Regarding Sri Aurobindo's withdrawal from the freedom struggle, he was already shown in visions in 1907 that India would be automatically liberated due to the fall of the British Empire after a war (and not due to Gandhi). If he had continued to publicly debate with Gandhi and influence the freedom struggle, the British who kept spies in Pondicherry to watch his every move right until the late 1930s would have put pressure on the French to get him deported back to British India.
You raise a valid question "why do some people dissociate from Hinduism" which deserves an anthropological study in itself.
IIRC, the Ramakrishna Mission sought to dissociate to gain tax benefits for minorities (right?)
As far as Americans as concerned, I see two reasons
1) Hinduism has had a bad brand image. It became identified with "cows caste curry" because of which they didn't feel like they should be identified with it (even though they drink its nectar). As India becomes more prosperous, it is possible that more people overseas would identify themselves as Hindus. Right now, Tulsi Gabbard is not shy on being known as a Hindu and there are also quite a few American men and women who take on Hindu names. Lets hope things change for the better.
On the other hand, Americans are quite willing to call themselves "Buddhist" because it doesn't have the same branding problem. Although there are plenty of poor and superstitious Tibetans, Americans tend to sympathize with Tibetan oppression and not feel repelled by it.
2) American culture tends to be free-wheeling and individualistic. Some Americans who take up Hinduism have already been to church in their childhood and ended up rejecting Christianity. Consequently, they don't want to be burdened with the membership of yet another "religion" in their adulthood.
Incidentally, you forgot to mention Peter Heehs, biographer of Sri Aurobindo and an inmate of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, who has gone further and claimed that Sri Aurobindo himself was a Hindu for only 12 years !
You are dodging the question after asking for evidence :-)
As far as I can see, some are Hindu in external form only, while others are Hindu in spirit. There is a whole spectrum of approaches to Hinduism which need to be understood instead of using black/white categories to label someone as Hindu or not-Hindu.
I won't digress from your main topic unless you want to continue this thread, but I had to ask my question since you seem to be promoting an inherent distrust of white women who turn to Hinduism which is not fair, because many of them are attracted to Hinduism after being repelled by rigidity of Abrahamic religions.
This is unfair to white men as well, against whom you don't seem to have any issues.
As far as the Mirra Alfassa is concerned, I have found that many Indian men (and in Sri Aurobindo's time, some of his male disciples as well) seem to resist accepting her spiritual stature after gaining cursory information about her. They eventually drop their inhibitions after learning more about her. Maybe some day you will undergo the same evolution.
