Professor Michael Witzel of Harvard University, the World’s Greatest Expert on Indian History, Explains Hindus and Indian-Americans

Note: Professor Witzel stayed for a WHOLE YEAR in Nepal, and is thus the world’s leading expert on south Asia.

Message in IER Yahoogroup # 2300

[mod's note: While it still is weekend here, let us continue with such
slightly off-topic discussions, but revert to straight-forward research
on Monday. Nevertheless, as it sheds some light on the background of
this thread, read this:]

“The Hindus in North America ( HINAs) are not just hiina, "lost, abandoned", but they (understandably) cling to their homeland in all manners they can come up with. "Reforming" our schoolbooks according to an imagined Golden Age (Ram Raj), hoary India is just one of the expressions we can observe.

They also tell their daughters to study Classical Indian dance (not exactly a highly regarded occupation back home), they build many
temples and have Sunday schools (as many other ethnicities do). But,
they hardly invest in Higher Education as other successful Asians have
done. Nor allow their children to study items outside Law or Medicine,
such as Indian Studies, --- the only way that members of their group
could speak with real authority (for example, in school books).

However, as they are NRIs ("non returning Indians", as I just learned from a Hindi movie), they have begun ---as an old, very conservative US Brahmin friend pointed out to me already in 1994—building crematoria as well.

And see that they children marry within the local caste of origin (preferably, as per advertisement, of "fair' or "wheatish" color), if necessary imported out of India. (I have represented in court for one unfortunate victim of such a cross-cultural RNI-Indian marriage).

Or at least, they look for a spouse within the same general Indian caste (jaati), or worse, class (varna), or worst, among any Indians.

They have seen too many of their children marry US people (whether of other Asian or of European descent; Blacks seem unthinkable). And loose their Hinduism, which second generation people just understand as "boaring rituals" (puja, etc.), temple visits and Indian (mythological) comic books ...

All such items add to the heady brew that we have seen emerging here...

Cheers, MW
Michael Witzel
Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, Harvard University
1 Bow Street , 3rd floor, Cambridge MA 02138
1-617-495 3295 Fax: 496 8571
direct line: 496 2990 http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm"