ABSTRACT
In this article I argue that the term “religion” is an ineffective category for the analysis of Hinduism. Much of the problem concerns how religion is distinguished from nonreligion—whether social or secular. This issue bears relevance for both religious studies and anthropology/sociology. Hinduism is consistently classified in books of the religion genre as one of the major five world religions. Despite the literature’s format, its conclusions remain the same. The selection of the data, the format, and the generalizations reflect an unacknowledged ideological commitment on the part of the comparative religionists. The collision between comparative religion and anthropology has produced a notion of religion which does nothing to clarify the complexities of the data. 1
