Shortage of Hindu priests prompts women to take up the profession

Amid the noise and bustle of downtown Chicago, the groom rode a white horse, shaking to Indian drumbeats in procession to the Palmer House Hilton hotel.

Inside, the bride and groom took seats under thered mandap, or wedding canopy, and the priest began chanting in a high, melodic voice.

For some, the chants heard at the service last month sounded like a break from Hindu custom. Priests are traditionally men, but the presiding priest at this wedding was Shashi Tandon, a respected female elder in the Hindu community and the groom's grandmother.

Since emigrating from New Delhi in 1982, Tandon has presided over countless religious ceremonies for Hindu families in Chicago, Michigan, Wisconsin and elsewhere, filling a void that has emerged because of a shortage of Hindu priests.

As more Hindu men enter more lucrative, secular professions, Tandon and a handful of Hindu women in America have begun performing priestly duties as a way of passing their faith to the next generation.

There is nothing in Hindu scripture that bars women from becoming priests, also known as pandits.

But in some parts of India and the U.S., women priests face resistance from conservative Hindus clinging to tradition. Tandon, 68, a retired teacher with a feisty attitude, recalled a group of men mocking her at one wedding she performed. They asked, How can a woman be a priest?

"I said to them, 'I have a question for you. Can you tell me who gave birth to you?' " she said. "The mother is the true priest. She is the true teacher, the first teacher of the child."

Neelima Shukla-Bhatt, a South Asian studies professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, said more Hindu women are learning priestly functions not necessarily because they feel drawn to religious life. Rather, women—including Shukla-Bhatt—are stepping forward to meet the growing Hindu community's needs.

According to the American Religious Identification Survey, there were about 227,000 Hindus in the U.S. in 1990, composed mainly of Asian Indians. Today there are more than 1 million Hindus in the U.S. and more than 700 Hindu mandirs, or temples. The Chicago area is home to some 80,000 Hindus, according to a Chicago-based interfaith research group.

Although no firm numbers exist, Shukla-Bhatt said fewer Hindu-American men are becoming priests. In her own family, she noted that her father's cousins were all priests, yet none of their children took up the profession.

"At one time, it was considered prestigious, but now it is not considered prestigious at all," she said. "If you are educated, you do something more secular. It is considered to be a sign of less educated, less sophisticated, so not many educated people are interested in becoming priests."

Shukla-Bhatt said many of the earliest Hindu texts speak of women priests. In Hinduism's most ancient book, the Vedas, there are multiple references to women making sacrifices and participating in philosophical debates. But, at some point, things changed.

"It's not that women weren't allowed to do this. It's that somewhere along the line, it got lost, and it became mainly a male profession," she said. "But in the most ancient scriptures, there were women priests. So, we should reclaim that."