Dinkar writes that the word Hindu is not mentioned anywhere in Sanskrit or Pali literature. However, the use of this term got started one to one-and-a-half thousand years before the origin of Islam; the Iranians used ‘h’ for ‘s’ and called the river Sindhu, ‘Hindu’. In the 19th century, when renaissance started in India, many Hindus started calling themselves Aryans. They abandoned the title Hindu because this title was given by Muslims and in Persian the term Hindu was used in a pejorative sense. The texts which contained the term Hindu are Ramkosh, Adbhut Kosh, Vridha Smriti, Shabda Kalp Drum, Parijat Haran, Brihspati Agam, etc. which are all later additions to Hindu literature. In Madhav Digvijaya Hindus are described as those whose original Mantra is Om, who have complete faith in transmigration of soul, who are born in Bharat, and who reject violence. It may be noted that after independence the law that was developed as Hindu Code Bill applied to Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs. Thus the Code established “Hindu” to be a negative category, which covered all those who did not identify as the Muslim, Jew, Christian, or Parsi.
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