Hinduism in the United States

Hinduism is the fourth-largest religion in the United States, comprising 1% of the population, the same as Buddhism and Islam. The majority of American Hindus are immigrants, mainly from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and the Caribbean, with a minority from Bhutan, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other countries.

The number of Hindus living in the United States did not grow substantially until the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Prior to 1965, fewer than 50,000 Hindus from India had immigrated to the United States. As a result of U.S. immigration policies in favor of educated and highly skilled migrants, Hindu-Americans are the most likely to hold college degrees and earn high incomes of all religious communities in the United States.

Many concepts of Hinduism, such as meditation, karma, ayurveda, reincarnation, and yoga, have been adopted into mainstream American beliefs and lifestyles. Om is a widely chanted mantra, particularly among millennials and those who practice yoga and subscribe to the New Age philosophy. According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey of 2009, 24% of Americans believe in reincarnation, a core concept of Hinduism. The Hindu practices of vegetarianism and ahimsa are also becoming more widespread.

Demographics
The Pew Research Center estimated that as of 2015, about 1.7 million adherents of Hinduism live in the United States. The Hindu population of the United States is the eighth-largest in the world. Ten percent of Asian Americans, who together account for 5.8% of the U.S. population, are followers of the Hindu faith.

Most Hindus in America are immigrants (87%) or the children of immigrants (9%). The remainder are converts. The majority of Hindus are immigrants from South Asia. There are also Hindus from the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, Canada, Oceania, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. In the U.S. there are also about 900 ethnic Cham people from Vietnam, one of the few remaining non-Indic Hindus in the world, 55% of whom are Hindus. In the 1990s, Buddhist Bhutan expelled most of its Hindu population, amounting to one-fifth of the country's population. , more than 92,000 exiled Bhutanese refugees have been resettled in the United States since 2008, the majority of whom are Hindu.

Many Afghan Hindus have also settled in United States, mainly after Soviet–Afghan War and the rise of the Taliban. A number of Hindu-Americans immigrated twice, first from former British colonies of East Africa, the Caribbean, Fiji to the United Kingdom, and then to the United States.

According to the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, in 2017 Hindus were the largest minority religion in 92 of the 3143 counties in the world.

Although Hinduism is practiced mainly by people of South Asian descent, a sizable number of Hindus in United States are converts to Hinduism. According to the Pew Research Center, 9% of Hindus in United States belong to a non-Asian ethnicity: White (4%), Black (2%), Latino (1%) and mixed (2%). Converts to Hinduism include Hollywood actors Julia Roberts and Russell Brand.

Contemporary status and public opinions
American Hindus have the highest rates of educational attainment and highest household income among all religious communities, and the lowest divorce rates. In 2008, according to Pew Research Center, 80% of American adults who were raised as Hindus continued to adhere to Hinduism, which is the highest retention rate for any religion in America.

Public opinions of Hindus
Hindus have relatively high acceptance of homosexuality. In 2019, 71% of Hindus believe that homosexuality should be accepted, which is higher than the general public (62%). About 68% of Hindus supported same-sex marriage, vs. 53% of the general public. Hindus in the United States also support abortion (68%). About 69% of Hindus supported strict laws and regulations to protect the environment and nature.

According to the Pew Research Center, only 15% of the Americans identified the Vedas as a Hindu religious text. Roughly half of Americans knew that yoga has roots in Hinduism.

Religiosity
According to a 2014 Pew Research survey, 88% of the American Hindu population believed in God (versus 89% of adults overall). However, only 26% believed that religion is very important in their life. About 51% of the Hindu population reported praying daily. Eighty-eight percent of Hindus say they believe in God.

Early Hindu visitors
Anandibai Joshi is believed to be the first Hindu woman to set foot on American soil, arriving in New York in June 1883 at the age of 19. She graduated with a medical degree from the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania in March 1886, becoming the first female of South Asian origin to graduate with a degree in Western medicine in the United States. Joshi returned to India in late 1886 but died within months of her return.

Swami Vivekananda's address to the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 was one of the first major discussions of Hinduism in the United States. He spent two years lecturing in several U.S. cities, including Detroit, Boston, and New York. Starting in 1902, Swami Rama Tirtha spent two years speaking on the philosophy of Vedanta in the United States. In 1920, Paramahansa Yogananda was India's delegate at the International Congress of Religious Liberals held in Boston.

Although most of these immigrants were Punjabi Sikhs, they were incorrectly referred to as "Hindoo" by many Americans, as well as in some official immigration documents.

Influence on counter-culture movement
During the 1960s, Hindu teachers found a receptive audience in the U.S. counter-culture, leading to the formation of a number of Neo-Hindu movements, such as the International Society for Krishna Consciousness founded by Swami Prabhupada. People involved in the counter-culture such as Ram Dass, George Harrison, and Allen Ginsberg were influential in the spread of Hinduism in the United States.

Ram Dass was a Harvard professor known as Richard Alpert who traveled to India in 1967 and studied under Neem Karoli Baba. He returned the West as a Hindu teacher and changed his name to Ram Dass, which means servant of Rama (one of the Hindu gods). A student of Ram Dass, Jeffery Kagel, devoted his life to Hinduism in the sixties, and is now an American vocalist known for his performances of Hindu devotional music known as kirtan (chanting the names of God). He has released seventeen albums since 1996.

Beatles member George Harrison became a devotee of Swami Prabhupada. Harrison started to record songs with the words "Hari Krishna" in the lyrics and was widely responsible for popularizing Hinduism in America in the 1960s and 1970s. His song, My Sweet Lord, became the biggest-selling single of 1971 in the United Kingdom. Allen Ginsberg, the author of Howl, was heavily involved with Hinduism in the 1960s and it was said that he chanted "Om" at The Human Be-in of 1967 for hours on end. Other influential Indians of Hindu faith in counter-culture movement are Mata Amritanandamayi, Chinmoy and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Adaption to Western culture
Hindu Americans, as well as Hindu immigrants, have often adapted their practice and places of worship in accordance with the world around them. Many of the early Hindu emissaries to the United States drew on ideological confluences between Christian and Hindu universalism. Hindu temples in the United States tend to house more than one deity corresponding with a different tradition, unlike those in India which tend to house deities from a single tradition. Yoga become part of many American's lifestyle, but its meaning has shifted. While Hindus in the United States may refer to the practice as a form of meditation that has different forms (i.e. karma yoga, bhakti yoga, kriya yoga), it is used in reference to the physical aspect of the word.

Political recognition
In September 2000, a joint session of Congress was opened with a prayer in Sanskrit (with some Hindi and English added), by Venkatachalapathi Samudrala to honor the visit of Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The gesture was an initiative by Ohio Congressman Sherrod Brown, who requested the U.S. Congress House Chaplain to invite the Hindu priest from the Shiva Vishnu Hindu Temple in Parma, Ohio. A Hindu prayer was read in the Senate on July 12, 2007, by Rajan Zed, a Hindu chaplain from Nevada. His prayer was interrupted by a couple and their daughter who claimed to be Christian patriots, which prompted a criticism of candidates in the upcoming presidential election for not condemning the interruption. In October 2009, President Barack Obama lit a ceremonial Diwali lamp at the White House to symbolize victory of light over darkness.

In April 2009, President Obama appointed Anju Bhargava, a management consultant and pioneer community builder, to serve as a member of his inaugural Advisory Council on Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnership. In collaboration with the White House, Hindu American Seva Communities was formed to bring the Hindu seva voices to the forefront in the public arena and to bridge the gap between U.S. government and Hindu and Dharmic people and places of worship.

In 2021, the State of New Jersey joined with the World Hindu Council to declare October as Hindu Heritage Month.

Hindu temples
The Vedanta Society was responsible for building the earliest temples in the United States starting in 1905 with the Old Temple in San Francisco,  but they were not considered formal temples. The earliest traditional Mandir in the United States is Shiva Kartikeya Temple in Concord, California. Built in 1957 and known as Palanisamy Temple, it is one of the few temples that is run by public elected members. The Maha Vallabha Ganapathi Devastanam, owned by the Hindu Temple Society of North America in Flushing, New York, was consecrated on July 4, 1977.

There are over 1450 Hindu temples across the United States, with a majority on the East Coast. The New York region has more than 1135 temples; Texas has 128 and Massachusetts has 127.

Other prominent temples include the Malibu Hindu Temple, built in 1981 in Calabasas, California, and owned and operated by the Hindu Temple Society of Southern California. In addition, Swaminarayan temples exist in almost 20 states.

The oldest Hindu Temple in Texas is the Shree Raseshwari Radha Rani temple at Radha Madhav Dham, Austin. The temple, established by Jagadguru Shree Kripaluji Maharaj, is one of the largest Hindu temple complexes in the Western Hemisphere, and the largest in North America.

In Tampa, South Florida, the Sri Vishnu Temple was consecrated in November 2001.

Parashakthi Temple in Pontiac, Michigan, is a tirtha peetham for Goddess "Shakthi," or the "Great Divine Mother" in Hinduism. The temple was envisioned in 1994 by Dr. G. Krishna Kumar in a deep meditative kundalini experience of "Adi Shakthi".

Akshardham in Robbinsville, New Jersey, is one of the largest stone Hindu temples in the United States.

In 2010, the Bharatiya Temple of Northwest Indiana temple was opened next to the Indian American Cultural Center in Merrillville, Indiana. The Bharatiya Temple allows four different Hindu groups as well as a Jain group to worship together.

The Sri Ganesha Temple of Alaska in Anchorage, Alaska, is the northernmost Hindu temple in the world.

Prominent contemporary Hindu-Americans
Tulsi Gabbard, a Hawaiian of Samoan and European descent and the daughter of a Roman Catholic father and a Hindu mother, became in 2012 the first-ever Hindu to be elected to the U.S. Congress. She was also the first Hindu to seek a major party nomination for President in 2020.

Usha Chilukuri Vance, wife of the junior United States Senator from Ohio, J. D. Vance, who is Donald Trump's running mate in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

Ami Bera (Amerish Babulal Bera) was elected to the Congress in 2012.Raja Krishnamoorthi, Pramila Jayapal and Ro Khanna (Rohit Khanna), all of Indian descent, were elected to Congress in In 2016. Shri Thanedar was first elected to the Congress from Michigan in 2022.American Hindus are now the third-largest religious group in Congress, with five members. (Among lawmakers declining to state their religious affiliations was Indian-American Pramila Jayapal, who was elected to the House of Representatives. Since her mother is a Hindu, the Hindu American Foundation suggests that Jayapal is also Hindu.) From 2019 to 2022, Padma Kuppa, an Indian politician from Troy, Michigan, served in the Michigan House of Representatives. Swati Dandekar served first as an assemblywoman and later as a state senator in Iowa between 2003-2011. Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy became the first Hindu to seek the Republican nomination for U.S. President in the 2024 Republican Party presidential primaries.

In 2011, Army Captain Pratima Dharm became the first Hindu to serve as a U.S. military chaplain.

Activism
Several organizations have been made to combat discrimination against Hindus in the United States and make changes in the political scene. Some of these organizations include:
 * Hindu American Foundation
 * Sadhana: Coalition of Progressive Hindus
 * CoHNA: Coalition of Hindus of North America - Due to their activism, Georgia passed a resolution condemning Hinduphobia in 2023, making it the first state in United States to pass such a resolution.
 * HinduPACT

Legal cases and riots
In the 1923 case United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, the Supreme Court ruled that Thind and other South Asians were not "free white persons" according to a 1790 federal law that stated that only white immigrants could apply for naturalized citizenship. The Immigration Act of 1924 prohibited the immigration of Asians such as Middle Easterners and Indians.

As a result of the Bellingham Riots in Bellingham, Washington, on September 5, 1907, some 125 Indians (mostly Sikhs but labelled as Hindus) were driven out of town by a mob of 400-500 white men. Some victims of the riots migrated to Everett, Washington, where they received similar treatment two months later. Riots occurred during this period in Vancouver, BC, and California.

Temple desecration
In January 2019, the Swaminarayan Temple in Kentucky was vandalized. Black paint was sprayed on the deity; the words "Jesus is the only God" and the Christian cross was spray painted on various walls. In February 2015, Hindu temples in Kent and the Seattle Metropolitan area were vandalized, and in April 2015, a Hindu temple in north Texas was vandalized with xenophobic images spray-painted on its walls. In 2011, the Sri Venkateshwara Temple in Pittsburgh was also vandalized and $15,000 worth of jewelry was stolen.

In January 2023, the Shri Omkarnath Temple, located in Brazos Valley, Texas, was broken into by the burglars. A board member of temple, Srinivasa Sunkari, said, "There was a sense of invasion, that sense of loss of privacy when something like this happened to us." Hindu advocacy organizations like HinduPact and Hindu American Foundation demanded an investigation.

In October 2023, burglars raided a Hindu mandir in Sacramento, California, with six suspects stealing a donation box from the premises. The incident, which took place at the Hari Om Radha Krishna Mandir in the Parkway neighborhood of Sacramento, was condemned by the Coalition of Hindus of North America as a potential hate crime.

Venkatachalapathi Samuldrala
After a Hindu opening prayer was offered in the U.S. Congress by Venkatachalapathi Samuldrala, a priest of Shiva Hindu Temple in Parma, Ohio,   the Family Research Council (FRC), a conservative Christian group, issued protests through conservative media.

Rajan Zed
On July 12, 2007, Rajan Zed, a Hindu cleric, offered a prayer in the U.S. Senate as its guest chaplain. The proceedings were interrupted by three self-professed Christian protestors, who were arrested by Capitol Police and charged with a misdemeanor for disrupting Congress. The conservative Christian group American Family Association objected to the prayer, citing the loss of the "Judeo-Christian foundations" of the United States.

California textbook protest over Hindu history
In 2005, the Texas-based Vedic Foundation and the American Hindu Education Foundation filed a complaint to California's Curriculum Commission, arguing that the coverage of Indian history and Hinduism in 6th grade history textbooks was biased against Hinduism. Points of contention included a textbook's portrayal of the caste system, the Indo-Aryan migration theory, and the status of women in Indian society.

Notable Hindu Americans
Scholars, Novelist and Writers -
 * Radhanath Swami - Philosopher
 * Jeffery D. Long - Religious Scholar
 * David Frawley - Writer
 * Christopher Isherwood - Novelist
 * Geoffrey Giuliano - American Biographer
 * Sister Gargi - Writer
 * Sister Christine - Writer
 * Ram Dass - Teacher
 * Tamal Krishna Goswami - Scholar
 * Lex Hixon - Poet and spiritual teacher
 * Agehananda Bharati - Academic Sanskritist

Politicians -
 * Tulsi Gabbard - First hindu elected in U.S. Congress in 2012
 * Raja Krishnamoorthi - Politician and Businessman
 * Ro Khanna - Politician and Lawyer
 * Vivek Ramaswamy - Businessman and politician
 * Pramila Jayapal - Politician

Celebrites -
 * Julia Roberts - Actress
 * Kelli Williams - Actress and Director
 * J Mascis - Musician

Games :
 * Joe Don Looney - Football player

Others -
 * John Dobson - American Astronomer
 * E. C. George Sudarshan - Physicist and Professor
 * Padma Kuppa - Served in Michigan House of Representatives
 * Satyananda Stokes - Indian Independence Activist