What is a Hindu?

There are over one billion Hindus on our planet, with the majority living in India. In popular parlance the word Hindu denotes a religion, and yet, this is often not how the Hindu experience is lived out. Hindus themselves struggle to pin down a particular lexicon that captures the fullness of what it means to be a Hindu – why is this? Is there incoherence in the identity itself?

Who is a Hindu? From where have the Hindu people come, and what happened to their civilisation? Is the term religious in nature, or to mark an ethnic group, or neither, is it merely to mark a culture? Is the Hindu identity rooted in a belief system? What ultimately makes one a Hindu? Is it in one’s birth, or living by a particular set of rules or dogmas?