what is the religion according to you do you why do you consider monotheism polytheism and atheism to be all part of hinduism and what is the culture of a land how much is there between religion and culture yeah so i have uh spoken about this in the past i think a couple of times perhaps so do i okay what's a religion so religion is a western concept in india we have the concept of dharma which is a very much wider concept in the western uh perception of religion a religion is something that has one prophet one god and one book and everybody follows that that is the western concept of religion and that uh that has been a force fitted on eastern cultures so eastern cultures are have always been polytheistic even the ancient arabic culture was polytheistic actually so this foreign western abrahamic concept of one book one prophet one god has been force-fitted on eastern cultures eastern traditions and that's how today we all see it because this is the way we are taught about religion so then we they have imposed this ism suffix onto eastern traditions hinduism tengrism confucianism taoism and whatever else shintoism so that's the kind of thing that's been done uh our traditions are very very diverse very wide now why do i consider monotheism politician ethicism to be part of hinduism well it's so what is hinduism it's essentially a number of ancient philosophical traditions a number of interrelated interconnected philosophical souls of thoughts thought that are extremely diverse so i have spoken about this in the past let me give you a very brief overview overview again so we have i think eight or nine schools of thought in hinduism major schools of thought there are many other smaller schools of thought the first one is charvaka which is atheism it is pure materialism it it rejects the existence of god then you have the jaina school of thought drain of philosophy which does believe in karma and rebirth but it is also an atheistic school of thought it rejects the existence of any god and you have the both the philosophy which is again a dharmic philosophy it believes in karma and rebirth but it is again mostly atheistic it rejects the existence of god then you have nyaya which is realistic it is a realistic philosophy based upon logic so in the atma or the self is distinct from the mind and the body there is karma and rebirth and it does believe in the existence of god that is nyaya then you have vaishyasik in which you there is the belief in karma and rebirth and there is a belief in the existence of god then you have the sankhya philosophy which is the holistic realism in which there is no need for god when you have yoga philosophy which admits the existence of god and it is essentially a form of sankhya sankhya then you have memansa which is based upon the vedas so in this philosophy the soul is immortal it is eternal but there is no supreme god there is no creator god so this is a skeptical theory atheistic theory to some extent it does believe in the law of karma it says this law is an autonomous natural and moral rule law that rules the world and finally we have vedanta which says that there exists a supreme person who permeates the entire universe and yet who remains beyond it so these are the major schools of thought of what we call hinduism today as you can see there is such a wide panoply of ideas and beliefs and and it's different systems so you have monotheistic aspects to it like vedanta says there is a supreme person who permeates the universe and yet is beyond it so you could interpret that as kind of being monotheistic but there are so many different aspects of this divinity which manifest them themselves in a variety of ways which we call these different gods right 64 crore gods or whatever the hell they call it in hinduism it's not 64 crore gods this is the western concept it's a western myth anyhow so you have polytheism you have monotheism you also have skepticism in atheism you have materialism and you have spiritualism and what not so it's a very diverse tradition so many different schools of thought and therefore all of these schools of thought they encompass all of these different viewpoints and philosophies and they are all part of hinduism however the abrahamic abrahamic monotheism is in no way part of dharma it is actually a dharma if you if you look at it strictly because it it talks about one god one prophet and one book and everybody is forced to believe that you can't go beyond that there is no you're not allowed to question anything you have to blindly obey blind obedience that is not a dharmic way of looking at anything so those belief systems are clearly not part of hinduism but the ones i just mentioned the various ancient indian schools of thought philosophical thought those diverse viewpoints are all part of hinduism now what's the difference between a culture and a religion well in the case of the eastern traditions there's very little difference between culture and religion because what what we call hinduism is not really a religion because we don't have one book one god and one prophet we have so many different viewpoints so that is all whatever practices you have in in a society in a civilization like india that's all culture so it manifests itself in the way you draw the kind of dress you wear the kind of languages the the kind of festivals you celebrate the kind of traditions you follow um the kind of practices you have rituals you have all of that the kind of music you play the kind of cuisine you have all of that forms what's called culture and clearly the what is called religion is a major component of that