The Church of South India was inaugurated in August 1947, only a few months after India gained its independence from the British empire. The union followed thirty years of negotiation between the South India United Church (itself a union of Presbyterians and Congregationalists), the Methodist Church of South India and the South India dioceses of the Anglican Church of India, Burma and Ceylon. It was the first time in four hundred years that the great divide between episcopal and non-episcopal churches springing from the Reformation had been bridged.

The scheme of union was based on the Lambeth quadrilateral, with the "historical episcopate" accepted in a constitutional form, but ways were found for the full mutual recognition of ministries, so that the new church included many ministers, or presbyters, who had not been episcopally ordained. As a result, the Lambeth conference in 1948 withheld full communion from the CSI, saying only that it looked forward "hopefully and with longing to the day when there shall be full communion between the Church of South India and the churches of the Anglican communion". In the course of the following decades, this initially negative response was gradually replaced by a more positive approach, but it was only in 1998 that bishops of the CSI for the first time took part as full members in the Lambeth conference. The CSI joined the World Alliance of Reformed Churches in 1990.

The WARC executive committee meeting was held just outside Bangalore, in Karnataka Central diocese. The bishop of this diocese, S Vasanthakumar, was elected to the executive committee at the 23rd general council (Debrecen 1997). If Debrecen was for him "a great experience", he and his colleagues in the diocese went out of their way to make Bangalore an equally great experience for the participants, with banquets and cultural displays, an all-day excursion to Mysore, and a service of worship in St Mark's cathedral to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the Alliance.

The panel discussion introduced the executive committee to the challenges confronting the churches in the Indian subcontinent. The main topics considered were the rise of fundamentalism in India, gender questions faced by Indian women (see Patricia Sheerattan-Bisnauth's article in this issue), the continuing social stigmatization of the dalits, poverty and unemployment, and environmental questions.

Christopher L Furtado said that historically fundamentalism in India had been seen as a Christian and Muslim problem, but attention had been focused on Hindu "fundamentalism" by the demolition of Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya in 1992. Strictly speaking, Hindu "fundamentalists" were really religious nationalists driven by a religio-national ideology (Hindutva) which held out the promise of cultural unity to the whole nation, but was in fact an attempt to reassert the dominance of the upper castes. Systematic propaganda in favour of Hindutva by this minority created fear and insecurity in the minds of ordinary Indians, but most Hindus still professed tolerance and a belief in religious harmony and pluralism. Christians were known for their contributions in the fields of education, health care, and social concern; even in the face of opposition by Hindutva forces, the churches could not abandon their work for social transformation and spiritual change.

The word "dalit" means broken, marginalized, oppressed and crushed. For the last 2,500 years, dalits have been untouchable, humiliated and brutalized because of the caste system in India. In an impassioned presentation, Rev D Manohar Chandraprasad painted a horrific picture of their fate. Every hour two dalits were assaulted. Every day two dalit women were raped, two dalits murdered and two dalit houses burnt down. The state - the police, the judiciary, the political authorities - simply failed to protect the dalits or to uphold their basic constitutional rights.

Bishop JW Gladstone said that poverty was still a major problem in India in spite of economic development. Rural unemployment, underemployment and debt was very common. In the tea garden areas of south India, death from starvation was not unknown. Equally worrying was the damage to the environment caused by deforestation, reckless killing of wild animals, lack of scientific methods for protecting water tables, etc. The results could be seen, for example, in the paradoxical combination of frequent floods and droughts in the same region.

The Church of South India is one of many united or uniting churches belonging to WARC which bring together Christians from Reformed and other traditions. (These "transconfessional" unions need to be distinguished from other, equally significant, unions within the Reformed family.) From the WARC viewpoint, Reformed churches joining a transconfessional union do not cease to be Reformed. At its Bangalore meeting, the executive committee "strongly affirmed" the continued participation of united and uniting churches in the Alliance.