ABSTRACT
There is so much diversity among people who think of themselves as Hindu and such a variety of ways that they have preferred to live their lives that it is impossible to present a ‘typical Hindu’ who would make it really simple to learn about Hinduism. Instead it is important to take into account many kinds of Hindus and many images. Imagine a red silk sa¯r. ı¯ interwoven with gold threads, a homespun cotton dhotı¯, a designer suit and tie; an oval jet-black stone besmeared with crimson powder, a shining gold anthropomorphic image resplendent with precious jewels, a ten-headed goddess waving a bloody sword and riding a tiger; a village woman carrying an earthen pot brimming with water atop her head, a well-to-do New Delhi housewife drawing water into a pink porcelain bathtub, a tribal elder bathing in a river; a young man wearing a cord looped over his left shoulder and draped down his right side, another with divine names permanently inked into his skin, a naked mendicant covered only by ashes and his long matted hair; high castes, low castes, outcastes; beggars, kings, and renunciants; 325 languages expressed in more than 2,000 dialects and 25 scripts. Such diversity, and all of it can have something to do with living as a Hindu. These images may help us to see why definitions of Hindus and Hinduism can seem so baffling. Hinduism is a complex set of interrelationships among many sorts of people, belief systems, and practices rather than a single uniformly structured, bureaucratically organized, and centrally codified religion.
