Hindu ( pronunciation ) can refer to either a religious or cultural identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. In common use today, it refers to an adherent of Hinduism. However, in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" has been used in places to denote persons professing any religion originated in India (i.e. Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism or Sikhism). Further, the terms Hindu or Hindi are also used as a cultural identity to denote people living on the other side of the Indus river, thus poets like Iqbal, ministers like M.C.Chagla and organisations like the RSS used the terms Hindu and Hindi to represent any person living on the other side of the Indus river, irrespective of religion.
The word Hindu is derived (through Persian) from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, the historic local name for the Indus River in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent (modern day Pakistan and Northern India). According to Gavin Flood, "The actual term Hindu first occurs as a Persian geographical term for the people who lived beyond the river Indus (Sanskrit: Sindhu)". The term Hindu then was a geographical term and did not refer to a religion.
The term Hindu was later used occasionally in some Sanskrit texts such as the later Rajataranginis of Kashmir (Hinduka, c. 1450). The Hindu religion (dharma) was set in apposition with Islam (turaka dharma) by poets such as Vidyapati, Kabir and Eknath. 16th- to 18th-century Bengali Gaudiya Vaishnava texts including Chaitanya Charitamrita and Chaitanya Bhagavata also made similar comparisons. Towards the end of the 18th century, the European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus. The term Hinduism was introduced into the English language in the 19th century to denote the religious, philosophical, and cultural traditions native to India.
With more than a billion adherents, Hinduism is the world's third largest religion after Christianity and Islam. The vast majority of Hindus, approximately 940 million, live in India. Other countries with large Hindu populations include Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Suriname, Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, United States, Fiji, United Kingdom, Singapore, Canada and the island of Bali in Indonesia.
Etymology
In origin, Hinduš was Old Persian name of the Indus River, cognate with Sanskrit word Sindhu. By about 2nd - 1st century BCE, the term "Hein-tu" was used by Chinese, for referring to North Indian people. The Persian term was loaned into Arabic as al-Hind referring to the land of the people who live across river Indus, and into Greek as Indos, whence ultimately English India.
History
The notion of grouping the indigenous religions of India under a single umbrella term Hindu emerges as a result of various invasions in India bringing forth non-indigenous religions such as Islam to the Indian Subcontinent Numerous Muslim invaders, such as Nader Shah, Mahmud of Ghazni, Ahmad ShÄh AbdÄlÄ«, Muhammad Ghori, Babur and Aurangzeb, destroyed Hindu temples and persecuted Hindus; some, such as Akbar, were more tolerant. Hinduism underwent profound changes, in large part due to the influence of the prominent teachers Ramanuja, Madhva and Chaitanya. Followers of the Bhakti Movement moved away from the abstract concept of Brahman, which the philosopher Adi Shankara consolidated a few centuries before, with emotional, passionate devotion towards what they believed as the more accessible Avatars, especially Krishna and Rama.
Indology as an academic discipline of studying Indian culture from a European perspective was established in the 18th century by Sir William Jones and 19th century, by scholars such as Max Müller and John Woodroffe. They brought Vedic, Puranic and Tantric literature and philosophy to Europe and the United States. At the same time, societies such as the Brahmo Samaj and the Theosophical Society attempted to reconcile and fuse Abrahamic and Dharmic philosophies, endeavouring to institute societal reform. This period saw the emergence of movements which, while highly innovative, were rooted in indigenous tradition. They were based on the personalities and teachings of individuals, as with Ramakrishna and Ramana Maharshi. Prominent Hindu philosophers, including Aurobindo and Prabhupada (founder of ISKCON), translated, reformulated and presented Hinduism's foundational texts for contemporary audiences in new iterations, attracting followers and attention in India and abroad.
Others, such as Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna, Paramahansa Yogananda, Sri Chinmoy, B.K.S. Iyengar and Swami Rama, have also been instrumental in raising the profiles of Yoga and Vedanta in the West. Today modern movements, such as ISKCON and the Swaminarayan Faith, attract a large amount of followers across the world.
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