I make a point of attending church on Maundy Thursday. The Thursday before Easter.

I think it’s a pretty significant day/night. The Last Supper. The institution of communion. The visit to Gethsemane. The betrayal by Judas. And the night of legal shuffling that led to Jesus being crucified at noon the next day.

I attend the Anglican church here in Abu Dhabi, St. Andrew’s, which is undergoing renovations to its main sanctuary.

Thus, the service had to be moved into a nearby building which normally is used for other church activities. One fairly big room, which I think is loaned by St. Andrew’s to smaller Christian congregations to serve as their place of worship, is where we ended up.

Anyway, the renovations to the main sanctuary seem to have hurt attendance at the Anglican services. Perhaps 70 people attended (down from perhaps 150 a year ago) the Maundy Thursday service, and I’d guess two-thirds of them were of Indian origin.

So, basically, the Anglican church in Abu Dhabi is in big trouble, were it not for the Indian worshipers.

In the West, we tend to think of India as a country where Hinduism predominates. That’s true, to an extent, Hindus comprising 78 percent of the population. A large majority.

But India’s population is so enormous (about 1.3 billion), that two of the world’s major religions, which are distinct minorities in India, still produce big numbers.

India has the world’s third-biggest Muslim community, trailing only Indonesia and Pakistan, which is only a tick ahead of India.

Muslims make up only 15 percent of the Indian population, but that translates into about 180 million Indian Muslims.

Christian make up 2.5 percent of India’s people but, again, that produces a big number: 24 million Christians. (The U.S. has more Christians than any nation on the planet, about 230 million. With 24 million Christians, India is only 9 million behind the UK.)

Many Indian Christians live in the southwest of the country, where European missionaries were busy, two or three centuries ago, and where many of the Indians living in the UAE originate. Kerala and Goa, in particular.

Thus, two-third of the congregation at St. Andrew’s for the Maundy Thursday service appeared to be Indian. Including an accomplished organist, who also led the little choir.

Religion in India is a big topic. A coworker and I were talking about how Buddhism originated there, and I said “India was Buddhist before it was Hindu.” And he said, “But it was Hindu first, then Buddhist, then Hindu again.”

There may not be many Hindus around the rest of the world, but because India is 78 percent Hindu (and some Hindu nationalists would like to see everyone else forced to convert), that pretty much instantly produces 1 billion Hindus. Which is two-thirds the total of the world’s Muslims.

Anyway, without Indian Christians, St. Andrew’s Anglican church in Abu Dhabi would not have had much of a Maundy Thursday.