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Hindus in the Diaspora regularly ask themselves how much liberty they have to adapt their faith to the culture in which they now live. Members of other world religions occasionally ask themselves a similar question, but for Hindus the question is particularly difficult because religion and culture were not clearly distinguished in Indian tradition and because in India there was no centralized effort to define or organize the different religious traditions. Consequently, Hindus of various geographical regions and social classes adapted their religious practices to local cultural norms with great freedom. In the Diaspora, Hindus found that they had to ask new questions about Hindu identity and the role culture should play in defining their religious identity.
The Hindu Diaspora consists of two distinct phases, each with its own distinctive characteristics. The First Hindu Diaspora was the colonial-era transfer of indentured workers to sugar plantations in a number of different places on the globe. For those of this Diaspora, questions about Hindu identity were framed by the colonial arrangements in the plantation society. The colonial missionaries had already provided educational opportunities and churches for others in the colonial societies. Consequently, Indians wishing to establish a Hindu identity had first to differentiate themselves from the Christian option already provided.1 In the second Hindu Diaspora, in which families emigrated to Europe and North America on their own, a Hindu identity had to be established in a context where religion was radically differentiated from culture, and religious communities were encouraged to follow the free-enterprise model and develop whatever religious institutions they wished.
While the historical circumstances outlined above helped define the social frameworks in which modern Hindus would practice their faith in the three different environments of India, the indentured societies, and the different countries of Europe and North America, it was primarily a set of creative individuals in each specific Diaspora context that defined what Hinduism would become in that setting. Because this "Diaspora" or scattering of Indians into the indentured societies and subsequently into Europe and North America is so recent it is still possible for students of Hinduism to discover how the creative individuals who defined the Hindu tradition in these new settings understood their task.
This study of Hindu religious adaptation will focus on...