Hinduism

Hindus are today found virtually all over the world, as natives, as descendants of earlier migrants, or as relatively recent arrivals. South Asia is, however, where most Hindus have always lived, where their old and new sacred centers are located, and from where they have migrated elsewhere, carrying with them significant elements of their cultural heritage (including religion and languages). With an estimated population of more than 885 million (13% of the human mass), Hindus as the followers of a world religion occupy the third place, behind Christians and Muslims. Table 1 presents the 2010 estimates for 12 countries with a sizable number of Hindus.

It may be additionally noted here that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau data for 2007, there were 2.57 million Indians counted; it is reasonable to presume that the great majority of them, perhaps well over 1 million, are Hindus. Pakistan, all but 5% of whose population of 175 million consists of Muslims, would be another country with more than 1 million Hindus.

The character and antiquity of Hinduism have been subjects of scholarly debate, particularly in the recent past. It has been argued that Hinduism is not a religion in the sense in which Christianity or Islam is so. It does not have a founder, a revealed book, or a set of fundamentals of belief and practice. Given its subcontinental spread and the presence of regional, cultural, and linguistic diversities, people who are called Hindus by others, and who identify themselves as such in everyday life and at decennial census enumerations, usually display much diversity along regional, caste, and sectarian lines in matters of religious faith and practice. Hinduism is therefore more a family of religions rather than a single, homogeneous faith. The presence of common elements cannot, however, be denied.

Definitional features of particular religions (e.g., Christianity and Islam) should not, of course, set limits but may provide cues to what may be deemed to be the religious life of Hindus. Moreover, Hindu sects usually have the aforementioned characteristics of the Abrahamic religions. Actually, the Vedas too are regarded as revealed scripture by textual pundits, but the Brahmanical notion of revelation is different in the sense that “knowledge” (vidyā) is believed to have been recovered spiritually by the ancient sages rather than received externally by them through a messenger. More important, perhaps, is the fact that today Hindus generally have little acquaintance with the Vedas. If one were to abandon the narrow approach and adopt a more general criterion, such as the notion of the “sacred” or the “holy,” Hinduism is as much a religion as any other.

The internal plurality of Hinduism was conceptualized by the sociologist M. N. Srinivas in a three-tier model comprising local, regional, and all-India or Sanskritic Hinduism. The diversities are most prominent if one focuses on the local level, and the common elements, at the subcontinental level. Enough historical evidence is available about the upward and downward passage of elements of belief and practice to constitute a single but heterogeneous Hinduism.

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