Christianity in India
Christianity is India's third most followed religion according to the census of 2011, with approximately 28 million followers, constituting 2.3 percent of India's population.
Quotes
[edit]- The indirect influence of Christianity has been to quicken Hinduism to life. The cultured Hindu society has admitted its grievous sin against the untouchables. But the effect of Christianity upon India in general must be judged by the life lived in our midst by the average Christian and its effect upon us. I am sorry to have to re record my opinion that it has been disastrous. It pains me to have to say that the Christian missionaries as a body, with honourable exceptions, have actively supported a system which has impoverished, enervated and demoralised a people considered to be among the gentlest and most civilized on earth...
- Mahatma Gandhi. Collected Works, Volume 24, New Delhi, 1967, p. 476. Young India of July 13, 1924.
- Christianity in India has been inextricably mixed up for the last one hundred years with the British rule. It appears to us as synonymous with the materialistic civilization and imperialistic exploitation by the strong white races of the weaker races of the world. Its contribution to India has been therefore largely of a negative character. It has done some good in spite of its professors. It has shocked us into setting our own house in order.
- Mahatma Gandhi,The Collected Works, Volume 40. New Delhi. 1970, pp. 58-59. as quoted in Goel, S.R. History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)
- From Greenland's icy mountains,
From India's coral strand....
They call us to deliver
Their land from error's chain.
What though the spicy breezes
Blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle (...)- Reginald Heber, "Missionary Hymn", st. 1 (1819).
- There are very few Christians and Jews (in India) and they are of little weight.
- Pope Nicolas IV sent John of Montecorvino, a missionary to convert India and China into Christianity and thus he wrote to Pope in 1306. (See G.T. Mackenzie, Christianity in Travancore, Govt. Press Trivandrum, 1901} Quoted in Ishwar Sharan. The Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple. Fourth edition. 2019
