That's a very interesting observation. I'd had to read an eye-opening book called "The Heathen in his Blindness" [1] to understand the cultural grounding I stan

That's a very interesting observation. I'd had to read an eye-opening book called "The Heathen in his Blindness" [1] to understand the cultural grounding I stand on. As an Indian, whose own mother tongue has been neglected by the neo-colonial state, and thus whose own epistemological roots are muddied up with those from an over-bearing English imposition, it has become very difficult for me to see the difference between Abrahamic traditions and the contemporary Indian ones (in the city atleast). The latter simply don't make sense anymore (which is likely why a lot of people are irreligious). On the other hand, more than half of the traditional schools in India don't believe in a creator, and it's not clear if any of them actually believe the "devas" (godlings?) exist. Buddhism for instance borrows heavily from the Indian pantheon of devas, but expressedly keeps mum about their existence; those on the "Astika" side like Mimansa, while attesting the grounding of the Vedas, don't believe in the existence or literal use of many of the categories in contemporary Hindu life. Other than these, there was also a school of determinism (slaughtered off by Ashoka), a (much maligned) materialist school, along with who knows how many others - many of them were atheistic (in the Abrahamic sense). I'm not even sure what the semantics of "creator" is in the Sanskrit literature; there is a lot it, but its study is seen with utter contempt (centers of Indic study are now in N.Y, Heidelberg and Kyoto). Likewise, Yoga, meditation... gained mass appeal in India, after they took off in the West. Edit: Updated for clarity.