Hindu

A Hindu, as per modern definition is an adherent of philosophies and scriptures of Hinduism, the predominant religious, philosophical and cultural system of the Indian subcontinent and the island of Bali. Most of the Hindus today live in India. Another popular name for India is Hindustan, meaning the land of Hindus.

As of 2005, there were approximately 970 million Hindus. Of these, 900 million live in India, the birthplace of Hinduism. Though the majority of the Indian population practices Hinduism, 82%, India is a secular republic. More than 80% of population in Nepal follows Hinduism. Large Hindu communities, mostly expatriates from India, live in South East Asia, North America, the West Indies, Western Europe, the Middle East, East Africa and South Africa. The Hindus of Bali, and in other parts of Indonesia are indigenous Indonesian Hindus.

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 Indus River, 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'.