Vedism knew many gods. But according to the book Concepts of Indian Philosophy, its adherents found this unsatisfying, so “they slowly drifted towards a monotheistic conception of the god-head. . . . One process was to lump all the previous gods together . . . [to] produce a conceptualised god.” Brahma therefore came to be an impersonal god without attributes and qualities but one personified in various deities.

In the latter part of the 19th century, Calcuttan priest Ramakrishna tried blending Hinduism with what he considered the best of Western religious thought. He argued that even as water has different names in different languages, so “Sat-chit-ananda, the everlasting-intelligent-bliss, is invoked by some as God, by some as Allah, by some as Jehovah, by some as Hari, and by others as Brahman.” Even “as one can ascend to the top of a house by means of a ladder or a bamboo or a staircase or a rope, so divers are the ways and means to approach God. . . . Different creeds are but different paths to reach the Almighty.”

Such a tolerant attitude accommodates great leeway in Hindu worship. It allows some sects to direct their worship mainly to Brahma (Brahmanism), others to Vishnu (Vaishnavism), and still others to Siva (Saivism). It allows folk Hinduism, Shaktism, and Tantrism to preach Hinduism each in its own fashion. Tantrism, for example, includes tribal and folk practices and stresses goddess worship, which appeared early in the history of Hinduism. Indians speak of their country as “Mother India,” and it is represented by a goddess named Bhārat Mā.