Hinduism: A Religion That Doesn't Exist

Imagine if you will someone coming to Texas and seeing the variety of Christian faith in this state. We've got Catholics, Protestants, and a seeming overpopulation of Evangelicals. Upon seeing this, and seeing that we all share some beliefs in common, they declared all of us to be adherents to Texanism. They proceed to write books about it, and come up with methods of evangelizing all Texans (which has now become a religious term).

This is basically what Westerners have done with the religions of India. And, most Indians look think of us as being basically just as ridiculous as we would think someone who declared Texanism to be a religion.

Originally Sanskrit was the language of India. In Sanskrit, the name of the valley which birthed Indian culture was Sindhu. Later in world history this area was taken over by the Persians who couldn't say Sindhu very well, so they transliterated it to be the Hindu valley. Soon there after the Greeks who didn't speak Persian or Sanskrit, deemed it the Indos valley. And, a couple thousand years later, the English called it the Indus valley - which lead to the whole land being known as India.

When Islam began overrunning the Indian plain, they did not have much of a category for a pluralistic society. They expected that all religions would show some kind of basic doctrine, sort of like their own. Therefore Muslims could pick out the Buddhists who all shared the same basic beliefs, but they weren't quite sure what to do with everybody else. So, soon the Muslims had divided the people of India into Buddhists and non-Buddhists. Or Buddhists and everyone else in the land: and in borrowing the Persian name for the land, "everyone else" became Hindu.

Soon thereafter the colonial Brittish decided that they were tired of trading with India to get tea, and decided the best way to not have to trade was to take the whole place over. This lead to some interesting cultural encounters. And, this lead to one slight problem: since colonial Brittain wasn't known for esteeming cultures that they conquered, they didn't do a very good job of gaining a decent understanding of Indian culture or religion. Being the politically incorrect people that they were, they assumed the best place to get a working knowledge of Indian culture was from the Muslims whose belief system didn't strike the Brittish as being quite so horribly ridiculous as the gross paganism of the Indians. Soon all the English textbooks had adopted the Muslim opinion of Indian culture, and all religious non-Buddhist/non-Muslims in the area were deemed "Hindus".

Therefore, Indians didn't create Hinduism, Westerners did. And, when we speak of Hinduism, we may not realize it, but we are really speaking of a religion that doesn't exist. We made it up for our own ease, because in essence we're lazy and don't really care that much. Yet, unfortunately for us, our simplified categories do not necessarily share a direct correlation with reality.

When we speak of Hinduism, we are actually speaking or a conglomeration of hundreds of religions and philosophies that have accumulated over thousands of years in the Indus Valley. The interesting thing is that in spite of the varying religions, a similar culture is shared. This culture has a phenomenal capacity to integrate and absorb conflicting systems into one overarching paradigm. Of the hundreds of religions, most have some continuity in their origins, terminology, myths, piety, and guiding philosophies. But, that does not mean they are the same religion, or that they are all just sects of the same system. The "system" is a Western creation. We made it because we're too lazy to learn of the basics of 15 different major Hindu religions. It's much easier to say, "hey, they're all from the same spot, let's just lump them together".

So, the gist is: don't speak of Hinduism as though it is a religion. The term is established, and doesn't appear to be fading away. But, when using it realize you are mostly referring to geography and shared culture, not a religion.