Prema Kurien's Book Examines Hindu American Identity By Francis C. Assisi

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‘Many of the teenagers and college students that I spoke with described the pain they experienced growing up with “brown skins” in a predominantly white environment. They said that their eagerness to be accepted had initially led them to turn away from their Indianness and to try to be as much like their white friends as possible. This, however, only increased their identity crisis and feeling of alienation since it became obvious to them that no matter what they did, they were not going to be accepted as “just American.” Confrontations with aggressive Christian evangelists who criticized and demeaned Hinduism added to their pain. The crisis was only resolved when they accepted their heritage and began to try and learn more about Hinduism and Indian culture. This was generally through the help of a Hindu religious organization. Over time, these youth told me that they came to see the beauty and value of their heritage and also finally started to feel comfortable with themselves as Hindus and as Indian Americans-Americans with Indian roots.’

According to its publisher Rutgers University Press, the book offers an in-depth look at Hinduism in the United States and the Hindu Indian American community.

The book focuses on understanding the private devotions, practices, and beliefs of Hindu Americans as well as their political mobilization and activism. And it probes the differences between immigrant and American-born Hindu Americans, how both understand their religion and their identity, while it emphasizes the importance of the social and cultural context of the United States in influencing the development of an American Hinduism.

Multiculturalism in the United States is commonly lauded as a positive social ideal. But, in reality, immigrants often feel pressured to create a singular formulation of their identity that does not reflect the diversity of cultures that exist in their homeland. Hindu Americans have faced this challenge over the last fifteen years, as the number of Indians that have immigrated to America has more than doubled. In this book Kurien shows how various Hindu American organizations-religious, cultural, and political-are attempting to answer the puzzling questions of identity outside their homeland.

Drawing on the experiences of both immigrant and American-born Hindus, Kurien demonstrates how religious ideas and practices are being imported, exported, and reshaped in the process. The result of this transnational movement, according to Kurien, is an American Hinduism- an organized, politicized, and standardized version of that which is found in India.

The book explains that Hinduism has undergone several modifications in interpretation, practice, and organization in the United States in the process of being institutionalized as an American religion. Kurien argues that while Hindu American spokespersons espouse a genteel pluralism and attempt to use Hinduism to secure a place at the American multicultural table, they also use the ideology of multiculturalism to justify and legitimize a militant Hindu nationalism. Drawing on this contradiction, she develops a theoretical model to explain 1) why multiculturalism often seems to exacerbate émigré nationalism, and 2) why religion is often involved directly or indirectly in this process.

Prema Kurien is associate professor of sociology at Syracuse University. She is the author of two books, Kaleidoscopic Ethnicity: International Migration and the Reconstruction of Community Identities in India, (Rutgers University Press, 2002) and A Place at the Multicultural Table: The Development of an American Hinduism (July 2007). Part of Kuriens study focuses on youth from Hindu Indian families who were brought up in the United States. The research was done mostly in Southern California – USC and UCLA campuses.

Highlights of Study

Interviews with student leaders reveal the complex ways in which Hindus in America define and re-define their Hindu American identity.

The founder of a Hindu student organization on a college campus recalls: “When we came in as freshmen in 1997, the university gave us a form to fill which asked about our religious background and Hinduism did not figure on that list. We thought this was very surprising given that there are a lot of students from a Hindu background on campus. We were also given a list of campus religious organizations and we saw that though there were organizations for all kinds of Christian denominations, and for Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Bahais and everyone else, there was nothing for Hindus. So we were upset and went to meet the Dean for Religious Life who encouraged us to start an organization of our own.”

Rajesh, who was trying to set up a chapter of the Hindu Student Council (HSC) at his school, told Kurien that his motivation in establishing an organization that emphasized the importance of a Hindu identity was because as Indians, “You won’t be accepted into this culture, whatever you do.” So the club was to provide an alternate culture and identity for Hindu students.

Another Hindu Student Council leader brought up identity issues as an important reason for the formation of Hindu Student Council chapters. He said that Hindu American youth “are really desperate to know who they are, the meaning of their customs,” but their parents did not have the answers to their children’s questions. He continued, “Kids . . . look in the mirror and realize they are not white. Somehow they don’t exactly fit. Their names are not like Mark, David, Joe or Marianne. Their culture, customs, religious festivals are not exactly mainstream Americana. They ask, ‘Are we Indo-Americans? Are we Indians? Are we Hindu? These different labels, what exactly are they?’” According to him, the Hindu Student Council helped students discover the answers to these questions through discussions with other, similarly positioned youth.

Ravi, one of the founders of a Hindu Student Council chapter that the author studied, talked about how hard it had been to set up the organization on campus. He attributed the difficulty in attracting Hindu students to the inferiority complex that many Hindu Americans had developed in this society. There were around eight hundred students of Indian ancestry on campus but only a hundred and fifty were even on the HSC mailing list. “People are ashamed to come out as Hindus. A few people faced racist comments from their white friends when they did. We can’t even have a puja [Hindu worship service] here since people don’t want to be associated with ‘idol worship.’” According to him, one of the main problems was that unlike other religious identities, a Hindu identity was a “vague” identity. “What does it really mean to be a Hindu? Most people haven’t a clue.” He and two other students decided to form the HSC club organized around a weekly discussion session so that Hindu students could talk about these issues.

These are some of the many complex reasons for the establishment of Hindu Student organizations, now prevalent in many of the universities and college campuses around the country, says Kurien.

Faced with the multiculturalism on college campuses, students have to be able to articulate, “who we are and what we are about” and thus it is often in college that issues of identity become important, particularly for minority groups…says Kurien. Many Hindu student associations are campus specific, but there is also a national organization, the Hindu Student Council (HSC) founded in 1990 by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) of America (VHPA) which currently has over seventy five chapters nationwide.

Kurien observes that whereas Indian Americans growing up in America are forced to define and come to terms with their racial and ethnic identity, Hindu Indian Americans face the additional burden of being practitioners of a religion that is little understood and often negatively perceived by Americans. 'A nation-wide survey conducted in 2001 on behalf of a Hindu American group found that over 95 percent of Americans had little or no knowledge of Hinduism and that 71 percent had no contact with a Hindu of Indian origin. What was of even greater concern to the Hindu leaders who had commissioned the survey was that 59 percent of those surveyed indicated that they had no interest in learning more about the religion.'

Kurien discovered that “the average Hindu immigrant is often unable to explain the “meaning” of Hinduism and its “central tenets,” something that they are repeatedly asked to do in the American context.”

Kurien says she noticed that Hindu organizations "seemed to promote two contradictory discourses: ‘on the one hand, they embraced an inclusivist multiculturalism and emphasized the tolerance and pluralism of Hindu culture; on the other hand, they frequently espoused an militant religious nationalism, attacking Islam and Christianity and highlighting Hindu victimization at the hands of these two religions. It became clear to me that these opposing discourses grew out of the contradictions of being part of a professionally successful but racialized minority group in contemporary multicultural America. As successful ethnics, Hindu American leaders drew on a model minority discourse to celebrate the contributions of Hinduism, but their racial and cultural marginality led them to also embrace an oppressed minority discourse.’

Like other American youth, writes Kurien, Hindu Americans also demand to have an intellectual understanding of their religion and tradition, and thus want to know the “meaning” of Hindu practices and beliefs. ‘The cursory and frequently insulting treatment that India and Hinduism receive in many American school textbooks provides further motivation to learn about Indian history. A trip to India on their own (i.e., unaccompanied by parents), to visit relatives, participate in a religious or cultural summer camp, take courses at a university, or most recently, to do social service, has become almost a rite of passage for many second generation Indian Americans. During these trips they are amazed to find that many youth in India do not know and do not care about their religion or history. “We know more about Hinduism and Indian culture than our cousins in India” is a frequently voiced statement.’

Over the past ten years, Kurien's research has focused on the relationship between religion, ethnicity, and international migration. Specifically, she explores the relationship between religion, ethnicity and politics among Indian immigrants in the U.S. She explains: "I have looked at two primary issues: 1) transformations of immigrant religion and 2) immigrant political mobilization."

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