WHAT IS HINDUISM AND WHO IS A HINDU
Shantanu Panigrahi on Facebook Ask a Hindu Public Group

Hindus are the people who lived in the past and now East of the Sindh Stat that is now par of Pakistan. In India today we are Hindustanis composed of Bharatiyas in a conglomeration of religions that includes sects of Islam, Christian's, Buddhists, Jainas, Saivities, Brahmaism, Vishnu, Sikhs, Advatists of various description both atheistic and theistic, and those without any religions but follow their Swamis like Ramdev, Ravishankar, or historical characters like Sai Baba; others just meditate on God personally through Mantras like the Gayatri Mantra. So it is the people who you are talking about when you talk about Hindus. The fact that in Hindustan such a diversity of beliefs and faiths are living together immersed into society in tolerance is the defining characteristic of Hinduism as a way of life, not dharma because dharma varies from a person to person, and there is no Sanatan Dharma as the eternal law of the universe that goes to protect the adherent through the principle of Dharma Rakshati Rak****a in a structure to Reality that has built-in Divine protection for those who follow Sri Krishna as Creator God. So what is the purpose of following Sri Krishna as Creator God, only Vaishavites know, no one else, for they get real ananda from their worship of Vishnu in Bhakti. Some like ISKON preach Bhakti-vedanta, it may or may not be true, who knows, my path did not take me there although I considered it. Vaishnavism is immersing oneself into Creation, not to God as Vishnu, nor to Sri Krishna as the Creator. In other words Hindus are a diverse lot, you find your own path in life. This is all I am willing to promote about Hinduism.

We have to be tolerant and retain our individual identities for there is only one God who we acknowledge, if realised, and taken into consideration of the fullcircumstances of history of Indians over thousands of years in seeing that we are blessed divinely with the diversity of Hindustanis. That diversity has always in the past generated prosperity in a civilisation that has held us together as a nation because the nation in diversity is creative only from an unbridled promotion of freethought and the expressions of all citizens as individuals from their individual beliefs and practices that is respected by others in society in learning from each other as living proof-examples of what raison d'etre has worked for them. Dictatorship of specific Hindutva practices will break apart Hindustan if for example the Bharatiya Janata Party of India chooses to rename India as Bharat for Bharatiyas and not for all the people lining together in the sub-continent of India as Hindustanis. The farmers protesting against new laws now have to express their wishes and can cause the Prime Minister to think again but by only doing so peacefully not in civil disobedience - I write of course as a Vaishnavist under the philosophy of Vishista Advaita Vedanta. So it is up to Narendra Modiji alone how he tackles the crisis and that will show his real mettle. I have already given my personal views on what I mean by 'ahimsa' which I stand by, but of course there is no political party at present in India called The Conservative Libertarian Party of India as the implementation of this philosophy and derived religon for implementation in the government of India, nor I think it will come about in my lifetime as the utopian society, so for now Indians must evolve slowly towards that ideal. I hope so anyway. This means of course that The Conservative Libertarian Society is not secular and does not welcome conflicting opinions within the fold. It is this purity of truth -based considerations that the world must consider. We are a global phenomenon and has its basis in Hinduism derived from consideration of Vishnu as Preserver of the world that we live in.