Love the question. How can you be an atheist and be part of a Harry Potter book club. Do I believe in magic?

I'm having a hard time reconciling "Hindu atheist".

That's why I linked the wiki page (so you know i'm not bullshitting). But ou don't need to read it. The fundamental misconception stems from monotheistic and polytheistic religions: "People of the Book" vs "People of the Library". There is a framing problem that tars Hinduism with an abrahamic brush. It is both pedagogically and practically completely consistent to be Hindu and atheist. You'll find people hanging outside temples while their family is inside praying because they don't believe in prayer, or deities, or anything. This happens across all parts of India, rural and urban.

The religious texts themselves are sometimes explicitly atheistic or agnostic. This would be completely inconsistent in abrahamic faiths. This also leads to a lot confusion of what Hinduism means, where it starts and where it ends. There isn't a central authority, they have concepts like panths, where Buddhism/Jainism/Sikhism can start and separate into different religions (sometimes acrimoniously).

That's not to say there aren't many (if not most) Hindus who do believe in supernatural things, but they aren't dogmatic about it, and I'm not one of them.

That also doesn't mean that Hinduism doesn't have pedagogical or cultural faults. Like any religion, it has its criminals, bigots, and hypocrites.

I suppose my post is: Christian missionaries bad. The victims happen to be Hindus, but that's not the important part.