India is a place of diversity & beauty, but deep spiritual darkness.
India is the world’s most populous country with great cultural, religious and linguistic diversity. Current population estimates are over 1.44 billion people. India accounts for around 1/6 of the world’s population. After the liberalization policies introduced in 1990’s, India became one of the fastest growing economies in the world. However, it continues to suffer from the challenges of poverty, illiteracy, inadequate infrastructure and public health systems. India is a multi-linguistic country of 28 states and 7 union territories with twenty plus official languages and one thousand plus dialects.
The major religions are Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Christianity. St. Thomas likely came to India in the first century, but according to the 2001 census data Christians made up just 2.3% of the total of over 1 billion population. However, there is good news on Christian growth from India. Really good news! First, the gospel continues to spread powerfully in this vast nation of more than 1.3 billion souls. As reported by Dr. Ralph Wilson, “the percentage of Christians has increased substantially from 2.5% a decade ago to about 5.8% today. That represents a huge increase in the growth rate.” But there remains a great need to spread the Gospel among the unreached millions of Indians amid the cultural, religious and linguistic barriers.