7 facts about Hindus around the world
BY JONATHAN EVANS
RELIGIONS NEWS AGENCY (REDNA) – Every year, Hindus around the world celebrate Diwali, the festival of lights. The holiday lasts five days, and Indians mark it with gifts, prayers and many sources of light, including lamps, candles and fireworks. This Diwali, some Hindus also are celebrating the appointment of Rishi Sunak as the United Kingdom’s first Hindu prime minister.
With Diwali celebrations and Sunak’s transition underway, here are some facts about Hindus around the world, drawing on a Pew Research Center survey of India conducted in 2019-2020, our 2021 study of the religious composition of India, and other sources.
2 Nearly all Hindus in India celebrate Diwali, but many also celebrate Christmas. More than nine-in-ten Indian Hindus (95%) celebrate Diwali, while roughly one-in-five (17%) say they participate in Christmas festivities and 7% say they celebrate Muslim Eid, according to Pew Research Center’s 2019-2020 survey. (In the U.S., 95% of Indian American Hindus celebrate Diwali, according to a 2012 survey.)
Diwali is among the most popular religious holidays in India and is also celebrated by large majorities of the country’s Jains (98%), Sikhs (90%) and Buddhists (79%), as well as by substantial minorities of Christians (31%) and Muslims (20%).
4 Many Indian Hindus regularly perform puja – a worship practice that often involves prayer and giving offerings to deities. Most Hindus in India perform puja at home daily (55%). Fewer Hindus perform puja at temples daily (20%). Hindu women are much more likely than men to perform puja in their home daily (64% vs. 47%), but there is no gender gap when it comes to performing puja at temples (20% vs. 21%).
6 Hindus in the U.S. and Europe are among the most educated religious groups where they live. In the U.S., Hindu adults have an average of 15.7 years of formal schooling – a full year more than the next most highly educated U.S. religious group (Jews), and nearly three years more than the average American adult (12.9 years), according to a 2016 Pew Research Center analysis. Similarly, the average level of education among Hindus in the UK is greater than that of other British adults (13.9 years vs. 12.2 years). These differences reflect the fact that religious minorities often have more education, on average, than a country’s majority, particularly when the minority group is largely foreign born and comes from a distant country.
In India, Hindus are among the groups with the least education: 39% of Hindu adults have 10 or more years of schooling, compared with 48% of Sikhs and 47% of Christians, according to India’s 2019-2021 National Family Health Survey.
These beliefs about Indian national identity are strongly reflected in political views, and in levels of support for India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is sometimes said to prioritize Hindu interests. Roughly half of Hindus who say they voted in the country’s 2019 election say they voted for the BJP (49%), but support for the BJP is considerably higher among those who say both being Hindu and speaking Hindi are very important to be truly Indian (60%). Although this group of Hindu BJP voters may see a special place for Hindus in India, they are just as likely as other Hindus to say respecting other religions is crucial to being truly Indian.