familiar with the rigorous discipline of the movement, its characteristic garb,
and public chanting of “Hare Ra ̄ma ̄, Hare Kr.is.n.a.” Yet another movement
was forged by Swami Maharishi Mahesh Yogiand his technique of meditating
for “transcendental consciousness” (“TM”), packaged and sold as twenty
minutes a day of meditation designed to focus the mind and clear it of un-
necessary debris. Other gurus have come and gone – Rajneeshof Oregon
fame is but one of hundreds who have made their way through North
America and Europe. Scores of other “alternative religions” have also been
engendered, some for brief periods before returning to relative oblivion.
Anand Marg and Eckankar are but two such. The latter, founded by one
Paul Twitchell, takes its name from the Panja ̄bı ̄ term for God (Ek– the One)
and purports to enable the devotee to free the soul to travel through the
multiple planes of the cosmos only to return totally enlightened.
These impeti, especially those of the TM and the International Society for
Krishna Consciousness groups, were given popular currency by the Beatles,
whose songs resonated with Indian idioms and whose donations supported
such movements. Not least important in this process of popularization has
been the way yoga has been made available throughout the West – as a form
of exercise, virtually stripped of its cosmological and soteriological context.
Such South Asian terms as “karma” and “nirvana” have become part of the
English language, obviously nuanced with their new cultural trappings.
While the fascination with India cooled in the 1980s and 1990s, it was piqued
further as the emigration of South Asians increased.
The emigration of South Asians
It was also subsequent to the 1960s that South Asians began to arrive
in significant numbers in Great Britain, Europe, and the United States. In
Britain, the mass migrations started shortly after the peoples from the
Caribbean had arrived. Many went at first as refugees. First there were
the Panja ̄bı ̄s; then peoples from East and West Pakistan (especially after the
war of 1971); from East Africa (especially Guja ̄ratis and others fleeing
Idi Amin’s “eviction notice” from Uganda); from Bangladesh; and Tamils
fleeing the war in Sri Lanka. These were joined by those who came for
professional and economic reasons. They settled in cities away from London
at first – Birmingham, Leeds, Leicester; they tended to keep to themselves,
followed parental discipline, and worked hard to save money. They were
generally lumped into a generic category known as “Asian.” Yet in recent
decades, as their numbers increased, as British society came to value “multi-
culturalism” more than “integration,” as democratic politics tended to
encourage power blocs, as migrants learned more about the politics of their
236 India’s Global Reach