When you first greet a Hindu, they may clasp their hands in prayer close to their heart, bow their head and say an old Sanskrit word.
Thrown around by many a Western yoga instructor and printed on overpriced tote bags, the word thought of as a colloquial greeting speaks, in reality, to an old philosophy’s defining warmth.
“‘Namaste’ is saying that the soul inside me and the soul inside you is same, irrespective of your gender, your caste or your color,” says Kapil Rajvanshi, an honorary board advisor who helps with community outreach at the Hindu Temple of Northeast Wisconsin in Kaukauna. “Your soul is the same pure soul that I have, and both our souls are part of the ultimate God.”
In Wisconsin, members of the vibrantly diverse religion “Hinduism” comprise a mere 1% of the state’s total population. Many Wisconsinites have never met a Hindu, and even fewer know the significance behind Hindu philosophy.
In spite of this, Wisconsin’s Hindus work hard to preserve their cultural values and educate others about the faith. They worship together, form temples and serve those in need — all while facing discrimination from outside the community and division from within.
“Hinduism” 101
As a descriptor of the many religious practices native to the Indian subcontinent, “Hinduism” (written then as Hindooism) was coined in the 18th century by British colonists and missionaries.
Prior to colonization, Hindus would identify themselves by their specific religious sects, locations and castes. The scriptural term for all Hindus is Sanātan Dharma, translating roughly to “Eternal Law.”
Hinduism is often said to be a polytheistic religion worshipping many Gods. But it is more accurately pluralistic, which means it accepts the coexistence of diverse religious beliefs. Hindus are typically tolerant of religious diversity, as Sanātan Dharma teaches there are many paths in this life, and that no particular religion claims ownership of the truth.
Deities within Hinduism are also all part of a universal Supreme Spirit — the same spirit to which Hindus believe humans, animals and all life on Earth belong.
“It’s like liking colors,” says Lalitha Murali, a teacher at Glen Hills Middle School near Milwaukee and devotee of Shiva, God of Destruction. “You might like green and I might like red … [but] it doesn’t matter which God you worship as long as you believe in one Supreme God.”
Finding Hindu community in Wisconsin
When Krish Narayanan came to Wisconsin in the summer of 1987, he quickly realized there was “hardly any Indian community — no temple, nothing” for him and his wife, Jayashree, to enjoy.
A decade afterward, Narayanan became part of a movement to build Wisconsin’s first Hindu temple, finding the plot of land on which the Hindu Temple of Wisconsin would eventually be built. In 2013, he broke away from the Hindu Temple of Wisconsin and began the process of building the Sri Lakshmi Narasimha Temple in the Milwaukee suburb of New Berlin.
The Hindu Temple of Wisconsin, in the Milwaukee suburb of Pewaukee, represents multiple Gods in its prayer space to be inclusive of many different faith traditions across South Asia.
But Narayanan had wanted a temple dedicated specifically to the worship of an avatar of Lord Vishnu named Narasimha, a half-man, half-lion who destroys evil. He hopes his temple can be a place for Narasimha worshippers across the Midwest to gather, sing songs, worship and sit with God.
“That’s one of the distinctions of our temple — that Lord Narasimha is unique, and there is no other temple [dedicated to him as the main shrine] within 1,000 miles,” Narayanan says.
Outside of the Indian-American diaspora, there are groups across Wisconsin for Hindus of different nationalities.
Krishna Sijapati is a Nepali Hindu who has lived in Wisconsin for almost 50 years. He is now the president of Madison’s Hindu Dharma Circle, a nonprofit serving the Hindu community regardless of race, religious sect or nationality.
While the organization includes everyone, Sijapati says one of its main functions is to do “almost everything to try and meet the needs of the Nepali community”: from hosting fundraisers to children’s cultural enrichment classes to satsangs, or spiritual gatherings.
“Any social activity, neighborhood or community service work, all those things, Hindu Dharma Circle does,” he says.
Hindu Dharma Circle is currently based in the Neighborhood House Community Center, just off of Regent Street in Madison. The community wants a temple of its own one day, but right now it lacks the funds to be able to do so.
That doesn’t stop Sijapati from making their space one of celebration.
People often ask him, “Oh, I have my birthday next week, can I come to temple, can I invite people?” Or, “I need to do the wedding of my daughter [and] there is no place … can I arrange things here?’
He says the answer is always yes.
Wisconsin’s Hindu temples and faith-based organizations play a vital role in promoting cultural, educational and social services for Hindus and non-Hindus alike. To perform selfless acts in service of others, Hindus believe, is a tenet of basic humanity known as sevā/sewa.
The Hindu organization Sewa International is named after this core principle. Created to advance various humanitarian causes, the nonprofit is present around the world, with a U.S. branch and chapter in Milwaukee.
“We see God in the human beings around us, so we believe service to man is service to God.”
When Anu Kelkar came to Wisconsin with her family in 2004, her husband, Shriram, was robbed while working in downtown Milwaukee. The incident inspired the couple to get further involved in social service work by providing educational opportunities for disadvantaged youth in their community, Kelkar says.
“If [the next generation is] educated, then all these problems we typically see in the inner city — any type of crime, any type of theft — would automatically reduce,” Kelkar says. “You give them a pen in their hand instead of a sword.”
The Kelkar family has hosted multiple free chess tournaments and STEM workshops, as well as free and reduced-cost nutritional concession stands for children across Milwaukee schools since then.
Alongside Murali and more than 3,000 volunteers across the U.S., they participate in Sewa Diwali, a yearly international charity drive that takes place during the Hindu festival of lights.
Nationally, volunteers have distributed nearly 3 million pounds of food to pantries, homeless shelters and refugee organizations across more than 30 states since Sewa Diwali’s founding in 2018.
“We see God in the human beings around us, so we believe service to man is service to God,” Kelkar says. “Our basic essence is Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, that this world is one family.”
A shifting tide
As one of the highest-earning ethnoreligious groups in the country and a growing political force, Asian American Hindus are often seen as privileged in comparison to other minorities.
While income data backs up this notion, the stereotype can obfuscate serious struggles Hindu Americans face as a predominantly brown-skinned and historically persecuted religious minority.
The 2024 Indian American Attitudes Survey, for example, notes that one in every two Indian Americans report experiencing discrimination in the past year; 55% of these survey respondents were Hindus.
Studies also show that white supremacist groups are increasingly targeting and advocating for violence against Hindus, particularly on online sites like 4chan. More than 15 Hindu temples in the U.S. report having been shot up, burglarized or desecrated since the beginning of 2022.
Murali still remembers the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. She recalls people coming to her family’s house, smashing their car windshields in and calling them “terrorists.” Now, other brown parents often come to her needing help, saying their children are getting bullied by classmates.
These experiences, which she says follow brown people wherever they go, are part of the reason Murali believes going to temple is so important.
“When your kids see there are other kids like them or other people who are similar to their parents, they feel like, ‘Oh, I belong to this group,’” Murali says. “This is one venue for us to pray to God and meet our like-minded people.”
Diversity within the Hindu faith doesn’t always lend itself to like-mindedness in its worshippers. Kaeya Kapoor, an ethnic Hindu from California who attends UW–Madison, says their family was “boycotted” by fellow Hindu community members after Kapoor was outed as lesbian.
And Thenmozhi Soundararajan, an American activist against the multinational, multifaith hereditary caste system which originated in Hindu scripture, presented a report at UW–Madison that found 25% of U.S. Dalits — members of South Asia’s most historically oppressed caste — report having been verbally or physically assaulted due to casteism, or caste-based discrimination.
Regardless of these challenges, Wisconsin Hindus are reinvigorated in their goal to pass down ethnoreligious traditions to the new, more Americanized generation of Hindus. It is a struggle of how to preserve one’s culture in an alien nation that they emphasize again and again.
“Ignorance is very, very dangerous,” Rajvanshi says. “The responsibility of all of us as Hindus is to not only teach the next generation our traditions, rituals and festivals, but also to reason it out so they never get influenced by others to say, ‘Oh, this is a stupid thing.’”
Mandir Mania
The evolution of Hindu Temples in Wisconsin
Wisconsin is home to a small number of diverse Hindu temples, or Mandirs — the places where followers of Dharmic traditions gather to pray, find and serve community members, and celebrate cultural heritage. But for most of the state’s 177-year history, there were no Hindu temples in Wisconsin at all. Click through this timeline to learn how Hindus have shaped Wisconsin’s religious landscape into what it is today.
In service of man
Wisconsin’s Hindus share with Curb how they help those in need across the state and beyond
Sreejita Patra spoke to Hindus across Wisconsin who often emphasized community service as a key part of their Hindu faith. Click the interactive slide show below to hear what they had to say in their own words, and to put faces to the names of some members in this growing Wisconsin community.
Click here to interact with the presentation:
SLIDESHOW BY SREEJITA PATRA. PHOTOS BY MARY BOSCH AND SREEJITA PATRA
Feature photo: Jayashree Narayanan, a founder of New Berlin’s Sri Lakshmi Narasimha Temple, serves food to members of the All India Visually Impaired Talents Association. The performers visited the temple and sang devotional bhajans, or worship songs Sept. 21. Photo by Mary Bosch