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.
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).
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