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There was some [[Birth and death registration|registration]] of Births and Deaths in [[British India]], commencing in 1864 in Calcutta, but generally it was voluntary, and records which exist are difficult to access. The next best thing for a genealogist is to use '''Church Records'''. An estimated 70% of all [[Birth, marriage and death records|baptism, marriage and burial records]] have survived today in the [[India Office Records]], and the good news is that they are all indexed and available on microfilm. Records of baptisms, marriages and burials are available 1698-1968.
The records are housed in the [[British Library]] in London. If you live outside London, the best way to access these records and their indexes is to use [[LDS]] (Mormon) microfilms, available in local LDS [[Family History Centres|Family History Centre]]s. '''The commerical website findmypast.co.uk are digitising has digitised these records and they are expected to be now available online in 2014.'''
In 1930 the Anglican Church in India separated from the Church of England and became the autonomous Church of India, [[Burma]] and [[Ceylon]], still within the Anglican Communion. '''From this time onwards fewer ecclesiastical records were sent to England, and the number continued to decline over time. By the 1940s there were very few records sent to England.'''
[[Image:Marriage cert St Pauls Calcutta.jpg|thumb|300px|Certificate of an 1885 marriage]]
Microfilmed copies of all the records are available for public inspection and indexes are on the open shelves of the Asian & African Studies Reading Room, broken down by [[Presidency]], alphabetically and by year. Records are catalogued under the 'N' series (ie, the references for ecclesiastical records being with N), under the heading [http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=059-iorn&cid=-1#-1 Ecclesiastical Returns]
====Online records and transcriptions===='''The commerical website findmypast.co.uk has digitised these records and they were released on line on 29 January 2014.''' Many of the indexes have been previously transcribed by FIBIS Volunteers and are available in the [http://www.search.fibis.org/frontis/bin/index.php FIBIS Search database] under the heading Ecclesiastical Records. Some records, a small proportion of the whole, have been transcribed and are searchable on the British Library's [http://indiafamily.bl.uk/UI/ India Office Family History Search].
The [[British Library]] article contains visiting tips and information.
