A non-resident Indian who considers herself Hindu American will hear a variety of reactions over the course of her life, mostly relating to how nice it is that she chooses to “stay in touch with her heritage,” “remember her culture,” “take pride in her roots,” and engage in a variety of other such platitudes. As a result, the majority of non-resident Indians believe that their role as Hindu Americans is mainly a preservative one, and if they manage to emulate exactly the social mores of homeland Indian Hinduism, they have succeeded in their task.

I believe that the importance of being Hindu American is a great deal more than simply preservation. As citizens of a dual heritage, molded as much by Christmas as by Diwali, we would not do our identity justice if we did not add something original of our own to the state of flux that is the Hindu cultural canon. I believe that Hindu Americans have something of this sort—something extraordinary, something formed by our unique experience—to contribute to the world at large, and this is why my Hindu American identity is important to me.

This extraordinary thing, specific to the Hindu American in particular, is that being Hindu American represents access to both the secular and the religious facets of man’s most ancient attempt to make sense of the world. In the Hindu religious tradition, this is clearly visible in the Vedas, largely discursive texts which use dialectic, reasoning, mathematics, and advanced science to find order in the bewildering metaphysical tapestry of the universe. For ancient Hindu scholars, such as Shankaracharya, the implications of this took form in a religious impulse to strive for the highest, the greatest, the most excellent form of man possible to our conception, and the rest of Hindu religious thought has slowly woven a coccoon of rituals, social structures, and sectarian belief systems around this central impulse. But the core of the philosophy always remained the same: that man is a great and powerful being, that because of the Godstuff of which his soul is fashioned he may triumph in any situation, that there is a purpose to life and that it is a beautiful and meaningful purpose. In secular life, I believe this philosophical premise has found a true home in the United States of America. Here, the quest for egalitarianism, justice, and opportunity for excellence in human life is honored more than in any place on earth, and to experience the ancient Hindu philosophy of vasudhaiva kutumbakam, the world as one, I need look no further than my own neighborhood, to the faces of the many immigrants who have found a home in American society.

Both Hindu philosophy and American secular wisdom speak to the core of man, and therefore I have always felt that these belief systems are uniquely compatible. The only difference is that the American philosophical tradition points to the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights; the Hindu one to the Gita and the Rig Veda, but the theme of each is one: the triumph of the human spirit. One says it in a religious way, with rituals, with poetry, with faith, and the other with proofs, justifications, and extensions that are far removed from their origins in Judeo-Christian social ethos. This, to me, is the importance of being Hindu American—recognizing that I am in a position to reconcile faith and intellect, spirituality and science, passion and reason, as the two streams of my heritage have the capacity to do—and have been doing for years, as Swami Vivekananda realized when he visited America one hundred and fourteen years ago.

Without realizing that the purest impulse of religion and the purest impulse of secular life is the same, I believe that society everywhere stands at the brink of emotional collapse. Creating a rigid line between religion and the rest of life has proved insanely impractical in the modern world, as can be easily seen by analyzing the international situation. Regimes which consider themselves purely religious have turned into totalitarian empires of penury and subjugation, whereas self-proclaimed secular nations suffer an emptiness of the spirit derived from a contemplative vaccuum, emotional isolation, and lack of spiritual dialogue. Religious and secular groups everywhere in the world have difficulty understanding and working with one another in any truly effective way, even though their mission is largely the same. If religion and secularism could be reconciled, these problems could be easily averted. And this is the benefit society will reap from Hindu American advocacy.

Hindu Americans must advocate for their heritage because our religion stands at a unique juncture between pure religion and pure secularism. The ancient rishis, the great masters of Hinduism, after all, were experts at reconciling the secular and the religious. Aryabhatta was a philosopher, but also a mathematician. Ved-Vyas and Narada were wandering ascetics, but also superlative politicians. Dronacharya was a spiritual teacher, but also a weapons master. And Chanakya, the famous Vedic sage, also wrote the most celebrated and lavishly materialistic economic text in Eastern history: the Artha-Shastra. All of these people knew that the material and the spiritual are welded together in the ultimate productive life, and so they strove for excellence in all fields. They were ideal Hindus—but they would also not have been out of place among Jefferson or Hancock. The great men of both traditions taught a truly holistic, integrated lifestyle. And the greatest form of advocacy a Hindu American can perform is to live such a lifestyle herself—a life in which religion and secularism are not mutually exclusive, but form a synergy that is truly the hallmark of the the purusharthi: the Hindu concept of the ideal man. If we can, as a group, recognize and expound upon the astonishing similarities between Hindu-ness and American-ness, which people normally insist on compartmentalizing into Religion and Secularism, we will succeed in bridging an ancient and actually meaningless divide between East and West. This is a benefit not only for American society, but for all of mankind.

Pt. Shriram Sharma, the founder of the Gayatri Pariwar (of which I am a member), famously said, “When we change ourselves, the world will be changed,” and in keeping with this philosophy I believe that self-recognition and self-refinement are truly the greatest forms of advocacy a Hindu American can engage in. Religious militancy, proclamations of “pride,” and demands for “recognition” from the greater American community are useless. Hindu Americans must first be comfortable in their dual heritage—learn about both the Hindu and the American philosophical traditions—and realize that we have created unnecessary divisions in regular life where none should exist. Then only can we begin to break down these divisions and usher in an age of secular/religious understanding and—dare I say it?—cooperation.

For me, this is truly the greatest advocacy possible: synthesis, not simply tolerance. I will learn and explore my binary heritage, synthesize its elements of rationality and excellence, and create an informed definition of what my religion and my culture mean to me. I will go out and live the life it mandates, show the world what a purusharthi looks like, and when I am asked how I was able to do it—I will say it was because I am a Hindu American.

Shivi's Bio

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