Tamil Society Insight

Hindu population: Who makes up India's largest religious group?

The Hindu population, the largest religious group in India, numbering over 966 million people as of recent estimates. Also known as Hindus, they form the backbone of India’s cultural, social, and spiritual landscape. This isn’t just a statistic—it’s a living, breathing network of families, rituals, and regional identities that stretch from the Himalayas to Kanyakumari.

What defines the Hindu population isn’t a single book or central authority. It’s thousands of local practices: a Tamil family lighting oil lamps for Karthigai Deepam, a Bengali woman offering flowers to Durga, a Punjabi farmer praying before harvest. These aren’t just traditions—they’re how identity is passed down. The Hindu festivals like Diwali, Holi, and Navaratri aren’t holidays on a calendar; they’re moments when communities come alive with music, food, and shared meaning. And while the Hindu traditions vary wildly from village to village, they all tie back to deeper ideas: duty, balance, devotion, and the belief that the divine shows up in everyday life.

Why does this matter? Because the Hindu population doesn’t just live in India—it shapes it. From the way schools teach history to how hospitals approach healing with Ayurveda, from the rhythm of temple bells in the morning to the sound of folk songs during harvest, Hindu values are woven into the fabric of daily life. Even when people don’t call themselves religious, they still follow customs passed down for generations. You see it in food taboos, in how weddings are planned, in the blue skin of gods painted on temple walls. These aren’t random quirks—they’re clues to a system that’s held together not by dogma, but by practice.

What you’ll find below isn’t a list of facts about numbers or doctrines. It’s a collection of real stories—why some Hindus celebrate Diwali differently than others, how music and folklore connect to belief, why people mix ancient practices with modern life, and what happens when Hindu traditions meet other cultures. These posts don’t just describe the Hindu population. They show you what it actually looks like when people live it.