Jesus in India?

Of late, I read about a few articles on Jesus in India and also watched a few documentories on that. There are some points of doubts about Jesus - where he spent his early days and also if he was not crucified, where did he spend his last days.

There are a couple of India-based theories that trace back both this periods to India. Both of these theories are well incorporated in this BBC documentory. The first one is from Nicolas Notovich, which tells about Isha (Jesus) in India. The information he gathered are from a Tibetan monestry in Hemis in Ladakh. In his book The Lost Years of Jesus:The Life of Saint Issa, he drew parallel to Issa and Jesus to trace the lost years of Jesus. Notovitch's writings were immediately controversial and after the German orientalist Max Mueller corresponded with the Hemis monastery Notovitch claimed to have visited, and Archibald Douglas visited Hemis Monastery, and both found no evidence that Notovich (much less Jesus) had even been there himself, his claims were widely rejected. The head of the Hemis community signed a document that denounced Notovitch as an outright liar. However, his findings were later supported by Swami Abhedananda, a famous diciple of Ramakrishna Paramhansa, in his Bengali translation of Tibetan Gospels named "Kashmir O Tibbate". An English translation of the Tibetan Gospels are found here. A short and interesting discussion on this topic is found on youtube.

The next one was post-crucification. As presented in the documentory, the Ahmadiyya sect believes that Jesus lived his end days in Kashmir and even he was burried here. The details of the claim was made by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and published as a book also. Holger Kersten wrote a book on "Jesus Lived in India" in 1995 which broadly supported this view.

The other resources :
1) Read the topic in the article by Swami Nirmalananda Giri - "Some Buddhist historical records about JesusSome Buddhist historical records about Jesus".
2) An article : Survival of the Crucifixion: Traditions of Jesus within Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Paganism by James W. DeardorffDecember, 1993; revised March, 1998.
3) Sole support for Christ of the Church in this reserch paper, but it seems to be to biased to project Jesus as we know in Bible, especially too inclined on non-Christian backgrounds of Notovich and Abhedananda.

BBC Videos courtesy youtube :
Part-1, part-2 and part-3 of the documentory is a well-represented and compiled resouce on crucification and what happened next. This will compell you to find the truth and will shake a human being's eternal quest for truth.

16th December remembered !!

The TIME Report

16th December always has a special meaning to refugee migrants from East Pakistan living in India. The day of victory celebrated all over the India and Bangladesh, on the occasion of great Indian victory over Pakistan in 1971 to give birth to a new Nation, Bangladesh. Though, most of us did not go back to Bangladesh, we felt we are closer to a nation named Bangladesh than the country we left, Pakistan.

Thanks to TIME Magazine, I was able to get hold of a couple of news reports from their archives. The first one describes the build up to the war, including the plights of the refugees and the war ravaged people, the political situation and the condition of the country. The next one gives vivid description of the war and how the new nation was born.

It's a pleasure to read the reports by TIME. Although the magazine was based in USA, the dared to come up with such reports, despite the pro-Pakistan stance of USA. Hats off to TIME.

The significance of the Victory day in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan

How India and Pakistan view Bangladesh and events of 1971, are highlighted in a couple of great editorials in The Daily Star, written by two liberal columnists - Kuldip Nayar and MB Naqvi. The following mukto-mona article also shows that Indian celebration of Victory day does not mention Bangladesh or even the Mukti-bahini. My coverage ends with a link to Rezwan's writing on the same topic.