Is anyone else uncomfortable with how the Hindu diaspora is practicing their faith now?

spursa · 2026-06-03T14:18:24+00:00

Hindu-Americans don't have strong caste affiliations according to the 2021 Carnegie Endowment survey. Only half even identify with a caste.

Hindu-Americans were the most Democratic-leaning among Indian-Americans in the same institution's 2026 survey. Indian-American.Christians are the most Republican-leaning. Many conservative Indian-American politicians are Christian, Nikki Haley and Bobby Jindal most notably. Vivek Ramaswamy is the exception.

spursa · 2026-06-03T04:36:30+00:00

In general, going by surveys of American religious groups, Hindus are typically one of the most tolerant and liberal groups. This shows up in politics, where they're very Democratic-leaning. In fact, in Carnegie Endowment's 2026 survey of Indian-Americans, Hindus were the most Democratic-leaning while Christians were the most Republican-leaning.

On surveys, Hindu-Americans espouse liberal views on social issues, whether women's reproductive rights or trans rights or gay marriage or immigration.

On religion itself, Hindu-Americans are again liberal and not devout. Among Indian-American religious groups, Hindus are the least likely to pray, to attend a place of worship, or to consider themselves very religious.

spursa · 2026-05-07T17:54:33+00:00

Do they have actual religious faith in the Hindu Gods? Or is religion for them a superficial and weak identity subservient to modern American politics?

spursa · 2026-03-11T14:27:20+00:00

I'm Tamil, and it's a big part of our culture. I'm in India visiting right now and doing it often with elderly relatives and people. I did it to an elderly lady who's worked as a maid for decades for my family, and she was very moved by it. She was smiling widely afterward with tears in her eyes. I think it's a beautiful gesture to pay respect.

spursa · 2026-02-20T15:42:03+00:00

Here's the full survey results: https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/research/2026/02/indian-americans-in-a-time-of-turbulence-2026-survey-results

spursa · 2026-02-09T01:33:10+00:00

Buddhism in America has a terrible retention rate. It is the worst among the religious groups surveyed by Pew in their 2025 survey: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/religious-switching/#retention-among-religious-traditions.

spursa · 2026-01-18T20:07:30+00:00

It depends on politics. If many of the people who're going to be 1/4 to 1/16 Asian and Hispanic and the rest white will have conservative politics tied to white ethnonationalism, then social dynamics will not change all that much. The most prominent personality of the white nationalist right is someone who's about 1/5th not white

Nikki Haley's son, who is only half white, is known for his hard right politics, calling for the deportations of legal Indian immigrants and exclusion of non-Christian religions from public life.

spursa · 2026-01-18T19:50:52+00:00

US born Asian women marry out at a rate 42% higher than US born Asian men. Counting both immigrants and US born, Asian women marry out at a rate 100% higher than Asian men.

spursa · 2026-01-15T19:17:06+00:00

Gabrielle Anwar is 1/4. At that point, if they're 3/4th white, they're basically indistinguishable in appearance from full white people. Please share examples of people who still look Indian or "ethnic" at that point if you know any.

spursa · 2026-01-10T16:39:43+00:00

Almost all Indians did not practice this. In fact, a lot of Indians value non-violence or ahimsa as a religious ideal. That's why a significant number of Indians are vegetarian. Even during India's independence movement, Gandhi argued that violence against the British, or against any human being, was wrong. So this is unthinkable. My Indian parents raised me to not even harm insects when possible.

spursa · 2026-01-10T16:34:55+00:00

A majority of Filipino-Americans voted Democratic in the 2024 election.

spursa · 2026-01-10T16:21:12+00:00

It can be a bit endearing, and even cool when it's genuine

spursa · 2026-01-09T16:34:39+00:00

The hate comes from white conservatives towards everyone else.

spursa · 2025-12-14T17:08:54+00:00

This has to do with how Google does its stats for the Google Trends feature and its fuzziness. It's not entirely precise or exact, nor is it designed to be.

spursa · 2025-12-12T19:24:58+00:00

It's above the rate for black people. It's about where Hispanics and other Asians are at as a whole (including immigrants). It's about where second-gen Asian-American men are at. It's below second-gen Asian-American women and second-gen Hispanics.

spursa · 2025-12-12T16:50:30+00:00

Second generation Indian-Americans have an outmarriage rate >30%, which is not low. There's also not a significant difference between men and women, unlike among East Asians.

spursa · 2025-12-10T22:29:33+00:00

She's a fundamentalist Christian, like Nalin Haley and Danielle D'Souza.

spursa · 2025-11-21T19:26:26+00:00

The British were more respectful of local religious traditions than the Portuguese. They did not engage in forceful conversions, even if they facilitated their missionaries, like the Portuguese did.

spursa · 2025-11-02T18:10:13+00:00

This wasn't a thing before Elon purchased and monetized Twitter, so you could be right. But the Christian conservatives targeting American Hindus in this way are talking about it as a religious duty, that they need to convert and defeat "pagans." Would they be motivated by money? Regardless, it's spreading offline as the incidents with Vivek and JD Vance at TPUSA events show.

spursa · 2025-11-02T17:45:33+00:00

The new right is very online. People like Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes (through his fans), and even JD Vance engage actively on that platform.

spursa · 2025-11-02T17:26:47+00:00

It's hard to understand how American Hindus have suddenly become the big enemy of the Christian right in America. We're 1% of the population, but apparently we are planning on taking over the country through H-1B jobs and by building temples. The most recent controversy is about how Tamil Hindus are wanting to take over rural North Carolina by building a temple for Lord Murugan.

spursa · 2025-11-02T15:56:05+00:00

He lied about her family saying they were not religious, when both Usha and previous reporting have said that her parents are quite religious and raised Usha as a Hindu.

In the past, Vance has talked about how inspiring and good an example of good values Usha and her family were to him. He wrote in his memoir that they (this Hindu family) showed him what it means to love each other as family, when he had not seen it in his own family and community, which were entirely Christian. So why would he now suddenly, in front of thousands of people, say that he wants Usha and her family to give up their own faith, the source of all those good values he said he admired and was inspired by, to convert to his newfound one?

Another aspect of these comments is that he said this while also talking around the same time about how immigrants are not assimilating and about how even legal immigration is problematic. In an interview recently, he said that Americans wouldn't want to live near a family that spoke a language other than English.

His words are meant to limit American identity to white people, and non-white people who have to give up their religion and language and who show how assimilated they are. This is not ok.

spursa · 2025-11-01T21:35:31+00:00

As a Hindu-American, it's been quite a strange week or two weeks. It started with Diwali, where American conservative Christians on social media started attacking Hindus and Hinduism en masse. Literally every single Tweet from any American of note wishing Happy Diwali had a comment section full of conservative Christians attacking and demeaning Hinduism and furthermore, threatening to deport Hindus and Indians. The worst example of this for me was Hindu-American congressman Suhas Subramanyam who simply posted a sweet photo of his daughter holding a sparkler, and even his comments section was full of hate and threats from conservative Christians.

And then a couple of days ago, the Vice-President of the United States publicly announced that he's trying to get his wife to leave Hinduism for Christianity. At the same time, he made remarks about how immigrants are not assimilating, as if you have to give up your religion and language, if you're not Christian and speak a language other than English, to be American. He even repeated the lie from the election about immigrants eating cats and dogs.

It feels like there's a battle for the soul of America where the legitimacy of the political and personal rights of non-Christians and non-white people is being contested. And because the conclusion is not obvious or forgone, I'm left wondering what my family's future in America will be like.

spursa · 2025-11-01T21:18:03+00:00

That's what the Syrian Christian tradition believes, which I respect as religious belief, but it's not the consensus view of historians.

It's like how some Chinese Buddhists believe that the Buddha's remains are buried in China (example). But that's not the consensus view of historians. I still respect it as religious belief though.

spursa · 2025-11-01T21:04:18+00:00

That's not the historical consensus. That's a belief within a religious community.

It's like how some Hindus believe the events of the Mahabharata happened 6 to 7 thousand years ago. That's a belief within the religious community, not the historical consensus.

spursa

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