Abstract:
This paper will focus on the strangely pervasive view – especially in western occult circles and in South Asia– that Jesus travelled to India and Tibet during his lost years between his Bar Mitzvah and his preaching in Palestine. While there, it was argued, he incorporated the fundamentals of Hinduism and Buddhism into his teachings, especially the Sermon on the Mount. The implication of this argument was that Western civilisation was unable to forge an ethics of compassion and a doctrine of non-violence without the help of Eastern Wisdom.
I will also show how this often Orientalist vision emerged forcefully in Islamic millenarianism among the Ahmadiyya, who claim that Jesus was not resurrected, but rather merely swooned during the crucifixion, only to escape, and die in Kashmir, where he is buried in the Roza Bal Shrine at Srinagar. Hindu Indians also sought to integrate Jesus into their religious worldview during their many confrontations with Christians. They esteemed Jesus as hero, man-woman, and supernatural incarnation, and placed him in an ‘oriental’ landscape, while almost always rejecting Trinitarianism. I will conclude by examining how ardent British and American Christians came to India to create their own vision of an Oriental Christ; I will do this by concentrating on Charles Freer Andrews, Gandhi’s closest western friend. I will suggest that Andrews sought to imitate a vision of the Oriental Christ through a new political theology that focused on the liberation of India’s indentured labourers around the world. Amongst the most progressive and explicitly anti-imperialist Christians, therefore, the Oriental Christ became important in the Indian liberation struggle.
I will conclude by suggesting that a vision of the Oriental Christ entered both diplomatic and missionary culture and became central in critiquing aspects of global imperialism.