There is a popular misconception that to be a Hindu, one must be born a Hindu. This was never so, since many thousands of years ago Hinduism was transported to places like Laos, Cambodia and even today the island of Bali in Indonesia contains many relics of Hindu temples and artifacts.

In 1966, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), an umbrella organisation of international Hindus, defined what is a Hindu. According to the VHP, “Hindu means a person believing in, following or respecting the external values of life, ethical and spiritual, which have sprung up in Bharath Khand, India and includes any person calling himself a Hindu.”

The VHP is headquartered in New Delhi, at Sankta Mochan, and is led by one of the most powerful Hindus in the world, Ashok Singal. In 1998, a meeting in the US called for the development of a process for accepting converts into the Hindu fold. Part of the process is to give the convert a Hindu first-name as part of the initiation process.

Some Hindus still remain worried about Christian efforts to “save the pagans.” But millions in the West are quietly adopting Hinduism in a remarkable and little-discussed silent conversion, which is as powerful and far more extensive than in the past.

Seekers in Europe, Africa and the Americas are starting to call themselves Hindu and seek formal entrance into the faith. They are the result of 150 years of Hindu philosophy surfing out from India in several waves.

Modern communications are also assisting the spread of Hinduism through the hundreds of Hindu Web sites. Television images emanating in India are transported across the world.

Scriptural translations, itinerant holy men such as Swami Vivikananda and, as part of the diaspora of Hindus out of India, Sri Lanka and Nepal, the establishment of temples and ashrams in nearly every country of the world have established Hinduism as a religion of choice for many people.

The central Hindu concepts of karma, dharma, yoga and reincarnation are now understood by tens of millions not born in the faith but exposed to it through music, film and television, and even commercial advertising.

In 1899, Swami Vivikananda in Chicago proclaimed, “Why, born aliens have been converted in the past by crowds, and the process is still going on. This statement not only applies to aboriginal tribes, to outlying nations and to almost all our conquerors before the Mohammedan conquest, but also to all those castes who find a special origin in the puranas. I hold that they have been aliens thus adopted.”

Dr S Radhakrishna, former president of India, confirms swami’s view in a brief passage from his well-known book, The Hindu View of Life:

“In a sense, Hinduism may be regarded as the first example in the world of a missionary religion. Only its missionary spirit is different from that associated with the proselytising creeds. It did not regard it as its mission to convert humanity to any one opinion.

“Worshippers of different Gods and followers of different rites were taken into the Hindu fold. The ancient practice of vratyastoma (initiation of tribes of nomads), described fully in the Tandya Brahmana, shows that not only individuals but whole tribes were absorbed into Hinduism. Many modern sects accept outsiders.”

To the born Hindu of today, the question of entering Hinduism may appear unnecessary, for by one common definition Hinduism is a way of life, a culture, both religious and secular.

According to Hinduism Today, the Hindu is not accustomed to thinking of his religion as a clearly defined system, distinct and different from other systems, for it fills his every experience. It encompasses all of life. This pure, simple view has to do, in part, with Hinduism’s all-embracing quality, to accept so many variations of belief and practice into self.

But this view ignores the true distinctions between this way of life and the ways of the world’s other great religions. There is no denying that Hinduism is also a distinct world religion, and to hold otherwise in today’s world is a stance fraught with risk.

Hinduism Today continues:

“If Hinduism is not a religion, then it is not entitled to the same rights and protection given to religion by the nations of the world. As just one example, in colonial Trinidad Hinduism was not recognised as a religion. Hindu marriages were therefore considered illegal, Hindu children illegitimate and unqualified to inherit property.

“A great deal of Hindu ancestral property was forfeited to the colonial Christian government. The claim that Hinduism is ‘not a religion’ weakens its position socially and legally with respect to other religions in the world community.”

The hundreds of Hindu swamis, pundits and lay people who regularly travel outside India are a relatively passive band, offering a reasoned presentation of beliefs that listeners are only expected to consider and accept or reject. There is no proselytising, no tearing down of other faith. We do not offer bribes in the form of spectacles and other financial aids to encourage conversion.

Hindu philosophy lacks the missionary compulsion to bring the whole world into its fold in any kind of spiritual colonialism and cultural invasion. That kind of conversion, which has gone on in India and elsewhere for centuries now, has seriously disrupted communities, turned son against father, wife against husband, friend against friend.

SATNARAYAN MAHARAJ is the Secretary General of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha