In June of 2006, Pres­i­dent of the US, Barack Oba­ma, said of his coun­try: "What­ev­er we once were, we are no longer a Chris­t­ian na­tion–at least not just. We are al­so a Jew­ish na­tion, a Mus­lim na­tion, a Bud­dhist na­tion and a Hin­du na­tion and a na­tion of non­be­liev­ers."

Oba­ma made a sim­i­lar state­ment in an e-mail re­sponse to CBN's David Brody in 2007: "What­ev­er we once were, we're no longer just a Chris­t­ian na­tion; we are al­so a Jew­ish na­tion, a Mus­lim na­tion, a Bud­dhist na­tion, a Hin­du na­tion and a na­tion of non­be­liev­ers." Here­un­der is an ar­ti­cle, "We are all Hin­dus now," writ­ten by Lisa Miller from Newsweek mag­a­zine, Au­gust 31 is­sue:

Amer­i­ca is not a Chris­t­ian na­tion. We are, it is true, a na­tion found­ed by Chris­tians and ac­cord­ing to a 2008 sur­vey, 76 per cent of us con­tin­ue to iden­ti­fy as Chris­t­ian (still, that's the low­est per­cent­age in Amer­i­can his­to­ry). Of course, we are not a Hin­du–or Mus­lim, or Jew­ish, or Wic­can–na­tion, ei­ther.

A mil­lion-plus Hin­dus live in the Unit­ed States, a frac­tion of the bil­lion who live on Earth. But re­cent poll da­ta show that con­cep­tu­al­ly, at least, we are slow­ly be­com­ing more like Hin­dus and less like tra­di­tion­al Chris­tians in the ways we think about God, our­selves, each oth­er and eter­ni­ty. The Rig Ve­da, the most an­cient Hin­du scrip­ture, says this: "Truth is One, but the sages speak of it by many names." A Hin­du be­lieves there are many paths to God. Je­sus is one way, the Qur'an is an­oth­er, and yo­ga prac­tice is a third. None is bet­ter than any oth­er; all are equal. The most tra­di­tion­al, con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians have not been taught to think like this. They learn in Sun­day school that their re­li­gion is true and oth­ers are false. Je­sus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Fa­ther ex­cept through me."

Amer­i­cans are no longer buy­ing it. Ac­cord­ing to a 2008 Pew Fo­rum sur­vey, 65 per cent of us be­lieve that "many re­li­gions can lead to eter­nal life"–in­clud­ing 37 per cent of white evan­gel­i­cals, the group most like­ly to be­lieve that sal­va­tion is theirs alone. Al­so, the num­ber of peo­ple who seek spir­i­tu­al truth out­side church is grow­ing.

Thir­ty per cent of Amer­i­cans call them­selves "spir­i­tu­al, not re­li­gious," ac­cord­ing to a 2009 Newsweek poll, up from 24 per cent in 2005. Stephen Prothero, re­li­gion pro­fes­sor at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty, has long framed the Amer­i­can propen­si­ty for "the di­vine-deli-cafe­te­ria re­li­gion" as "very much in the spir­it of Hin­duism. You're not pick­ing and choos­ing from dif­fer­ent re­li­gions, be­cause they're all the same," he says. "It isn't about or­tho­doxy. It's about what­ev­er works. If go­ing to yo­ga works, great–and if go­ing to Catholic Mass works, great, And if go­ing to Catholic Mass plus the yo­ga plus the Bud­dhist re­treat works, that's great too."

Then there's the ques­tion of what hap­pens when you die. Chris­tians tra­di­tion­al­ly be­lieve that bod­ies and souls are sa­cred, that to­geth­er they com­prise the "self" and that at the end of time they will be re­unit­ed in the Res­ur­rec­tion. You need both, in oth­er words, and you need them for­ev­er. Hin­dus be­lieve no such thing. At death, the body burns on a pyre, while the spir­it–where iden­ti­ty re­sides–es­capes. In rein­car­na­tion, cen­tral to Hin­duism, selves come back to Earth again and again in dif­fer­ent bod­ies. So here is an­oth­er way in which Amer­i­cans are be­com­ing more Hin­du: 24 per cent of Amer­i­cans say they be­lieve in rein­car­na­tion, ac­cord­ing to a 2008 Har­ris poll.

So ag­nos­tic are we about ul­ti­mate fates of our bod­ies that we're burn­ing them–like Hin­dus–af­ter death. More than a third of Amer­i­cans now choose cre­ma­tion, ac­cord­ing to the Cre­ma­tion As­so­ci­a­tion of North Amer­i­ca, up from six per cent in 1975. "I do think the more spir­i­tu­al role of re­li­gion tends to de-em­pha­sise some of the more stark­ly lit­er­al in­ter­pre­ta­tions of the Res­ur­rec­tion," agrees Di­ana Eck, pro­fes­sor of com­par­a­tive re­li­gion at Har­vard. So let us all say om.

Hin­duism has not on­ly cap­tured the imag­i­na­tion and fol­low­ing of Amer­i­cans, with­out the gun and bay­o­net, it has qui­et­ly spread its re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy across 125 coun­tries world­wide. Pre­vi­ous­ly on­ly coun­tries that im­port­ed In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers had pock­ets of Hin­dus. South Africa, Mau­ri­tius, Fi­ji, Suri­name, Guyana and T&T could boast of large pock­ets of Hin­du fol­low­ers. In all these coun­tries and es­pe­cial­ly T&T, every ef­fort was made by the State and colo­nial au­thor­i­ties to strip Hin­dus of their re­li­gion and cul­ture. Hin­dus were forced to aban­don their an­cient be­lief, cul­ture and God as a trade for west­ern ed­u­ca­tion. In T&T the Cana­di­an Pres­by­te­ri­ans were giv­en the task of "civil­is­ing the coolies."

To­day we are charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of tak­ing Hin­duism and its off-shoot, Bud­dhism (Lord Bud­dha is an Avatar of the Hin­du man­i­fest­ed Gods) to 125 coun­tries. Many of Hin­duism's great tem­ples are spread among the ma­jor cities of the world–Lon­don, Hawaii, across the US and Can-ada, Syd­ney and the Caribbean.

? Sat­narayan Ma­haraj is the sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the

Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha