Podcast: How One Man Is Smuggling Bibles into India (Amir)

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

The Real Challenges That Christians in India Face Day in and Day Out

In this episode, Amir (not his full name, which we can’t share due to security concerns) speaks about the persecution, social ostracism, harassment, and even physical violence on account of their faith that Christians around the world face, even for the simple offense of owning a Bible.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

• The Persecuted Church in India
• Called to Christ and Called to Ministry
• Rescuing Girls from Sex Trafficking
• Helping New Converts to Christianity
• India Needs Bibles
• How to Pray for Brothers and Sisters in India

01:21 - The Persecuted Church in India

Matt Tully
Thank you so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.

Amir
Thanks for having me. Thank you so much.

Matt Tully
You do a lot of really amazing work throughout the country of India, and I’m excited to discuss all of that in a few minutes here. But I wanted to start by just talking about India itself first. Before our interview today, you asked that I not use your full name and the name of the organization that you work with. I just wonder if you could share a little bit more why that is.

Amir
The reason for that is because the situation in India for Christians, Christian churches, Christian ministries is not good at all. There is a lot of hostility towards preaching the gospel and people coming to know Christ. As a Christian church, we are persecuted in India heavily today. Many people say it has become one of the most persecuted places in the world today. The persecution comes in different ways. We are persecuted in terms of buildings—churches being destroyed. Our own ministry building was destroyed two years ago, knocked down. And so it’s a physical persecution. There are also a lot of amendments to constitution laws which makes it difficult for Christian ministry to exist. And also we have to give so much reporting to the government in terms of what we do, what we don’t do. And in the recent past, they have also canceled what we call the FCRA in India, which is the license to receive foreign funding. Most Christian ministries have lost that in the last one or two years, so they are not able to receive foreign funding to continue the ministry of what they have been doing. Not just that. In India today, especially in North India, lots of Christian missionaries and pastors have lost their lives just for the sake of sharing the gospel. Right in front of my own eyes I have seen legs being broken, hands being broken, people put into prison. We have so many Christian pastors in prison today just because they just shared the gospel with somebody or distributed a New Testament or a Bible. So the situation in India for Christians is not easy these days.

Matt Tully
Has it gotten worse in the last few years or the last decades?

Amir
Yes. Actually, we have had a Hindu fanatic government for the last ten years, and since they came to power things have been getting worse and worse. Usually our electoral terms are for five years. The first five years, they were just trying what they could do to stop Christians. In the second five years, they have really made it difficult for Christian ministry to do anything or continue the ministry of what they have been doing. But in the last two or three years, they have canceled the licenses of so many Christian ministries, some big ones. I don’t want to name those here, but some big ones have lost their licenses as well.

Matt Tully
That’s surprising to me. I think when we in America think of countries that can be a little bit hostile or very hostile to Christianity, India just hasn’t been on my radar as a primary place where that would be the case. Have you found that to be true as you’ve talked with Americans and other people living in the West? Have they been surprised by the hostility that the Indian Christians face?

Amir
Yes. That has been true for the last few years. I think most people in the US do not realize the kind of persecution that is going on in India because the government tried to present it as a government which takes care of all religions. And many times they encourage the Hindu fanatic groups to go and destroy or attack Christian ministries. But from the front, they say what they did is not right. But from behind, they are supporting them, financing them, they are helping them, and none of them book a case against them or anything like that. But In the recent one or two years, many Christians in the US, especially ministry leaders, are realizing this, and they are calling it as one of the most persecuted countries. I have seen reports of ministries in the US who are saying now how difficult they are finding it. So the Christians in the US don’t really realize the real difficulty that the Christian church in India is going through, but slowly they are becoming aware of it.

Matt Tully
Tell us a little bit more and paint a picture of how large the church is in India. How many Christians are there? What percentage of the population, roughly, would that make up?

Amir
According to the Indian government statistics, we are about 2.7 to 2.9 percent Christians. But in reality, most people believe it will be about 5 to 6 percent Christians in India. Now, even if you Just take 3 percent of 1.4 billion, that is nearly 30 million Christians in India. So there is a large number of Christians in India because there are a lot of people who have come to know Christ from what we call in India as low caste Hindus, scheduled caste, scheduled tribes. And when it comes to statistics, they don’t change their religion from Hindu to Christianity because they lose all benefits. So though they are Christians, in the records they will be still shown as Hindus in order to get the benefits that the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes get. So I would believe anywhere between 5 to 6 percent Christians in India, but the government statistics is about 2.7 to 2.9 percent Christians.

Matt Tully
Are churches able to meet publicly in any way or context? I know in China there is a government-approved Christian Church that can do some things. Is that the case in India, or is it all underground?

Amir
Not really. In India, constitutionally, we have the right to meet together as a Christian church. There is no problem in meeting together, but that does not mean there is no attack. There is the permission from the constitution that allows you to meet together publicly and worship Christ, but you can be attacked by a mob. What happens is that in most of the small towns and rural areas, the rural churches, or the small churches, they do not know all the compliance issues to trying to get a license to meet or to have a church registered. And most of them just come together as a small fellowship group and worship. And the Hindu fanatic groups use that as an excuse to attack them. And many of the churches, even if they have a license and they are permit to meet, they just come as a mob and just attack them.

08:00 - Called to Christ and Called to Ministry

Matt Tully
Tell us a little bit about how you became a Christian. Did you grow up in a Christian home with Christian parents?

Amir
No. My mother was a Christian. She had come to know Christ through Swedish missionaries who had come and planted a church in our village. But I came to know Christ when I was studying to become a medical doctor. I had come to a point where I had said there is no God, and I was doing well in my studies and I was doing well in terms of finances. My dad was a businessman. We were doing well. But my mother always prayed that one day I would come to know Christ and that I would go into ministry. One summer holiday when I went to our hometown from my medical college, that’s when the local church invited me for a meeting. I didn’t want to go, actually. I was at one of our shops sitting at the cash desk, but the local pastor from my mother’s church came and invited me. And I said, “Look, I don’t want to come for any Christian meetings.”

Matt Tully
What was your impression of Christians at the time?

Amir
I thought it was for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe people.

Matt Tully
What does that mean—Scheduled Caste?

Amir
That’s what we call the lower caste in India. Hindu religion has various castes—like Brahman and Upper Caste—and they have four main castes. Then there is a lower caste. Most Christians who have come to know Christ are from that background because that’s where the ministry is concentrate—in the rural area, tribal area, and people have come to know Christ. And on the other hand, I felt I don’t need God. I’m doing well in my studies. I’m doing well in my finances. I really didn’t think I needed God. But anyway, to cut the story short, I went for that meeting. My dad was the one who told me to go the second day. He said, "Look, the pastor came and invited you the first day. You didn’t go. Second day, he has come. You go.

Matt Tully
Out of respect for him?

Amir
Out of respect, because we respect older people in India. I went there, I accepted Christ, and I went into ministry. My dad was so upset because he was not a Christian. He had spent a lot of money on my medical education. For two years he did not allow me to go back home. For two years he said, “No, you can’t come back home.” After two years, my mother convinced him that I need to come back home. And when I went back home, I said, “Dad, it was all your mistake because I didn’t want to go for that meeting, and it was you who told me to go.” Anyway, when I came to know Christ, I joined a Christian ministry for three months of summer holidays, and three months became six months, nine months. I ended up with that ministry for twenty-four years.

Matt Tully
When you were able to come back home, when your father allowed that after a couple of years, were you able to reestablish that relationship with him to some degree?

Amir
Yes, I did, but it took a long time for him to come to know Christ. It was towards the end of his life. In fact, he came to stay with us once we lost our mother, and by then he had become a Christian. He really appreciated the fact that I was in ministry, because by then he realized how important it was.

Matt Tully
How did he become a Christian? Was it through your mother or others in his life?

Amir
Through my mother. And by then all the children had come to know Christ. We are six siblings. All of us had come to know Christ just by seeing the change in our life, and it had brought him to Christ. The day he died, he was fasting all day, praying, and just slipped into God’s presence.

Matt Tully
That’s beautiful. What a beautiful story. Fast forwarding a few decades, a big focus of your ministry work today is caring for children. And I wonder if you could just share a little bit more about how you started working with kids in particular, and then what that ministry has grown into today.

Amir
Actually it all started in June 2007. A local pastor brought two girls who were left on the streets to our house that morning and asked if both me and my wife would be willing to take care of them. They were nine- and seven-years-old. And the reason why he brought them was he had heard me somewhere sharing that I have a heart for children. The reason for that is the Swedish missionaries who had led my mother to the Lord were the ones one who sent me to school in a city, and I was educated there. They had taken sixteen from my village and educated sixteen of us. Out of sixteen, fifteen of us are in ministry today. And I always had a desire, as the Lord enabled us, I want to help sixteen children. And so when this pastor brought these two girls to us, we didn’t have an organization and we didn’t have any setup. I was working as the Asia director, and my wife was heading up a large Christian women’s ministry. We didn’t know what to do when these girls were brought to us, but we also knew if they’re left on the streets, they will soon be trafficked into sex trade. So we decided to take those two girls into our home that day. My wife resigned her job to take care of them, and I continued to work for two more years. And our goal at that time was to take sixteen children. I said, “We don’t need to establish an organization or anything. We can take care of them our own salary.” So that’s what we initially thought and decided to do that. But the two girls grew. By the end of first year, we had sixteen. Soon we had eighteen. By the end of second year, we had thirty by then. Then then I had to resign to take care of them. And today we have over 2,000 children under our various programs and under our care.

Matt Tully
Two thousand children. Wow. I’m thinking back on that second year where you got up to thirty children. What were you doing? Where were they all staying? Was it just in your home?

Amir
No. We rented a small house in the second year that could accommodate eighteen to twenty children. We started with my wife being there, and we hired one or two staff to take care of them. Actually, by the second year, our ministry started growing not just for children, because we realized if we really are to empower these children, we also have to empower the single moms. So we started a skills-training program for them. Actually, today we train about 1,300 young girls and boys in skills training. We have seventeen government-certified courses that we train in. Out of these 1,300 are 200 girls rescued from sex trafficking and temple prostitution. So we train about 1,300 girls and young boys every year. In fact, we are one of the best technical institutes in South India today, awarded by the government. So second year was a rented house, and by the third year we had our own building. And it was interesting because it was not Christians. The local Lions Club saw what we were doing and they built the building for us—the first campus.

15:02 - Rescuing Girls from Sex Trafficking

Matt Tully
So you were meeting a real, practical, ever-present need in your community in doing that. You mentioned that these two young girls who were first brought to your door would have probably ended up in sex trafficking if you hadn't brought them in, and you now work with women who are coming out of that as well. But you also mentioned temple prostitution. I think those of us in the US would probably be less familiar with what that is. How do young girls find themselves in that situation?

Amir
As for the girls trafficked into sex trade, it happens through many ways. In the rural area, a lot of parents are living in poverty, and the traffickers go there promising good jobs for the young girls, and then they take them to Mumbai or Hyderabad in the name of giving them a good job. And finally they end up trafficked into sex trade. Or a young man goes there and says, “I will marry the daughter without taking any dowry.” A dowry is something which they give. They take them to the city and then they are trafficked into sex trade. Sometimes, unfortunately, it is their own parents who sell out of the poverty. They sell them to traffickers for a certain amount of money, and they end up in the sex trade. There are a lot of reasons, but it could be their uncles, aunts. I have had cases of where aunts have cheated on these girls and taken them and sold them. It is a dad who is addicted to alcohol, not being able to have enough money, who sells, knowingly or unknowingly, their daughters to sex trade. So that’s as far as sex trade is concerned. Whereas temple prostitution in India is practiced by certain people groups. There is a certain people group called as Joginis. They are taught in the Hindu religion that God has made you to satisfy the temple priest and those who come in the temple. They believe that is what God has created them for, or that’s what they are being taught.

Matt Tully
They’re being brainwashed to believe that.

Amir
Brainwashed. And so, including the men, they are encouraged to go into temple prostitution. Basically they are there meeting the needs of the temple priest and people who come to the temple. But now there are a lot of young girls who are rebelling against the system. I went to a certain place in 2012 I think, and that’s when God laid a burden on my heart to start this work for trafficked girls. And these were girls from a temple town. And I was meeting with this people group, Jogini, and the young girls came to me and said, “Sir, will you please rescue us? Anything or anywhere you can take us, but somehow rescue us. We don’t want to go into this.” And I was putting this away. I said, “Look, I’m already taking care of 2,000 children. I’m doing a skills-training program. We have a lot on our plate.” But the Lord kept putting this burden on my heart day after day. Finally, through a story of rescuing one girl, and that’s a long story, we got into it and we started rescuing these young girls from the temple towns. And today every year we are rescuing about 200 girls. They become part of our skills-training program. They stay with us for nine months, and we give them government-certified skills. Then we have job interviews on our campus. Once they get the jobs, they move out of our campuses. But we are rescuing about 200 girls. That includes both the sex trafficking and the girls from temple prostitution.

Matt Tully
I’m just struck that it sounds like poverty is a common thread or underlying issue that often leads to this.

Amir
Mainly poverty, then marriage, because the parents are not able to pay the dowry. The other one is young men coming and saying to the parents, “Look, I’m working in so and so, I have a good job, I can marry your daughter without taking any dowry.”

Matt Tully
“I can provide a good future for her.”

Amir
Yeah. And even they marry them, but for the sake of trafficking.

19:08 - Helping New Converts to Christianity

Matt Tully
That’s terrible. You mentioned a minute ago that when you became a Christian, you were kicked out of your home. I know that part of your ministry today also entails caring for new converts to Christianity from Hinduism or Islam who have been ostracized by their own communities, kicked out of their own homes as well. Can you tell us a little bit about that work that you’re doing?

Amir
It all happened in 2011. A young man walked into my office. He was highly educated. He had his master’s degree. He was a very wealthy man. He came to my office and said, “Sir, I want to study the Bible.” So I asked him what happened. He said he had come to know Christ about a year ago or something, and he had finished his masters, and he started sharing the gospel with his friends and his family. And the parents told him, “You have two options. Either you share your gospel and be kicked out of the house, or you give up your faith. Then you can stay here and inherit the property.” They were quite rich people. This brother decided that he doesn’t want the property. He wanted to share the gospel. Then they said, “You’ll have to leave the house right away.” So he just left the house with the clothes he was wearing. He went to many Bible colleges asking for admission, and nobody could give him admission because he had no certificate, no money. And people were worried whether he’s trying to find out details about the Bible college.

Matt Tully
Like a spy.

Amir
Like a spy. So somebody told him, “There is an office there. Can you go there? Maybe they will be able to help.” So he walked into my office and he said, “Sir, I want to study the Bible.” I said, “I don’t have a Bible college.” When he told me the story, I said, “Look, I don’t have a Bible college, but I have two evangelism teams. You can stay with them for six months, if you want to, until you find something to do.” So he stayed with our evangelism team and was doing evangelism. That’s when the Lord put a burden on my heart to take care of young men and women who have come to know Christ from Hindu or Muslim background. And if they are kicked out of their house, I said I want to give them at least shelter for one year. Because the first year is the most difficult year because the churches don’t accept them. Families don’t accept them. People look at them as spies. They don’t know where to go, what to do. We have lots of businesses as well which take care of our ministry operational costs. I said I’ll take care of ten to twelve young men and women who are kicked out of their home. So we started that. And in the first year, I had twelve young people.

Matt Tully
Twelve.

Amir
Twelve. When they came, I said, “No, I don’t want to keep them quiet. Let’s teach them church planting and send them back to their own community to plant a church.” And along with church planting, I will also train them as an electrician, a welder, a computer software guy, a nursing assistant—we have all these courses, like paramedics courses—so that when they go there, they have a reason to go to the community and they have an income to sustain themselves. So we started training these young people in church planting and giving them skills and sending them back.

Matt Tully
Sending missionaries back to their own home town.

Amir
Yes. Not as a church planter, not as a pastor. They go there as an electrician so that they have an entry and they are not kicked out. But then they also have an avenue to have some income. And so since then we’ve been training young people from 2011. Every year we are training about forty-eight to fifty young people and sending them. We have more than 200 churches established through them now.

22:44 - India Needs Bibles

Matt Tully
That’s a great segue into how the Bible fits into all of this work that you’re doing. We’ve only hit on a few areas of the really large scope that your ministry and organization is working on. What role does God’s word play in that work? I know you have to be very careful about how much you talk about the Bible, how you publicize your connection to Christianity and God’s word. How does that integrate?

Amir
There is a great need for Bibles in India. When they think of India, they think, Okay, there are only very few Christians. But as I said, 3 percent of 1.4 or 1.5 billion is a lot of people. My work in Bible distribution started as far back as 1990. That’s when I first came to know Christian Booksellers Association (CBA) here. At that time, we had only the Good News English Bible in India. No NIV, no ESV.

Matt Tully
So just one English translation?

Amir
One English translation. And I saw the need. And I came to the US publishers and I said, “India needs Bibles. Can you sell me the Bibles?” Nobody wanted to send me. That was at the Atlanta CBA. I said, “I’m not asking for credit. I’ll pay you the money, but India needs Bibles.” Nobody wanted to give. They said, “It’s too problematic. We don’t want to sell Bibles to India.” And a friend of mine, who was a large distributor in the UK, said, “I will buy for you and send.” I said no. I went into the restroom. I cried before the Lord that day and I said, “Lord, India needs Bibles. Make sure one day these publishers come after me.” And I didn’t buy any Bibles. I went back to India. I fasted and prayed. I got my team to pray. I researched and found out when is the lowest season the US publishers are looking for sales. I found out it was in March, and I got my team to fast and pray for one week. I came here the next year in March. I went straight to Nashville, and went to some of the publishers. One particular publisher there, I walked into their warehouse. They had three forty-foot container loads of Bibles which was not even in their inventory. I started negotiating, negotiating, got them at a good price—90 percent discount. I said, “I’ll take all of them. India needs Bibles. Give me the Bibles.” And even with that discount, during that year, 1990, it came to one million US dollars. And my organization told me, “You’re going to sink the whole organization.” I said, “Trust me! India needs Bibles.” And you won’t believe it. Those three forty-foot containers came, and we sold 50 percent of them in fifteen days and made the money. And that was the first time we introduced other Bibles to the Indian market. There is a great hunger. Last year we distributed 700,000 Bibles. After COVID, the young professionals, the college students are wanting to read English Bibles. There is a great demand for English Bibles. India is hungry for Bibles. Yes, there is opposition. And maybe the opposition is because of this hunger, because young people are seeking for truth and the people are looking out for truth. And that’s why the opposition is increasing because the Hindu fanatics believe if they don’t contain it soon, India will become a Christian country or something like that. But there is great hunger, great demand for Bibles.

Matt Tully
How do you incorporate Bible teaching and bible literacy into some of these trades courses and certificates that you provide? Do you find ways to incorporate Bible study into that?

Amir
Yes. We do morning devotions with them for all the students, and for those who stay on the campus there are morning and evening devotions. And then we do a one-day retreat where we show a Jesus movie, or one Christian movie, which is a very clear gospel-oriented movie. And then we give a short gospel message, and we invite them to accept Christ. And during the course, we bring in people who have come to know Christ from Hindu and Muslim backgrounds to share their testimony so that they see their own people and how they have come to know Christ. And we give a Bible as a graduation gift. Earlier we just gave it to everybody. Today we tell them, because of the persecution, we say, “In the back there are Bibles kept. Those who want, you can take. Those who don’t want, don’t take.” Ninety five percent of them take it. We are not forcing them, but they have an opportunity to take. We see anywhere between 270 to 290 young people come to know Christ, and every forty-five days we do a baptism of sixteen or seventeen young people, all from non-Christian backgrounds. First generation Christians. I have built a baptism tank right into my campus to baptize them. It’s risky, it’s hard, but that’s what God has called us to do.

Matt Tully
How do you actually get them the Bibles that you need to hand out? The 700,000 Bibles you distributed last year, how do you get them into the country in the context where the government is against you and increasingly watching?

Amir
We bring in Bibles both from the US and also the local language Bibles from the local Bible suppliers. But the English Bibles, when we bring them in, we don’t bring it as a foundation or as a trust. We have our own business. We treat that as a business entity, and we do that as a business. We are importing books for supplies.

Matt Tully
Just generic books.

Amir
Yeah, generic books for distribution. So if they stop us as a business importing books, they have to stop other business as well. Unfortunately, in the last year they have introduced duty on the books.

Matt Tully
Tax.

Amir
Yeah, tax. Earlier we didn’t have tax on any books we imported. Today we pay 17 percent tax on it. That increases the price. But this is where I really want to thank Crossway for providing Bibles to believers who have come to know Christ recently. And especially the church edition, what you just have given to us. We are able to give it to hundreds and thousands of young people in the college. They like it. Especially after COVID there is a great demand. For young professionals we do programs in the corporate houses, especially during Easter and Christmas, and we distribute those Bibles. And we are very grateful for Crossway in making that available. Now, that’s as far as distribution is concerned, but we also sell it to the Christians. I always believed Christians, if they want to read God’s word, they must be willing to pay for it and pay a little extra, and the extra goes towards the evangelistic material or evangelism and those kind of things. So there is a great demand, both with the Christians, they need it, they are asking for it, and there is also a great hunger among the non-Christians, especially among the young people.

29:31 - How to Pray for Brothers and Sisters in India

Matt Tully
Thank you so much for giving us this insight into the incredible work that you and I know many, many people working with you, many Christians sacrificially working in very difficult situations to see the gospel go out in India and see people cared for. I wonder if as a final question, how could we in the US and abroad be praying for you and your family and your ministry in particular?

Amir
I would really appreciate it if the Christians here in us pray for protection of Indian Christians. Protection in terms of physical protection. When I became a Christian, I went around doing open air evangelism. I had no fear. We used to do eight to nine open airs every day, where we gave New Testaments, and I hardly had any opposition. Today I can’t even do one open air. I’ll be attacked immediately. I can’t distribute tracts on the streets of India anymore. We are attacked even in the first hour itself. So pray for physical protection. Protection of churches, because they are knocked down, they are burnt down. And protection of Christian workers. They are killed. They are being brutally hurt. Pray for protection. And also protection in terms of freedom to continue to preach the gospel, because the laws are amended, foreign funding is restricted. Because many Indian Christian ministries depended on foreign funding, now when it is restricted, their hands are tied and they’re not able to do what they have been doing. So pray that protection from all this tightening will end. So protection physically, protection in terms of compliance issues and laws that are being changed, and just the freedom to preach the gospel. And the other thing I would really appreciate is if the Christians here can pray that we will be bold. I know most Christians in India are living in fear today. Christian ministries are living in fear today. Pray for boldness, courage, so that we can continue to do what God has called us to do till the day it is impossible. I don’t know how long this will be possible because every year the situation is worsening. But as long as the Lord allows us, pray that God will give us strength and boldness to continue to do what we are doing. So we really appreciate your prayers in those areas.

Matt Tully
Thank you so much for your time today.

Amir
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

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