Hi Aunt
Bea,

I
have to disagree, I see it differently.

Just
look at the most popular 'modern' texts of Hinduism: the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.

The
central tenant of the Mahabharata resolves around Krishna, and his students, gopis, devotees
if you will.  Same goes for the Ramayana
and Rama.  The dominant theme ties into
devotional love for and the worship of a representative of God (“Guru”). 

There are soooo many sects of Hinduism, and I can even see Sikhism as a sect of Hinduism in a way.  One can even make a good argument that the Buddha was a nice Hindu boy, but did not tie what he learned to the
Vedas, thus the offshoot known as Buddhism. 
Looking closely, his eight-fold path was elucidated over prior centuries
within Vedic lore.  Then for the most
part, Guru Rinpoche took Buddhism to Tibet where it mixed with Bon and became
Tibetan Buddhism, and Bodhidharma took Buddhism to the far east, where it morphed
into Zen, all really parts of the same philosophical bucket. 

Anyway,
unless you want to split hairs, it is all emanated out of the Harappan
civilization, the original Vedas and that which was appended; and I would say
it would not be wrong at all to call the basket that holds this pot luck cornucopia of
religion and philosophy “Hinduism” (although personally I would use the term “Indiology”).  Some popular forms of Hinduism may not be so specifically
focused on Bhakti and surrender of a guru, it that theme is very, very
well-baked into Hinduism.  It is not
exactly science though, and I may have spent some time in Indian Temples, thanks.

Many lengthy, complicated and contradictory books have been written about this type of obviousness.

M