The Bible in India

India has a very ancient Christian population; it is believed that the first Christians came to India along with St. Thomas in 52 AD. They are believed to have reached the shores of Kerala. The Bible they followed was in Syriac language, and they also had oral instruction in religion. But Bible translation into the Indian languages did not happen till much later with the advent of the missionaries in colonial times. The first of the missionaries to translate the Bible was William Carey of the Baptist Missionary Society. He translated the Bible into Bengali, Sanskrit and other Indian dialects. He along with Joshua Marshman and William Ward (known as the Serampore trio) established the Serampore College to train Indians irrespective of caste and colour, to become Christian clergymen. More importantly, they established the Serampore Mission Press in 1800, which was the first press to start functioning in India. According to Wikipedia, “The press published religious Christian tracts, Indian literary works, translations of the Bible in twenty five Indian vernaculars and other South Asian languages, but the major contribution of the press was printing vernacular textbooks”. This shows how the foreign missionaries helped in the development and standardization of local Indian languages. It must also be mentioned that Carey did not have the blessings of the East India Company in his endeavours, because they were suspicious of missionaries in general.

The Bible Society of India founded in 1811, is another society that undertakes Bible translations. It was established in Calcutta with the aim of making the Bible available in local languages to the people who did not know English. The organization sees to the translation and marketing of the Bible in various parts of India. It has rendered the Bible into 49 Indian languages so far.

It has also to be noted that Bible translations were done only by the Protestant missionaries who came to India with the British. The French or Portuguese were not interested in the mission of translating the Bible; in fact, the Portuguese tried to sever the Christians of India from their indigenous practices and unite them with the Roman Catholic church.