Mission articles
The Gospel in India Today
‘India shining’ is the television advertising slogan being used
by the government to portray its achievements in this election year.
India today is on the move.
Four lane highways are being constructed
connecting Delhi, Mumbai (Bombay), Chennai (Madras) and Kolkata as well
as north-south and east-west highways. Non-stop trains have just been
introduced from state capitals to Delhi. With the liberalization of the
economy during the past decade India has seen a record growth rate this
year. The world class IT and software expertise and services centred on
Bangalore and Hyderabad have contributed greatly to this. But India is a
vast country with gigantic issues to tackle.
Population
From about 350 million when India gained independence from Britain in 1947, the population has increased to over 1 billion today! An estimated 540 million (49%) are below the age of 25. India is a country of young people with new aspirations in this new century. Indian cities are expanding as never before. It is estimated that 30% of the population now live in urban centres. There are 303 cities with a population of over 100,000, 23 cities with a population of more than one million and six mega-cities with a population of over eight million. The number of literate people in India has increased dramatically during the past fifty years. In 1947 the literacy rate was 6%; today it is 65%.
Unreached people groups
There are great difficulties in counting people groups in India because of language, caste, tribal and cultural divisions. Taking only the ethnicity of people, India is considered to have 953 ethnic groups of more than 10,000. Of these 205 have only a passing contact with Christian missions or churches and do not have a worshipping community. Many of these are Hindu or Muslim and located in northern or central India. There are 100 mega people groups with a population of over one million among whom there is no viable church.
Language groups
Of the 1652 languages recognized by the 1971 census of India, about 370 languages are spoken by at least 10,000 speakers. Some of these already have the Bible or portions of Scripture in their own languages. From a small beginning 25 years ago, today around fifty teams of Indian translators belonging to various Indian missions and churches are engaged in translation work in unwritten languages. About 180 unwritten languages are in urgent need of Bible translators. If Christians and their churches do not have the Scripture in their mother tongue, they can never be strong.
Religious plurality
India is about 75% Hindu. Of these only 15% are philosophic Hindus who study the Vedas, the ancient Hindu scriptures, while 50% are popular Hindus involved in rituals, pilgrimages and worship of many gods. The rest are the lowest castes of Hindus. Further, the Hindus are divided into nearly 2500 castes and sub-castes with their rigid codes of conduct. During the past decade the politico-religious nationalist philosophy ‘Hindutva’, which would like to establish ‘Hindu Rule’ in India, has taken root and is influencing many sections of the Hindu society. The main political party in the present coalition government of India subscribes to it.
There are also nearly 450 tribal groups, constituting 7% of the
population. They are mostly animistic and the majority of them live in
central India. Several Indian missions have focused their ministries on
the tribes and churches are being planted among them.
India has the second largest Muslim population in the world, constituting 12% of the population. It is only during the past ten years or so that Indian missions have started sending their workers to work among them. The group most open today is the Bengali Muslims and ministry to them needs encouragement. There are also Sikhs (2%), Buddhists (0.7%) and Jains (0.4%) apart from a few other groups.
Christians account for about 4% of the population. They are not evenly spread - 70% live in southern India, 18% in north-east India and only 12% in the vast northern region where 83% of the Indian people live. Clearly the churches are stronger in the south and in the north-east of India.
Indian churches today
At the time of the country’s independence many churches were dependent on foreign missionaries and their funding. But with the development of the Indian missionary movement and many inter-denominational organizations, the churches gradually came to understand their responsibility for missionary work and began to pray for, support and send Indian missionaries.
Today, the vast majority of Indian missionaries - numbering several thousand - are supported by the Indian churches. This change has taken place only during the past forty years! We praise God for this. According to Church Growth Association of India, 5000 people are added to the Christian population every day. There are over 150,000 congregations and it is estimated that fifty new congregations are planted every week.
Indian missions today
Until 1960 there were only three well-known Indian mission agencies, with less then 300 Indian missionaries. Then the Holy Spirit began to work in the hearts of young Christian leaders to pray and send out missionaries to unreached groups of people within India, especially to the tribal people in central India and the Hindu people of northern India.
University students attending a missionary
camp on a field trip to Koya
The Indian Evangelical Mission (IEM) was started in 1965 and many others followed. In 1972 there were 26 mission agencies with about 400 missionaries; in 1980 there were 75 agencies with over 2000 missionaries and in 1994 there were 300 mission agencies with 12,000 missionaries. During the same period the number of long term foreign missionaries dropped from 6000 in 1960 to 1500 or so in 1994. According to government figures, in 1999 there were 1375 foreign missionaries in the country. No long term missionary visas have been issued by the government since1984 though short-term visas are issued to those coming in an administrative capacity.
Today there are over 500 agencies with at least 30,000 or more Indian missionaries, many of them in cross-cultural work within the country. Of these, 185 agencies are affiliated to the India Missions Association (IMA), the umbrella body for Indian missions which in turn is linked to the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI).
There are three kinds of mission field, depending on the response of the people groups:
1 Ripe fields
There has been great openness among certain people groups. In 1980, in the Dangs district of South Gujarat I was involved in a survey among the Bhil and Kukna tribal people. There was only one large church in the whole district, but the people were open to the gospel. The Indian Evangelical Mission sent a missionary family and 27 people were baptized within three months and today there are 30 congregations in that one area. Friends Missionary Prayer Band has seen a great harvest among the Malto tribal people in southern Bihar and is celebrating this year the silver jubilee of its ministry among those people. Other missions have also seen a tremendous number of tribal people and those from the lower castes of the Hindu society (Dalits) becoming followers of Christ.
2 Ripening fields
Among certain groups of Hindus and also among certain tribal groups
we find that there is no great response to the gospel when it is first
shared with them. But after a few years we see people here and there
responding, We particularly see this among the various Hindu groups in
the Himalayas and the plains of northern India.
An Indian Evangelical Mission doctor visiting a clinic in Koya
3 Unripe Fields
There are several groups of people where the response has been poor. This is particularly so among many higher caste Hindu groups and Muslim groups.
4 Unripe to ripe fields
We are seeing a dramatic change in some places after many years of frustrating ministry. The Hindus in Uttar Pradesh had not responded to the message of Christ for many years. However during the past few years the Uttar Pradesh Mission has reported seeing thousands of house churches being planted in many parts of that state. A similar situation is seen among some tribal and Hindu groups in Madhya Pradesh through the work of Operation Agape. The response has also been encouraging among the Hindus in the states of Bihar and Punjab. This response is not just confined to lower levels of the Hindu strata, but also increasingly in the upper castes as well. In the city of Bangalore many middle and upper caste families have become followers of Christ.
Dr R Theodore Srinivasagam, a Tamil, trained as a marine biologist at Southampton University and served as a missionary with OMF in Bangkok. It was here that he met his wife, Diana, an English woman who was also working with OMF. Later he became the General Secretary of the Indian Evangelical Mission (IEM), one of the large indigenous missions in India, from 1990 to 1999. He is at present a mission consultant with the India Missions Association (IMA) to which 190 Indian mission agencies are affiliated, with over 20,000 missionaries.