Hindu Lesson Plan--New Ways of Passing on the Religion to the Young Being Tried in U.S.

October 19, 2006

Author: DEEPTI JAJELA

Source: South Bend Tribune

Wire Service: AP

http://www.southbendtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061019/Lives05/610190473/-1/Lives/CAT=Lives05

It took coming to America for 13-year-old Samyuktha Shivraj to understand what it really meant to her to be Hindu.

Since she and her family arrived five years ago, they've been more observant about practicing their faith than they were in India, Samyuktha says. They regularly go to their temple in Queens, where she's a member of the youth club, and there are more conversations about what the prayers she's reciting really are saying.

"When I say those prayers now, I actually know what it means," the teen says. "It's not just a mundane ritual routine that I'm doing."

With an estimated 870 million followers around the planet and texts dating back thousands of years, Hinduism is one of the world's largest and most well-established religions. But with the vast majority of those followers still in India, there are parts of the world, such as the United States, where Hinduism is a relative unknown.