Author: Francis C. Assisi
Publication: Indolink
Date: June 9, 2005
URL: http://www.indolink.com/displayArticleS.php?id=060305110343
Like so many Americans who like
to play "Indian", Indian-Americans too have been traversing America's sacred
landscape without connecting with the deeply held beliefs of its ancient
inhabitants, the American Indians.
But not anymore. They are becoming
grounded on American soil. And from Hindu temples in Juneau, Alaska, to
Tallahassee, Florida, and to Kauai, Hawaii, they are chanting praises such
as this: America vasa jaya govinda or Victory to Govinda who lives in America.
That's because there is an ongoing
process of Hinduizing the American sacred space. Hindu Americans have begun
to cultivate the strains within their own religious tradition that foster
a sense of the sacred earth through myth, ritual, ceremonies, and spirit
power that more or less reflects Native American or American Indian cultures.
Indeed, Hindu Americans would not be doing this if they did not realize
the land was sacred in some intrinsic way, something the Native American
Indians knew for thousands of years.
Now, Hindu Americans are locating,
establishing and embellishing sacred spaces in America by co-mingling the
waters of the Ganga and the Kaveri with the Mississippi and Rio Grande,
and by invoking the holy Indian rivers into the local waters. Even if this
ritual is not viewed as purifying one of all sins it is a palpable affirmation
of an emerging Hindu cosmology transplanted in America.
At the simples level there is a
notion of transference - an idea that the sacredness attached to the India's
sacred rivers will physically attach itself to the local rivers. It's a
pattern that has grown with the earlier diasporas in Malaysia, Singapore,
Mauritius, South Africa, Fiji, Guyana, Trinidad, and the later migrations
to Australia, Britain, Europe, Canada and the United States. Perhaps the
stage was set when Hindu culture spread to Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia
in its earliest phase.
SACRED LAND
In America itself the phrase "sacred
land" is used frequently, but it's meaning remains elusive to many non-Natives,
who relate to land mostly through property lines or hiking trails. This
difference highlights perhaps the widest gulf between the two cultures
- Native Americans and European Americans. On the one hand is the Judeo-Christian
belief that humans were meant to have dominion over nature; on the other
is the belief in land as a living network, not as fragments they could
purchase. "How can you 'save the Earth' if you have no spiritual relationship
with the Earth?" asks Tonya Gonnella Frichner of the Onondaga Nation. "There
is an intellectual abstraction about the environment but no visceral participation
with the Earth."
Perhaps one of the most pervasive
concepts among American Indians is the belief that land is alive. Every
particular form of the land is the locus of qualitatively different spirit
beings. Their presence gives life to and sanctifies the land in all its
details and contours. Thus, it's when people recognize a shared spiritual
essence in the world around them that their interactions with the land
take on a quality of reverence and respect.
Seeing what a specific place means
to a specific culture can help non-Natives understand how land plays not
an auxiliary or symbolic role, but is a central, necessary force in many
Native traditions. The rivers, the mountains, the air, the wind, animals,
all living and non-living things, everything in the ecology - becomes meaningful
because they are interconnected. This is a theme that is central to India's
holistic vision.
In his "Afterword" to the volume
America in 1492, Vine Deloria, Jr., encourages us to reflect on the degree
to which non-Native Americans "have responded to the rhythms of the land--the
degree to which they have become indigenous." In the context of immigrant
Indian Americans, "becoming indigenous" means knowing the land where they
live and showing it respect. One way this is happening is by placing a
relationship to the land in a religious context, as opposed to just an
economic context. It helps Indian Americans experience the life force of
the land, enabling them to see the land of their adoption as a distinct
being deserving of respect.
Which is why, in the past twenty
five years, the American landscape, with its rich surfeit of rivers, mountains,
forests, animals, ancestral graves and relics, is becoming sacred space
to Indian Americans as it has been for American Indians through the millennia.
They have enhanced and spiritually empowered America's sacred landscape
with more than 1500 places of worship in North America.
DR VASUDHA NARYANAN
Professor Vasudha Narayanan, an
authority on diasporic Hinduism claims that Hindu rituals are part of the
many ways in which the local landscape is being transformed to be sacred
liturgical space for immigrant American Hindus. Dr. Narayanan, a former
President of the American Academy of Religions and professor at the University
of Florida's Department of Religion, has looked at how post-1965 immigrant
Hindus perceive the land of the Americas and how they consecrate the ground
on which they build their temples. She has outlined this in a paper presented
at the American Academy of Religion and titled "Victory to Govinda who
lives in America: Hindu Ritual to Sacralize the American Landscape."
Narayanan is the author and editor
of five books and more than 80 articles, chapters and encyclopedia entries.
Her book "The Hindu Traditions in the United States: Temple Space, Domestic
Space, and Cyberspace" was be published by Columbia University Press in
2004. She is currently working on Hindu temples and Vaishnava traditions
in Cambodia.
The point this distinguished Hindu
American has made is that Indians have made the land of the Americas ritually
sacred in at least four ways: composing songs and pious Sanskrit prayers
extolling the American state where the temples are located; identifying
America as a specific dvipa or island as noted in the Hindu Puranas; physically
consecrating the land with waters from sacred Indian and American rivers;
and literally recreating the physical landscape of certain holy places
in India, as in Pittsburgh or Barsana Dham, Texas. Thus, Prof. Naryanan
discerns "a process by which land or shrines held sacred by the native
inhabitants is coopted by Hindus and the sacrality is re-articulated with
Hindu motifs."
For example, devotees at the Sri
Venkateswara Temple in Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, praised Lord Venkateswara,
a manifestation of Lord Vishnu, in song: America vasa jaya govinda, Penn
Hills nilaya radhe govinda, sri guru jaya guru, vithala govinda, which
means, "Victory to Govinda who lives in America; Govinda who with Radha
resides in Penn Hills. Victory to Govinda, Vithala, the sacred Teacher."
Singing about a place expresses its sacredness and makes it a palpable
spot of holiness, explains Prof. Narayanan.
Also, a statement put out by the
Venkateshwara temple noted: Pittsburgh, endowed with hills and a multitude
of trees as well as the confluence of the three rivers, namely, the Allegheny,
the Mongahela, and the sub-terrainean river (brought up via the 60 foot
high fountain at downtown) to form the Ohio river is indeed a perfect choice
for building the first and most authentic temple to house Lord Venkateswara.
The evergrowing crowds that have been coming to the city with the thriveni
Sangama of the three rivers to worship at the Temple with the three vimanas
reassure our belief that the venerable Gods chose this place and the emerald
green hillock to reside in.
Dr. J. Sethuraman, professor of
statistics at the Florida State University in Tallahassee, who is now retired,
went one step further. The Madras-born Sanskrit scholar composed an elegant
poem called Sri Venkatesha America Vaibhava Stotram, "Praise of the Appearance
of Lord Venkatesha in America." It is in classical Sanskrit, in the style
of a traditional kavya, or poem, replete with exquisite literary flourishes
and ornate verses: "Such a Venkatesha, the ocean of nectar of kindness,
has come to the hilltop at the well-known city of Pittsburgh, surrounded
by the three rivers, Allegheny, Monongahela and the Ohio, to remove the
miseries of the people." Dr. Sethuraman then proceeds to glorify Lord Vishnu;
in his manifestation as Venkatesha, as the deity in more than 20 American
towns, and describes with local imagery the different places in the United
States where Venkatesha is enshrined.
As Prof. Narayanan explained: "While
all temples go through formal ceremonies of vivification with pitchers
of sanctified waters, the devotees' songs promulgate the sacredness of
the land; the terrain is now internalized in landscape of devotion. Many
Hindu devotees celebrate the lord's accessibility more than his supremacy,
and to make himself accessible, he is said to abide in a local shrine close
to the devotee. Thus, Venkateswara (also known as Venkatesha in songs)
is totally present in Tiru Venkatam, India, and this is important; but
even more important is that this deity is now perceived as abiding in a
local shrine at Penn Hills, Malibu, Chicago, Dayton, Atlanta, etc. The
devotees in Pittsburgh, just as the many Hindu saints celebrated it, see
the lord as being physically close to them sanctifying the land they live
in."
Another example of making America
a sacred home is evident in the "declaration of intention," done at the
beginning of every ritual. The land is usually identified with one of the
dvipas, or "islands" from the Puranas.. Thus, Hindus in India begin most
rituals with the line, "in this island of the Rose-Apple (Jambudvipa),
in the fragment of land called Bharata, south of Mount Meru." In Canada
and America there are new parameters. Almost all temples state that America
is located in the Krauncha (Egret or Heron) island, which is west of Mount
Meru. In the intention recited in Tallahassee, Dr. Sethuraman chanted:
"In this island of Krauncha, in the delightful continent, in the sacred
province of the cows that is east of the Mississippi River, in the sacred
land called Tallahassee."
Interestingly, according to the
Puranic Encyclopedia of Vettam Mani, Krauncha is the fifth of seven islands
in Indian mythology. Surrounded by milk, and guarded by the god Varuna,
it is also said to contain a mountain, where a haughty and arrogant asura,
also named Krauncha, was leading a wicked life.
SACRED RIVERS
Hindus think of rivers as capable
of spiritually cleansing all those who bathe in them. But why should they
mingle the sacred waters brought from India's rivers with the local waters
of the Mississippi and the Suwannee? On the simplest level, the belief
is that the sacredness of the Ganga, the Kaveri and other rivers will physically
attach itself to the local rivers of America. But there is more going on
here than just spiritually or physically invoking the holy Indian rivers
into the local waters. Just as the supreme being makes itself accessible
through an incarnation or manifestation on earth, the sanctity of the remote
site in India is made accessible in this country to the devotees, claims
Prof. Naryanan.
Another way Hindus in America enhance
the sacredness of their temples is to try to either recognize and rediscover
resemblances between American physical landscape and distinctive sacred
spots in India, or to recreate that similarity. The earliest attempt was
at the Venkateswara Temple in Pittsburgh. Devotees voiced the similarity
between the sacred place in India where the rivers Ganga, Yamuna and the
underground Saraswati meet, and the confluence of three local rivers.
According to Prof Narayanan, some
of the most sustained attempts in recreating the landscape are in Barsana
Dham, Texas, and at the Iraivan Temple to Siva, in Kauai, Hawaii. Barsana
Dham resembles Barsana in Northern India, said to be the hometown of Radha,
the beloved of Lord Krishna. Here, all the important landmarks of Krishna
and Radha's homeland were recreated. At Iraivan Temple in Hawaii, not only
are the names reminiscent of India, but the similar environment of tropical
India meshes with the local Hawaiian land to create a unique milieu.
As expected, the Pittsburgh temple,
the Barsana Dham in Texas, and the Iraivan Temple in Hawaii have become
new pilgrimage destination for millions of Indians living in North America.
Even visitors from India make it a point to include these temples in their
itinerary. Dr. Sambamurthy Sivachariyar, an important priest of a large
temple in Madras, India, who presided as chief priest for the stone-laying
ceremony of Iraivan Temple in 1995 said, "I am too old to go on pilgrimage
to the holy sites in the Indian Himalayan mountains, where, according to
Hinduism, God Himself resides and gives His grace to pilgrims. That was
a life-long dream of mine. But now that I have come to the most beautiful
place in the world, Kauai, to this sacred land, I feel my dream has been
fulfilled. I have come to the home of God."
Interestingly, the ancient Hawaiians
called the temple site, which is at the foot of Mount Waialeale near the
sacred Wailua River, Pihanakalani, "where heaven touches Earth."
Last December, Prof Seetharaman
put final touches to his version of the Sri-Venkatesha-America-Vaibhava-Stotram
by including all the traditional style Hindu temples in North America and
concluded with the following shloka:
"It is no wonder that you have many
such divine residences; Oh Lord, Oh kind One; in spite of all this, do
shower me with your grace and please come with Sri Devi and Bhuu Devi and
reside in my house. This resident of Tallahassee, Sethuraman, requests
that you give a mind, calmed of the raging fires of desire, to the devotees
who think again and again of your divine residences, contemplate again
and again on your divine form, and praise you with these slokas."
