From a western point of view, the concept of "Hinduism" seems extremely broad. A few hundred years ago, Catholics and Protestants routinely warred against each

From a western point of view, the concept of "Hinduism" seems extremely broad. A few hundred years ago, Catholics and Protestants routinely warred against each other, and many present-day Christians still deny that other self-identified Christians are "really" Christian. When hatred between Christians and even Jews started to ebb, conservatives had to invent the bogus "Judeo-Christian" identity to create a new viable "us/them" distinction and revitalize religious xenophobia in the US. When an American such as myself looks at the amazing variety of Hindu beliefs, his first thought is to suspect that Hinduism, too, is a political invention to unite a diverse group of people against the "other." I don't know of any evidence for this theory, though, and the idea of Hinduism as a common tradition seems to be pretty old. (Hinduism is certainly used to foster us/them thinking by the BJP now, but they seem to be capitalizing on the Hindu identity more than creating it.)