Why People Who Practise Hinduism Are Shy to Say That They Are Hindus?

Take a look at the parts I have highlighted in red in the following article (taken from Hinduism Today). Isn't it rather sad to see many people, whom we trust should have known better, do not want to have anything to do with Hinduism, or even to be obliquely connected with Hinduism. They find, I feel, a disgrace or ignoble to be associated with anything even remotely linked with Hinduism and India.

In this league are Organisations and people like Ramakrishna Mission, Hare Krsnas, Deepak Chopra. 

Sri Daya Mata, President of Yogananda's Fellowship, Dies at 96

 

 

USA, December 3, 2010:  [HPI note: Though this report from the New York Times begins by calling the Self-Realization Fellowship an "influential Hindu group," the organization is not openly Hindu. One of our editors once called them to ask about that, and the answer was that no, the SRF did no teach Hinduism. Still, Parahamansa Yogananda's famous autobiography, consistently promoted by his disciples through the SRF, was instrumental in paving the way to Hinduism's place in the consciousness of modern America.]

 

Sri Daya Mata, who for more than five decades was the leader of one of the most influential Hindu groups in the United States and an ardent advocate of the healing power of meditation, died on Tuesday at the group's retreat for nuns in Los Angeles. She was 96.

 

From 1955 until her death, Sri Daya Mata -- her name means "true mother of compassion" in Sanskrit -- was the society's president and spiritual leader. In her flowing ocher sari, she presided over an organization that now has more than 600 temples, centers and retreats in 60 countries, about half of them in the United States. A spokesperson estimated that the society had "hundreds of thousands" of followers, but said she could not be more specific.

 

The society, whose monks and nuns adopt Indian names, teaches that there is a unifying truth behind all religious experience, and the group encourages its members to honor their roots in other faiths. 

 

For more than 20 years, Sri Daya Mata was one of Sri Yogananda's closest disciples, serving as his secretary and helping compile the detailed instructions on yoga meditation that the society distributed by mail order and his autobiography. In 1955, three years after Sri Yogananda died, she succeeded Rajarsi Janakananda as president of the society. As a spiritual successor to Sri Yogananda, she supervised the training of disciples who resided in ashrams around the world and the administration of the society's humanitarian services.

 

 

The above article is extracted from Hinduism Today