Despite being the oldest, Hinduism is most modern and calling it a religion will not justify it.

When the world is fighting in the name or religion we should understand the concept of religion, which was mentioned in Hinduism. Maybe in the modern concept of religion, entire world call Hinduism as a religion but none really able to read and understand the Hinduism due to its vastness. When most of the other religions have the specific founder of the religion, Hinduism doesn’t have any specific founder and nowhere it was mentioned any specific name. Rather if we try to read its old scripture we found that most of them are research and development of different philosophy which developed time to time by different Sagas. Interestingly may be Hinduism is the only religion which don’t have the concept of “conversation”, its only have the term “purification”.

Hinduism is not a religion but a system or philosophy to live a healthy wealthy life in earth. Maybe, this is a system where if anyone invent something better than the existing, that widely accepted and become a part of the system. Which we can’t see in other religion. Before 700 century AD, the Indian subcontinent was the land where Sanatan dharma (The real name of Hinduism), Jain and Buddhist co-exist without any religious conflict. In fact the cousin of Lord Krishna, Nimi was the Tirthankara of Jainism. When Gautam Buddha did the revolution against the Brahmin and bring a new philosophy which we can consider as a revolution in the old system, which even happened during the British rule in India through Raja Mohan Roy and Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar. Initially, they were neglected but when people realized the result of the social reformation people accepted it with the open heart. So when we say that Sanatan Dharma is the oldest system or philosophy at the same time it is the most modern philosophy due to the several social reformer and of course we need to credit to the openness of the philosophy, which accepted the changes according to contemporary demand.

śreyān sva-dharmo viguṇaḥ
para-dharmāt sv-anuṣṭhitāt
sva-dharme nidhanaḿ śreyaḥ
para-dharmo bhayāvahaḥ
Bhagawat Gita Ch-3.35

In this sloka the Dharma which was mentioned was not the religion which we think in modern age and according to the meaning of religion. Here the Dharma means the assigned work, the assigned work for the society for the growth of the human civilizations in the right direction. When Lord Krishna mentioned this sloka around 5000 years back (3100 BC) religions do not exist rather only the philosophy were taking shape in the form of Sanatan Dharma and Jainism. They never hated each other as people do in modern word due to the difference of religion. Lord Krishna’s cousin was Lord Nimi who was following Jainism and their famously documented story also mentioning how close Lord Krishna and Lord Nimi were despite being the follower of a different philosophies.

So trying to measure Sanatan Dharma philosophy (Hinduism) with the modern parameter and calling it as a religion and comparing with another religion is not justified. Hinduism is not so easy to be called as the religion it is much more than a religion, but a healthy lifestyle to live peacefully in the life of the human form.