Accidental Blogger

Here is an alternate view of Jesus' resurrection. This story makes its rounds every year around Easter in one form or the other and it is not really as new as the BBC report makes it out to be. I had heard it many times as a child in India.

The reason why the Rozabal shrine has only recently been getting attention in the west could be because not many people outside India knew much about the place until the 1990s and the advent of the World Wide Web. Jesus' resurrection is not uppermost in the religious narratives of Indian Muslims and Hindus. The local lore surrounding Jesus' tomb in Kashmir has therefore always been a minor myth in the northern Indian regions. It was only after India established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1992 and young Israeli tourists began flocking to India that a large influx of foreign visitors to Rozabal began. For the Israelis, a non-Christian version of Jesus' fate after crucifixion probably has a high curiosity value. It is only since then that the "Jesus is buried in Kashmir" theory has found widespread popularity outside India.

A belief that Jesus survived the crucifixion and spent his remaining years in Kashmir has led to a run-down shrine in Srinagar making it firmly onto the must-visit-in India tourist trail.

In the backstreets of downtown Srinagar is an old building known as the Rozabal shrine.

It's in a part of the city where the Indian security forces are on regular patrol, or peering out from behind check-posts made of sandbags.

There are still occasional clashes with militants or stone-throwing children, but the security situation has improved in recent times and the tourists are returning.

When I first searched for Rozabal two years ago, the taxi circled around a minor Muslim tomb in a city of many mosques and mausoleums, the driver asking directions several times before we found it.

The shrine, on a street corner, is a modest stone building with a traditional Kashmiri multi-tiered sloping roof.

A watchman led me in and encouraged me to inspect the smaller wooden chamber within, with its trellis-like, perforated screen.

Through the gaps I could see a gravestone covered with a green cloth.

When I returned to the shrine recently though, it was shut – its gate padlocked because it had attracted too many visitors.

The reason? Well, according to an eclectic combination of New Age Christians, unorthodox Muslims and fans of the Da Vinci Code, the grave contains the mortal remains of a candidate for the most important visitor of all time to India.