Paper short abstract:

Hindu Americans are one of the fastest growing communities in the United States. The rise in religious travel or pilgrimage (tirtha) back to India by the Hindu diaspora cannot be regarded merely as an immigrant attachment to their homeland. This stems from the feeling of being a racial minority in the United States and a need to obtain recognition of their ethnic and cultural heritage. Hindu Americans are not only trying to model their identity in an Abrahamic paradigm by interpreting Hinduism as a monotheistic religion, but also renewing their ties to their homeland through religious travel and pilgrimage. This paper explores the importance of religious travel in the lives of Hindu Americans, and illustrates ways and means through which the Hindus are using religion to negotiate an identity in an alien culture.

Paper long abstract:

Indian diaspora is estimated over 30 million, and it constitutes both NRIs (Non-resident Indians) and PIOs (Person of Indian origins). Of this number, Hindus living outside the littoral limits of the Indian subcontinent constitute around 70 million, and represent a very divergent diaspora, not because their beliefs, practices and social organizations develop differently from and may emerge to be quite unlike those in the Indian subcontinent, but Hindu socio-religious phenomenon and identities in different places outside India are often highly unlike each other, having traveled along diverse historical trajectories conditioned by a wide range of locally contextual factors. Migration and minority status in the host country engenders an imagined connection between the diasporic population and their homeland, and often stimulates a mode of religious change through heightened self-awareness. The sense of contrast - contrast with a past or contrast with the rest of the American society - is at the heart of a Hindu diasporic self-consciousness. With the increased pace of globalization, it has become possible for transnational Hindus to maintain contact with the principle epicenters of their religion in India. Moreover travel to pilgrimage sites of religious significance renews both the center and the periphery and renders obsolete notions of frontiers as defined by geographical boundaries. This paper explores the nature of religious travel by the Hindu diaspora to India and its significance on the lives of transnational Hindus. It concludes that the feeling of being a 'stranger' in the host country propels the need for Hindu Americans to coalesce around an identity centered on religion.