For the Hazrati family, Christmas Day typically includes a lit-up tree, gifts and a dal lunch. 

But after the wrapping paper remnants were cleared from around the tree, the Punjabi Sikh family living in Jersey City, New Jersey, didn’t always know what the rest of the day should entail for a family like theirs — so a few years ago, they started spending Christmas Day at the local gurdwara, a place of assembly and worship for Sikhs. 

With no extended family nearby nor religious service to attend, and lacking the colorful parades that would flood India’s...

A United States court on Tuesday dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by the Hindu American Foundation against four activists and academic Audrey Truschke for two articles published in news website Al Jazeera.

The court noted that it “cannot plausibly infer that any of their [Truschke and others] statements were made with actual malice”.

The US-based Hindutva advocacy group had filed the lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on May 7 last year. Besides Truschke, it had sued Hindus for Human Rights co-founders Sunita...

Nearly two decades ago, at the age of 21, Gopal Patel moved into an ashram on the banks of the River Ganges to study the Bhagavad Gita, one of Hinduism’s foundational Scriptures.

One of just a handful of Indian students at a “very racist” high school in England, he said, Patel, now 39, found comfort in the epic conversation between the sacred text’s warrior prince Arjuna and the god Krishna.

“It made me go into myself and try to discern who I was as a person, my identity and my cultural background,” Patel said. “By the time I finished reading it, I was like, ‘I want...

Sheetal Deo was shocked when she got a letter from her Queens apartment building’s co-op board calling her Diwali decoration “offensive” and demanding she take it down.

“My decoration said ‘Happy Diwali’ and had a swastika on it,” said Deo, a physician, who was celebrating the Hindu festival of lights.

The equilateral cross with its legs bent at right angles is a millennia-old sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism that represents peace and good fortune, and was also used widely by Indigenous people worldwide in a similar vein.

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In Edison, New Jersey, a bulldozer, which has become a symbol of oppression of India’s Muslim minority, rolled down the street during a parade marking that country's Independence Day. At an event in Anaheim, California, a shouting match erupted between people celebrating the holiday and those who showed up to protest violence against Muslims in India.

Indian Americans from diverse faith backgrounds have peacefully co-existed stateside for several decades. But these recent events in the U.S. — and violent confrontations between some Hindus and Muslims last month in Leicester,...

The week dawned gloomily in New York, but the drab mist was little match for the holiday at hand: Diwali, the festival of lights that symbolizes the triumph over darkness.

Celebrated across South Asia in some fashion by Hindus, Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists, the multi-day festival has secured a sturdy foothold far from the subcontinent in places with significant diaspora populations — like New York.

“One thing I would say — the...

Many preparations go into the celebration of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, which starts Monday.

There’s cleaning and decorating the house, buying new clothes, visiting friends and family — and of course preparing and sharing food. And although the foods associated with Diwali vary from culture to culture, one central theme is snacks and sweets.

The holiday honors the goddess Lakshmi, goddess of prosperity. It celebrates light over darkness, new beginnings, and the triumph of good over evil.

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A Hindu rights activist is calling on a Massachusetts museum to stop selling children’s plush toys representing three Hindu deities, which he says are “insensitive.”

Toys depicting Lord Krishna, Lord Ganesh and Lord Hanuman were available on the Peabody Essex Museum’s online shop last week but had been removed by Tuesday, Rajan Zed, president of the Universal Society of Hinduism, said in a statement.

The deities are “greatly revered in Hinduism and were meant to be worshipped in temples or home shrines and not to be thrown around loosely on the floor, bathrooms,...

The India Day Parade featured a pretty standard lineup of festival fare.

A Bollywood actress waved to fans from the top of a handmade float. Indian flags fluttered in the breeze. Flashy cars and quirky ads (“Kidney donors are sexy,” read one) passed by.

Then, toward the middle of the caravan, came a small, yellow piece of construction equipment decorated with photos of India’s prime minister and a hard-line protégé who has been called “...

Three years ago, Abby Govindan, a Twitter personality and stand-up comic, was invited to perform at “Howdy Modi,” a rally featuring Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and then-President Donald Trump, held in her home city, Houston. 

After much deliberation, Govindan turned the appearance down. While it was a chance to perform at NRG Stadium in front of 50,000 fellow Indian Americans, Govindan didn’t want to show tacit support for the Indian politician whose name has become synonymous with Hindu nationalism.

“I...

Tucked away on a hill beyond a vast commercial landscape are the first two Dharmic temples to exist in the Midwestern state of Wisconsin.

The 22 acres that are home to the Hindu and Jain Temples of Wisconsin were situated in “the middle of nowhere” when they were built in 2001, according to Sarvesh Geddam, the secretary of the two congregations. Now, the area is laden with fast-food restaurants and surplus warehouses, and Pewaukee, a village next to Waukesha in Milwaukee’s far-west suburbs, has become home to two more groups: devotees of Shirdi Sai Baba, a 20th-century Hindu...

A recent study by researchers at Pennsylvania State University and Oklahoma State University has revealed that the majority of U.S. colleges and universities do not offer campus clubs or groups for Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, or Muslim students. 

The researchers assessed religious organizations at 1,953 four-year, not-for-profit colleges and universities. They found that 66 percent have no minority religious student group of any type. Buddhist and Hindu student groups each exist at only 5 percent of campuses. One-quarter of the schools have Jewish student organizations, and...

Over the course of two centuries, ayurveda — the ancient philosophy of the Indian subcontinent — has spread West, informing ideas about healthy lifestyles with holistic skin care, diet and exercise. The COVID-19 pandemic seems to have propelled ayurveda further into the mainstream, as housebound yogis, chefs and spa owners — believers, if not Hindus — percolated new techniques and businesses based on the practices developed since it began more than 3,000 years ago.

New York City has become a hub of the ayurveda trend, where the creative forces behind new ayurvedic restaurants...

As Pope Francis pays a historic visit to Canada, he is encountering a country that is less Catholic, more secular and more religiously diverse than the last time it hosted a pontiff two decades ago.

And the city where he landed on Sunday — Edmonton — reflects that diversity more than outsiders might expect from a provincial capital in Canada’s prairie heartland.

Edmonton and its province of Alberta do have a large, long-settled population of Christians of European descent.

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Dignitaries and devotees from across North America travelled to Newark Airport last month to welcome Acharya Shree Jitendriyapriyadasji Swamiji Maharaj of Maninagar, Gujarat, India.

The religious leader was beginning his inaugural visit to the United States and Canada since he became the spiritual leader of Maninagar Shree Swaminarayan Gadi Sansthan. He was accompanied by his team of 16 Eminent Sants, also known as monks.

Acharya Swamiji and his Sants are on a seven-week religious tour of the U.S. and...