U.S. Hindus Hear the Call of India

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/world/asia/17iht-letter17.html

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NEW YORK — In a play that opened in New York last week, a Hindu god who drinks wine and uses foul language goes to Nazi Germany to reclaim the swastika from Hitler. The swastika, which for many has become a reminder of chilling human evil, is also an ancient and sacred Hindu symbol that is commonly found on doors and walls in Indian homes, and that women in southern India draw every morning on their porches.

When the play, “Ganesh Versus the Third Reich, ” was staged in Australia in 2011, Hindus there protested, claiming to be wounded by the comic representation of the elephant-headed god, the length of whose trunk is used in one scene to allude to a vital male organ. Some Hindu groups in the United States, whose antennas often seem as if they are finely tuned to seek offense, are now contemplating how they should react to such a play in a land where complaints on religious grounds are largely subordinate to artistic freedom.

It is possible that there are many American Hindus who are not troubled enough by their cultural displacement to get too worked up about religion, India or myths of identity. But the most visible Hindus in the United States are the online fanatics who react instantly and with conviction to news developments and personalities in India. They are a part of the middle-class South Asian settlements in the United States that are growing disenchanted, whether discreetly or overtly, with the West and thus are becoming obsessed with their roots.

In a cafe in downtown New York, Sheetal Shah, a senior director at the Hindu American Foundation, told me that there was a distinction between American Hindus who were born and raised in India and those whose formative memories are in the United States. It is those in the former group who feel compelled to react to Indian politics, she said. The latter tend to be less interested in politics, but just as passionate about Hinduism and India.

Ms. Shah, who has a master’s degree from the London School of Economics, has been active in the foundation’s “Take Back Yoga” campaign, which seeks to remind everyone that yoga has Hindu origins and believes the world should acknowledge this. Among Ms. Shah’s many other activities is an attempt to nudge Americans beyond “caste, cow and karma” when viewing Hinduism, and to perceive it as a great antique philosophy rather than merely a pantheon of paranormal deities. She was aware of “Ganesh Versus the Third Reich” but had yet to see the play. “I am not clear about our course of action” in its regard, she said.

Not very long ago, the “Nonresident Indian” was revered in India through the venerated abbreviation NRI. As there is a hierarchy in everything that Indians consider important, the American NRI was the most revered of all NRIs. In the late 1980s, there was always a commotion when an NRI visited family in India. The visitor would appear to have a glow of the good life, with a fragrance of something affluent and distant. From large, top-quality suitcases would emerge extraordinary objects with famous Western names.

As India became richer and its economy opened up to consumption of the most famous global brands, and as Indians began to travel to the West, the NRI became somewhat diminished but still respectable. In the past decade, though, there has been a change in what NRIs represent in India. They have gone from being considered part of the academic elite to being seen as amusing conservatives. They are among the great swarms that fill slots on the Internet where comments are free.

One of the major focal points for these swarms is a man called Narendra Modi, who arrived in the Indian national consciousness at the turn of the millennium. He has been the chief minister of Gujarat State for more than a decade and is a possible candidate for prime minister for the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014.

In 2002, Gujarat witnessed two horrific acts of violence. A passenger train filled with Hindu pilgrims was burned by a Muslim mob, killing at least 58 people. In the days that followed, a retaliatory attack that Mr. Modi claimed was “a spontaneous reaction of Hindus” resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Muslims and an unknown number of rapes. Since then, various human rights groups, journalists and public servants have accused Mr. Modi of being complicit in the riots, an accusation that he denies.

The political leaning of the majority of Hindus in the United States is liberal and Democratic, Ms. Shah said, but many of these same Hindus favor Mr. Modi. So while they are Democrats in the United States, they are also the wind beneath the right wing in India.

But there are also those, especially among younger American Hindus, who are repulsed by Mr. Modi. One young woman, who lives in New York and who once met Mr. Modi with her father, said: “I have fights with my father over Modi. I tell my father, ‘How can you? How can you love that man who did all that?”’

She is among the many daughters in this world who find it hard to understand the choices that some good men make.

<em>Manu Joseph is editor of the Indian newsweekly Open and author of the novel “The Illicit Happiness of Other People.”</em>