Female Immigration as a Catalyst for Ritual Practice: A Social History of Hinduism in the United States

Abstract

Demographic shifts among Hindu populations in the United States are intimately related to the types of Hinduism that have flourished in the American diaspora. Prior to the 1965 Immigration Act, Hindu ambassadors, Hindu texts, and missionary accounts formed a Hindu imaginary highly influenced by neo-Vedantic ideology. After 1965, ordinary women and female gurus joined the small populations of Hindu male immigrants and Hindu gurus active in the United States. As a result, the neo-Vedantic version of Hinduism that had stood in for the whole of Hinduism prior to 1965 was forced to diversify because of the religious demands made by the gamete of immigrant Indian Hindu families and the multiple Hindu religiosities presented by popular Hindu gurus. This demographic shift impacted the transition of Hinduism in the United States from a masculinised neo-Vedantic interpretation (1820-1965) to its diversification (1965-present), of which a major component is the integration of the feminine. Prior to the 1965 Immigration Act, which brought Hindu families in large numbers to the United States, neo-Vedantin gurus were the primary propagators of 'Hindu- ism' in the United States. 1 However, it would be more accurate to argue that they imported a particular form of Hindu spirituality that emerged from the colonial encounter and was coloured by Orientalism. The religious reformers of the nine- teenth century, both nationalists and independent religious adepts (gurus), shaped their ideologies in reaction to the Romantic orientalism of the colonial period. Where orientalists depicted the native as lazy, effeminate, and degenerate, Hindu reformers inverted these tropes into 'a nationalist self-assertion (that) took the form of a meticulous reversal of the orientalist-anglicist double hypothesis'. This response 'did not upset the belief in the underlying thematic of Romantic orient- alism affirming the existence of cultural essences and civilizational norms and ten- dencies'. 2 Nineteenth century neo-Vedantin reformers drew their ideas from Shankara's Advaita Vedanta, but shaped them with their concerns to respond to the cultural essentialism enacted by their colonial oppressors. They crafted a 'mas- culine' neo-Hinduism that emphasised European demands for rationalism and democracy, which they supplemented with a dedication to social welfare, science,