ABSTRACT
When the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama reached the Indian coast in 1498 he came as the representative of a European Latin Catholicism which was soon to face the challenge of the Protestant Reformation and the rise of non-Catholic nations which would compete with Portugal for commercial control of Asia. The Indian sub-continent, too, was about to undergo major upheaval. In the ensuing five hundred years Christianity took root in India in a variety of forms and underwent a process of transformation as Christians sought to express their faith within patterns of Indian thought, symbol and rite. At the same time, the presence of Christianity as a small but not negligible minority has itself contributed to the changes which have revolutionised at least some aspects of Indian life since the sixteenth century.
