The origin of the word Hindu is still disagreed upon by historians and linguists. It is generally accepted as having originally been a Persian word for someone who lives around or beyond the river Indus, which is called Sindhu in Sanskrit, and meant any inhabitant of the Indian subcontinent, before the Partition of India.

In Persian and Arabic, the term "Hind" denotes the Indian subcontinent, and the term Hindu (Indu or Intu in China) is still used in some languages to denote a person from the region. A variant of the word was taken into old Greek, and lost the initial aspiration ('h') in modern Greek. This led to the Greek name of 'India'.

Until about 19th century, the term Hindu implied a culture and ethnicity and not religion alone. When the British government started periodic census and established a legal system, need arose to define Hinduism as a clearly-defined religion, along the lines of Christianity or Islam. Some scholars like Bal Gangadhar Tilak, defined it as a religion based on the Vedas, using the analogy of Bible and Qur'an being the basis of Christianity and Islam respectively.

The old Persian definition of "Hindu" would club all people living in India into a single group called "Hindus". However, today all Indians are not called Hindus simply to be able to differentiate between adherents of different faiths, and also with respect to peoples' sentiments.

That even an atheist may be called a Hindu is an example of the fact that Hinduism is far beyond a simple religious system, but actually an extremely diverse and complicated river of evolving philosophies and ancient traditions.


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