India

Aglow Leader: Johshy Tewes
National Board President

Capital: New Delhi

Pray:

Aglow India is uniting with Christians across India in prayer and fasting for their nation March 18-25 along with a National Day of Prayer on March 22. They are actively putting Ephesians 6:10-18 into practice. Join them in prayer during this time and continue afterwards to see the fullness of God’s goodness and power manifest throughout India.

• Pray blessings upon the President, Prime Minister and Home Minister. Pray for an encounter with the living God.
• Proclaim that the Christians of India are strong in the power of the might of the Lord as they stand firm in the full armor of God.
• Declare the door for harvest for the Kingdom of Heaven is opened in a greater way than ever.

Proclaim:

• We proclaim this is the favorable year of the Lord in India. Jesus is the light of the World. Let Your light shine upon every single person. Release Your Word and let it run like a river over India.
• We proclaim that the Indian women are set free by the power of the Holy Spirit.  We declare that whom the Son of God sets free is free indeed.
• India, arise and shine for God’s light has come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.  In the Name of Jesus, Amen!

Interesting Facts About India

Background:

The Indus Valley civilization, one of the world’s oldest, flourished during the 3rd and 2nd millennia B.C. and extended into northwestern India. Aryan tribes from the northwest infiltrated the Indian subcontinent about 1500 B.C.; their merger with the earlier Dravidian inhabitants created the classical Indian culture. The Maurya Empire of the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C. – which reached its zenith under ASHOKA – united much of South Asia. The Golden Age ushered in by the Gupta dynasty (4th to 6th centuries A.D.) saw a flowering of Indian science, art, and culture. Islam spread across the subcontinent over a period of 700 years. In the 10th and 11th centuries, Turks and Afghans invaded India and established the Delhi Sultanate. In the early 16th century, the Emperor BABUR established the Mughal Dynasty, which ruled India for more than three centuries. European explorers began establishing footholds in India during the 16th century.

By the 19th century, Great Britain had become the dominant political power on the subcontinent and India was seen as the “Jewel in the Crown” of the British Empire. The British Indian Army played a vital role in both World Wars. Years of nonviolent resistance to British rule, led by Mohandas GANDHI and Jawaharlal NEHRU, eventually resulted in Indian independence in 1947. Large-scale communal violence took place before and after the subcontinent partition into two separate states – India and Pakistan. The neighboring countries have fought three wars since independence, the last of which was in 1971 and resulted in East Pakistan becoming the separate nation of Bangladesh. India’s nuclear weapons tests in 1998 emboldened Pakistan to conduct its own tests that same year. In November 2008, terrorists originating from Pakistan conducted a series of coordinated attacks in Mumbai, India’s financial capital.

India’s economic growth following the launch of economic reforms in 1991, a massive youthful population, and a strategic geographic location have contributed to India’s emergence as a regional and global power. However, India still faces pressing problems such as environmental degradation, extensive poverty, and widespread corruption, and its restrictive business climate is dampening economic growth expectations.

Government Type: federal parliamentary republic

Population: 1,339,330,514 (July 2021 est.)

Ethnic Groups: Indo-Aryan 72%, Dravidian 25%, Mongoloid and other 3% (2000)

Languages: Hindi 43.6%, Bengali 8%, Marathi 6.9%, Telugu 6.7%, Tamil 5.7%, Gujarati 4.6%, Urdu 4.2%, Kannada 3.6%, Odia 3.1%, Malayalam 2.9%, Punjabi 2.7%, Assamese 1.3%, Maithili 1.1%, other 5.6% (2011 est.)

Religions: Hindu 79.8%, Muslim 14.2%, Christian 2.3%, Sikh 1.7%, other and unspecified 2% (2011 est.)

Interesting Facts information from the cia.gov website. Read more about India