It was springtime in India, and the local Saraswati festival was quickly approaching. A new Hindu friend, Saikat (pseudonym), had invited me to join his family’s celebration at their home for this religious holiday.1 Saikat had quickly become something of a local host for me, and I was grateful to be invited to his extended family’s gathering.

On the festival day, I arrived at Saikat’s house, where I was warmly welcomed and ushered inside. I met Saikat’s father and mother, grandmother, and all manner of aunts, uncles, cousins, and neighbors. Saikat showed me where the religious ceremony had taken place (the Saraswati worship had already concluded), but the true focal point of the event was still to come. A long table was slowly being mounded with Bengali delicacies. Everyone was focused on the meal—Saikat, his mother and father, his grandmother… everybody. I ate well that day.

After everyone had eaten, I told Saikat’s father how much I enjoyed being welcomed by his family and his many relatives. He looked a bit sad as I said this, so I asked if any relative was missing. “Only my brother,” Saikat’s father replied. “Three years ago he became a Christian. Since then, he never comes to our home or visits us on any of the holidays.”

His words impacted me deeply. Here I was, a follower of Jesus who had left my family and hometown 8,000 miles away to share about Jesus with Hindu people. Yet the Hindu family that I was trying to reach had already experienced the hoped-for miracle that someone in their family might begin to follow Christ. Unfortunately, Saikat’s uncle’s conversion had left only painful wounds for the rest of his family. The gospel of Jesus, at least how Saikat’s family understood it, had been distinctly not good news.

What happened within Saikat’s family is a depressingly common experience within Hindu forward caste (previously known as high caste) families when one relative converts to Christianity. A single individual decides to convert. Maybe the convert’s spouse also begins to follow Jesus, or, rarely, a single sibling.
No other relative joins them.

When considering the question of where the edge of mission is in the Hindu world, the answer is where the gospel stops flowing and the kingdom of Jesus halts its advance. By and large, across the wide swath of gospel work done by Indian churches, ministries, and mission organizations, the gospel so painfully, predictably stops moving after reaching one individual in a forward caste Hindu family. The most critical edge in mission in the Hindu world is the line that develops in forward caste Hindu families between a new Hindu follower of Jesus and their not-yet-following siblings, parents, extended families, and neighbors.

There are, of course, so many edges of mission in the Hindu world. Half of the world’s unreached people groups and a third of the world’s population in unreached people groups are Hindu.2 The good news of Jesus’ kingdom is separated from so many South Asians by language, geography, and family clan distinctions (literally jati, the operating force behind the many distinct people groups in India).3

Yet across all domains of personal experience, the published record, and extensive networking with like- minded leaders in both India and the global Hindu diaspora, what stands out are the shockingly few reports of a forward caste Hindu coming to trust in Lord Jesus and then being joined in faith by others from his or her family. Although only a portion of the Hindu world is forward caste, even this small subset of the Hindu world is massive, representing 270 million people.4 Why have so few forward caste Hindu families found good news in the name of Jesus together? I believe there are two primary stumbling blocks.

Stumbling Block: Hindu Identity?

The first stumbling block is that Hindus believe they must give up their Hindu identity to follow Jesus. Yet is that so? Is Hindu identity fundamentally unacceptable for a follower of Jesus?

Working out the interplay of new faith and prior identity claims is difficult in any context. After coming to faith in Jesus, some existing identities must be retained, while others should be renegotiated or dropped. Identities of marriage and parenthood, hometown and nation, sports fandom and collegiate alumni networks are not changed by new belief in Jesus. Other identities, such as political affiliation and various lifestyle choices, may need to be renegotiated. Identities like a spiritual allegiance to another deity must be dropped. So where does Hindu identity fall? What does it mean to be Hindu?

Hindu identity can be best understood as an ethnic identity, rather than a religious identity. There is no specific deity that must be worshipped to be Hindu, no accepted way of salvation, no universal scripture, and no mandated spiritual practice. What we consider Hinduism is the amalgamation of countless merging and dividing strands of religiosity found within the Indian subcontinent. In fact, rather than someone who believes something or does something, the best definition of a Hindu is someone born to Hindu parents. The word Hindu more clearly marks the people someone belongs to, rather than the god(s) they worship or the way they demonstrate spirituality.

Yet common experience shows that when a Hindu begins to follow Jesus, they are instructed to give up their Hindu identity and take on a Christian cultural identity. Critically, this changing of identity does not refer to accepting a new spiritual reality as an heir of God and co-heir with Christ (Rom 8:17), but rather, transferring membership from one human group to another.

This sometimes happens explicitly. A Hindu friend of mine, living in a large Indian city, experienced a miracle from Jesus. Knowing that it was Jesus who intervened in his life and not knowing what else to do, he visited a local church (because as he told me, “Jesus is the Christian god, so I thought that I should go to the Christian place”). After hearing his story, the pastor who met my friend said that there were just two things he needed to do. One, he should take baptism. Two, he needed to change his name, as he carried a Hindu name which was not appropriate for a follower of Jesus. “Popular names to take are Thomas or George,” the priest said. Thomas, for the apostle who traveled to India. George, for the British king who ruled India during part of the British colonial era.

Followers of Jesus who were born into Hindu families often begin to follow Jesus because of an overwhelming conviction of the presence and reality of God’s goodness through Prabhu Yeshu (Lord Jesus). These individuals are so convinced of Jesus and his reality, like my friend above, that they are willing to overcome the pain of identity loss to be associated with him. Yet is it surprising that so few of their family members are willing to accept the same identity loss? Perhaps not coincidentally, most first-generation Indian Christian converts come from jatis not very closely tied to Hindu identity.5

Stumbling Block: Hindu Community?

The loss of Hindu identity feeds directly into the second stumbling block, which is how discipleship to Jesus is typically situated within a distinctly other, Christian community rather than a Hindu community. The Christian community is different in language and social customs from the Hindu community. There are different starting points and differing assumptions. Frankly, the new disciple of Jesus from a Hindu family must navigate different (and often more challenging!) social settings. The lessons learned from the Christian culture do not directly address the issues being faced in the Hindu world.

Particularly, social behaviors and discipleship patterns that are appropriate in the Christian world can be deeply provocative for the Hindu community. Discipleship instructions given to new Hindu believers, because of these cultural differences, often lead to unnecessary antagonism between the new follower of Jesus and their not-yet-believing Hindu family. This is regrettable, as there are so many examples of Hindu families (though not all) being notably gracious in interacting with a family member beginning to follow Jesus.

Essentially, the second issue is the difference between a disciple and a proselyte. Two Hindi words, desi (lit. “of the soil” and meaning to be Indian) and videshi (lit. “foreign”), can help here. A Hindu disciple of Jesus has the gospel freedom to develop a new desi witness of Christ’s kingdom expressed in the deep-rooted traditions, idioms, and arts of their Hindu community. A proselyte, however, may be too quick to adopt the videshi cultural expressions of a culturally Christian community quite dissimilar from their family. To both better demonstrate and communicate the gospel message, new disciples of Jesus from the hundreds of unreached Hindu forward caste jatis must build vibrant, compelling desi witnesses to Christ in their own cultural contexts, rather than mimicking Christian expressions from other communities in India or other parts of the world.

This issue is best illustrated by a story I heard from a church planter in western India. My friend Vijay (pseudonym) spent several years starting a church amongst middle-class professionals in a large, prosperous Indian city. Though most of the church came from Christian backgrounds, several Hindu men, mid-career individuals well-regarded in their companies and families, also began to trust Jesus. After some time being a part of the church, Vijay began to dialogue more seriously with these Hindu converts to Christianity about the need and possibility of reaching their other family members. As Vijay told me the story, he shared, “I was dismayed to hear from these men about their inability to share with their families. What these Hindu
background believers shared with me was, ‘We can’t understand our families anymore. It is like we have been reprogrammed by our time in the church.’” Vijay went on, “I couldn’t understand at the time what they meant. But now I can see it more clearly. Because of how this ended, I recognize that our church failed. I may have reached a few people who were formerly Hindu. But nothing we did could carry forward into the broader society.”

The edge that exists within a Hindu forward caste family between the first follower of Jesus and their other family members has proven to be a historic challenge for the gospel’s advance in South Asia.