India has around 16 million Christians. There have been Christian communities in Kerala as long as Christianity has been in Europe, for St Thomas the Apostle is supposed to have arrived here in 54 AD.

The Posrtuguese, who unlike the English were as enthusiastic about spreading their brand of Christianity as making money from trade, left a large Christian community in Goa. Generally though, Christianity, has not had great success in India, if success is counted in number of converts.

The first round of Indian converts to Christianity were generally those from the ruling classes and after that the converts were mainly from the lower castes.

There are, however, two small states (Mizoram and Nagaland) where Christians form a majority of the population. A quarter of the population of Kerala and a third of Goa are also Christian.

There are small Jewish communities in a number of cities, but the Jews of Kochi (Cochin) in Kerala are of interest because a group claims to have arrived here in 587 BC.