ANNANDALE, VIRGINIA, July 21, 2007: The first hour at the Chinmaya Mission day camp unfolds as at any other camp. Children shriek through tag, while a few other play Uno. But by 9 a.m., the grammar-school-age campers are sitting down, their attention focused on a long-haired Indian man in the front of the room, Swami Dheerananda, the mission’s Hindu teacher, or acharya. Together, they chant pryers in Sanskrit. Many recite passages they have memorized from the Bhagavad Gita, a holy HIndu text. Hindu parents, most of whom are recent immigrants to the United States, are turning to well-established institutions like summer camp and weekend school, and to decidedly more contemporary Internet sites, to teach their American-born children ancient religious traditions and help maintain their Indian identity. “I would venture to say that it is children’s programming and education that has become a primary, if not the primary, focus of Hindu-American leaders and institutions,” Shana Sippy, a candidate for a doctoral degree in religion from Columbia University, wrote in a recent paper. “In California alone, over 10,000 children attend some sort of Hindu or Indian instruction on the weekend.”
But explaining Hinduism to Americans is another challenge, one that is leading to a homogenization of a faith that, in India, is characterized by the variety of local beliefs and worship practices, some scholars and Hindus say. “It has to be homogenized at some level because if I ask my daughter, she doesn’t know the difference between the practice of Hinduism among South Indians and Bengalis,” said Sanjiev Chattopadhya, whose 8-year-old daughter, Maya Chatterjee, attends the Chinmaya camp here. “There has to be dilution at some level, because there hasn’t been a critical mass of us, though that maybe starting to change.” From 1.2 million to 2 million Hindus live in the United States, according to estimates cited by Harvard’s Pluralism Project on religious diversity, a tiny fraction of the approximately one billion Hindus worldwide. Hindus may be better understood now than a generation ago, partly because yoga has generated interest in Hinduism, said Suhag Shukla, legal counsel for the Hindu American Foundation, an advocacy group.
About 65 children attend the month-long camp in Virginia, one of two in the Washington area run by the Chinmaya Mission, part of a worldwide Hindu movement. Hundreds more attend Sunday school classes during the school year. The children here spend the morning learning Sanskrit prayers and broad lessons from the Bhagavad Gita about “caring and sharing,” the main theme of this year’s camp term. Afternoons are devoted mostly to traditional songs and dances that mix Bollywood with religious tales. Hindus in the United States have long bolstered their children’s cultural identity by having them take Indian dance and music classes. But over the last two decades, many Hindus’ anxiety about preserving their culture has translated into a drive to teach religion more explicitly, said Vijay Prashad, professor of South Asian history at Trinity College.