In North India, the spiritually steep Buddha Dhamma practice of extending homage to fellow human beings with humility, and boundless friendliness is referred to in Hindi as Namaste. Of late, some individuals have claimed that Namaste is to invoke the Divine in a person.
This modern-day spin to the age-old typically Buddha Dhamma practice of honoring a fellow human being or object does not hold water. The Buddha’s teaching of Namakara is devoid of any notion of divinity. Rather, the practice of Namaskara is to be rightly understood as a salutation of the Oneness of Humankind as a singular race or species, as consistently stressed by the Buddha.
In Central India, in tandem with the phonetics of the indigenous regional languages, the compassion-driven humane mindset and accompanying gesture of honoring one another is referred to as Namaskar. Similarly, in South India, in line with the prevalent Dravidian languages, the ennobling attitude of expressing concord and amity with fellow human beings is termed, Namaskaram.