May 2004

World View

The Bihari Muslims of India

A Baptist volunteer visited a national church planter in India and gave the church planter a copy of the JESUS film. The church planter shared the film with a friend who works for a television station in a large city in Bihar, India The friend broadcast the JESUS film! Christian workers ask believers to pray that the many Bihari Muslims who saw the film will seek truth from God and that God will multiply Bihari believers and birth a church-planting movement among India's 17 million Bihari Muslims.

The Bihari [bee-HAR-ee] Muslims are a people about whom seemingly no one cares. The Indian state of Bihar is often described as backward, illiterate, corrupt, dirty, poor and neglected. Bihari Muslims are a minority there among the predominantly Hindu population. Many migrate to Calcutta or Delhi in search of work, but they find themselves even more downtrodden. The Bihari operate rickshaws, repair used clothing for resale, and sell cookware door to door. They go to the mosque when they can; more often, they worship at the tombs of Muslim saints. Only a handful of India's 16.5 million Bihari Muslims have become Christians. Another 1 million Bihari are living without Christ in refugee camps in Bangladesh. God does care about the Bihari Muslims. Scriptures are available in some Bihari Muslim languages, but their low literacy rate makes a personal witness the best way to hear about Christ.

More about the Bihari of India