Venerable Hindu perhaps crawled over India (5)
I believe the answer is:
swami
'venerable hindu' is the definition.
'swami' can be an answer for 'hindu' (swami is a kind of hindu). I am not certain of the 'venerable' bit.
'crawled over india' is the wordplay.
'crawled' becomes 'swam' (I've seen this in other clues).
'over' says to put letters next to each other (in a down clue, some letters go over others).
'india' becomes 'i' (phonetic alphabet: alpha, bravo, charlie etc.).
'swam'+'i'='SWAMI'
'perhaps' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for swami that I've seen before include "How to address Hindu dignitary" , "Teacher abroad" , "Hindu mystic" , "Term of respect to a Hindu teacher" , "Hindu religious instructor" .)