MUMBAI, INDIA, JANUARY 8: They prefer to call this country Bharat, not India. Words like shakha, hindutva, dharma and samiti pramukh sanchalika roll off their tongues, thick with accents ranging from Birmingham to Durban. They are the latest batch of graduates — girls aged 15-25 — of the Rashtra Sevika Samiti camp held at Reshimbagh, the RSS headquarters in Nagpur. They learned about dharma, and say their greatest concern was conversion to Christianity or Islam. The camp, held between December 22 and January 5, was the second of its kind for NRI Hindu girls (the first was in 1997) and included participants from 11 countries: South Africa, England, Trinidad, Guyana, Fiji, Canada, Portugal, Denmark, Sri Lanka, USA and Kenya. Some had stopped over in Mumbai on their way home; they appeared totally sure of what they were doing and why they were here. “We wanted to learn about our Hindu dharma, our way of life.” What is the dharma? “To learn about Hinduism, the problems Hindus face and to unite all Hindu women of the world.” These are voices of the third- and fourth-generation Indians settled abroad, with now distant relatives in the Indian subcontinent.
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