significant migration has been of Tibetans, and the Dalai Lama is a frequent and respected visitor to the United States.
 
While the Christian population of India is numerically small and the Hindu population large, the opposite is the case in the United States. Christian immigrants from India have found themselves in a majority Christian country, but many have preserved their original denominational affiliation. The Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, for example, is an Eastern church founded at the time of St. Thomas’ visit to India in the first century. With its U.S. headquarters in Chicago, it has parishes located across the country. The Mar Thoma Church, which also traces its origins to the apostle Thomas in India, began its U.S. history in the 1970s in New York.
 
Keeping Faith: Indian Religions in the United States highlights how these faiths have grown in cities and states across the country, as well as how individuals, communities, and organizations practice their traditions and celebrate their differences. Like India, the United States is a vibrant and complex multi-religious democracy. While Indians have had a growing role in American society for over a century, only with the recent immigration of the past fifty years have India’s many faith traditions become a pervasive and significant part of America’s religious landscape. They have built centers and halls of worship for their community events, creating a place for rites and festivals, a place of learning for the next generation, and a place to share their religions with other Americans, signaling the fact that India’s faiths have set down roots in American soil.
 
Dr. Diana L. Eck
Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies
Frederic Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society
Founder and Director, The Pluralism Project
Harvard University