05/12/2025
Sadhu Sundar Singh grew up in a relatively wealthy family in India who were strictly Sikh religion. At 15 he hated Jesus so much he burned a Bible. After seeking the truth of God in desperation and depression due to the passing of his mother, Jesus appeared to him in a vision and turned his life around.
To preach to his own people he didn’t dress like a Western missionary. He put on a simple yellow robe, grew his hair and beard long, and went barefoot, exactly like India’s wandering “sadhus.”
What is a sadhu?
In India a sadhu is any traveling holy man who gives up money and comfort to seek God. Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, and even some Muslims have sadhus. When Indians see that robe they automatically think “this guy is serious about spiritual things” and they stop and listen.
Sundar suffered greatly for his faith: beaten, poisoned, thrown in a well full of dead bodies, stoned, arrested, yet kept walking the roads preaching Jesus until he eventually vanished, likely losing his life in the Himalayas and a missionary trip.
Millions listened because he looked and lived like one of their own holy men.
Sundar Singh’s huge impact includes:
• Sparking the biggest wave of Indian-led conversions in the early 1900s
• Tens of thousands of Hindus and Sikhs came to Christ through his preaching alone.
• Planted hundreds of Indian house churches that didn’t depend on foreign money.
• Inspired the first generation of native Indian pastors and evangelists who took over from Western missionaries.
• Still called “the Apostle of India” today: his books and testimony are in every Indian Bible college.
One man in a robe did what armies of foreign missionaries couldn’t. India’s church exploded because of him. ✝️🔥
He did what the apostle Paul preached:
“I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.”
1 Corinthians 9:22
One former Sikh in a sadhu robe reached more Indians for Christ than armies of foreign preachers ever did.
The message never changes. Sometimes the clothes do so the message can be heard.
