introduction. 9
for him epitomized the message he wanted to convey: that reality is fundamentally
synchronistic, nonlocal, nondual. These passages, he said, showed his perception
about synchronicity to be the wisdom of the ages—at least, the Indian ages. Cer-
tain participants stressed the idea that they were on a journey of world-discovery
that eluded the practices of any particular religious tradition, yet many Hindus
would insist on the point that this very stance—liberal and exploratory—imbibes a
religious sensibility that has long thrived on Hindu soil.
Some aspects of Hinduism’s increasingly global sense of self are far less obvious
than a visit from Deepak Chopra. After all, in 2004 only about 30 percent of India’s
population could be said to be urban. The rest, some 700 million people, are still
closely tied to the land; and the religious lives of the Hindus among them bear dis-
tinctive regional and local flavors. In the Himalayan regions of Garhwal and Ku-
maon, for example, the complicated, classic battles over good and evil that were
fought out in the ancient epic Mahabharataare still ritually enacted, and there are
great goat and buffalo sacrifices to the Goddess. Such sacrifices are perennial among
these mountain people, but in recent years they have felt a definite pressure to de-
sist. This pressure comes not just from a steadily increasing conviction among Hin-
dus all over India that Hindu religion is in some fundamental way about nonviolence
and vegetarianism, but also from the Indian government, which in turn is respond-
ing in part to the agendas of animal-rights groups worldwide.^4
As with any religious tradition, of course, there are still many aspects of “the life
of Hinduism” that proceed more or less the same from year to year. If cosmopoli-
tan Delhi is a long way from the pilgrimage town of Brindavan, though less than a
hundred miles distant on the map, and Brindavan in turn is well removed from the
sleepy villages that surround it, then it doesn’t take much imagination to see that Bali
is worlds away from Guyana. Lived Hinduism presents us with a fascinating and
considerable range: practices and views that are sometimes obdurately conservative,
sometimes subject to rapid change, sometimes overlapping. Hinduism is globaliz-
ing fast, but the danger of its succumbing to anyone ’s vision of global homogene-
ity is still very remote.
The diversity of Hindu life is legendary, and the purpose of this volume is to
present a selection of essays that will help bring that diversity into focus. But before
describing our plan for the book, we must deal with two basic questions. First, we
must consider precisely what we mean when we speak of such a thing as Hinduism.
And second, we must ask whether there is a range of practices and sensibilities in
lived Hinduism that really does make the tradition cohere, despite its much-vaunted
(or much-lamented) variety.