Hindu views on evolution
Some Hindus have found support for, or ideas foreshadowing evolutionary ideas, in scriptures, such as the mytheme of Dashavatara, the incarnations of Vishnu starting with a fish.
In 2023, India removed references to evolution in textbooks and stopped teaching from 10th grade and below and was moved to 12th grade. In 2025, NCERT books also saw exclusion of Darwin's evolution theory.
Reception in India
In India, there were minimal references to Darwinism in the 19th century. While elements of Victorian England opposed the idea of Darwinism, Hindus already had the present notion of common ancestry between humans and animals. While the creation–evolution controversy has seen much debate in US, Middle East and parts of Africa, it is an insignificant issue in India, because of its Hindu-majority population.Most Indian scientists accept biological evolution and it is taught in Indian universities.
In 2023, India removed references to evolution in textbooks and stopped teaching from 10th grade and below and was moved to 12th grade.
Spiritual evolution
Many Hindu reformers compare the Samkhya philosophy, specifically the term parinama and the concept of evolutes, with Darwinism. David Lagourie Gosling has suggested that Swami Vivekananda based most of his cosmological and biological ideas on Samkhya. Influenced by western thought and esotericism, Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo developed a view on reincarnation in which an involution of the Divine into matter takes place, and the person has to evolve over multiple lives until the Divine gains recognition of its true nature and liberation is attained.Hindu creationism
Hindu creationism, also known as Vedic creationism, is a type of religious old Earth creationism. Historian of science Ronald Numbers has commented that "Hindu Creationists have insisted on the antiquity of humans, who they believe appeared fully formed as long, perhaps, as trillions of years ago." The views of Hindu creationism are based on the Vedas, which depict an extreme antiquity of the universe and history of the Earth.The emergence of modern Vedic creationism has been linked to Dayananda Saraswati, the founder of Arya Samaj. In his Satyarth Prakash, Saraswati promoted anti-evolutionary views and took a literal reading of the Vedas. He argued that God designed the physical bodies of all species 1.96 billions years ago on Earth and on other planets at the beginning of the present cosmic cycle. He stated that God conjoined the bodies with pre-existing souls and that different species were created and distributed to souls in accord to their karma from the previous cosmic cycle. Saraswati in a public lecture condemned Darwinian evolution but misunderstood common descent by questioning why monkeys no longer evolve into men.
Vedic creationism holds a view of the world derived largely from the Bhagavad Gita. It was promoted by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada the founder of ISKCON who referred to Charles Darwin and his followers as "rascals". Vedic creationism was also promoted by ISKCON devotees Michael Cremo and Richard L. Thompson, authors of the 1993 book Forbidden Archeology. They argue that human beings are distinct species that have existed for billions of years. Vedic creationists are known to search for anomalies and reinterpret the fossil record to make it fit with their metaphysical assumptions.