California Hinduisms: The Shivalingam of Golden Gate Park, 1989–1994

ABSTRACT: This article examines the rise and fall of a Shivalingam shrine in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park during the 1990s, where Indian American inheritor and White American convert Hindus briefly converged in shared ritual practice. Drawing on media analysis and personal interviews, the article argues that such convergence was made possible by what is here termed “California Hinduism,” forged through a shared interest in showcasing lived Hinduism, a shared theology of divine immanence, an ethos of pluralism, and an emphasis on orthopraxy over orthodoxy. The shrine’s eventual dissolution highlights tensions between collectivist devotional practices and Tantra- inspired countercultural individualism. Using the concept of “White utopias,” this case illuminates both the possibilities and precarity of multiracial religious belonging, showing how the romantic exoticism that drew countercultural White converts to California Hinduism could also unravel it from within.