The Church in India
Latter-day Saint missionaries formed the first branches in India in the 1850s, but a majority of Church members immigrated to Utah. From the 1960s to 1980s new Church groups formed in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, present-day Telangana, and New Delhi. A mission in India was officially organized in 1993, and the first stake was created in Hyderabad in 2012.
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History of the Church in India
The restored gospel reached India in 1849 through tracts from Orson Hyde and preaching by Latter-day Saint sailors. The first missionaries arrived in 1851. Over 300 Europeans and Indians joined the Church before the mission closed in 1856. A few members remained in the subcontinent into the 1930s, and three later missions to British India took place.
The first baptism in independent India took place in 1961, when Elder Spencer W. Kimball baptized Mangal Dan Dipty in New Delhi. Though a mission was not established at the time, people continued to find their way into the Church. For example, S. Paul Thiruthuvadoss was converted by a pamphlet he found in a used book store in 1954, and he began preaching the gospel near Coimbatore. In 1978 Edwin and Elsie Dharmaraju, expatriate Indians called as missionaries to their homeland, established a branch in Hyderabad.
In 1993 a mission in India was finally organized. Reactivation efforts, leadership development, and conversions led to a rapid increase in the number of branches. Visa restrictions limited the number of foreign missionaries, but local members helped carry the work forward, and Church membership in the country increased tenfold in the next 20 years, even as many members emigrated. The first stake in India was organized in Hyderabad in 2012.
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Notes
- Bristch, Lanier. “India, 1954–1982: Church Growth in South Asia.” In From the East: The History of the Latter-day Saints in Asia, 1851–1996. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1998, 506–36.
- Dipty, Mangal Dan (as told to John Santosh Murala). “My Journey as a Pioneer from India.” Ensign, July 2016, 66–69.
- “Elder Christofferson Says Protecting Faith Is Path to Peace.” Mormon Newsroom, Aug. 15, 2017, mormonnewsroom.org.
- Rutherford, Taunalyn F. “Studying Sikhs and Meeting Mormons: A Comparative Study of Women in Two of the Newest World Religions.” Sikh Formations, vol. 13, nos. 1–2, 2017, 114–31.
- Rutherford, Taunalyn F. “The Internationalization of Mormonism: Indications from India.” In Patrick Q. Mason and John G. Turner, eds. Out of Obscurity: Mormonism since 1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016, 37–59.