WHAT IS HINDUISM?
Hinduism in Distinction to the Abrahamic Faiths ..........................................
‘Hinduism’ is a modern word for the world’s oldest and
still third-largest religion, with around one billion followers.
And yet it differs from all of the ‘Abrahamic’ faiths –
Judaism, Christianity and Islam – in the most fundamental
of ways. Otherwise known as Sanatana Dharma (‘the Eternal
Truth’) ‘Hinduism’ is not an ethnically exclusive religion
and it understands itself as inclusively embracing the partial
truths of other religions from within a higher, holistic
perspective. In contrast, Judaism is both an ethnically and
doctrinally exclusive religion, whereas Christianity and
Islam are ethnically inclusive but doctrinally exclusive
faiths.
The Persian term Hindu derives from the name of the
Sindhu river – the Indus. And indeed the best symbol of
Hinduism is a flowing river with many tributaries. Hinduism
is not a monolithic ‘faith’ so much as an evolving and
creative confluence of numerous diverse but non-dogmatic
and non-exclusive religious world-views and philosophies
rooted in the Indian sub-continent – in particular the Vedic
and Indus Valley civilisations. For even the earliest ‘Hindu’
scriptures – the Vedas – recognised ‘no religion higher than
truth’, holding truth as their most sacred religious value. In
search of ultimate truths the countless religious and