In the last few years, there has been a noticeable wave of panic among some Hindu organisations about Hindu American kids growing up to no longer identify as Hindu.
In December, the Hindu American Foundation put out a video titled “IMPORTANT Public Service Announcement | The Hidden Nature of Predatory Proselytization,” with executive director Suhag Shukla telling parents how to keep their children safe from Christian pressure to convert. The Hindu Parents Network, an initiative of the Coalition of Hindus of North America, has a webpage of resources dedicated to training parents on how to talk about Hinduism to their kids, from webinars about how caste doesn’t exist to articles about how Hindu parents can save their children from woke academics.
At least some of the panic is coming in response to a Pew Research Center study that found that about 18 per cent of adults in the US who were raised Hindus no longer identify as Hindu. Of course, this means that 82 per cent of adults in the US who were raised Hindu still identify as Hindu—a higher percentage continuing to identify with their childhood faith than any other religious community surveyed.
According to the study, 73 per cent of adults in the US who grew up Christian still identify as Christian, while 77 per cent of individuals who grew up Muslim and 76 per cent of those who grew up Jewish still identify with the faith they grew up in. Only 45 per cent of adults who were raised Buddhist maintain a Buddhist identity.
Hindus have the lowest “attrition” rate of the five major religious communities in the US.
All this being said, religious identity is fundamentally a personal choice, and our community ought to be well aware that by living in the United States, Hindu children will be exposed to a wide range of ideas that may make them choose to disaffiliate from their faith or even choose a different faith entirely.
If a young person decides that they feel more “Indian” than Hindu, doesn’t believe in God, or finds it easier to reach the divine through another religious path, that person has not done anything wrong. If anything, they have followed a very Hindu belief of seeking truth—and rather than blindly following a path laid out for them, they have sought to find truth for themselves.
Of course, it is completely reasonable for Hindu parents to want their children to have a positive Hindu identity. As a Hindu who has faced my own share of proselytisation attempts, bullying, and culturally incompetent social studies education, I know how Hindus and other religious minorities can feel pressure to stop identifying with the religion they believe in.
There is also no question that Hindus born and brought up in the United States are increasingly absent from mainstream Hindu life. I grew up going to balavihar, a Hindu education programme, every Sunday with a group of 20-30 kids. At the balavihar, local parent volunteers taught us yoga, Hindu shlokas and bhajans, Hindu stories, and Indian history (my balavihar was also unaffiliated with the balavihar programme now run by Chinmaya Mission).
While most of those kids grew up to become Hindu adults (at least culturally), there are people from my balavihar community who no longer identify as Hindu. I can count on one hand the number of US-born Hindus who regularly visit my temple in Eugene, and I am the only one who serves on any leadership committees.
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Cultivating a positive Hindu identity
Much of this disaffiliation from Hinduism is a result of the declining popularity of religion itself. According to the Pew survey, the vast majority of people leaving all faiths—including Hinduism—are disaffiliating from religion. Many of my Hindu-raised peers who are no longer Hindu simply don’t believe in God and believe Hindu customs are superstitious. Besides a new Great Awakening, I doubt there is much that religious communities can do to reverse the trend of disaffiliation and atheism.
For others, however, the decision to not identify as Hindu anymore has come from harmful experiences they had within the Hindu community, from not being allowed to go to the temple on their period to the pervasive Islamophobia and casteism they heard from family members. One of my best friends—whose mother taught shlokas and bhajans at balavihar—stopped identifying as Hindu soon after her mother passed away, disturbed by the sexism and casteism involved in her funeral rituals. The priest blessed her and her sister, saying he hoped they would get “good Brahmin husbands” and fastidiously maintained casteist customs such as a rite required to be conducted by four Brahmin men. Disturbed by just how much caste seemed inseparable from religious practice, she put Hinduism at a distance.
It is also difficult for American Hindus to be a part of mainstream Hindu life when it contradicts our values so frequently. One US-born Hindu friend has tried to be involved in mainstream Hindu life, sending her children to Chinmaya Mission for their balavihar programme. But she and her husband pulled their kids out, anxious that the programme was promoting a rigid, orthodox version of Hinduism that they did not want their kids to grow up with.
Most American Hindus want to continue being a part of the Hindu community, but they want a Hinduism that is inclusive. As minorities who have faced discrimination, we are averse to the discrimination against Muslims, Dalits, and women so prevalent in our community. As people who grew up in American society, where independent thinking is considered a virtue, we want the freedom to challenge mainstream and orthodox Hindu ideas.
Cultivating a positive Hindu identity for the next generation requires real engagement with our religion and a willingness to challenge regressive ideas and imagine new ways of practising our faith in inclusive ways. It means recognising that caste and sexism are part of how our religion is widely practised and that we need to develop new ways of practising Hinduism that promote equality. It also means that we need to give space to American Hindus to challenge, reform, and even get rid of practices that perpetuate harm.
Fearmongering about Christians and pretending that caste doesn’t exist will not stop Hindu youth from leaving our religion. Creating Hindu institutions and communities that reject casteism and sexism and treat all visitors and community members with equal respect and dignity will allow American Hindus to be in Hindu spaces fully as themselves, while also contributing to a more joyful and harmonious South Asian community life.
Sravya Tadepalli is the deputy executive director of Hindus for Human Rights. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)