Hindus in America
Hindus had reached America by the mid-1800s. Swami Vivekananda was the first major spiritual leader who introduced Hinduism to America at the World’s Parliament of Religions and founded the Vedanta Society. Other early major leaders included Paramahansa Yogananda, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and Srila Prabhupada. Institutionally racist laws, like the Asian Exclusion Act (1924 Immigration Act), tightly restricted immigration until 1965.
The American civil rights movement ushered in other reforms, however, including passage of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 (INA). The INA lifted the bar on Asian immigration and the previous quota system, and replaced it with a preference system based on labor skills needed by the United States and those who had a pre-existing family tie in the country. These major changes to American laws paved the way for Indians to immigrate to the US from which the Hindu American community grew enormously, now having surpassed 3.3 million. Hindus have achieved thriving success in America, despite facing ongoing hate crimes and discrimination in education.
Early American Writings on Hinduism
The first American writings on Hindus (“Hindoos”) and Hinduism were overtly disparaging and prejudiced. Cotton Mather (1663-1728) saw Hindoos as heathens on the fringes of Christian European civilization. Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) compared Hindoo religion with Biblical religion in order to prove the superiority of Christianity. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, founded in 1810, represented “Hindoo religion” in its missionary reports as noisy, chaotic, obscene, bloody, ritualistic heathenism, and explicitly claimed the superiority of Protestant Christianity.1
American public school textbooks constructed an anthropology through which they understood human differences, and ranked human differences across categories of race, civilization, and religion. They overtly taught American children that they were part of a superior enlightened, white, Protestant identity, in order to produce the model American citizens that the government desired. They described India as “a distinct and peculiar nation,” emphasizing its deep differences from the West. Many of these stereotypes persist in American education today.
Similarly, magazines such as Harper’s New Monthly Magazine used “Hindoo religion” as a foil for the “superior” white American Protestantism. American popular culture thus constructed their identity by casting Hindoos as Other.2
The first major manifestation of more positive understandings of Hindu philosophy was in the literary movement called Transcendentalism, led by famous authors Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman. This is where Hindu influence in America catapulted. By the 1830s, Emerson was studying translations of the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita. They were the source of his understanding of the underlying oneness of spirit linking the human soul and the Transcendent reality, and thus the intellectual movement he started became called the Transcendentalists. He disseminated Hindu scriptures in these circles, calling them “the ethical scriptures.”3 “In the morning, I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat-Geeta… in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial.” – Henry David Thoreau.
Around the same time, many members of the Unitarian movement were drawn to Hindu (especially Vedanta) ideas on the fundamental oneness of the Divine, the deep connection between the soul and the Divine, and the transcendent unity of many different ways and paths. The Unitarians of Boston had connections with some of the reformist Hindu renaissance movements in Bengal from an early period.
The First Hindus Arrive in America
Some people from India, including Hindus, were held as slaves in Maryland and Delaware in the 1700s. Upon the abolition of slavery, they blended into the freed African American population; their descendants were considered mulattos.
Free Hindu sailors came on trading ships from India entering the ports of Salem and Boston in the early to mid-1800s. By the mid-1800s, Hindus were reportedly participating in Salem’s Fourth of July parade.4
After slavery was ended in the area, beginning in 1838 plantations in the Caribbean were re-staffed with over half a million indentured laborers, mainly from India (also some from China), most of them press-ganged into indentured servitude by force and/or deceit and shipped across the world without their informed consent, never to be able to go home.5 While initially no women were allowed, this was later revoked and an estimated quarter million women from India alone sailed to the West Indies to work sugar plantations.6 While not technically slaves, these workers lived under inherited structures of slavery, including identical living conditions and restrictions of their movement and freedom. The ships that transported them were the same slave ships, the workers were housed in the same housing recently vacated by slaves, and the slave masters were retained as the new indenture overseers.7 This continued until 1917, when the indentureship system was also ended. The indentured and formerly indentured laborers formed new communities in the Caribbean area, including many large Hindu communities. These communities were heavily targeted by Christian missionaries, including the deliberate use of abuses and religiously discriminatory employment restrictions to coerce them into conversion. Today many Caribbean Hindus have made the United States their home and built temples that carry on many of the traditions they preserved and adapted for generations outside of India.
Swami Vivekananda and the Vedanta Society
Systemic Discrimination Against Hindus
In 1905, the Asiatic Exclusion League was founded to advocate for the prevention of Asian people from immigrating to America. The AEL argued that “Hindoos” were dangerous cheap laborers and unassimilable foreigners. The AEL also mischaracterized the freedom struggles and independence movement in India as Indian nationalism and perpetuated smears that they were a threat to US national security. Discrimination and racial violence ensued.12 Indians were harassed, prohibited from owning or leasing land (which other Asian immigrants could do), and were entirely driven out of cities including Marysville, CA and Bellingham, WA by violent mobs. The 1911 U.S. Immigration Commission identified Indians as the “least desirable race of immigrants thus far admitted to the United States.” The 1917 Immigration Act legally banned all Indians from entering the United States, except those of a very short list of specific professions (including religious teachers), and in most cases they could not even bring their wives.13 Restrictions were tightened even further with the institution of race-based exclusionary quotas in 1924. This ban stood until 1946, when the Luce-Celler Act allowed Indians to enter the country and gave them the right to naturalization, but with an extremely limited quota of only 100 Indian immigrants allowed per year. This miniscule quota remained in place until 1965.14 The Ghadar Movement (1913-1948) was a movement and party founded by Indians living in America to help in the struggle for India’s independence from the British Empire. The founder and first leader, Har Dayal, was a Hindu as were many others. Many were Sikhs and some were Muslims. Har Dayal was forced to flee the United States in 1914. Based out of San Francisco, the movement’s headquarters were referred to as an Ashram. They published a highly popular and influential weekly paper titled “Ghadar” to promote the cause of Indian independence. In 1914 the Ghadar Party called for overseas Indians to go to India to fight for its freedom. In response to this call, 8,000 Indians living in America went to India. Many were jailed by the British, and some killed. Those killed are memorialized and celebrated as martyrs to this day. A later president of the Ghadar Party, Ram Chandra, was charged with sedition and assassinated during his trial.15
A Sikh member of the Ghadar Movement named Bhagat Singh Thind joined the US Army and served in World War I. After the war he sought naturalized citizenship, which at the time was legally restricted to those of Caucasian and/or African descent. By the racial science of the time, Indians were considered Caucasian. Thind received his certificate of US citizenship in 1918 at Camp Lewis, Washington, wearing military uniform. However the Bureau of Naturalization revoked his citizenship four days later on the grounds that Thind was not a “white man.” The case reached the Supreme Court, which unanimously denied citizenship to Indians.16 This affected not only Thind, but stripped the citizenship of more than seventy Indians who had already received it and were living in the US as naturalized citizens prior to this ruling.17 These people had been required to renounce their prior citizenship to become Americans, so this ruling rendered them legally persona non grata or stateless. The ban on Indians being eligible for naturalization stood until 1946.18 Just one example of the impact this had on Indians in the US is Vaishno Das Bagai, a model Hindu American. A husband and father of three, he had asked his brother to sell some of their land so that he could use his portion of the inheritance to settle his family in America. He was a fully integrated and proud American citizen, wearing American suits, speaking fluent English and fully conversant with Western etiquette. He owned a home and a thriving business in San Francisco, despite having faced racism from neighbors. When stripped of his citizenship, he became subject to California’s alien land laws; he was forced to liquidate his property, including his business. When he sought a passport to return to India, he was denied this too. He committed suicide, leaving this letter:
“I came to America thinking, dreaming and hoping to make this land my home. Sold my properties and brought more than twentyfive thousand dollars (gold) to this country, established myself and tried my very best to give my children the best American education. In year 1921 the Federal court at San Francisco accepted me as a naturalized citizen of the United States and issued to my name the final certificate, giving therein the name and description of my wife and three sons. In last 12 or 13 years we all made ourselves as much Americanized as possible. But they now come to me and say, I am no longer an American citizen. They will not permit me to buy my home and, lo, they even shall not issue me a passport to go back to India. Now what am I? What have I made of myself and my children? We cannot exercise our rights, we cannot leave this country. Humility and insults, who is responsible for all this? Myself and American government. I do not choose to live the life of an interned person; yes, I am in a free country and can move about where and when I wish inside the country. Is life worth living in a gilded cage? Obstacles this way, blockades that way, and the bridges burnt behind.”19
Major Hindu Spiritual Leaders’ Influence in America
Paramahansa Yogananda
In 1920, Paramahansa Yogananda, a Hindu spiritual teacher, came to America to attend the International Congress of Religious Liberals in Boston. Afterward he stayed in the US to teach spirituality. He lived in the US for the rest of his life, until 1952. In 1925 he founded the Self-Realization Fellowship, which became the most prominent Hindu organization in America, based in Los Angeles and with dozens of local centers across the country. Yogananda was by far the foremost Hindu community leader in America in his time. Most early members of the SRF were white Americans from Christian backgrounds. In 1946, his book Autobiography of a Yogi was published and became one of the most widely read and influential books by a Hindu author in America for decades to come. Even today, amongst those who were not born into Hindu families, many cite Yogananda’s book as having inspired their personal journey to Hindu Dharma. Yogananda demonstrated that Hindu spirituality is fundamentally pro-science.20
Swami Vivekananda
Today yoga is among the most recognizable contributions of Hindus to American culture, with about 10% of the US population practicing yoga.
Martin Luther King, Jr
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Abhaya Charanaravinda Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
New Wave of Immigration
In 1965, the US government passed an Immigration and Nationality Act which eliminated the limits on the numbers of individuals from any given nation who could immigrate to the United States. The new immigration standards were focused on family reunification, refugee status, and most of all, professional skills, encouraging the immigration of much larger numbers of highly qualified professionals and students from India. In response, many Indians did immigrate, forming much larger, and more ethnically Indian, Hindu communities than had ever before existed in the United States. Importantly, before this time women were mostly only able to immigrate as wives of working men. Hereon, more women began coming as professionals and students in their own right, shifting the gender dynamics of Hindu American society. It is also important to note that many of the Indians who were able to immigrate were educated in Christian-run English language schools in India, which has led to many such Hindus’ understanding of Hindu traditions to be shaped through an Abrahamic lens of thinking about religion.
At first, many of the immigrants gathered primarily with others of the same Indian region, language, or culture. Collaborations between different regional communities came later, over time. Today some of them remain highly regionally specific given their unique ancestral traditions, while others have become more pan-Hindu. Most of these immigrants performed their main spiritual practices at home. For communal gatherings, they initially often visited ISKCON temples and Vedanta Society centers as the only available options, though these were from different Hindu traditions than most of these new immigrants and many of them saw them as sacred venues but retained their own Hindu traditions. By the mid-1970s, many of these Hindu immigrants now had children to whom they wanted to impart their Hindu heritage. This created a rising demand for new and more diverse temples and other Hindu cultural centers, and much grander communal celebrations of Hindu festivals like Diwali, Ganesha Chaturthi, Durga Puja, etc. in major cities across America, initially in rented halls and former churches.27
Many Hindu immigrants in America desired full-scale temples like those in India, but most of the Hindu communities and regional associations individually lacked the resources to build and operate them. To this end, they began to collaborate with each other to construct shared temples in their cities, often (though not always) representing a plurality of multiple regional styles and traditions to serve multiple Hindu communities. The first non-ISKCON, non-Vedanta Society Hindu temple to be consecrated in the US was the Sri Venkateswara Temple in Pittsburgh in 1977. There are now some 900 Hindu temples in the US. Hindu temples are integral for many Hindu communities in America, often even more so than in India, as they provide centers of Hindu culture and tradition in a broader societal context where Hindus are a micro-minority.28
From 1975 into the early 1990s, a violent anti-Hindu hate group was active in Jersey City, New Jersey. Calling themselves the Dotbusters, they placed threat ads in the local newspaper, “We will go to any extreme to get Indians to move out of Jersey City. If I’m walking down the street and I see a Hindu and the setting is right, I will hit him or her.” In 1987 they murdered an Indian man, Navroze Mody, by brutally beating him to death on the street. The murderers were never apprehended despite there being a direct witness. Many dozens of other anti-Hindu and anti-Indian hate crimes were committed, including another assault which left Dr. Kaushal Saran in a coma and inflicted lasting brain damage. The Dotbusters searched phone books to find the home addresses of Indian families, and broke their windows and crashed parties, seeking to harass them until they moved away. The Dotbusters went free and were never brought to justice.29
From 1980 to 2013, the population of Indian immigrants in the US roughly doubled each decade, going from 206,000 to well over 2 million.30 The 1990 Immigration Act raised the number of permanent work visas. According to Pew Research Center’s 2012 survey based on a 35,000 sample size, an estimated 1% of the US population is Hindu, equating to ~3.3 million American Hindus. ~2.5 million US Hindus are of Indian origin, but 800,000 are from other countries.31 Hindu communities are spreading throughout the US. While they have long existed in California, New York, and New Jersey, more recently large Hindu communities have formed in Texas, Minnesota, Georgia, and North Carolina, among other places. The CEOs of Microsoft32, Adobe33, Starbucks34, and FedEx35 are all Hindu Americans. Hindus make up only 1% of the US population, but contribute closer to 4% of federal tax revenue, plus spending several hundred billion dollars per year, a major contribution of Hindus to the prosperity of America. Since 2022, young Hindu Americans have secured Forbes 30 Under 30 awards at almost ten times the average rate for their population size, most of all in healthcare, consumer technology, education, and energy. Their massively outsized rate of contribution is similar in new patents and publishing in scientific journals. Hindus own more than a third of all hotels in America, and an only slightly smaller share of all convenience stores. The first female CEO of a major US biotech company is a Hindu.36
Some Hindu communities in America came as refugees, primarily from Bhutan, Afghanistan, and the Sindh and Balochistan provinces of Pakistan. Other Hindu communities in America are second- and third-level diasporas, their ancestors having spent two or three generations in countries like Uganda, Kenya, or Tanzania. Their particular histories have often produced unique modulations or reframings of the Hindu traditions that passed through those places. Although 91% of Hindus in the US are of Asian descent, 4% are white, 2% are black, 1% are Latino, and 2% are mixed or from other backgrounds.37 Similar demographics are reflected at most major temples, while smaller temples may be more communityscpecific. There have been black Hindu communities in the US since at least the 1970s. For example, at that time Alice Coltrane, a black jazz musician, was sharing Vedanta teachings, writing her own jazz-style Bhajans, and popularizing Hindu traditions in her predominantly black spiritual community in California. She founded and directed a Vedanta center. There are also AfroCaribbean Hindu communities descended from intermixtures of African and Indian indentured laborers on plantations.
According to Pew Research Center’s 2012 survey based on a 35,000 sample size, an estimated 1% of the US population is Hindu, equating to ~3.3 million American Hindus. ~2.5 million US Hindus are of Indian origin.
Issues Facing Hindu Americans Today
Pressing issues facing Hindu Americans
- Research shows that Hindu Americans are not regarded as warmly as Jews, Catholics, Evangelical Christians, or Buddhists, all of whose religions are taught with far more respect and accuracy in educational curricula.
- One in three Hindu students in America report being bullied for their religious beliefs, and a full half report being socially isolated because of their religious identity. Hindu students report that faith-based bullying is tightly correlated with inaccurate and negative content on Hinduism being taught in their classes, especially equating Hinduism to a caste system. In addition to contributing to bullying, such inaccurate content disrupts healthy identity development of Hindu American children.
- Hindu Americans’ opposition to discriminatory caste policies has been egregiously mischaracterized as themselves seeking to protect the “right to discriminate.”
- Hindus have faced repeated incidents of law enforcement ignoring and dismissing vandalisms or even robberies of their places of worship.
- A common misconception is that all Indians are Hindu, or else non-Muslim Indians may be assumed to be Muslim. Indians in America, Hindu and otherwise, often encounter assumptions about their religious identity which may be incorrect, as Indians in America are religiously diverse.41
Common misconceptions about “the caste system”
- There is one “Hindu caste system” across all Hindu traditions, of four castes: Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras. No, there is no Hindu caste system. The Varna model is not a caste system. Varnas are archetypes in Hindu sources of knowledge that lay out a framework for a balanced and well-functioning society. There are hundreds of different versions and configurations of jāți or tribes with shared distinguishing features, such as origin story, history, worldview, teachings, customs, religions, traditional trade or guild affiliation, vocation, profession, or trade, and/or language and dialect, etc.birth-based community groups in different local regions of South Asia. Today most Hindu traditions emphatically reject treating or mistreating others on the basis of their community identity caste oppression . Many have done so for hundreds or a thousand years.
- Hindu social identities are singular and rigid. No. Hindu identities are layered and complex, and significant fluidity in group identity is actually fairly common.
- Hindu society is a clearly organized hierarchy. No, it is not. Hindu sociopolitical and religious status is highly localized and often is largely subjective and without religious codification.
- Your “caste” determines your job, where you live, and who you can associate with. For most Hindus today this is not true, and less and less so. Caste is an administrative category under Indian law, and does not encapsulate the diverse complexities of Indian social identity. Especially in America, Hindus’ jobs, neighborhoods, and social freedom are not at all restricted by tribal or ancestral identity.
- Hereditary caste is mandated in the authoritative scriptures of Hinduism. No, most Hindu sources of knowledge do not mention nor mandate hereditary “caste.” Some texts do mention privileges and restrictions based on social class, but there is little evidence such texts were ever enforced historically, and certainly Hindus today are not bound to follow them.
- Untouchables are the lowest in Hindu society and are required to do unclean work. There is no word meaning “untouchables” in any Indian language. Under British censuses, multiple communities who worked in an array of professions, some seen as unclean and as a result marginalized or ostracized by other local communities, were called “Untouchables.” These communities are not required to do unclean work and some are in high government and corporate positions. A large majority in India report that there is not a lot of discrimination against them.
- Caste is a specifically Hindu phenomenon. No, social identities, including jāti, kula, bhirādhāri, etc. are a South Asian phenomenon. People of all religions throughout South Asia have tribal identities and organization in their societies as much as Hindus do; this is widely documented by social scientists.
- Only Brahmins can reach Moksha; other people should first aspire to rebirth as a Brahmin. Not at all; major Hindu sources of knowledge like the
- Bhagavad Gita and many others explicitly proclaim that anyone can reach Moksha, and there are many revered examples of this. Many important Hindu sages were not Brahmins.
Hindu American Identities
Hindu Americans may identify in various ways. ‘Cultural Hindus’ or ‘heritage Hindus’ are from the ancient Indosphere or their diasporas, were raised in a household that describes themselves as Hindu, observe certain aspects of their ancestral familial/ clan/tribal/regional culture i.e. art, music, dance, art, poetry, cuisine, festivals, special occasions, etc., and are more likely to identify with the geography and culture of their heritage rather than with a spiritual tradition. They may not be deeply familiar with the spiritual aspects of that heritage, specifically around philosophies, teachings and spiritual practices, but may participate in family ceremonies.
‘Spiritual Hindus’ or “practicing Hindus’ are those who actively engage in spiritual philosophies, teachings and practices with varying levels of consistency, or observe various aspects of the culture and spirituality derived from a Hindu Dharma tradition. They may or may not have a Hindu heritage. If they do, they may largely embrace their ancestral culture and spiritual tradition(s) and/or that of another Hindu Dharma tradition. They may identify as Hindu (cultural) and by their Hindu Dharma tradition, region/ linguistic group and/or clan/tribe, e.g. Hindu Śākta or Tamil Hindu Śākta, or Hindu Vaiṣṇava or Gujarati Hindu Puṣṭimārg Modh Vāṇyā. If they do not have a Hindu heritage, they may adopt a specific Hindu Dharma tradition, and largely embrace the culture (knowledge, beliefs, behaviors, customs, norms, ethics, values, music, dance, art, poetry, cuisine, festivals, special occasions, etc.) and spiritual traditions of the Hindu Dharma
tradition they adopted, and may prefer the name of the tradition over ‘Hindu,’ e.g. Śaiva, Vedānta, Yoga, etc. Some may adopt the regional culture of the founder of the tradition, for example Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas in the West who adopt Bengali cultural norms.
There are also those who do not identify as Hindu, but may espouse or partake in Hindu philosophies, teachings and practices because of personal preference, custom or marriage, and identify with other Dharma traditions. The Dharma traditions have historically been and continue to be syncretic, especially in regions of India where marriage between Hindus and Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs and Zoroastrians is common. They may identify as “spiritual” or with the religion of their family even though they espouse or partake in Hindu philosophies, teachings and practices because the Hindu Dharma traditions do not demand ‘conversion’ or denouncing of one’s former religion or culture and the other religion requires exclusive allegiance or commitment. For example, there are Christians who also practice Vedāntic methods, and Indian Muslim women who engage in Devi vrata (vow).
Hindu Dharma traditions do not demand ‘conversion’ or denouncing of one’s former religion or culture.
The Hindu Dharma traditions
Smārta tradition
Smārta tradition treats all deities as ultimately the same, and leaves the choice of deity up to the individual practitioner, encouraging the veneration of one’s Ishta Devata, or whatever form of the Divine feels most personally attractive. The Smārta tradition follows Adi Shankaracharya’s Advaita Vedanta as their philosophy. Swami Vivekananda, Paramahansa Yogananda, and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi all came from the Smārta tradition. Mata Amritanandamayi is another popular Smārta guru with a large following in America. Main sacred texts for Smārtas include the Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, and Patanjali Yoga Sutras.
Vaiṣṇava Dharma
Vaiṣṇava Dharma generally emphasizes ecstatic chanting and deeply devotional Bhakti Yoga, with a heavy focus on a personal view of the Supreme Being as Krishna or Vishnu, and a unique de-emphasis of the impersonal aspect. Vaiṣṇava Dharma runs the full gamut of philosophical views from Dvaita (dualism) to Advaita (non-dualism), and a range in between of Vishishtadvaita (qualified non-dualism) and other perspectives. The Vaiṣṇavas have many saints and scriptures, and most Vaiṣṇava Sampradayas like building temples, such that Hindu temples in many US cities tend to be somewhat disproportionately Vaiṣṇava. Vaiṣṇava Dharma is the most pro-vegetarian tradition, and generally emphasizes Ahimsa or non-violence more than other traditions. Vaiṣṇava traditions with large followings in America include ISKCON, Sri Vaiṣṇava Sampradaya (specifically popular among South Indians), and Swaminarayan Sampradaya. The main sacred text for Vaiṣṇavas is the Bhagavad Gita.
Śaiva Dharma
Śaiva Dharma sees the Supreme Being as Śiva. Śaiva Dharma highly emphasizes the practice of Yoga, tending towards Jnana Yoga and Ashtanga Yoga, which are less prominent in many other traditions. Śaiva Dharma often (though not always) takes a more impersonal view of the Supreme Being, and includes a wide range of philosophical perspectives. Śaiva Dharma recommends vegetarianism but generally sees it as optional. Major Śaiva organizations in America include Saiva Siddhanta Church, Sadhguru’s Isha Foundation, and Siddha Yoga headed by Gurumayi Chidvilasananda. Main sacred texts vary significantly between different Śaiva communities.
Śākta Dharma is the main tradition which sees the Supreme Being as feminine, though all of the Hindu traditions mentioned here do revere feminine Divine beings. Śāktas venerate Śākti in various forms, such as Kali, Parvati, Durga, Lakshmi, and Sarasvati. All Śākta schools follow Advaita Vedanta. Śākta Dharma is generally non-ascetic. Śākta Dharma generally does not recommend vegetarianism; it sees it as wholly a personal choice. Main sacred texts for Śāktas include the Devi Gita, Devi Mahatmyam, and Lalita Sahasranama.
Kaumāram
Kaumāram, who primarily venerate the Supreme Being as Kumara/Murugan/Kartikeya. The vast majority of Kaumāras are Tamizh people, especially from Sri Lanka, though most Tamizh Hindus are not Kaumāram; it is a much smaller tradition than those listed above. Some are also Malaysian.
“New Age”
There are also various Hindu movements and organizations founded in the 1800s and since that may be considered new traditions, though they all collectively include less than 3% of Hindus. There is a very long list of such modern Hindu organizations. Many of them do not claim to be new traditions, but align themselves with general Smārta-style Hindu Dharma or one of the other traditions. Many of them are fusion movements from multiple traditional roots, and/or may be counted among “New Age” movements.
Other regional-ancestral traditions, often with tribal connections
There are also various Hindu movements and organizations founded in the 1800s and since that may be considered new traditions, though they all collectively include less than 3% of Hindus. There is a very long list of such modern Hindu organizations. Many of them do not claim to be new traditions, but align themselves with general Smārta-style Hindu Dharma or one of the other traditions. Many of them are fusion movements from multiple traditional roots, and/or may be counted among “New Age” movements.
Are Hindu Dharmas monotheistic or polytheistic?
Western/Abrahamic theological categories like “monotheistic” and “polytheistic” do not cleanly fit Hindu Dharmas. All Hindu Dharmas with large followings today revere a singular Supreme Being, though in most traditions this Being takes on many different forms and aspects. Distinct from the singular Supreme Being, most Hindu Dharmas also recognize vast numbers of Devas or illumined beings who, though worthy of deep respect, are not Supreme. In addition to the above points, most Hindu Dharmas are panentheistic, meaning that the universe itself is part of the unitary Divine, but the Divine is also infinitely more than merely this universe. Many Hindu Dharmas are monistic, teaching that all of reality is a unitary whole, and all living things are fundamentally one. A small minority of Hindus, mostly from regional/ ancestral traditions, identify as polytheistic. Some Hindu Dharmas are not theistic at all.
Sources
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2 Altman, Michael J., ‘Transcendentalism, Brahmanism, and Universal Religion’, Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu: American Representations of India, 1721-1893 (New York, 2017; online edn, Oxford Academic, 24 Aug. 2017), chapter 3
3 Ibid, chapters 2 and 4, and https://pluralism.org/trade-and-transcendentalism
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37 https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/religious-tradition/hindu/
38 https://www.iskconvrindavan.com/home/the-history
39 https://www.vedantany.org/history