Why is Hinduism not polytheistic?

But to answer that, I first have to take another step back.

So I’ll answer both.

Different people relate best to the Divine in different ways. Some people relate most naturally to God as a Divine Parent. Some may connect better with the Divine Mother, others with the Divine Father; some may prefer to have both a Divine Mother and a Divine Father. Some people feel the strongest, most loving connection with the Divine as their own child. Some people feel the most intimate, ecstatic connection with the Divine as their lover. And so on.

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Well, this question could be taken in two ways:

First, is Hinduism a polytheistic religion?

Okay, so for the second part of this question: Why do “polytheistic” Hindus choose to practice in this way? In other words, for what reason is Hinduism a polytheistic religion?

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Most of these traditions of Hinduism recognize one singular Supreme Being, not exactly corresponding to Abrahamic concepts of “God” per se but often loosely translated as such, which takes on many different forms and manifests myriad beings from Itself, giving rise to a vast pantheon of Deities or Gods (more properly, Devatas) who are widely worshipped as if multiplistic individuals while simultaneously recognizing that they never become separate from the One Universal Reality, and indeed neither do we nor does anything. Thus Hinduism is at once a monistic, monotheistic, polytheistic, henotheistic, kathenotheistic, and panentheistic religion. Or to put it from a more Hindu perspective: the Divine so completely transcends these artificial boxes Western philosophers try to put It in that the boxes are silly and don’t seem useful.

What actually do exist are well over a hundred distinctly different spiritual traditions, interrelated to varying degrees but each with its own unique features. If you zoom in on more minor local and regional variations, there are thousands of such traditions. Many elements are common and widespread across most of them. Very little is quantifiably universal to all of them. All of this was lumped together under the extremely vague and clumsy umbrella term “Hinduism”, which soon had to stretch well beyond the Indian subcontinent, to include closely related traditions across Southeast Asia and Indonesia.

7% of Hindus (in India; such precise polling data is not available for Hindus elsewhere) are straightforwardly polytheistic. They recognize many Gods, and do not consider them to be fundamentally one. These people are mostly concentrated in South India, though a few can be found throughout the country.

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Why do Hindus choose to practice in this way? In other words, for what reason is Hinduism a polytheistic religion?

Originally answered: Why is Hinduism a polytheistic religion?

The word “Hinduism” was only coined in the colonial-era 1800s. It was coined to refer to the religion of the Hindu people of the Indian subcontinent… without bothering too much over whether such a thing existed.

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Why does Hinduism fit the definition of a polytheistic religion (if indeed it does)? In other words, in what way is Hinduism a polytheistic religion?

Hinduism gives us all of these options and dozens more, so that everyone can connect with the Divine in whichever form works best for them personally. We can relate to the Divine as a lithesome, alluring maiden. We can to the Divine as a fierce and valiant warrior queen, Her many arms bristling with weapons to protect us. We can relate to the Divine as a loving married couple seated side by side. We can relate to the Divine as the cosmic dancer, long hair flying wild, playfully juggling the very fire of doomsday. We can relate to the Divine as a priest performing His own worship; as the first of the Seers revealing the Vedas to us. We can relate to the Divine as a flowing river, literally giving us life, not just once but ongoingly. We can relate to the Divine as the flow of music, of artistic expression, of beauty. We can relate to the Divine as a thousand-headed serpent; as the great sleeper dreaming what we quaintly call reality; as the shining splendor of gold; as an electrifyingly attractive youthful lover playing a flute; as a cowherd; as a knotted-haired ascetic seated in deep meditation; as the dark mother with Her garland of severed heads, Her tongue lolling thirstily for blood, squatting on corpses. We can relate to the Divine as our brave hero, as our beloved elephant-headed chubby friend and well-wisher, as the sun and moon, as fire, as wind and rain and storm, as the rays of dawn, as the very nectar of life, as death itself, as a great fish, a sea turtle, a boar, a traveling dwarf, a monkey warrior, a lion rending our oppressor. Hindu “polytheism”, so to speak, gives us all of this and far more; it enables our relationship with the Divine to be highly colorful, multifaceted, dynamic and rich and thrumming with vibrancy, integrated with the full spectrum of our experience as living beings, and able to fulfill the differing natures and spiritual needs of many different people.

Is Hinduism a religion?

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Among the thousands of traditions of Hinduism, some of them describe themselves as straightforwardly monotheistic and definitely not polytheistic. There is One God, period. However, these traditions almost always recognize the existence of vast hosts of lesser deities, still greatly supernaturally powerful, just subordinate to the One God. So in such cases the question of monotheism vs. polytheism seems to depend more on where you draw the line between “does it count as a deity” vs. calling it a powerful spirit; and such distinctions tend not to translate cleanly between languages.

And not only different people, but even the same person may relate to the Divine in different ways at different times, in different situations. Hindu polytheism gives us the freedom to explore different facets of Divinity which touch and connect with different facets of ourselves, which for some people enables a far more thoroughly integrated and holistic relationship with the Divine.

Also, much of Hindu polytheism (or what gets called that from an Abrahamic perspective) consists of ceremonial expressions of reciprocal gratitude to the powers of Nature that sustain us, from weather and rainclouds and the sky itself to air, wind, and breath to water to fire to the oceans to love and desire to health and medicine to the sun, light, and day to the moon and the night to the earth herself to trees and plants, mountains, rivers, and so on. All of these things and many more are understood as “ensouled” by their living, presiding Devas, and we Hindus engage with them in a spirit of respect and thankfulness.

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2% of Hindus are atheistic. Their way of conceptualizing Reality tends not to personify it, and their spiritual practices do not use deities.