Source: The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1207/p07s02-wosc.html
Raymond Cruze is on a pilgrimage, which in India puts him in rather ordinary company. The destination, however, is not the Hindu's sacred Ganges, the Sikh's holy city of Amritsar, or the home of the Buddhist Dalai Lama in Dharmsala.
Mr. Cruze has come to a barren crag at the southern tip of India to stand where Christ Jesus' doubting disciple, Thomas, is believed to have been martyred some 2,000 years ago.
In a land that has given birth to the faiths of Hindus, Buddhists, and Sikhs and is now the world's third most-populous Muslim nation, Christianity often gets scant attention. But St. Thomas Mount on the outskirts of Chennai (formerly Madras) is a reminder that Christianity may have come here before it came even to Europe.
In all, Christians are India's third-largest religious group behind Hindus and Muslims. Yet at 24 million, they make up only 2.3 percent of the population and have only a fingerhold in most parts of the country.
It is here in India's far south where the country's Christian history runs the deepest - where holy days explode in a riot of color and devotees trace their tradition back to the earliest days after Christ.