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Hinduism in Croatia

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Hinduism in Croatia CHAPTER 33 Hinduism in Croatia Hrvoje Čargonja 1 Introduction In a transitioning, post-Socialist, and predominantly Catholic society such as Croatia, the influence and presence of Hinduism in its culture has always been rather marginal but nonetheless long standing. The earliest medieval images of India were mostly shaped by European interpretations. More immediate encounters between Croatia and Hinduism can be traced back to the works of Croatian Catholic missionaries in India in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- turies, and even earlier (sixteenth century) to the merchants of the Republic of Ragusa (present-day Dubrovnik), a maritime republic whose trade routes stretched all the way to India. In Croatia, there is no Indian diaspora nor any forms of traditional Hinduism. Therefore, all forms of Hinduism in Croatia are of a more recent origin. According to the 2011 census, only 441 citizens declared themselves as Hindus and 619 as Vaiṣṇavas. The most active and longstanding communities with the largest membership are Transcendental Meditation, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), the Sathya Sai Organization, Yoga in Everyday Life, and the Art of Living Foundation. Other communities are the Theosophical Society, Makaja, Ananda Marga, Brahma Kumaris, the Sri Chinmoy Centre, and Bhakti Marga. The Bhagwan Rajneesh Movement and the Divine Light Mission were present in Croatia, but their existence today could not be verified. There are only two Hindu religious communities formally reg- istered at the Ministry of Administration: ISKCON as the Vaishnava Religious Community, and Yoga in Everyday Life as the Hindu Religious Community. All other forms of Hinduism are active as either citizens’ associations or infor- mal groups. This chapter commences with a short introduction to the Croatian histori- cal context with special regard to religious freedom and minority religions. The proceeding section gives an overview of the landscape of new Hindu move- ments in Croatia. The focus is on the activities and contributions of the most popular communities. The Catholic Church’s attitude toward Hinduism in Croatia will also be discussed. The final part of the article deals with Hinduism’s position in Croatian culture, both in its elite and popular aspects. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004432284_034 Hinduism in Croatia 905 2 Croatian History and Religious Freedom Croatia is a country with 4.2 million inhabitants who are predominant- ly Catholic; 86%, according to the 2011 census report (Croatian Bureau of Statistics 2013: 12). In the same report, there is also an aggregate category of “Oriental religions” with 2,550 citizens or 0.06% of the Croatian population. The most numerous religious identifications in that category are Buddhism (1,361 people), Vaiṣṇavism (619 people), and Hinduism (441 people). Although the percentage of the total population in this aggregate category is indeed very small, it is important to notice how, in comparison to the 2001 census, the category of “Oriental religions” has increased by almost three times. Looking at the regional distribution of this category in Croatia, it is evident that most of the so-called “Oriental religions” are present in the capital city of Zagreb, which is home to almost one-quarter of the total population in Croatia. This category’s numbers are the largest in two northwestern counties. These are the most populated, developed, and politically left-wing orientated parts of Croatia. According to sociological studies, Croatia belongs to the post-Socialist coun- tries of Central and Eastern Europe that have high levels religiosity (Zrinšćak and Črpić 2017: 171) and where the Catholic Church has a strong influence on the state and society (Zrinšćak 2011: 177; Zrinšćak et al. 2014: 149–51). Such a situation is explained by a close connection between national identity and Catholicism that solidified during the collapse of Communism and the out- break of the war for national independence (Nikodem and Zrinšćak 2012: 225). Except for a short period of collaborationist regime during World War II, the independence gained in 1991 was the first since the twelfth century. Over this long period, the territory of what is today Croatia was divided and ruled by many foreign rulers, such as Byzantium, Hungary, Austria, Venice, the Ottoman Empire, and Serbia. Although there has always been at least some small part of the territory that maintained an idea of autonomy within various multina- tional, political entities, Croatian identity bears a deep historical imprint of a colonised nation. Croatia is a “peripheral society” (Črpić and Zrinšćak 2005: 50) of the European cultural circle, situated on its southeastern border, which was more often than not a battlefield between significantly different cultures, worldviews, and faiths, such as Orthodox Christianity and Islam. It is no won- der then that loyalty to the Vatican and Catholicism played such an impor- tant role in maintaining Croatian cultural continuity and traditions (Zrinšćak 2004: 300). Even the antireligious and atheistic Communist rule of the former Yugoslavia—the latest multinational conjoining that Croatia broke off from in 1991—did not manage to sever this link..
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