The talk seeks to verify the truth of Christian and Islamic claims of having brought a long-awaited egalitarianism among the Hindu masses” It is a much-debated question if Buddhism is Hindu or not. Some people juxtapose Buddhism and Hinduism. Dr. Elst, on the other hand, says that Buddhism was a ‘sampradaya’ of Hinduism and that the Buddha never talked of himself as anything but a Hindu (at a time when even the word ‘Hindu’ was not yet in use.) In this talk, he examines various aspects of the Buddha and Buddhism, like caste, practices, beliefs, concepts, and rituals among others, drawing out conspicuously common roots between Buddhism and Hinduism.
