| The number of Hindus in the United States dropped by almost a quarter between 2001 and 2008, according to a national survey of 544,000 American households.
The American Religious Identification Survey 2008 found that the number of people declaring themselves as Hindu dropped from 766,000 in 2001 to 582,000 in 2008. The same survey had earlier found that the Hindu population in 2001 tripled from 1990, when it stood at 227,000.
The decline in the latest survey is perplexing scholars and Hindu religious groups who point out that the Indian population in the United States rose almost 70 percent between 2001 and 2008. A separate survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life estimated that 0.4 percent of the American population was Hindu, which translates into approximately 1.2 million Hindus in America.
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