India has been home to a large number of religious thinkers and spiritualists. A major reason for this has been the tolerant and liberalist traditions inbuilt in ancient Indian society. Another reason is the huge diversity of people found here. A majority of the religious thinkers have advocated themselves as reformers and not as prophets or founders of new religions.
The most important religious figures include Buddha, Mahavira and Guru Nanak Dev. Buddha and Guru Nanak were the founders of the Buddhist and Sikh religions, Mahavira, the last and 24th Jain Tirthankara was the reviver and reformer of the Jain religion propagated by previous 23 Tirthankaras.
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Other important figures include Basava, Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.
Other important figures include Kabir, Ali Hujwiri and Akbar.
The Sikh Gurus undoubtedly were very important in propounding the tenets of Sikhism. Thomas, one of the twelve disciples of Jesus, is believed to have preached and finally died in India.[1] Saint Francis Xavier also developed a Jesuit missionary method that left a significant impression upon the missionary history of India.
We shall let a Christian historian speak about what the Portuguese did in their Indian domain. “At least from 1540 onwards,” writes Dr. T. R. de Souza “and in the island of Goa before that year, all the Hindu idols had been annihilated or had disappeared, all the temples had been destroyed and their sites and building materials were in most cases utilised to erect new Christian churches and chapels. Various viceregal and Church council decrees banished the Hindu priests from the Portuguese territories; the public practice of Hindu rites including marriage rites, was banned; the state took upon itself the task of bringing up the Hindu orphan children; the Hindus were denied certain employments, while the Christians were preferred; it was ensured that the Hindus would not harass those who became -Christians, and on the contrary, the Hindus were obliged to assemble periodically in churches to listen to preaching or to the refutation of their religion.”2
The Pope denies that St. Thomas visited south India and suggests that Portuguese pirates on a religious campaign to eradicate Hindus concocted a story to align converted Indian Christians to the Christian homeland. The Pope denies that St. Thomas visited India and that the Christian Indians owe their faith to Portuguese invaders rather than a Christian saint.
Controversy is raging in the Christian community in Kerala following recent remarks by Pope Benedict XVI that St. Thomas had preached Christianity in “western” India, from where it spread to other parts of the country, fuelling a debate whether or not the apostle had come to southern India.
The community in Kerala believes that St. Thomas came to this part of the country in A.D. 52 and had established seven churches. The community considers St. Thomas as the “Father in Faith” of Christians in India.
The present Pope had in a recent pronouncement at St. Peter's Square at the Vatican spoken of St. Thomas the Apostle, seemingly taking away from him the traditional title of “Apostle of India”.