LUCKY SEVERSON (guest anchor): Next, the rising profile of Hinduism in the United States. New census figures show a sharp rise in the number of Asian-Indian immigrants to America. The vast majority of them are Hindus. At close to 1.5 million, they now form the fifth largest religious group, after Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism. Recently, the increased attention to Hinduism has come from a clash with an American icon -- McDonald's.

Fred de Sam Lazaro has our report.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Brij Sharma prays twice each day in his suburban Seattle home. In the kitchen that houses his altar, no meat is ever cooked. Sharma, like most Hindus, does not consume beef.

So he would seem an unlikely customer of McDonald's, the world's largest seller of beef. But he began going there in the early '90s after the chain announced it would stop using animal fat to prepare its fries.

MR. BRIJ SHARMA: I heard on TV that they will not use beef fat to cook the french fries, so after that I started eating french fries from McDonald's.

DE SAM LAZARO: But last year, McDonald's issued a clarification. Although it had switched to 100 percent vegetable oil, so-called natural ingredients added to the french fries do include a miniscule amount of beef flavoring -- much to Sharma's horror.

MR. SHARMA: For quite a long time, in the morning, I started vomiting.

DE SAM LAZARO: At the thought of it?

MR. SHARMA: At the thought of it. Because when in the morning, I'd go for my prayer, and that time I used to feel there is something wrong I have done in my life.

DE SAM LAZARO: To Hindus, the cow has been a revered figure, a bountiful animal that gives milk and butter. It was the favorite of Lord Krishna, one of Hinduism's most commonly revered deities, a symbol of love, the destroyer of evil.
Seattle attorney Harish Bharti, [a] Hindu and vegetarian himself, has taken up the cause of Sharma and perhaps others. He hopes to file a class-action suit on behalf of vegetarians and Hindus, who he says feel added insult.

MR. HARISH BHARTI (attorney): Think of somebody who is [an] animal lover or loves dogs and they found out that some corporation has been feeding them dog meat, or that a group of people have been fed a miniscule amount of human meat, in some product. How would that make people feel?

DE SAM LAZARO: Many Hindus in America feel the McDonald's lawsuit represents a coming of age, a growing self-confidence in this mostly first-generation immigrant community.

PROFESSOR SREENATH SREENIVASAN (Columbia University): The kind of attention that has been paid to this particular story we have never seen before. This is an American story, this is someone living in this country who is reacting to something so American as McDonald's, and that has caused everyone to sit up and pay attention.

DE SAM LAZARO: Most Hindus are immigrants from India. They began arriving in the U.S. in the mid-'60s. Many are doctors, engineers, and entrepreneurs, notably in the software business -- making them overall one of the most affluent ethnic groups in the nation.

For the first time last year, a Hindu priest delivered an invocation in the U.S. Congress.

But like many Hindu names, Hinduism itself has been difficult for the American public to grasp and, at times, to accept. New York gynecologist Uma Mysorekar remembers when the Ganesha temple, one of the oldest in North America, opened in Queens 25 years ago.

DR. UMA MYSOREKAR (gynecologist): A lot of residents around were totally unfamiliar with Hinduism. They couldn't understand the rituals that were being performed, and [there was] to some extent some mockery and a lot of vandalism the first five, six years.

DE SAM LAZARO: Dr. Mysorekar says things are fine now, thanks to a concerted effort to invite neighbors into the temple for celebrations and to demystify Hinduism and its seeming contradictions: believing in one supreme being while worshipping many deities.