Christianity continues to play a significant role in the day-to-day life of India, especially in the areas of education and health care, said India’s ambassador to the United States during a visit to the Seventh-day Adventist Church world headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, United States.

“My country is no stranger to Christianity or to the Adventist Church,” said His Excellency Lalit Mansingh at a gathering of church leaders October 11. “The Christian tradition in India is almost as old as Christianity itself,” he noted. “In the more than 100 years the Adventist Church has operated in India it has achieved a great deal, establishing 12 hospitals and 304 schools and colleges.

“And whenever there is a national calamity, Adventists have been at the forefront of offering help,” said Mansingh. 

“As a church, we want to be constructively engaged in Indian society,” said Pastor Jan Paulsen, president of the Adventist Church worldwide. “A vital part of the Christian mission entrusted to the church is to use our resources and concentrate our energies on improving the quality of life for individuals.”

“We live not only for the future, but also for now,” said Paulsen. “And in these turbulent times, the humanitarian responsibility of the church is especially important. We need to deal with human suffering in all its forms. We need to make certain that the children of tomorrow will have a better future than the children of today.”

The majority faith in India is Hinduism, with some 81 percent of the country’s 1 billion people professing this religion. Twelve percent of the population is Muslim, just over 2 percent is Christian, and other groups include Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, and Parsi.

Mansingh said that religious freedom is enshrined in India’s constitution and laws, which preserve India as a secular state that treats religions equally.

“There is an Indian saying, ‘Show equal respect for all religions,’ and this concept is deeply entrenched within Indian culture and society,” said Mansingh.

“This is not to say that there are never instances of religious intolerance in India,” he added, referring to a 1999 incident where a Baptist missionary and his two sons were killed by militant Hindus in the state of Orissa.

“There will always be the lunatic fringe that is intolerant. But the redeeming aspect to this is that these actions [in Orissa] were widely and strongly condemned by mainstream Indian society. And not just by Christians, but by members of many different religions who are continuing India’s long tradition of tolerance and respect for all religions.”

Mansingh also referred to the “recent tragic history of Afghanistan,” a country where he served from 1971 to 1974 as deputy chief of India’s diplomatic mission to Kabul.

Two decades of civil war have impoverished the Afghan people and their plight has been exacerbated by years of drought, he said. “The world must come together to support the people of Afghanistan. We must work to ensure that normalcy is restored to their country.”