THE HINDU RELIGIOUS TRADITION IN MINNESOTA

INDIRA Y. JUNGHARE

Abstract

Hinduism took its roots in America during the 60’s and it has been growing along with the growing population of Hindus. The State of Minnesota is no exception. The Twin cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul, is the home of a large number of Indian regional groups. These communities have established regional-cultural organisations in order to provide for their socio-religious needs. This paper describes the nature and scope of the religious tradition of the Hindu communities of Minnesota, through the analysis of their philosophical and ritualis- tic practices. It determines to what extent their non-native setting has influenced this tradition.

I. Introduction

A major problem in studying Hinduism is the attempt to come to terms with the tremendous variety of practices and beliefs subsumed as “Hindu.” There has been considerable debate over whether or to what degree highly localised phenomena are integrated into philo- sophically broader or socio-culturally diverse institutions. Most often the issue has been set in the framework of the Hindu “Great Tradi- tion” versus the “Little Tradition.” The “Great Tradition” of San- skritic literature and deities, Brahmanic rites, national pilgrimage sites, and a widely recognised religious calendar is, in this approach, set out as distinguishable from the “Little Tradition” of tutelary deities and supernatural beings, folklore, charismatic or shamanic practices, local sacred sites, and a calendar with these village-level idiosyncrasies (Singer, 1960: 105-166; and 1972). Most scholars assure us that both traditions are in symbiotic relationship. They are “mutually necessary conditions of each others’ existence” (Marriott, 1955: 191), complexes that are “complementary, each serving impor- tant but differing religious purposes” (Mandelbaum, 1964: 11), and “two currents of thought and action, distinguishable, yet ever flowing 150   into and out of each other” (Redfield, 1956: 42-43). Such an approach is found outside of Indian studies in cross-cultural discus- sions about official versus popular religion or textual versus contextu- al religious culture. Yet some students of Hinduism see the local or ground-level phenomena as so diverse and divorced from Sanskritic or Brahmanic tradition as to claim they are wholly distinct (Miller, 1966). By the same token, then, some suggest that a single rubric of “Hinduism” is consequently a misnomer. A more contemporary trend, however, seems to evidence the grad- ual disregard of many magico-religious practices and beliefs in favour of ones more widely acceptable or respected. The motivation to adopt generalised Sanskritic traits and to forego particularised village ones, the process called “Sanskritisation” (Srinivas 1956: 481-496; 1952) is catalyst to an interesting type of religious or cultural blending. Origi- nally, as Srinivas and others have proposed, this process must have been set in course for the purpose of advancing individual or caste group prestige. Now, heightened senses of communalism and radical Hindu fun- damentalism are affecting similar results in India. Among the over- seas Hindu population, a parallel process of Sanskritisation and homogenisation has occurred for altogether different reasons. Hindus in numerous places outside India have been subject to changes which have “led from village and caste beliefs and practices to wider, more universalistic definitions of Hinduism that cut across local and caste differences” (Jayawardena, 1968: 444). In South Africa, for instance, Kuper (1957: 229) portrays the emergent form of religion among Indians as a new variety of “regional Hinduism” similar to the shared patterns of wide areas in India. Bharati (1970: 28-29; 38-40) describes a “complete fusion of ‘big’ and ‘little’ tradition elements among Hin- dus in East Africa. Along this line we find Pratap Kumar’s scholarly study (2000: 229) of the traditions and beliefs of the Hindus in South Africa. Kumar (2000: 15) informs us that the Hinduism of South Africa is a “remarkable blend of both non-brahmanical and brah- manical elements.” In their study of the ‘Sanatana Dharma’ i.e. the traditional Hinduism of Natal, Diesel and Maxwell (1993: 112) come to the nearly same conclusion that the South African Sanatanist tradi- tion is complex and incorporates brahmanical as well as the indige- nous Indian folk traditions. In virtually every case, Hinduism in diaspora has developed sub- stantial modifications from the traditions originally carried abroad.