The changing landscape of Hindus in America

Falgun Shuddha Trutiya/Chaturthi

The landmark 2008 Pew Forum (religions.pewforum.org) survey found that only 10% of Hindus in America married outside their faith. Although the survey covered 257 Hindu families, 86% of them were immigrants and 58% between the ages of 30-49. Thus, it focused on the first generation Hindu immigrants from India and reflects the norms of interfaith marriages in India. It does not provide information on the much higher rate of interfaith marriages that American-born, second generation Hindus are entering into. Our independent survey shows that 38% of marriage of young Hindus, Jains and Sikhs are to people of Abrahamic faiths (Christians, Jews and Muslims).

Common family names of Hindus, Jains and Sikhs (followers of Dharma traditions) were picked from the Macy’s marriage registry for our data analysis. Though individual’s religious preferences were not verified, the consistency of results across these common family names, gives validity to our conclusions. The results clearly show that at least a third of these young Dharmics have selected an Abrahamic partner as their life mate.Historically in India, interfaith marriages among Hindus, Jains and Sikhs are quite common, but not with Muslims or Christians because there are fundamental differences between the beliefs and practices of the two major groups of religions — the Dharmic and the Abrahamic. Now in America, these groups are assimilating for marriage at large.

In reality, a marriage is not only a marriage of two individuals; but to some extent, it is also a marriage of two extended families. Many a time major difficulties may arise when subtle pressure is applied by the extended family for religious conversion before a church wedding or Islamic Nikaah takes place. The challenges may get harder as years go by, especially when time comes to decide the religious fate of the children from the marriage. For example, the Islamic religion requires that children of mixed marriages must be raised in the Islamic faith. The Catholic Church strongly advocates that the Catholic parent should do everything possible to insure that a child is baptized and raised as a Catholic. It remains to be seen how followers of Dharmic and Abrahamic faiths will manage their fundamental religious differences in these new interfaith marriages.

• Dilip Amin, Ph. D

              Email: [email protected]

• Dr. Amin, a medial research scientist, is past President of the Plymouth Balvihar (Hindu cultural school), PA.

             908-392-6798 (cell) for more data.

Additional data and information

The “Patel” is one the most known Indian last names in America and the most common last name in Gujarat, India. There, among two major subclasses, a Kadva-Patel marrying to a Leuva-Patel is not acceptable. Apparently in America, a major cultural shift is coming for Patels. Note 22% of Patels married to a person with the same exact last name, there may be many more Patels married to other Patels like Desai-Patel and Amin-Patels. This percentage number was low for people with other last names. This shows that, a good fraction of young Patels in America are still maintaining the tradition from back home.

The Reddys appear to have a highest percent of interfaith marriages, but this could be misleading since the sample size is low.Singhs are expected be 90% Sikhs and the rest Panjabi Hindus.

There was no major difference between percent of male and female Dharmics, who decided to marry an Abrahamic.Note that total of male and female married does not match with an earlier table of total number of marriages. This discrepancy is due to people marrying with the same last name. For example, there were 494 marriage registries of Patels but there were total 602 Patels got married, including 108 Patels married to other Patels (494+108=602).The Singh female appears to be low in number here because female Singh may use Kaur as a last name. Still, percent marrying to Abrahamics among males and females are comparable and higher than Patels.

How survey was conducted:

Duplicate registries and Abrahamic suspecting names (like Fatima Patel or Anthony Reddy) were removed from the list. For example, 28 Christian suspecting Reddys were removed from the list and only Hindu sounding 47 first names were kept for the survey. Name classification to a religious category was reconfirmed visiting Gurudwara, Jain temple or talking to other experts.

Pew: http://religions.pewforum.org/reports

Macy’s registry: http://macys.weddingchannel.com