Content area
Full Text
Temple and Human Bodies: Representing Hinduism
George Pati
Indian immigrants have become a remarkable presence in the socio-religious fabric of the United States because of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which opened the door for skilled professionals from India to immigrate to the United States in search of educational opportunities and employment. Another act, passed in 1984, gave preference to immigrants trying to reunite their families, triggering another surge in immigration by Indians. These Indian immigrants have established themselves successfully in their new society, in both social and religious realms, by maintaining distinctive identities that are rooted in the faith and culture they brought along with them from India while assimilating into the new society.
For Indian immigrants in the United States (and in other western countries, such as Britain, Canada and Germany), religion has played a particularly important role in maintaining individual and collective identities, but more significantly in representing their traditions as distinct from the native context in India. Religion, for Hindus in the United States, involves construction and deconstruction of boundaries and identities, just as the Hindus themselves illustrate homogeneity and heterogeneity as they maintain and transcend sectarian boundaries. Indian Hindus have instituted temples or cultural centers that play a significant role in the process of creating new forms of transnational religion and identity and that foster a new representation of Hinduism in the United States. In this process, Hindus represent a Hinduism which is
International Journal of Hindu Studies 15, 2: 191207 2011 Springer
DOI 10.1007/s11407-011-9103-x
192 / George Pati
different as compared with its native context in India.
Based on fieldwork for the past three years, this article shows how the Indian American Cultural Center, a non-profit organization situated in Merrillville, Northwest Indiana, which now has a temple attached to it (the Bharatiya Temple of Northwest Indiana), represents a Hinduism with all its complexity and diversity in the midwestern part of the United States. This article attempts to answer few questions: Why is Hinduism represented the way it is in the United States? What has changed from the native context in India? How does the temple as body merge with the human body, reinforcing the merger between microcosm and macro-cosm? This article is divided into two sections....