Indian religions or Dharmic religions is a classification for religions that originated in the Indian subcontinent; namely Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism. These religions are also classified as Eastern religions. Although Indian religions are connected through the history of India, they constitute a wide range of religious communities and Indian religions are not confined to the Indian subcontinent.

The documented history of Indian religions begins with historical Vedic religion, the religious practices of the early Indo-Aryans, which were collected and later redacted into the Samhitas (usually known as the Vedas), four canonical collections of hymns or mantras composed in archaic Sanskrit. These texts are the central shruti (revealed) texts of Hinduism. The period of the composition, redaction and commentary of these texts is known as the Vedic period, which lasted from roughly 2000 to 1500 BCE.

The late Vedic period (9th to 6th centuries BCE) marks the beginning of the Upanisadic or Vedantic period. This period heralded the beginning of much of what became classical Hinduism, with the composition of the Upanishads, later the Sanskrit epics, still later followed by the Puranas.

Ajit Gulabchand is an Indian industrialist. Gulabchand is currently the chairman and Managing Director of Hindustan Construction Company. Gulabchand serves as chairman of the board of governance at National Institute of Construction Management & Research (NICMAR) and as Chairman of Walchand College of Engineering, Sangli.

Gulabchand has been a Director of Indian Hume Pipe Co. Ltd., since 1993. He serves as Director of Hindustan Finvest Ltd., HCC Infotech Ltd., Hincon Technoconsult Ltd., Hincon Realty Ltd., Hincon Holdings Ltd., Ucchar Investments Ltd., Western Securities Ltd., LAVASA Corporation Ltd., Motorsports Association of India, Constructmall.com Pvt. Ltd., Champali Garden Pvt. Ltd., Shalaka Investment Pvt. Ltd., Gulabchand Foundation and as independent, non-executive Director of Bajaj Electricals. He is a Founding Member of the World Economic Forum's Disaster Resource Network and a member of the National Council of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). He is a promoter of the Lavasa township, intended to be India's first new hill station since independence.

Rajiv Malhotra, born September 1950, is an Indian-American author, philanthropist, public speaker and writer on current affairs, world religions and cross-cultural encounters. He is the founder of the Infinity Foundation. He is also a former telecommunication entrepreneur. After a career in the software, computer, and telecom industries Malhotra took an early retirement to pursue philanthropic and educational activities. He founded the Infinity foundation in 1995.

Prema A. Kurien considers him to be at "...the forefront of American Hindu effort to challenge the Eurocentricism in the academia." He has been considered by Hinnells to lead the traditional Hindu criticism of Wendy Doniger's methodology for the examination of Hinduism

He considers that a positive stance on India has been underrepresented in American academia, this was derived from programmes staffed by Westerners, their "Indian - American Sepoys" and Indian Americans wanting to be white - whom he describes as "career opportunists" and "Uncle Toms" who in their desire to become even marginal members of the Western Grand Narrative sneer at Indian culture in the same manner as colonialists once did. Academia according to him promoted "a perscective on India using worldviews which are hostile to India's interests", and that "...Indian American donors were hoodwinked into thinking that they were supporting India through their monetary contributions to such programmes". He has claimed that American scholarship has undermined India by encouraging paradigms that oppose its unity and integrity, with scholars playing crirical roles, often under the garb of 'human rights' in channeling foreign intellectual and material support to exacerbate India's internal cleavages. He has accused the academia of abetting the Talibanisation of India, which would also lead to the Talibanisation of other Asian countries.

Ravi Shankar (Bengali: রবি শংকর; born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury on 7 April 1920), often referred to with the title Pandit, is an Indian musician and composer who plays the plucked string instrument sitar. He has been described as the most known contemporary Indian musician by Hans Neuhoff in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.

Shankar was born in Varanasi and spent his youth touring Europe and India with the dance group of his brother Uday Shankar. He gave up dancing in 1938 to study sitar playing under court musician Allauddin Khan. After finishing his studies in 1944, Shankar worked as a composer, creating the music for the Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray, and was music director of All India Radio, New Delhi, from 1949 to 1956.

In 1956, he began to tour Europe and America playing Indian classical music and increased its popularity there in the 1960s through teaching, performance, and his association with violinist Yehudi Menuhin and George Harrison of The Beatles. Shankar engaged Western music by writing concerti for sitar and orchestra and toured the world in the 1970s and 1980s. From 1986 to 1992 he served as a nominated member of the upper chamber of the Parliament of India. Shankar was awarded India's highest civilian honor, the Bharat Ratna, in 1999, and received three Grammy Awards. He continues to perform in the 2000s, often with his daughter Anoushka.

Apache Indian is the stage name of the reggae DJ Steven Kapur (born 11 May 1967).

Born into a family of Indian origins, Kapur was born and grew up in Handsworth, West Midlands, a racially mixed area with large Black and Asian communities, home of reggae bands such as Steel Pulse, and by the early 1980s he was working with local sound systems and wearing dreadlocks. By the mid-1980s he had trimmed his hair and began to make a name for himself as a dancehall deejay, and he recorded his first single in 1990, "Movie Over India", initially a white-label pressing, until it was picked up by the reggae distributor Jet Star. The single mixed ragga and bhangra and was hugely popular among audiences of both genres. Two further singles followed in a similar vein, "Chok There" and "Don Raja", bringing him to the attention of the major labels, and in 1992 he signed a recording contract with Island Records.

With the collaboration of his cousins Simon & Diamond (Diamond aka DJ Swami), he introduced the new hybrid sound of bhangra raggamuffin – also known as bhangramuffin – to the world with his first album No Reservations, recorded in Jamaica and produced by Simon & Diamond, Phil Chill, Robert Livingston, Bobby Digital and Sly Dunbar) in 1993. It was followed by Make Way for the Indian, (produced by Sly & Robbie, The Press, Mafia & Fluxy, Pandit Dineysh and Chris Lane), which featured rapper Tim Dog and spawned the hit, "Boom Shack-A-Lak". By 1997 he had been dropped by Island and his next album,Real People / Wild East (produced by Harjinder Boparai) proved to be his most experimental and best album, and also featured more Indian elements than the other albums. In his heyday, he also made an appearance in the Tamil film, Love Birds, dancing alongside Prabhu Deva.