When you consider all the different parts of the Hindu Dharma Traditions, there is a holiday, festival, or commemoration of some sort for nearly every day of the year.

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All of the world’s religions have internal divisions, sometimes deep ones. Hinduism too has internal sub-divisions, though the differences between them are less contentious than in some other traditions, and are more a matter of preference in what forms of the Divine are the focus of veneration and contemplation.

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How do Hindus today actually think about and interact with the multitude of representations and aspects of Divinity? Are there really 2 million gods that are worshiped within the Hindu Dharma traditions? Is Hinduism polytheistic, monotheistic, pantheistic? Something else can you say that all the different parts of this collection of traditions are in agreement on this?

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Worship is an old word, but one that doesn’t fully represent the ways in which Hindus honor the divine, whether in their homes or in temples.

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Want to learn all about Hinduism, the world's oldest and third-largest religion? Like actually understand what karma is? Or what dharma means? Do you want to know what the sacred texts of Hinduism are? Or, maybe, you just want to know why Hindu women wear a dot on their forehead? Or, perhaps, if all Hindus vegetarian? If so, then All About Hinduism is just what you’ve been waiting for. We’ll give you an overview of Hinduism as a lived and contemporary spiritual path. We’ll explore the history of how Hinduism has come to be what it is today: the third-largest and oldest religious tradition in the world.

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One of the underlying themes in the first series of episodes of All About Hinduism is that this spiritual tradition is often misunderstood by those people outside of it. Some of this misunderstanding is basic exposure to Hinduism and Hindus. But sometimes, we Hindus ourselves are unwittingly to blame. If we want non-Hindus to better understand Hinduism and we want to ourselves better understand Hinduism, the way in which we talk about Hinduism needs to change.

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Caste is one of the most complicated and misunderstood concepts encountered when attempting to understand India and Hinduism. Yet caste and a so-called caste system have become the singular focus of how Indian and Hindu society and culture are seen by the West — and increasingly being focused on by activists within the diaspora.

Sources:

• German Indology, Aryanism, and Anti-Semitism, by Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee
• The Indian Caste System and The British – Ethnographic Mapping and the Construction of the British Census in India, by Kevin Hobson
• The Brahmin, the Aryan, and the Powers of the Priestly Class: Puzzles in the Study of Indian Religion, by Marianne Keppens and Jakob De Roover
• Caste Confusion and Census Enumeration in Colonial India, 1871–1921 by Kevin Walby and Michael Haan
• Census in Colonial India and the Birth of Caste by Padmanabh Samarendra
• Ethnographic inquiry in colonial India: Herbert Risley, William Crooke, and the study of tribes and castes by C.J. Fuller
• ‘Untouchable’: What is in a Name?, by Simon Charsley
• Scheduled Castes vs. Caste Hindus: About a Colonial Distinction and Its Legal Impact, by Jakob de Roover

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If you think of Nazis, white supremacists, the Holocaust, a rabble of Fred Perry-wearing white dudes marching in Charlottesville, Virginia chanting “Jews will not replace us”, we don’t blame you. If your primary source of knowledge about India is your average high school textbook or mass market travel guideyou might also conjure up images of a group of light-skinned Aryans invading India in the hoary past and subjugating the darker skinned people already living there, the invaders imposing their beliefs and culture. In this episode we explain to you the connection between those two sets of imagery and how both are hugely off the mark.

Related: That's So Hindu interview with Professor Lavanya Vemsani

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