On a cold December morning in India’s western state of Rajasthan, 38 worshipers sat on mats spread on the floor or on plastic chairs in the back of a small brick church as they heard the Bible read in their native language of Hadoti for the first time in their lives.
As the pastor read Psalm 23, some of the congregants smiled in amazement while others cried tears of joy.A few lifted their hands and cried out, ”Amen.”
“It felt [as if] God came closer,” said one congregant, recalling the Bible reading on the Sunday before Christmas. “The familiar verses … no longer sounded foreign.” CT agreed not to use the names of the Indian Christians interviewed due to threats from local Hindu nationalist groups.
Although spoken by several million people in southeastern Rajasthan and parts of Madhya Pradesh, Hadoti (also spelled Hadauti or Harauti) has long played second fiddle to Hindi, the language of administration, education, and employment. Similarly, in the church, hymns, Bibles, and sermons are all in Hindi.
“Many did not truly understand Hindi,” said a pastor from Kota, the third-largest city in Rajasthan. “Yet churches continued using it. We assumed this was normal.”
All this began to change when a homegrown mission organization translated and published the Hadoti New Testament in October 2021. An expanded edition, which includes the books of Psalms and Proverbs, reached the hands of believers last November. Currently, translators are working to translate the Old Testament, with the first draft of 17 books ready so far.
Despite Hadoti’s rich oral tradition—which includes folk songs, proverbs, and tales passed down through generations—books are seldom written in Hadoti, and the language is not taught in schools. A 2012 survey found that 75 percent of Hadoti speakers preferred their children speak only in Hindi, leading linguists to believe the language is “unsafe,” meaning it is at risk of disappearing as parents stop passing it on to the next generation. Young people speak Hadoti only at home among family and friends, as Hindi takes precedence in formal settings.
It was not a native Hadoti speaker but a missionary from South India who first decided to translate the Bible into the language. The grandson of a well-respected Hindu priest, he grew up in a devout Hindu household, yet his faith was shaken after his grandfather and then father passed away. He wondered why the Hindu gods they prayed to couldn’t save them. While he was in college, a friend gave him a Christian magazine to read, and that night, he had a vision of Jesus on the cross. The next day, he attended church with his friend and accepted Jesus as his Savior.
Several years later, he was reading the Bible during his morning devotions when he heard an audible voice say, You are reading Scripture in your mother tongue—but what about those who can’t?
He shrugged it off at the time but later realized translating the Bible was his calling when his mission organization sent him to southeastern Rajasthan in 2007. He witnessed a growing number of people coming to faith as he and other leaders planted churches. Yet the missionary said it felt strange for them to read the Word of God in Hindi rather than Hadoti.
He remembered the calling he heard and started officially translating the Bible into Hadoti in 2011. Yet through the process, he faced many challenges. Since he wasn’t a native speaker, he needed to train locals to help him translate. He also relied on community checking, where he read Bible passages aloud to people in the community and asked for their feedback.
The missionary recalls the team struggling to translate two words in particular: prophet and righteous.
The closest equivalent to the word prophet in Hadoti had a connotation that meant the person is a fortuneteller, astrologer, or Hindu priest. They settled on a word that is largely understood as “one who speaks on behalf of God.”
Similarly, they had difficulty translating the word righteous, as the closest equivalent had connotations of doing good works, helping the poor, and running religious programs. Hadoti believers were unhappy with the word as it didn’t fit the Bible’s meaning. After a lot of consultation, they arrived at a word that meant “one who is blameless in the eyes of God.”
“Translating technical words … into a new language is always a challenge due to their linguistic and cultural nuances,” said N. Subramani, assistant director of translations at the Bible Society of India, which helped with translation consulting, exegetical checking, and printing the Bibles. He added, “We approached it by converting nouns into verbs (salvation then became to be saved), providing footnotes with context, and by transliterating.”
During the translation process, local Hindu nationalist groups were angry with the missionary for his Christian work, leading him and his family to change houses multiple times due to fear of attacks. A serious accident left him with fractures in his arm and leg. He was on the verge of giving up.
One Sunday, he was preaching while still recovering from his accident. During the sermon, he declared, “Do not stop. God is going before you.” Many in the congregation knelt and sobbed.
“That was the moment my own faith in God [was] renewed,” he said. “I picked myself up and returned to translation.”
After nearly a decade, he and nine other translators finished translating the New Testament. Today, Hadoti Bibles are used by 12 house churches planted by the mission organization, churches where many first-generation Christians worship. So far, 2,500 copies of the New Testament and 250 audio versions have been distributed.
“For many believers, this became the first real piece of literature in their own language,” the missionary said.
He noted that many people said they read the Bible more now than they used to read the Hindi Bible and they understand the text better. They realized God is speaking to them directly. Even non-Christians are glad to see a religion text in their mother tongue, he said.
One pastor said it was transformative to hear his favorite verse, John 15:16, in Hadoti. It says, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.” The pastor said, “It is [more] deeply comforting to read it in my mother tongue than in Hindi. I feel I am now in safe hands.”
For one of the translators, the experience was not just linguistic but deeply personal. As he was translating, he became convicted of his sins, broke down, and returned things he had stolen in the past.
For the missionary, the work already feels complete, no matter how long the translation of the Old Testament could take.
“My life’s mission has been fulfilled,” the missionary said. “When I see people convicted, crying, responding as Scripture is read in Hadoti, I know it was worth it.”
