By IANS
New York : Their eyes on the acharya, or teacher, the Indian origin children chant prayers in Sanskrit. Many can recite passages from the Hindu scripture Bhagvad Gita. They also learn about caring and sharing.
For, these US-born children of Indian American parents have been sent to summer camps and weekend schools to learn about ancient Indian religious traditions and maintain their identity.
Take, for instance, the Chinmaya Mission in Virginia. They focus their attention on Swami Dheerananda, the mission's Hindu teacher, or acharya as they call him. Together they chant prayers in Sanskrit.
Afternoons in the mission are devoted mostly to traditional songs and dances that mix Bollywood with religious tales. Hundreds more attend Sunday school classes during the school year, the New York Times reported.
"In California alone, over 10,000 children attend some sort of Hindu or Indian instruction on the weekend, especially during summers," Shana Sippy, an Indian American doctoral student in religion from Columbia University, wrote in a recent paper.
Explaining Hinduism to Americans is a challenge, one that is leading to the homogenisation of a faith that in India is characterised by a variety of local beliefs and worship practices, some scholars and Hindus believe.
"It has to be homogenised at some level because if I ask my daughter, she doesn't know the difference between the practice of Hinduism among south Indians and Bengalis," said Sanjeev Chatterjee, whose eight-year-old daughter, Maya, attends the Chinmaya camp.
"There has to be dilution at some level because there hasn't been a critical mass of us, though that may be starting to change."
"Hindus may be better understood now than a generation ago, partly because yoga has generated interest in Hinduism," said Suhag Shukla, legal counsel for the Hindu American Foundation, an advocacy group.
According to Harvard's Pluralism Project on religious diversity, there are two million Hindus currently living in the US, a tiny fraction of the approximately one billion Hindus worldwide.
"Hindus in the United States have long bolstered their children's cultural identity by having them take Indian dance and music classes. But over the last two decades, many Hindus' anxiety about preserving their culture has translated into a drive to teach religion more explicitly," said Vijay Prashad, professor of South Asian history at Trinity College.
Last week, for the first time in US history, the country's senate opened with the chanting of the Gayatri Mantra from the Rig-Veda, said to be the oldest Hindu scripture composed around 1,500 B.C.