24. introduction
We begin with issues that arise in connection with Hinduism’s recent diasporiza-
tion. Early in this introduction we had a taste of how this global fact exerts a pow-
erful influence on Hindu life in modern India, but we have yet to explore “the life
of Hinduism” abroad. This we do in the two essays that comprise part 7. In her
essay on the impressive temple to Vishnu as Ventakesvara (Lord of the Venkata
Hill) in Pittsburgh, Vasudha Narayanan describes what it took to transplant this
major deity from the hills of Andhra Pradesh to Penn Hills, Pennsylvania. She con-
cludes with some observations about the cardinal features of Hinduism as under-
stood not just in Pittsburgh but in the American Hindu diaspora at large. (The sec-
ond of these, by the way, is the conviction that Hinduism is a tolerant religion.) In
the essay that follows, Sitansu Chakravarti, a professor of philosophy living in
Toronto, settles on a somewhat different rubric for laying out “some basic features
of Hinduism.” These tenets of faith figure prominently in his primer Hinduism: A
Way of Life,a book aimed specifically at Hindus living in the diaspora and
prompted by the exigencies of his own diasporic experience. But his book is printed
in Delhi and has sold briskly there as well.
Most of the Hindus described by Narayanan and addressed by Chakravarti have
migrated to the United States and Canada directly from India, but some have a
longer diasporic history. A good example is provided by Hindus who in the 1980s
and 1990s immigrated to Queens, a borough of New York City, from Guyana on
the northeastern shore of South America. By and large, twice-migrant Caribbean
Hindu communities in Europe and North America have remained quite separate
from their once-migrant Indian Hindu neighbors, but a series of recent experiences,
including the younger generation’s education at the same universities, have brought
them increasingly together. This has brought to the surface a series of problems of
“internal” adjustment, as Hindus from one part of the world meet Hindus from oth-
ers. In Queens, for instance, a Guyanese religious leader was invited to manage a
high-profile temple whose founders and constituents came primarily from Gujarat
and North India. The results were challenging, and, for some old-time supporters
of the temple, uncomfortable.^14
These diasporic growing pains—and graftings—can sometimes be hard, and
they are complicated by a further set of issues that arise when Hindus relate to
people who stand outside the Hindu tradition altogether. In the volume ’s conclud-
ing section—part 8—we see how these issues of identity are shaped by two major
questions: (1) Should Hinduism be militant or tolerant? (2) Should it be studied and
represented by Hindus alone, or is there also room for outsiders?
In regard to the question of militancy versus tolerance, we turn again to contri-