Negotiating Hindu Identities in the United States: Diaspora, Geography, and Sacred Authenticity
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2016
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Haverford College. Department of Religion
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Thesis
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Award
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eng
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Tri-College users only
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Abstract
Given the central importance of sacred geography in Hindu traditions, how is it possible for members of the Hindu diaspora to practice their religion “authentically” while abroad? To address this question, my thesis examines the analytical tools and assumptions that Hindus in the United States use to fashion their understandings of American Hinduism. Focusing on rhetoric, architecture, and media materials, it examines how Hindus understand and negotiate religious power and authenticity in American temples, institutions, and academic contexts, as well as what types of assumptions underlie their articulations of “true” Hinduism in an American setting. In my thesis, I identify two major logical frameworks that American Hindus use in articulating their visions of diaspora Hinduism. One analytical approach imagines American Hinduism as a new node in the web of global Hinduism, which remains centered in South Asia. In this vision, sacrality and authority may radiate outward from the center of the web to the periphery, and American Hindus may actively import and impart authority to their new homes by drawing divine power from the original center. Crucially, this understanding is not an ideology, but rather an analytical framework--American Hindus rarely explicitly state this “sacred South Asian” notion of Hinduism nor do they defend it against other schools of thought as one would an ideology; rather, the particular conception of sacrality and geography I describe here provides a logical framework that some American Hindus sometimes draw upon when they must translate their imagined understandings of American Hinduism into the concrete world, be it in the form of temples, texts, or other media. I call a second major analytical approach the “universalist” understanding of Hinduism (here, American Hinduism, but as we will see, the universalist understanding relegates locational and national distinctions to the background in its articulation of a de-localized authoritative Hinduism.) In the universalist approach, no place has inherently more Hindu authority than another; anywhere can be sacred because the pervasive force of the divine permeates everywhere. Like the sacred South Asian approach, the universalist framework is not a set of defined political or religious beliefs; rather, it is a conception of sacrality and authority that American Hindus may draw on to form their beliefs and guide their actions. After elucidating these two American Hindu modes of articulation and assumption through the case studies of the Penn Hills Sri Venkateswara Temple and the Himalayan Academy monastery and publishing organization, my thesis explores a meta-academic conflict, the dispute over how Hinduism should be taught in California public school textbooks, to reveal some of the ways beliefs based on the sacred South Asian and universalist frameworks manifest alongside each other and guide concrete debate over the “what,” “where,” and “who” of authentic Hinduism. I conclude by summarizing my findings and speculating on their broader implications for Hindus in the United States and worldwide, as well as for the general study of diasporic religion.