If you grow up in a Hindu society being taught about the Hindu faith, you will automatically decide whether the information you are being given is true or not. You cannot, if you are being intellectually honest, choose to believe or not. But then, you will be unaware of other belief systems. If you are taught about two faiths, Hinduism and Christianity you will automatically decide if one is true or both are false. As you said, you choose the direction you want to take. Which by definition, reduces the amount of knowledge available. Which is not a criticism. We’re all in the same boat. We can only work with what we are given.
I know quite a bit about Hinduism and I’m pretty sure in the case you describe above, I would have been reading about Christianity. It’s important to broaden one’s exposure to different cultures. It opens our eyes to what it means to be human, who we are.
And, this is at the very least of it. Religions go beyond what binds societies, reaching to the roots of our primary relationship which is with the Ground of our being. It is not so much a matter of true or false here, as they are all expressions of a connectedness to the Divine. Also, it is more than knowledge, but rather has to do with how one conducts one life.
Confession, founded on personal human experience, I find more convincing than hypotheticals. So, looking back to when I realized that nothing I had learned in school could explain my existence, what was most real, I recall coming to understand that what I had been doing was like expecting Pi to be a whole number. Life was clearly irrational from my perspective of what constituted the structure of the world. But, left dissatisfied with that answer I sought it elsewhere. Finding Zen, and then parking myself in eastern thought, punctuated by the indisputable arguments of CS Lewis, for about half a century, I adopted an approach to life which place the eternal above the transience and illusoriness of the mundane. For me religion was a personal affair, between God and myself. When my niece married a Hindu fellow, I realized I had been seeking Him at a distance - the most intimate of relationships, totally intellectualized. The mantras, symbols and teachings were brought to life. It was like going to the Holy land and seeing all the places you had read about. I think that was part of the ongoing deepening of what is termed growing in Christ. We are all in this together, we participate in rather than observe the Beatific Vision. I suppose the clincher to committing myself to the church was when a close friend asked me what I thought constituted a soul. I went on for a long time, in my mind long after the person had been satisfied with my response. It all sounded phony as I said and thought it because the reality was right there in front of me and I had absolutely nothing that could reach it. Sort of like noticing that you’ve been chewing on straw, in the presence of bread.
What I am trying to say is that belief is a a light illuminating the journey that is one’s faith. One chooses the path. Faith is like seeds scattered by a generous sower everywhere. They fall where they can be trampled, on rocks, in brambles and thickets and in fertile soil, which represent the choices we make when we receive God’s graces. It is always our choice wherever we are along the path.
