Hinduism in the West

History

18th century

During this time, most British and American writers conceptualized all religions through the taxonomy of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Heathens. Termed "Hindoo religion," it was subsumed by the blanket label of heathenism.

Beginning in the 1780s, American merchants took religious items from India along with trade goods. For example, the East India Marine Society (EIMS) in Salem, Massachusetts took statues of Rama and Sita for their collection, which represented Hinduism as the "Oriental east."

19th-20th century

During the British colonial period, the British substantially influenced Indian society, but India also influenced the western world. An early champion of Indian-inspired thought in the West was Arthur Schopenhauer who in the 1850s advocated ethics based on an "Aryan-Vedic theme of spiritual self-conquest", as opposed to the ignorant drive toward earthly utopianism of the superficially this-worldly "Jewish" spirit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau turned to translations of the Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Vishnu Sarma, and Vishnu Purana as an alternative to the main forms of Protestantism present around them. However, early engagement between American thinkers and Hindu ideas in the 19th century was also shaped by Orientalism, often reducing the Hindu religion to mystical abstraction or primitive superstition.

Vivekananda introduced a form of yoga to America that fit Western audience's want for techniques that focused on getting results.

In the early 20th century, Western occultists influenced by Hinduism include Maximiani Portaz – an advocate of "Aryan Paganism" – who styled herself Savitri Devi and Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, founder of the German Faith Movement. It was in this period, and until the 1920s, that the swastika became a ubiquitous symbol of good luck in the West before its association with the Nazi Party became dominant in the 1930s. In 1920, Yogananda came to the United States as India's delegate to an International Congress of Religious Liberals convening in Boston; the same year he founded the Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) to disseminate worldwide his teachings on India's ancient practices and philosophy of Yoga and its tradition of meditation.

Neo-Hindu movements 1950s–1980s

During the 1960s to 1970s counter-culture, Sathya Sai Baba (Sathya Sai Organization), A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (ISKCON or "Hare Krishna"), Guru Maharaj Ji (Divine Light Mission) and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Transcendental Meditation movement) attracted a notable western following, founding religious or quasi-religious movements that remain active into the present time. This group of movements founded by charismatic persons with a corpus of esoteric writings, predominantly in English, is classed as founding, proselytizing religions, or "guru-ism" by Michaels.

Hatha Yoga was popularized from the 1960s by B.K.S. Iyengar, K. Pattabhi Jois and others. However, western practice of Yoga has mostly become detached from its religious or mystic context and is predominantly practiced as exercise or as alternative medicine.

Jaggi Vasudev, otherwise known as Sadhguru has been influential in the revival of New Age Hinduism in the West. By diverging from traditional ways of teaching Hinduism, Sadhguru offers a New Age Hinduism which resonates with second-generation South-Asian Americans who are navigating the intersection of their Indian roots and Western identity.