ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the process and strategies of adaptation that are characteristic of Asian-Indian religious groups in the United States, and the goal is a typology of adaptive strategies. Five trajectories, models, or ideal types of adaptive strategies can be discerned among Asian-Indian religious groups and indeed among secular organizations as well. Five strategies of adaptation in evidence among Asian-Indian religious groups are: individual, national, ecumenical, ethnic and hierarchical. The length of residence for the Asian-Indian community as a whole is circumscribed by the change in the immigration law in 1965, which opened the United States to emigrants from India and other countries that had previously been effectively barred. Closely allied with, but not identical to, length of residence is increase in population density of Asian Indians in most urban centers. As population density increases, the adaptive strategies develop through the five patterns: individual, national, ecumenical, ethnic and hierarchical.
