section_path: Main traditions/Ethnicities
section_name: Ethnicities
paragraph_text: Ethnicities
  
  Hinduism is traditionally a multi- or polyethnic religion. On the Indian subcontinent, it is widespread among many Indo-Aryan, Dravidian and other South Asian ethnic groups, for example, the Meitei people (Tibeto-Burman ethnicity in the northeastern Indian state Manipur).
  
  In addition, in antiquity and the Middle Ages, Hinduism was the state religion in many Indianized kingdoms of Asia, the Greater India – from Afghanistan (Kabul) in the West and including almost all of Southeast Asia in the East (Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, partly Philippines) – and only by the 15th century was nearly everywhere supplanted by Buddhism and Islam, except several still Hindu minor Austronesian ethnic groups, such as the Balinese and Tenggerese people in Indonesia, and the Chams in Vietnam. Also, a small community of the Afghan Pashtuns who migrated to India after partition remain committed to Hinduism.
  
  The Indo-Aryan Kalash people in Pakistan traditionally practice an indigenous religion which is closely related to ancient Indo-Iranian religion, and resembles the ancient Vedic religion. While it has been related to Greek religion, due to an origin-narrative which says that the Kalash descend from Alexander the Great's Greek soldiers, the Kalash speak an Indo-Aryan language, and their religion is closer to Hinduism than to the religion of Alexander's army.
  
  There are many new ethnic Ghanaian Hindus in Ghana, who have converted to Hinduism due to the works of Swami Ghanananda Saraswati and Hindu Monastery of Africa From the beginning of the 20th century, by the forces of Baba Premananda Bharati (1858–1914), Swami Vivekananda, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada and other missionaries, Hinduism gained a certain distribution among the Western peoples.