Hinduism

Hindus (Hindustani: [ˈɦɪndu] (About this soundlisten)) are bodies who attention themselves as culturally, ethnically, or religiously adhering to aspects of Hinduism.[49][50] Historically, the appellation has additionally been acclimated as a geographical, cultural, and afterwards religious identifier for bodies active in the Indian subcontinent.[51][52]

The absolute acceptation of the appellation Hindu has acquired with time. Starting with the Persian and Greek references to the acreage of the Indus in the 1st millennium BCE through the texts of the medieval era,[53] the appellation Hindu adumbrated a geographic, indigenous or cultural identifier for bodies active in the Indian subcontinent about or above the Sindhu (Indus) river.[54] By the 16th century, the appellation began to accredit to association of the subcontinent who were not Turkic or Muslims.[54][a][b] Hindoo is an age-old spelling variant, whose use today may be advised derogatory.[55][56]

The absolute development of Hindu self-identity aural the bounded Indian population, in a religious or cultural sense, is unclear.[51][57] Competing theories accompaniment that Hindu character developed in the British colonial era, or that it may acquire developed post-8th aeon CE afterwards the Islamic aggression and medieval Hindu-Muslim wars.[57][58][59] A faculty of Hindu character and the appellation Hindu appears in some texts anachronous amid the 13th and 18th aeon in Sanskrit and Bengali.[58][60] The 14th- and 18th-century Indian poets such as Vidyapati, Kabir and Eknath acclimated the byword Hindu dharma (Hinduism) and assorted it with Turaka dharma (Islam).[57][61] The Christian abbot Sebastiao Manrique acclimated the appellation 'Hindu' in religious ambience in 1649.[62] In the 18th century, the European merchants and colonists began to accredit to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus, in adverse to Mohamedans for Turks, Mughals and Arabs afterward Islam.[51][54] By the mid-19th century, colonial orientalist texts added acclaimed Hindus from Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains,[51] but the colonial laws connected to accede all of them to be aural the ambit of the appellation Hindu until about mid-20th century.[63] Advisers accompaniment that the custom of appropriate amid Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs is a avant-garde phenomenon.[64][65]

At added than 1.2 billion,[66] Hindus are the world's third better accumulation afterwards Christians and Muslims. The all-inclusive majority of Hindus, about 966 actor (94.3% of apple Hindu population), alive in India, according to India's 2011 census.[67] Afterwards India, the abutting 9 countries with the better Hindu populations are, in abbreviating order: Nepal, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, United States, Malaysia, United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom. [68] These calm accounted for 99% of the world's Hindu population, and the absolute nations of the apple calm had about 6 actor Hindus in 2010.[68]

Etymology

Further information: Hinduism

The chat Hindu is an exonym.[69][70] This chat Hindu is acquired from the Indo-Aryan[71] and Sanskrit[71][53] chat Sindhu, which agency "a ample anatomy of water", accoutrement "river, ocean".[72][c] It was acclimated as the name of the Indus River and additionally referred to its tributaries. The absolute appellation 'hindu' aboriginal occurs, states Gavin Flood, as "a Persian bounded appellation for the bodies who lived above the river Indus (Sanskrit: Sindhu)",[53] added accurately in the 6th-century BCE inscription of Darius I.[73] The Punjab region, alleged Sapta Sindhu in the Vedas, is alleged Hapta Hindu in Zend Avesta. The 6th-century BCE inscription of Darius I mentions the arena of Hi[n]dush, apropos to northwestern India.[73][74][75] The bodies of India were referred to as Hinduvān (Hindus) and hindavī was acclimated as the adjective for Indian in the 8th aeon argument Chachnama.[75] The appellation 'Hindu' in these age-old annal is an ethno-geographical appellation and did not accredit to a religion.[53][76] The Arabic agnate Al-Hind additionally referred to the country of India.[77][73]

Hindu ability in Bali, Indonesia. The Krishna-Arjuna carve aggressive by the Bhagavad Gita in Denpasar (top), and Hindu dancers in acceptable dress.

Among the age-old accustomed annal of 'Hindu' with connotations of adoration may be in the 7th-century CE Chinese argument Almanac of the Western Regions by the Buddhist academic Xuanzang. Xuanzang uses the transliterated appellation In-tu whose "connotation overflows in the religious" according to Arvind Sharma.[73] While Xuanzang appropriate that the appellation refers to the country alleged afterwards the moon, accession Buddhist academic I-tsing contradicted the cessation adage that In-tu was not a accustomed name for the country.[75]

Al-Biruni's 11th-century argument Tarikh Al-Hind, and the texts of the Delhi Sultanate aeon use the appellation 'Hindu', area it includes all non-Islamic bodies such as Buddhists, and retains the ambiguity of actuality "a arena or a religion".[73] The 'Hindu' association occurs as the baggy 'Other' of the Muslim association in the cloister chronicles, according to Romila Thapar.[78] Wilfred Cantwell Smith addendum that 'Hindu' retained its bounded advertence initially: 'Indian', 'indigenous, local', about 'native'. Slowly, the Indian groups themselves started application the term, appropriate themselves and their "traditional ways" from those of the invaders.[79]

The argument Prithviraj Raso, by Chanda Baradai, about the 1192 CE defeat of Prithviraj Chauhan at the easily of Muhammad Ghori, is abounding of references to "Hindus" and "Turks", and at one stage, says "both the religions acquire fatigued their arced swords;" however, the date of this argument is cryptic and advised by best advisers to be added recent.[80] In Islamic literature, 'Abd al-Malik Isami's Persian work, Futuhu's-salatin, composed in the Deccan in 1350, uses the chat 'hindi' to beggarly Indian in the ethno-geographical faculty and the chat 'hindu' to beggarly 'Hindu' in the faculty of a addict of the Hindu religion".[80] The artist Vidyapati's composition Kirtilata contrasts the cultures of Hindus and Turks (Muslims) in a burghal and concludes "The Hindus and the Turks alive abutting together; Anniversary makes fun of the other's adoration (dhamme)."[81] One of the age-old uses of chat 'Hindu' in religious ambience in a European accent (Spanish), was the advertisement in 1649 by Sebastiao Manrique.[62]

Other arresting mentions of 'Hindu' accommodate the epigraphical inscriptions from Andhra Pradesh kingdoms who battled aggressive amplification of Muslim dynasties in the 14th century, area the chat 'Hindu' partly implies a religious character in adverse to 'Turks' or Islamic religious identity.[82] The appellation Hindu was afterwards acclimated occasionally in some Sanskrit texts such as the afterwards Rajataranginis of Kashmir (Hinduka, c. 1450) and some 16th- to 18th-century Bengali Gaudiya Vaishnava texts, including Chaitanya Charitamrita and Chaitanya Bhagavata. These texts acclimated it to adverse Hindus from Muslims who are alleged Yavanas (foreigners) or Mlecchas (barbarians), with the 16th-century Chaitanya Charitamrita argument and the 17th-century Bhakta Mala argument application the byword "Hindu dharma".[60]

Terminology

Hindus at Har Ki Pauri, Haridwar abreast river Ganges in Uttarakhand accompaniment of India.

Medieval-era acceptance (8th to 18th century)

One of the age-old but cryptic uses of the chat Hindu is, states Arvind Sharma, in the 'Brahmanabad settlement' which Muhammad ibn Qasim fabricated with non-Muslims afterwards the Arab aggression of northwestern Sindh arena of India, in 712 CE. The appellation 'Hindu' meant bodies who were non-Muslims, and it included Buddhists of the region.[83] In the 11th-century argument of Al Biruni, Hindus are referred to as "religious antagonists" to Islam, as those who acquire in rebirth, presents them to authority a assortment of beliefs, and seems to oscillate amid Hindus captivation a centralist and pluralist religious views.[83] In the texts of Delhi Sultanate era, states Sharma, the appellation Hindu charcoal cryptic on whether it agency bodies of a arena or religion, giving the archetype of Ibn Battuta's account of the name "Hindu Kush" for a abundance ambit in Afghanistan. It was so called, wrote Ibn Battuta, because abounding Indian disciplinarian died there of snow cold, as they were marched above that abundance range. The appellation Hindu there is clashing and could beggarly bounded arena or religion.[84]

The appellation Hindu appears in the texts from the Mughal Authority era. It broadly refers to non-Muslims. Pashaura Singh states, "in Persian writings, Sikhs were admired as Hindu in the faculty of non-Muslim Indians".[85] Jahangir, for example, alleged the Sikh Authority Arjan a Hindu:[86]

There was a Hindu alleged Arjan in Gobindwal on the banks of the Beas River. Pretending to be a airy guide, he had won over as admirers abounding addled Indians and alike some ignorant, brainless Muslims by broadcasting his claims to be a saint. [...] Aback Khusraw chock-full at his residence, [Arjan] came out and had an account with [Khusraw]. Giving him some elementary airy precepts best up actuality and there, he fabricated a mark with saffron on his forehead, which is alleged qashqa in the argot of the Hindus and which they accede lucky. [...]

— Emperor Jahangir, Jahangirnama, 27b-28a (Translated by Wheeler Thackston)[87][d]

Colonial-era acceptance (18th to 20th century)

The administration of Indian religions in British India (1909). The high map shows administration of Hindus, the lower of Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs.

During the colonial era, the appellation Hindu had connotations of built-in religions of India, that is religions added than Christianity and Islam.[88] In aboriginal colonial era Anglo-Hindu laws and British India cloister system, the appellation Hindu referred to bodies of all Indian religions as able-bodied as two non-Indian religions: Judaism and Zoroastrianism.[88] In the 20th-century, claimed laws were formulated for Hindus, and the appellation 'Hindu' in these colonial 'Hindu laws' activated to Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs in accession to denominational Hindus.[63][e]

Beyond the agreement of British law, colonial orientalists and decidedly the affecting Asiatick Researches founded in the 18th century, afterwards alleged The Asiatic Society, initially articular aloof two religions in India – Islam, and Hinduism. These orientalists included all Indian religions such as Buddhism as a subgroup of Hinduism in the 18th century.[51] These texts alleged followers of Islam as Mohamedans, and all others as Hindus. The text, by the aboriginal 19th century, began adding Hindus into abstracted groups, for agenda studies of the assorted beliefs. Amid the age-old agreement to arise were Seeks and their College (later spelled Sikhs by Charles Wilkins), Boudhism (later spelled Buddhism), and in the 9th aggregate of Asiatick Researches address on religions in India, the appellation Jainism accustomed notice.[51]

According to Pennington, the agreement Hindu and Hinduism were appropriately complete for colonial studies of India. The assorted sub-divisions and break of subgroup agreement were affected to be aftereffect of "communal conflict", and Hindu was complete by these orientalists to betoken bodies who adhered to "ancient absence backbreaking religious basement of India", states Pennington.[51] Followers of added Indian religions so articular were afterwards referred Buddhists, Sikhs or Jains and acclaimed from Hindus, in an afraid two-dimensional manner, with Hindus and Hinduism banal as aberrant acceptable and others as rational ameliorate religions. However, these mid-19th-century letters offered no adumbration of doctrinal or ritual differences amid Hindu and Buddhist, or added anew complete religious identities.[51] These colonial studies, states Pennigton, "puzzled endlessly about the Hindus and acutely scrutinized them, but did not catechize and abhorred advertisement the practices and adoration of Mughal and Arabs in South Asia", and generally relied on Muslim advisers to characterise Hindus.[51]

Contemporary usage

A adolescent Nepali Hindu addict during a acceptable adoration commemoration at Kathmandu's Durbar Square

In abreast era, the appellation Hindus are individuals who analyze with one or added aspects of Hinduism, whether they are practising or non-practicing or Laissez-faire.[91] The appellation does not accommodate those who analyze with added Indian religions such as Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism or assorted animist affiliated religions begin in India such as Sarnaism.[92][93] The appellation Hindu, in abreast parlance, includes bodies who acquire themselves as culturally or ethnically Hindu rather than with a anchored set of religious behavior aural Hinduism.[49] One charge not be religious in the basal sense, states Julius Lipner, to be accustomed as Hindu by Hindus, or to call oneself as Hindu.[94]

Hindus subscribe to a assortment of account on adherence and traditions, but acquire no ecclesiastical order, no absolute religious authorities, no administering body, nor a audible founding prophet; Hindus can accept to be polytheistic, pantheistic, monotheistic, monistic, agnostic, agnostic or humanist.[95][96][97] Because of the advanced ambit of traditions and account covered by the appellation Hinduism, accession at a absolute analogue is difficult.[53] The adoration "defies our admiration to ascertain and assort it".[98] A Hindu may, by his or her choice, draw aloft account of added Indian or non-Indian religious anticipation as a resource, chase or advance his or her claimed beliefs, and still analyze as a Hindu.[49]

In 1995, Chief Justice P. B. Gajendragadkar was quoted in an Indian Supreme Cloister ruling:[99][100]

When we anticipate of the Hindu religion, clashing added religions in the world, the Hindu adoration does not affirmation any one prophet; it does not adoration any one god; it does not subscribe to any one dogma; it does not acquire in any one abstract concept; it does not chase any one set of religious rites or performances; in fact, it does not arise to amuse the attenuated acceptable appearance of any adoration or creed. It may broadly be declared as a way of action and annihilation more.

Although Hinduism contains a ample ambit of philosophies, Hindus allotment abstract concepts, such as but not attached to dharma, karma, kama, artha, moksha and samsara, alike if anniversary subscribes to a assortment of views.[101] Hindus additionally acquire aggregate texts such as the Vedas with anchored Upanishads, and accustomed ritual grammar (Sanskara (rite of passage)) such as rituals during a bells or aback a babyish is built-in or burial rituals.[102][103] Some Hindus go on crusade to aggregate sites they accede spiritually significant, convenance one or added forms of bhakti or puja, bless belief and epics, above festivals, adulation and account for authority and family, and added cultural traditions.[101][104] A Hindu could:

follow any of the Hindu schools of philosophy, such as Advaita (non-dualism), Vishishtadvaita (non-dualism of the able whole), Dvaita (dualism), Dvaitadvaita (dualism with non-dualism), etc.[105][106]

follow a attitude centred on any accurate anatomy of the Divine, such as Shaivism, Vaishnavism, Shaktism, etc.[107]

practice any one of the assorted forms of yoga systems in adjustment to accomplish moksha – that is abandon in accepted action (jivanmukti) or conservancy in after-life (videhamukti);[108]

practice bhakti or puja for airy reasons, which may be directed to one's authority or to a all-powerful image.[109] A arresting accessible anatomy of this convenance is adoration afore an idol or statue. Jeaneane Fowler states that non-Hindu assemblage generally abash this convenance as "stone or idol-worship and annihilation above it", while for abounding Hindus, it is an angel which represents or is allegorical appearance of a airy Absolute (Brahman).[109] This convenance may focus on a metal or bean statue, or a accurate image, or a linga, or any commodity or timberline (pipal) or beastly (cow) or accoutrement of one's profession, or aurora or announcement of attributes or to annihilation at all, and the convenance may absorb meditation, japa, offerings or songs.[109][110] Inden states that this convenance agency altered things to altered Hindus, and has been misunderstood, biased as idolatry, and assorted rationalisations acquire been complete by both Western and built-in Indologists.[111]

Disputes

In the Constitution of India, the chat "Hindu" has been acclimated in some places to denote bodies professing any of these religions: Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism or Sikhism.[112] This about has been challenged by the Sikhs[92][113] and by neo-Buddhists who were aforetime Hindus.[114] According to Sheen and Boyle, Jains acquire not objected to actuality covered by claimed laws termed beneath 'Hindu',[114] but Indian courts acquire accustomed that Jainism is a audible religion.[115]

The Republic of India is in the appropriate bearings that the Supreme Cloister of India has again been alleged aloft to ascertain "Hinduism" because the Constitution of India, while it prohibits "discrimination of any citizen" on area of adoration in commodity 15, commodity 30 foresees appropriate rights for "All minorities, whether based on adoration or language". As a consequence, religious groups acquire an absorption in actuality recognised as audible from the Hindu majority in adjustment to authorize as a "religious minority". Thus, the Supreme Cloister was affected to accede the catechism whether Jainism is allotment of Hinduism in 2005 and 2006.

History of Hindu identity

Part of a alternation on

Hinduism

1 Om.svg

HindusHistory

Origins[show]

Main traditions[show]

Deities[show]

Concepts[show]

Practices[show]

Philosophical schools[show]

Gurus, saints, philosophers[show]

Texts[show]

Society[show]

Other topics[show]

Glossary of Hinduism terms

Aum Om red.svg Hinduism aperture HinduSwastika.svg

vte

Starting afterwards the 10th aeon and decidedly afterwards the 12th aeon Islamic invasion, states Sheldon Pollock, the political acknowledgment alloyed with the Indic religious ability and doctrines.[58] Temples committed to celestial Rama were congenital from arctic to south India, and textual annal as able-bodied as hagiographic inscriptions began comparing the Hindu ballsy of Ramayana to bounded kings and their acknowledgment to Islamic attacks. The Yadava baron of Devagiri alleged Ramacandra, for archetype states Pollock, is declared in a 13th-century almanac as, "How is this Rama to be described.. who freed Varanasi from the mleccha (barbarian, Turk Muslim) horde, and congenital there a aureate temple of Sarngadhara".[58] Pollock addendum that the Yadava baron Ramacandra is declared as a addict of celestial Shiva (Shaivism), yet his political achievements and temple architectonics advocacy in Varanasi, far from his kingdom's area in the Deccan region, is declared in the absolute annal in Vaishnavism agreement of Rama, a celestial Vishnu avatar.[58] Pollock presents abounding such examples and suggests an arising Hindu political character that was ashore in the Hindu religious argument of Ramayana, one that has connected into the avant-garde times, and suggests that this celebrated action began with the accession of Islam in India.[116]

Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya has questioned the Pollock approach and presented textual and inscriptional evidence.[117] According to Chattopadhyaya, the Hindu character and religious acknowledgment to Islamic aggression and wars developed in altered kingdoms, such as wars amid Islamic Sultanates and the Vijayanagara commonwealth (Karnataka), and Islamic raids on the kingdoms in Tamil Nadu. These wars were declared not aloof application the allegorical adventure of Rama from Ramayana, states Chattopadhyaya, the medieval annal acclimated a advanced ambit of religious apologue and belief that are now advised as allotment of Hindu literature.[59][117] This actualization of religious with political analogue began with the aboriginal Muslim aggression of Sindh in the 8th aeon CE, and agitated 13th aeon onwards. The 14th-century Sanskrit text, Madhuravijayam, a account accounting by Gangadevi, the wife of Vijayanagara prince, for archetype describes the after-effects of war application religious terms,[118]

I actual abundant complaining for what happened to the groves in Madhura,

The attic copse acquire all been cut and in their abode are to be seen,

  rows of adamant spikes with animal skulls dangling at the points,

In the highways which were already absorbing with anklets complete of admirable women,

  are now heard ear-piercing noises of Brahmins actuality dragged, apprenticed in iron-fetters,

The amnion of Tambraparni, which were already white with sandal paste,

  are now abounding red with the claret of beasts collapsed by miscreants,

Earth is no best the ambassador of wealth, nor does Indra accord appropriate rains,

The God of afterlife takes his disproportionate assessment of what are larboard lives if actual by the Yavanas [Muslims],[119]

The Kali age now deserves centermost congratulations for actuality at the acme of its power,

gone is the angelic learning, hidden is refinement, hushed is the articulation of Dharma.

— Madhuravijayam, Translated by Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya[118]

The historiographic writings in Telugu accent from the 13th- and 14th-century Kakatiya absolutism aeon presents a agnate "alien added (Turk)" and "self-identity (Hindu)" contrast.[120] Chattopadhyaya, and added scholars,[121] accompaniment that the aggressive and political attack during the medieval era wars in Deccan peninsula of India, and in the arctic India, were no best a adventure for sovereignty, they embodied a political and religious acrimony adjoin the "otherness of Islam", and this began the absolute action of Hindu character formation.[59][f]

Andrew Nicholson, in his analysis of scholarship on Hindu character history, states that the colloquial abstract of Bhakti movement sants from 15th to 17th century, such as Kabir, Anantadas, Eknath, Vidyapati, suggests that audible religious identities, amid Hindus and Turks (Muslims), had formed during these centuries.[122] The balladry of this aeon contrasts Hindu and Islamic identities, states Nicholson, and the abstract vilifies the Muslims accompanying with a "distinct faculty of a Hindu religious identity".[122]

Hindu character amidst added Indian religions

Hindus adulatory their above festivals, Holi (top) and Diwali.

Scholars accompaniment that Hindu, Buddhist and Jain identities are retrospectively-introduced avant-garde constructions.[65] Inscriptional affirmation from the 8th aeon onwards, in regions such as South India, suggests that medieval era India, at both aristocratic and folk religious practices level, acceptable had a "shared religious culture",[65] and their aggregate identities were "multiple, layered and fuzzy".[123] Alike amid Hinduism denominations such as Shaivism and Vaishnavism, the Hindu identities, states Leslie Orr, lacked "firm definitions and bright boundaries".[123]

Overlaps in Jain-Hindu identities acquire included Jains admiration Hindu deities, intermarriages amid Jains and Hindus, and medieval era Jain temples featuring Hindu religious icons and sculpture.[124][125][126] Above India, on Java island of Indonesia, absolute annal adjure to marriages amid Hindus and Buddhists, medieval era temple architectonics and sculptures that accompanying absorb Hindu and Buddhist themes,[127] area Hinduism and Buddhism alloyed and functioned as "two abstracted paths aural one all-embracing system", according to Ann Kenney and added scholars.[128] Similarly, there is an amoebic affiliation of Sikhs to Hindus, states Zaehner, both in religious anticipation and their communities, and about all Sikhs' ancestors were Hindus.[129] Marriages amid Sikhs and Hindus, decidedly amid Khatris, were frequent.[129] Some Hindu families brought up a son as a Sikh, and some Hindus appearance Sikhism as a attitude aural Hinduism, alike admitting the Sikh acceptance is a audible religion.[129]

Julius Lipner states that the custom of appropriate amid Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs is a avant-garde phenomena, but one that is a acceptable abstraction.[64] Appropriate Indian traditions is a adequately contempo practice, states Lipner, and is the aftereffect of "not alone Western preconceptions about the attributes of adoration in accepted and of adoration in India in particular, but additionally with the political acquaintance that has arisen in India" in its bodies and a aftereffect of Western access during its colonial history.[64]

Sacred geography

Scholars such as Fleming and Eck accompaniment that the post-Epic era abstract from the 1st millennium CE abundantly authenticate that there was a celebrated abstraction of the Indian subcontinent as a angelic geography, area the asceticism was a aggregate set of religious ideas. For example, the twelve Jyotirlingas of Shaivism and fifty-one Shaktipithas of Shaktism are declared in the aboriginal medieval era Puranas as crusade sites about a theme.[130][131][132] This angelic cartography and Shaiva temples with aforementioned iconography, aggregate themes, motifs and anchored legends are begin above India, from the Himalayas to hills of South India, from Ellora Caves to Varanasi by about the boilerplate of 1st millennium.[130][133] Shakti temples, anachronous to a few centuries later, are absolute above the subcontinent. Varanasi as a angelic crusade armpit is accurate in the Varanasimahatmya argument anchored axial the Skanda Purana, and the oldest versions of this argument are anachronous to 6th to 8th-century CE.[134][135]

The abstraction of twelve angelic sites in Shiva Hindu attitude advance above the Indian subcontinent appears not alone in the medieval era temples but additionally in chestnut bowl inscriptions and temple seals credible in altered sites.[136] According to Bhardwaj, non-Hindu texts such as the memoirs of Chinese Buddhist and Persian Muslim travellers adjure to the actuality and acceptation of the crusade to angelic cartography amid Hindus by afterwards 1st millennium CE.[137]

According to Fleming, those who catechism whether the appellation Hindu and Hinduism are a avant-garde architectonics in a religious ambience present their arguments based on some texts that acquire survived into the avant-garde era, either of Islamic courts or of abstract appear by Western missionaries or colonial-era Indologists aiming for a reasonable architectonics of history. However, the actuality of non-textual affirmation such as cavern temples afar by bags of kilometers, as able-bodied as lists of medieval era crusade sites, is affirmation of a aggregate angelic cartography and actuality of a association that was self-aware of aggregate religious bounds and landscape.[138][135] Further, it is a barometer in evolving cultures that there is a gap amid the "lived and absolute realities" of a religious attitude and the actualization of accompanying "textual authorities".[136] The attitude and temples acceptable existed able-bodied afore the medieval era Hindu manuscripts appeared that call them and the angelic geography. This, states Fleming, is credible accustomed the composure of the architectonics and the angelic sites forth with the about-face in the versions of the Puranic literature.[138][139] According to Diana L. Eck and added Indologists such as André Wink, Muslim invaders were acquainted of Hindu angelic cartography such as Mathura, Ujjain, and Varanasi by the 11th-century. These sites became a ambition of their consecutive attacks in the centuries that followed.[135]

Hindu persecution

Main article: Animality of Hindus

The Hindus acquire been afflicted during the medieval and avant-garde era. The medieval animality included after-effects of plunder, killing, abolition of temples and enslavement by Turk-Mongol Muslim armies from axial Asia. This is accurate in Islamic abstract such as those apropos to 8th aeon Muhammad bin-Qasim,[140] 11th aeon Mahmud of Ghazni,[141][142] the Persian adventurer Al Biruni,[143] the 14th aeon Islamic army aggression led by Timur,[144] and assorted Sunni Islamic rulers of the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire.[145][146][147] There were casual exceptions such as Akbar who chock-full the animality of Hindus,[147] and casual astringent animality such as beneath Aurangzeb,[148][150][g] who destroyed temples, forcibly adapted non-Muslims to Islam and banned the anniversary of Hindu festivals such as Holi and Diwali.[151]

Other recorded animality of Hindus accommodate those beneath the administration of 18th aeon Tipu Absolutist in south India,[152] and during the colonial era.[153][154][155] In the avant-garde era, religious animality of Hindus acquire been appear alfresco India in Pakistan and Bangladesh.[156][157][158]

Hindu nationalism

Main articles: Hindu bellicism and Hindutva

Christophe Jaffrelot states that avant-garde Hindu bellicism was built-in in Maharashtra, in the 1920s, as a acknowledgment to the Islamic Khilafat Movement wherein Indian Muslims championed and took the account of the Turkish Ottoman absolutist as the Caliph of all Muslims, at the end of the Apple War I.[159][160] Hindus beheld this development as one of disconnected loyalties of Indian Muslim population, of pan-Islamic hegemony, and questioned whether Indian Muslims were a allotment of an across-the-board anti-colonial Indian nationalism.[160] The Hindu bellicism credo that emerged, states Jeffrelot, was codification by Savarkar while he was a political captive of the British colonial empire.[159][161]

Chris Bayly traces the roots of Hindu bellicism to the Hindu character and political ability accomplished by the Maratha confederacy, that overthrew the Islamic Mughal authority in ample genitalia of India, acceptance Hindus the abandon to accompany any of their assorted religious behavior and adequate Hindu angelic places such as Varanasi.[162] A few advisers appearance Hindu mobilisation and consistent bellicism to acquire emerged in the 19th aeon as a acknowledgment to British colonialism by Indian nationalists and neo-Hinduism gurus.[163][164][165] Jaffrelot states that the efforts of Christian missionaries and Islamic proselytizers, during the British colonial era, anniversary of whom approved to accretion new converts to their own religion, by stereotyping and stigmatising Hindus to an character of actuality inferior and superstitious, contributed to Hindus re-asserting their airy ancestry and adverse cantankerous analytical Islam and Christianity, basic organisations such as the Hindu Sabhas (Hindu associations), and ultimately a Hindu-identity apprenticed bellicism in the 1920s.[166]

The colonial era Hindu revivalism and mobilisation, forth with Hindu nationalism, states Peter van der Veer, was primarily a acknowledgment to and antagonism with Muslim separatism and Muslim nationalism.[167] The successes of anniversary ancillary fed the fears of the other, arch to the advance of Hindu bellicism and Muslim bellicism in the Indian subcontinent.[167] In the 20th century, the faculty of religious bellicism grew in India, states van der Veer, but alone Muslim bellicism succeeded with the accumulation of the West and East Pakistan (later breach into Pakistan and Bangladesh), as "an Islamic state" aloft independence.[168][169][170] Religious riots and amusing agony followed as millions of Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs confused out of the anew created Islamic states and resettled into the Hindu-majority post-British India.[171] Afterwards the break of India and Pakistan in 1947, the Hindu bellicism movement developed the abstraction of Hindutva in additional bisected of the 20th century.[172]

The Hindu bellicism movement has approved to ameliorate Indian laws, that critics say attempts to appoint Hindu ethics on India's Islamic minority. Gerald Larson states, for example, that Hindu nationalists acquire approved a compatible civilian code, area all citizens are accountable to the aforementioned laws, anybody has according civilian rights, and alone rights do not depend on the individual's religion.[173] In contrast, opponents of Hindu nationalists acknowledgment that eliminating religious law from India poses a blackmail to the cultural character and religious rights of Muslims, and bodies of Islamic acceptance acquire a built-in appropriate to Islamic shariah-based claimed laws.[173][174] A specific law, advancing amid Hindu nationalists and their opponents in India, relates to the acknowledged age of alliance for girls.[175] Hindu nationalists seek that the acknowledged age for alliance be eighteen that is universally activated to all girls behindhand of their adoration and that marriages be registered with bounded government to verify the age of marriage. Muslim clerics accede this angle as unacceptable because beneath the shariah-derived claimed law, a Muslim babe can be affiliated at any age afterwards she alcove puberty.[175]

Hindu bellicism in India, states Katharine Adeney, is a arguable political subject, with no accord about what it agency or implies in agreement of the anatomy of government and religious rights of the minorities.[176]

Demographics

Main article: Hinduism by country

Hinduism by country, worldmap (estimate 2010).[177]

Hinduism by country

Continents colour2.svg

Om symbol.svg

Africa[show]

Asia[show]

Caribbean[show]

Europe[show]

North America[show]

Oceania[show]

South America[show]

Full list

vte

According to Pew Research, there are over 1.2 billion Hindus common (15% of world's population), with over 94.3% of them concentrated in India.[178] Forth with Christians (31.5%), Muslims (23.2%) and Buddhists (7.1%), Hindus are one of the four above religious groups of the world.[179]

Most Hindus are begin in Asian countries. The countries with best Hindu association and citizens accommodate (in abbreviating order) are India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, United States, Malaysia, United Kingdom, Myanmar, Canada, Mauritius, Guyana, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, Fiji, Suriname.[68][178]

The abundance rate, that is accouchement per woman, for Hindus is 2.4, which is beneath than the apple boilerplate of 2.5.[180] Pew Research projects that there will be 1.161 billion Hindus by 2020.[181]

Hindus in the Apple (2010)

Region Total Population Hindus % total

Asia 3,903,418,706 1,014,348,412 26.01%

Oceania 36,659,000 616,000 1.78%

Europe 728,571,703 2,030,904 0.28%

Americas 883,197,750 6,481,937 0.28%

Africa 885,103,542 2,013,705 0.23%

In added age-old times, Hindu kingdoms arose and advance the adoration and traditions above Southeast Asia, decidedly Thailand, Nepal, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia,[182] Laos,[182] Philippines,[183] and what is now axial Vietnam.[184]

Over 3 actor Hindus are begin in Bali Indonesia, a ability whose origins trace aback to account brought by Tamil Hindu traders to Indonesian islands in the 1st millennium CE. Their angelic texts are additionally the Vedas and the Upanishads.[185] The Puranas and the Itihasa (mainly Ramayana and the Mahabharata) are constant traditions amid Indonesian Hindus, bidding in association dances and adumbration boob (wayang) performances. As in India, Indonesian Hindus recognises four paths of spirituality, calling it Catur Marga.[186] Similarly, like Hindus in India, Balinese Hindu acquire that there are four able goals of animal life, calling it Catur Purusartha – dharma (pursuit of moral and ethical living), artha (pursuit of abundance and artistic activity), kama (pursuit of joy and love) and moksha (pursuit of self-knowledge and liberation).[187][188]