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Religion in India is characterised by a diversity of religious beliefs and practices. Throughout India's history, religion has been an important part of the country's culture and the Indian subcontinent is the birthplace of four of the world's major religions, namely, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism, which are collectively known as native Indian religions or Dharmic religions and ...
Indian religions, sometimes also termed Dharmic religions or Indic religions, are the religions that originated in the Indian subcontinent. These religions, which include Buddhism , Hinduism , Jainism , and Sikhism , [ web 1 ] [ note 1 ] are also classified as Eastern religions .
Hinduism is the largest and most practised religion in India. [1] [2] About 80% of the country's population identified as Hindu in the last census. India contains 94% of the global Hindu population. [3] [4] The vast majority of Indian Hindus belong to Shaivite, Vaishnavite and Shakta denominations. [5]
Indian-origin religions Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism, [4] are all based on the concepts of dharma and karma. Ahimsa, the philosophy of nonviolence, is an important aspect of native Indian faiths whose most well-known proponent was Shri Mahatma Gandhi, who used civil disobedience to unite India during the Indian independence movement – this philosophy further inspired Martin ...
In Indian texts, Hindu dharma ("Hindu religion") was often used to refer to Hinduism. [45] [47] Starting in the 17th century, European merchants and colonists adopted "Hindu" (often with the English spelling "Hindoo") to refer to residents of India as a religious community.
The historical Vedic religion, also called Vedicism or Vedism, and sometimes ancient Hinduism or Vedic Hinduism, [a] constituted the religious ideas and practices prevalent amongst some of the Indo-Aryan peoples of the northwest Indian subcontinent (Punjab and the western Ganges plain) during the Vedic period (c. 1500–500 BCE).
By total number, India has the most Hindus. As a percentage, Nepal has the largest percentage of Hindus in the world, followed by India and Mauritius. [6] The Hindu population around the world as of 2020 is about 1.2 billion, making it the world's third-largest religion after Christianity and Islam, of which nearly 1.1 billion Hindus live in India.
The Indo-Aryan Kalash people in Pakistan traditionally practice an indigenous religion which some authors characterise as an archaic form of ancient Indo-Aryan religion. [119] [120] [121] The Nuristanis of Afghanistan and Pakistan until the late 19th century had followed a religion which was described as a form of ancient Hinduism. [122] [123 ...