The word Hindu is derived from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, the historic local appellation for the Indus River in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent. It is world’s oldest religion. It consists of "thousands of different religious groups that have evolved in India since 1500 BCE. Most forms of Hinduism are henotheistic( the worship of one god without denying the existence of other gods) religions. Hinduism has grown to become the world's third largest religion, after Christianity and Islam. It claims about 950 million followers -- about 14% of the world's population. 2 It is the dominant religion in India, Nepal, and among the Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Estimates of the number of Hindus in the U.S vary greatly:

• Our estimate, for mid-2010, is 1.5 million.
• According to the "Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches," there were about 1.1 million Hindus in the U.S. during 1999.  
• The "American Religious Identification Survey" is believed to under-estimate the numbers of Hindus because of communications problems with non-English speaking households.  They estimated: 766,000 Hindus in 2001 and 1.2 million in 2008.