Comprised of presenters from different stages in their professional careers, our panel sheds light on four lesser explored case studies of the Hindu American experience. Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork, each presenter pushes us to revisit the key conceptual categories that have often guided investigations Hindu diasporas. Whereas the first paper locates contemporary Canadian Brahma Kumari practices at the intersection of South Asian and Western cultures, the second explores how placemaking and ecological concerns direct devotion towards Hindu goddesses in the Bay Area. Our final papers encourage us to open our eyes and look more rigorously at the lives of Hindu objects and devotionality outside spaces that center the temple and Indian nationality. All in all, despite being a very crowded discipline, our panel reminds us that the study of North American Hindu traditions remains animated and is committed to pursuing research agendas in directions that are unfamiliar but exciting.
This paper studies the Brahma Kumari tradition in Canada and in global space. The focus is on the issue of globalized identity and female religious authority of the followers. I examine several aspects of the globalization of Brahma Kumari in Canada and its complex links with South Asian religions in India. It seems that the tradition is at crossroads, just as the devotees’ cultural identity is at crossroads – being simultaneously Western and at the same time South Asian. What happens when traditions and identities are at crossroads? Do globalized traditions produce globalized identities? Are there any other transformations that happen in this cultural mobility? By means of analysis of texts and data from interviews with Brahma Kumari followers, this paper seeks to reframe the Brahma Kumari tradition in a global context, a truly global movement, which has made home in Canada while maintaining links with the spiritual homeland in India.
In the Tamil Hindu diaspora in the United States, this paper will explore the presence, the vitality, and the active worship of two Hindu goddesses, one who is very well known, the Goddess Lakshmi, who represents wealth, health, auspiciousness and alertness and one not as focused upon, Bhudevi, the earth goddess. This ethnographic research will focus on Tamil Hindu Americans of the San Francisco Bay Area. Very recently, in January 2025, the Los Angelos area was a site of intense fires which were out of control for weeks and was one of the fiercest fire storms ever in a populated area in California. How do these uncontrollable fires affect Hindu American’s worship of Bhudevi? Or the Goddess Lakshmi? These questions will be investigated through the triple interlaced lens of economics, ecology, and climate chaos.
Jagannath is best known for his Ratha Yatra festival that carries the deity out of the temple and into the world, extending his presence even into diaspora. Another important but lesser-known festival, Nabakalebara (“New Bodies”), highlights how Jagannath's image transforms to make him available to devotees across both time and space. This paper explores how Jagannath travels and transforms with and through diaspora communities, particularly in the Bay Area and its particular images of the deity as they have been re-created by devotees there. Relying on my own ethnographic studies and close analyses of images, I examine the different manifestations of the deity and how they take up each group’s unique circumstances and experiences. The paper focuses on the personal, intimate experiences of devotion, especially in the home. The study also emphasizes the material embodiment of Jagannath and his connection with devotees.
My presentation examines the religious lives of Thai-American restaurateurs in Elmhurst, New York, site of the East Coast’s first officially recognized “Little Thailand.” By considering why paintings and icons of Hindu figures like Ganesha, Brahma, and Kubera frequently appear in restaurant décor alongside images of Southeast Asian and Chinese deities, I explore how emerging trends in Thai religion—notably the growing popularity of Hindu deities in Buddhist-majority Thailand—shape Thai immigrants' beliefs and business practices. In the process, my ethnographic fieldwork and visual analyses raise two key questions: (1) By incorporating Indian deities into their religious practices, how do Thai Americans express their cultural identities? (2) How are conventional understandings of Orientalism reshaped when Asian Americans themselves curate and participate in syncretic devotional movements with roots in modern Asia? Through these inquiries, my talk highlights the intersections of migration, religious materiality, and transnational cultural flows in shaping contemporary Thai-American identity.