(RNS) — Vivek Ramaswamy, who got further than any other Hindu in his run for president and is a veteran of Charlie Kirk’s “Prove me wrong” campus colloquies, is no stranger to discussing religious beliefs. But earlier this month, Ramaswamy, challenged at a campus event to explain his faith, managed to displease Hindu Americans while confusing many others.

Ramaswamy, currently running for governor of Ohio, was appearing at a Montana State University forum sponsored by Kirk’s own Turning Point USA when an MSU student questioned Ramaswamy’s presence, given TPUSA’s Christian orientation and Ramaswamy’s “polytheistic” faith. 

Objecting that he is a monotheist, Ramaswamy offered a relatable, yet somewhat controversial, look into his Hindu worldview, according to the video of the moment, which went viral. “Do you believe in the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit?” Ramaswamy asked the student, who agreed. “And that doesn’t make you a polytheist, does it?”

He continued: “Every religion has its reconciling of the one and the many. And so, in my faith, I believe there’s one true God, he resides in all of us, and he appears in different forms, but it’s one true God. I’m an ethical monotheist.”

The son of Indian immigrants, Ramaswamy has long been open about his journey from agnostic child in a Hindu household to exploring the Bible while enrolled in a Jesuit high school to revitalizing his Hindu beliefs after the birth of his first son, Karthik. 

Many American Hindus applauded Ramaswamy’s succinct explanation of the Advaita philosophy of Hinduism’s Vedanta school, which holds that Brahman, the one, eternal, supreme spirit of reality, manifests through infinite forms of the Hindu gods. Others took issue with his oversimplification or argued against Ramaswamy’s “pandering” to the Western Christian framework.

Ramaswamy’s comparison to the concept of the Trinity had its doubters among Christians, too. “Comparing the Holy Trinity to your 330 million gods is blasphemous, disrespectful and a slap in the face to every Christian,” said Nalin Haley, the son of Nikki Haley, who became the first Indian American to serve in a presidential Cabinet, under Donald Trump in 2017, before running against him in 2024. 

“If you’re gonna run for governor in a state that is Christian,” said Nalin Haley, who like his mother is Christian, “have the decency to learn our faith and not slander it.” 

Ramaswamy himself quickly abandoned the religion lesson and instead brought the student on stage to make a point about freedom of religion. Asking the student to read the Constitution’s Article Four banning religious tests to hold public office, the candidate said, “What matters more than the differences in our faith is our shared value set.”

Perhaps sensing he’d come up short on his theology, he says, “I’m not running to be pastor of Ohio.”

The moment exemplified a challenge Hindus have long faced in the United States: how to explain their theologically diverse, often untranslatable belief systems to their neighbors, while remaining united as a religious group positioned against other traditions.

Lavanya Vemsani, a Hindu immigrant and professor of Indian history and religions at Ohio’s Shawnee State University, said that, for the MSU audience and under the circumstances, Ramaswamy “did the best job he could.”

“He could not go into the details of how Brahma (the creator deity) represents the universal vision (of Hinduism), and how gods represent these universal forces symbolizing Brahma,” she said. “He’s not speaking to an exclusive Hindu theological school.

“And even then,” she added, “it would be difficult, because we don’t understand ourselves either.”

The struggle to define Hinduism has existed since before Britain colonized India, said Vemsani, when outsiders referred to the people living in or near the Indus River valley as “Hindus.” When the British came along, they defined these Hindus’ spiritual traditions, which differed between households, languages and regions, using their own Protestant Christian lens. 

In reality, said Vemsani, Hinduism — coined as the name for a religion by an 18th-century British politician — has no dogma or required core beliefs. Ramaswamy’s monotheistic version of Hinduism, then, is no less Hindu than that of someone who identifies as polytheistic, or even nontheistic. (Or pluralistic: Many Hindus believe multiple truths and realities can exist simultaneously.)

But in the face of a culture that may denigrate idol worship or polytheism, said Vemsani, it’s understandable why American-born Hindus latch on to similarities with other faiths, rather than distinctions. “The second generation grew up with this Western imagination and lens on Hinduism, so that’s what they understand, and what they’re trying to explain,” she said. “It’s a (form of) colonialism again.”  

Ramaswamy’s use of Abrahamic language when speaking about Hinduism is not unique, says second-generation Indian American writer Vishal Ganesan. In the 18th century, reformers such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy, called the “father of the Indian renaissance,” created a “deistic, rationalist” form of the Hindu religion called the Brahmo Samaj, inspired by interactions with Unitarians in England and America. Roy, too, offered the Trinity as an analogy when talking to Westerners.

 ”There’s a pressure for immigrants, just like there was a pressure for these figures during the colonial era, to redefine their spiritual tradition in a way that they can engage in dialogue with other religious groups,” said Ganesan. “As a public figure and as someone who is prominent in especially the GOP in a state like Ohio, (Vivek), I think, feels his pressure acutely.”

Second-generation American Hindus, like other young Americans, attend temples more rarely or else practice their families’ “very specific ritual culture,” says Ganesan, himself a second-generation American born and raised in Texas.  

“It’s just as much about the disconnect we have from our parents as it is about the disconnect we have from mainstream American society. So, trying to think about that honestly, and being more fearless in our examination of that reality, is important.”

Many Hindu Americans are “retaking agency and defining the spiritual tradition for themselves,” he added, but he warned that it “is a very big challenge.”

Vemsani hopes the challenge of explaining Hinduism will get easier but said it will likely take decades to see the payoff. The good news, she said, is that “America is receptive. America is open to learning. Hopefully, in 10 to 20 years, people will be able to understand the complexity.”