How can we better engage with Hindus?

Rahil Patel is the author of ‘Found by Love’ (Instant Apostle, 2016) www.instantapostle.com/books/found-by-love
He continues to write and speak on this topic.

One of the groups with whom I am in touch is Patel followers of Jesus around the world. In October last year I was honoured to mediate our first global gathering of Patel believers, mainly from the USA, U.K. and India. It went well with extraordinary insights from former high caste Hindus on how to engage with the upper caste. It was great to meet and share stories. We will continue to do this every 3 months in the hope that God would guide us in our endeavours.

In October I was also interviewed by the Solas Centre for Public Christianity. The interview centred around the style and content one ought to use when engaging with Hindus. I shared some avenues into the heart and mind of a Hindu and how to avoid offence. It doesn’t help when we keep asking ‘Christian’ questions to a completely different and complex worldview. Instead of the need of sins being forgiven (for example) we can talk about the karma bank of a Hindu that needs to be wiped clean. Again, karma and sin are very different concepts so we need to understand where (between the soul and the body) karma is actually attached, in the mind of a Hindu, and work from there.

This is very important for such a time as this:
• 1 in every 6 people on the planet lives in India
• There are 600 million Indians in India under the age of 25! The total population of Europe is 746 million…
• The average age of an Indian is 28. The average age of an EU citizen is 43 and a North American is 41.
• As the World Economic Forum notes, these richer, younger, more confident and more connected millennial India consumers will pave the way for tremendous innovation in products, services and business models.

According to the World Bank (July 2021), by 2030 over 70% of China’s population could be middle class, consuming nearly $10 trillion in goods and services. But India’s middle class consumer market could be even bigger, surpassing both China and the U.S. By then, China and India together will represent roughly two-thirds of the global middle-class population and consumption. I often say, there is extreme poverty in India but India is not a poor country.

One doesn’t need to wonder why the U.K. is so keen for an ‘Indo-Pacific tilt’ in its foreign policy regarding defence, security and a very large free trade agreement with India. The Indo-Pacific is already the political and economic centre of the world.

We (as believers) ought to be thinking along similar lines. We need to be prepared accurately to engage with Hindus about Christ with the huge shift in geopolitics taking place during this decade and beyond.

There was a debate in Parliament on 24th February on religious freedom in India. You can read the report at https://bit.ly/3467Va3 It was a healthy debate with thorough understanding of the complex context of pluralism and ‘minority faiths’ in India and what to bear in mind before we simply wave our ‘human rights placards’.

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