Local community say no - Jesus is not buried in Kashmir

For centuries, and recently in the light of new books and films, people claim that Jesus Christ was buried in Kashmir. Is this true? The local community says no (dna, India, February 1, 2016).

The local community in Srinigar have long remembered claims that Kashmir’s Rozabal shrine is the burial place of Jesus of Nazareth. It is said that Jesus survived the crucifixion and spent the rest of his years in Kashmir, and that the shrine was his final resting place.

Kashmiri scholar, Shoib-Bin Mukhtar, who lives near the shrine, says that Ghulam Ahmad Mirza, the founder of the Ahmadiyah religion, initiated the ‘Jesus theory’ in his 19th-century book Raz-i-Haqiqat by stating that Jesus was buried at Rozabal Khanyar. Mirza based his claim on an ‘investigative report’ by his follower Mawlawi Abd Allah Sahab Kashmiri. The local community has always refuted this, stating at the time that Jesus is not buried in Kashmir.

In the 1990s American author Suzanne Olsson went to Kashmir to collect DNA genetic evidence from the shrine. The local community objected to her attempts to dig up the shrine and the police were called over the issue. In 2005 she published a book called Jesus in Kashmir: The Lost Tomb. Dan Brown’s 2003 book The Da Vinci Code and the 2006 movie alluded to the theory and further fueled the debate.

Fida Hassnain, Kashmiri author of Jesus in Kashmir, also claims that Jesus is buried at Rozabal, because it was mentioned in the local history long before Mirza’s manuscript. The shrine of Muslim saints, Hazrat Youza Asif and Syed Naseer-ud-Din, are also receiving attention because Hassnain claims that Youza Asif is not an Arabic or Muslim name. He claims that it is a Hebrew name, which he says proves that Jesus is buried in Kashmir.

The Rozabal shrine, in the Old City, is open on the 13th day of each month. The site bans the taking of photographs and videos.

The local community maintain that the shrine is attracting attention for the wrong reasons. They say the shrine is becoming a commercial attraction designed to make money from tourists, and that tourists are viewing it as an attraction erroneously – often making surreptitious attempts to take photographs.

The caretakers of the shrine launched a campaign to reject the ‘Jesus theory’ by giving lessons to visitors about the shrine, the site, and its history and religion. In an attempt to clear the myth, the local community installed a notice board with quoted verses from the Q’ran and the Bible that disprove the ‘Jesus theory.’

The century-old controversy continues, while the local community insist that the answer is no, Jesus is not buried in Kashmir.

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-christ-s-tomb-in-kaskmir-rozabal-shrine-in-spotlight-over-century-old-debate-2172873

MARTINA NICOLLS is the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).