Origin of Hindu √ The Name

By Dibyendu Chakraborty

Whenever the word Hindu comes up for discussion, at the very outset, it is announced that the word has its origin in the word Sindhu, the Sanskrit term for the river Indus. That statement is taken for granted as an axiom and repeated by all. It is not seen in the public domain that anybody has ever raised any doubt on that explanation. The current explanation has gone ex silentio. Arguments may be put forward to expose many logical loopholes in the present explanation. This book tries to highlight the logical inconsistencies of the present explanation and at the same time tries to provide a more consistent alternative explanation of the origin of the word Hindu that has a traceable root to the core values of that way of life. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookRix
• Release date: Jul 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9783748749059

Book preview

Foreward

There are very few places on earth that are as young as the Indo-Gangetic Plain, particularly of its comparable size. The home of a huge population, that area is estimated to have become mature enough to be fit for human habitation at around 7000 years BP. A huge basin area had turned into flat land by the interactions of the natural forces. The rapid transition of the geography of that region had a huge impact on the life of the people who had been present in the surrounding places of that basin since long before that basin got matured. A new way of life was evolved around that geography. That way of life, known as the Hindu religion, in turn, affected the history of that region.

Introduction

Whenever the word Hindu comes up for discussion, at the very outset, it is announced that that word has its origin in the word Sindhu, the Sanskrit term for the river Indus. That statement has been taken for granted as an axiom and repeated by all concerned. It is not seen in the public domain that anybody has ever contested that explanation. The current explanation has been accepted ex silentio. Arguments may be put forward to expose many logical loopholes in the present explanation. This book tries to highlight the logical inconsistencies of the present explanation and at the same time tries to provide a more consistent alternative explanation of the origin of the word Hindu that has a traceable root at the core values of that way of life.

Chapter 1 - Connotation of the term Hindu

Present available connotation of the term Hindu

The explanation that the word Hindu was originally derived from the corrupted pronunciation of the word Sindhu has been assumed by all and sundry as a maxim.

It is said that the people residing on the eastern side of the river Sindhu was named as Hindu as some people of very high significance, resident of the western side of Sindhu, developed problem in pronouncing a letter as represented by the English letter ‘S’.

That was the time when the British tried to find out the bond, which was responsible for keeping the largest section of the inhabitants of the land, south of the Himalayas linked together in a sense of commonness.

The then ruling British in India initiated the exercise of analysing the total scenario at hand of that land from the managerial perspective during the second half of the nineteenth century.

The necessity of that search originated from the efforts of drawing a planning process by the British. To run an organised structure, planning is necessary. That is more pertinent in the case of directing the human society. It is said that even the Rig Veda (oldest of the four Vedas and one of the oldest scripts of the world) contained the ideas of census in some form or the other.

The process of planning is all about creating a bridge between ‘where we are’ and ‘where we want to be.’ For a political entity, the census is the way to find out ‘where we are.’

Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, informs through the website titled censusindia.gov.in that on a pan-India basis, the British originally started the exercise of census around the year 1865. That process ended in the year 1872. Before that effort was undertaken, many regional level enumerations of ‘where we are’ got started as early as