What then is Hinduism?

"No definition is possible, for the very good reason that Hinduism is absolutely indefinite. It is really an anthropological process to which, by a strange irony of fate, the name of 'religion' has been given. Starting from the Vedas, embodying the customs and ideas of one or a few tribes, it has like a snowball gone on ever getting bigger and bigger in the course of ages, as it has steadily gone on absorbing from the customs and ideas of all peoples with whom it has come into contact, down even to the present day. It rejects nothing. It is all-comprehensive, all-absorbing, all-tolerant, all- complacent, all-compliant. Every type of mind can derive nourishment from it. It has its spiritual and its material, its esoteric and exoteric, its subjective and objective, its rational and irrational, its pure and impure aspects. It may be compared to a huge irregular multilateral figure. One side for the practical, another for the severely moral, another for the devotional and the imaginative, another for the supremely ascetic, another for the sensuous and sensual - even to the downright carnal - and another for the philosopher and the speculative."

- Govinda Das in 'Hinduism'

Photo credit: Joey L, New York