Hindu devotees run through red hot embers as part of annual fire walking ritual during “Draupadi Amman” festival in Bangalore on June 9, 2019. (Photo by Manjunath Kiran/AFP Photo)
A former living goddess Kumari, middle, watches the Indra Jatra festival, an eight-day festival that honors Indra, the Hindu god of rain, in Kathmandu, Nepal, Friday, September 13, 2019. (Photo by Niranjan Shrestha/AP Photo)
A Hindu holy man, or sadhu, smokes marijuana in a chillum at the premises of Pashupatinath Temple, ahead of the Shivaratri festival in Kathmandu, Nepal February 15, 2017. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)
A man checks the temperature of a devotee as a precaution against the coronavirus as she arrives to offer prayers at an ancient temple of Hindu goddess Kali in Jammu, India, Tuesday, August 18, 2020. (Photo by Channi Anand/AP Photo)
A Hindu devotee drinks water from the Ganges River at the Sangam area, the confluence of rivers Ganges, Yamuna, and the mythical Saraswati, in Allahabad on March 16, 2021. (Photo by Sanjay Kanojia/AFP Photo)
Hindu devotees, their bodies pierced with lemon and paladai, or bowl with a spout mainly used to feed milk to infants, wait to participate in a procession to mark Shivratri, or the night of Shiva, in Chennai, India, Wednesday, February 18, 2015. Such processions are held as an offering and show of devotion by devotees on the day dedicated to the worship of Lord Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction. (Photo by Arun Sankar K./AP Photo)
A Hindu holy man on his way to the annual holy dip at Gangasagar, gestures towards a visitor as he rests at a transit camp in Kolkata, India, Wednesday, January 6, 2016. Thousands of Hindu pilgrims are expected to take the annual holy dip at Gangasagar, where the Ganges River reaches the Bay of Bengal, on the auspicious Makar Sankranti festival day that falls on Jan.14. (Photo by Bikas Das/AP Photo)
A Hindu worshipper throws vegetables into the crater as offerings during the Kasada Festival at Mount Bromo in Probolinggo, Indonesia's East Java province, August 1, 2015. Every year people gather for the annual festival where offerings of rice, fruit, vegetables, livestock or money are made to Hindu gods at the active volcano to ask for blessings and assure a bountiful harvest. (Photo by Reuters/Beawiharta)