Includes index

"Hinduism in America: An Introduction is a concise introduction to the long history of religion in the encounter between America and India. It is not a book that will tell you what Hinduism is, rather it is an introduction to the variety of ways Hinduism has been represented, constructed, and practiced in the United States. Americans have been interested in the religions of India since the colonial period and, by the late nineteenth century, the first Hindu teachers arrived in the United States. Throughout the twentieth century, interest in Hinduism and yoga grew, even as anti-Asian and anti-immigrant politics and policies in America intensified.