Those that do not - Christianity and Islam among them - have very substantial numbers of their followers in this country, all of them entirely home-sprung. It is well known, for instance, that there are more Muslims in India than anywhere else in the world save Indonesia. But not much is known about Christians in India, by any definition an impressive majority.

The first church in India was established by none other than St. Thomas who first arrived in Kerala in the southwestern corner of the country. The saint died in the neighbouring region of the Tamils called Madras by the British (now Chennai). This was five hundred years before Shankaracharya. Incidentally, the venerated Hindu seer and reformer was also born in Kerala.

Given St. Thomas, it is hardly surprising that something like sixty per cent Christians in India should come from south India, chiefly Kerala, Tamilnadu and Andhra Pradesh. In Kerala, they are nearly a third of the population and very prominent in politics, business and the professions. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that any Indian who enters a public or private hospital would bump into a nurse from Kerala who would almost invariably be a Catholic, believed to form 61 per cent of all Christians in the country.

Some people, in both innocence and ignorance, confuse the spread of Christianity in this country with the two hundred years of British rule. Indeed, a church stood in Agra - made famous by the Taj Mahal - in the day of Akbar, the great Mughal Emperor, and British colonial rule had an awkward relationship with native-born Christians. They were expected to be on the right side of Empire by virtue of sharing the faith of the rulers. But this was hardly ever the case.

In fact, missionary activity, which has done so much for the spread of modern education in the country, if anything, helped in the long run to mobilise general opinion, including those of Christians, against foreign rule. Many prominent opinion-makers, social leaders, and outstanding educationists of Calcutta, the seat of the British empire in the last century, were Bengali Christians, as indeed was W.C Bonnerji, the first president of the Indian National Congress which led the national struggle against colonial rule.

In India, preaching one’s faith, religious or political, is neither against the law nor against cultural mores. Thus have spread diverse sects under the broad umbrella of Hinduism, eg the Ramakrishna Mission, or the Arya Samaj, as well as those of Buddhism, Islam and Christianity. However, preaching by offering rewards or issuing threats is a crime. Political Hindu zealots raise precisely this allegation against Christian missionary activity in India but are not taken seriously.

This is because the evidence is too compelling to ignore. A very large section of the modern Indian elite was brought up in schools and colleges run across the country by Christian missionaries. In these splendid institutions the students were mostly non-Christian, mainly Hindus. Indeed, so were the teachers in most.

Principally the reason is that of the twenty five million Christians in India, i.e. two and a half per cent of the country’s population, the overwhelming number come from the lowest classes, and suffer the same economic deprivations as their counterparts from other faiths, including Hinduism. Thus, it is only the top rung among the Christians - just like the top rung among the Hindus or Muslims - who benefited from - the elite education provided by Christian missionary activity. Christian missionary work done among the tribal populations in central, eastern, and northeastern India provided mainly rudimentary literacy and basic health care.