Hinduism

The oldest major religion

Hinduism is the world’s third-largest religion, with approximately 1.2 billion adherents — about 15% of the global population — the vast majority of them in India and Nepal. It is also the oldest major religion still practiced today. Its roots lie in the Vedic civilization of the Indian subcontinent, dating to at least 1500 BCE and possibly earlier, making it several centuries older than Buddhism, a millennium older than Christianity, and nearly two millennia older than Islam.

The word “Hinduism” itself is a relatively recent coinage — a term applied by outsiders, primarily Persian and later British, to the diverse religious practices of the people living beyond the Indus River. The tradition has no single founder, no central ecclesiastical authority, no universal creed, and no single sacred text. It encompasses practices and beliefs that in any other context might be considered separate religions. This makes Hinduism extraordinarily difficult to define — and makes sweeping statements about it almost always wrong somewhere.

Core concepts

Despite its internal diversity, several philosophical concepts run through most Hindu traditions and provide a common vocabulary.

The major deities

Hinduism is often described as polytheistic, but this is an oversimplification. Many Hindu traditions hold that the numerous deities are manifestations or aspects of a single ultimate reality (Brahman), making the theology closer to monism or panentheism than to the polytheism of ancient Greece or Rome. The three most prominent deities in the pan-Hindu tradition form what is sometimes called the Trimurti:

Brahmais the creator god — the deity associated with the creation of the universe. Despite his cosmic importance, Brahma is rarely worshipped directly and has few temples dedicated to him, a theological puzzle that Hindu commentators have explained in various ways. Vishnuis the preserver, understood as returning to earth in times of cosmic crisis in the form of avatars — the most famous being Rama and Krishna. Vaishnavism, the devotional tradition centered on Vishnu and his avatars, is the largest strand of Hinduism. Shivais the destroyer and transformer — but “destroyer” in the Hindu sense means the dissolution that makes renewal possible, not annihilation. Shaivism, centered on Shiva, is the second largest major tradition. The Goddess — Devi, Durga, Kali, Lakshmi, Saraswati in her many forms — is central to Shaktism, a third major strand.

Hindu atheism: the Charvaka tradition

One of the least-known facts about Hinduism is that it has its own indigenous atheist tradition, dating to at least the sixth century BCE. The Charvaka (also called Lokayata) school rejected the authority of the Vedas, denied the existence of an afterlife or divine beings, rejected the concept of karma and reincarnation, and held that direct sensory experience is the only valid source of knowledge. Their materialist philosophy — that consciousness arises from matter and ceases with the body — is strikingly similar to modern secular naturalism.

The Charvaka texts survive only in fragments quoted by their opponents, which means we know the tradition largely through the arguments made against it. But its existence demonstrates that skepticism of religious claims is not a uniquely Western or modern phenomenon. India produced rigorous philosophical atheism two and a half millennia ago, and the tradition of rational inquiry has continued in various forms ever since.

The caste system and its religious foundations

Hinduism’s most persistent secular critique concerns the caste system — the hierarchical division of society into hereditary groups (varnas and jatis) that has structured social life across the Indian subcontinent for millennia. The system assigns occupations, determines marriage partners, governs social interactions, and — in its most extreme form — categorizes certain communities as “untouchable,” subject to severe discrimination and exclusion from social life.

The religious grounding of caste is explicit in texts like the Manusmriti, which provides elaborate rules governing the behavior of each caste and the treatment of untouchables. The karma doctrine provides a theological rationalization: those born into lower castes are understood to be experiencing the consequences of actions in previous lives. B. R. Ambedkar — the jurist, economist, and principal architect of the Indian constitution, who was himself from an untouchable (Dalit) community — argued that caste could not be reformed within Hinduism because it was not an aberration but a feature, built into the religion’s foundational texts. He converted to Buddhism in 1956, along with hundreds of thousands of his followers, as an explicit rejection of the caste system’s religious authority.

Contemporary Dalit activists and secular critics make similar arguments: that caste discrimination cannot be adequately addressed without confronting the religious doctrines that have legitimized it for centuries. Hindu reformers respond that caste is a cultural distortion of genuine Hindu teaching, and that the tradition’s philosophical core — the equality of all souls before Brahman — is fundamentally egalitarian. This is a live and serious debate within Indian society.

The treatment of women

Hindu scriptures present a wide range of perspectives on women — from powerful goddesses like Durga and Kali to the elaborate gender hierarchies of the Manusmriti, which prescribes that a woman should be subject to her father in childhood, her husband in marriage, and her son in widowhood. The practice of sati — the immolation of widows on their husbands’ funeral pyres — was abolished by British colonial authorities in 1829 and condemned by Hindu reformers like Ram Mohan Roy, but the underlying theology of female subordination has been more persistent.

Contemporary secular critics point to ongoing issues including dowry violence, female infanticide and sex-selective abortion, restrictions on temple entry for women during menstruation, and the treatment of women from Dalit communities as the intersection of caste and gender discrimination. Hindu feminists and reformers argue that the tradition contains internal resources for gender equality — in the goddess traditions, in bhakti devotionalism, and in the philosophical traditions that regard all souls as equally capable of liberation. The debate mirrors similar conversations happening within every major religion.

The rationalist movement in India

India has a substantial and organized rationalist movement, with roots in nineteenth-century reformers like Ram Mohan Roy, Jyotirao Phule, and Periyar E. V. Ramasamy, who explicitly attacked religious superstition, caste hierarchy, and Brahminical authority. The movement continues today through organizations like the Rationalist Association of India and the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations, whose members investigate miracle claims, expose fraudulent godmen, and advocate for scientific education.

The rationalist tradition has paid real costs. Narendra Dabholkar, a prominent rationalist activist who campaigned against superstitious practices, was shot and killed in Pune in 2013. Govind Pansare and M. M. Kalburgi, both rationalist scholars, were killed in 2015. Gauri Lankesh, a journalist and secular activist, was murdered in 2017. These killings remain largely unsolved and have been linked to Hindu nationalist networks. The suppression of criticism — religious or otherwise — through violence is not unique to any one tradition, but its presence in the context of Hindu nationalism in contemporary India is a serious and documented phenomenon.