Hi. I need to learn more about Hinduism, I don't know nearly enough about it. But a Hindu is someone who considers themselves either culturally or ethnically Hindu.
Yes. They consider themselves Hindu and they are also Buddhist for religion.
In history, the word Hindu has been used to identify people from South Asia or whose cultural identity is in South Asia.
Yes, but essentially those who live in the Indian peninsult.
It's unclear how Hindu self-identity developed in local populations to South Asia, in the religious and cultural sense.
They have such a long and interesting history. Really a great civilization.
-Muslim wars. A sense of Hindu identity and the term "Hindu" appears in some texts dated between the 13th and 18th century in Sanskrit and regional languages. The 14th- and 18th-century Indian poets such as Vidyapati, Kabir and Eknath used the phrase "Hindu dharma" (Hinduism) and contrasted it with "Turaka dharma" (Islam). The Christian friar Sebastiao Manrique used the term 'Hindu' in religious context in 1649. In the 18th century, the European merchants and colonists began to refer to
whether they are practising or non-practicing or "Laissez-faire". The term does not include those who identify with other Indian religions such as Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism or various animist tribal religions found in India such as "Sarnaism". The term Hindu, in contemporary parlance, includes people who accept themselves as culturally or ethnically Hindu rather than with a fixed set of religious beliefs within Hinduism. One need not be religious in the minimal sense, states Julius Lipner, to be accepted as Hindu by Hindus,