Vicaarana: Are We All Hindu Now?

First I wanna give a special thanks to my friend Aditya for posting this article on his facebook. So, in her article We Are All Hindu in Newsweek Magazine, Lisa Miller claims that America is not *really* a Christian nation, but actually a *Hindu* nation. Not that we are all becoming Hindus, but rather, because Americans are starting to encompass, perhaps subconsciously, Hindu Dharmic beliefs including the famous quote from the Rig Veda: "The truth is one, though sages call it by many names". As much as I can see where this is coming from, I have to put up a small argument that it depends where in America you are. On the coasts, I totally believe it. I've grown up my whole life in the Northeastern US, I went to school up here, and I am going to more school up here. I have met plenty of people from the West Coast who practice, as the author cites, Dr. Stephen Prothero's term "cafeteria style religion". I will even cite myself as guilty of this (look at the name of this blog, after all). I've met the "spiritual, not religious" and I've met the agnostics who just don't know, and those trying to create some sort of meaning. I went to college, after all, and worked in religious life, the spiritual seekers were widespread and hungry for something that wasn't their Mama's religion (often shying away from THAT word, of course). But as many of these people and views of religion in America appear, there are still plenty of the "Christian nation" to contend with (as much as Newsweek has repeatedly insisted we are a Post Christian nation). The Christian political stances on abortion, LGBT marriage rights, and a host of other issues are too hard to ignore. (On a side note, I'm also currently reading Jeff Sharlett's The Family which furthers my belief that we are far from being a post Christian nation. Woah. Its crazy.)

But despite all this, I understand the point being made, things aren't like they were. Americans now have choices and new interactions with Diaspora communities and different faith traditions that were never made available to them in the past. Even death, Miller points out, is being treated differently as more and more people, Catholics included, leave behind that old adage of body and soul = self and go for cremation for their remains (How very Hindu indeed!). So, while I don't think there's gonna be a whole rush of people to begin installing murthis (images) of Sri Rama at their new local Mandir (temple), some of the underlying philosophical ideals of the Hindu tradition are, I can agree, starting to slowly grab hold of the American subconscious.

On the other side of the coin, as Americans are becoming more Hindu, are Hindus becoming more American? It could be argued that some of the American freedom and individualism ideology is equally grabbing hold of the South Asian Hindu diaspora psyche. So how does this new Newsweek article fair for the other side? Does it make more Americans aware and accepting of their likeness to Hinduism, or does it continue to morph the continually Americanizing Hindu tradition as it makes the transformation from India to American culture. Eventually does everyone meet somewhere in the middle? Where does culture and tradition go after we make that sort of jump to the everyone's happy little bit of everything religion, or can we just accept everyone's religion as is and live together? The author claims a little bit of both is happening, and I've seen it around me, however, as I said before, I'm living in a Northeast coast world, and I wonder if these claims are true of the whole country.