Christ was in India, claims Kolkata filmmaker

Kolkata – A filmmaker based in Kolkata has made a shocking revelation that Jesus Christ had spent the missing years of his life in India and had probably died in Kashmir and will be documenting a movie on the missing years in the life of the Messiah.

Engineer–turned filmmaker, Subhrajit Mitra’s “The Unknown Stories of the Messiah” attempts to trace the unexplored life of Christ and his unaccounted years in the Bible.

Did Christ visit India after his crucifixion? Is a tomb in the Kashmir Valley that of Christ? These are some of the controversial questions Mitra raises in his film.

According to Mitra, Jesus did visit India and has substantiated his claims by taking recourse to the scrolls found in caves near the Dead Sea or at Nag Hammadi (in Egypt), believed to be the first drafts of the Bible.

“According to the alternative theory about Christ,” he said, “the Messiah did visit India.”

Hindu, Buddhist and Islamic scriptures and beliefs corroborate his claims, he said, and gives a glimpse of the missing years of his life that he had spent in India.

“He stayed in India for 14 years,” Mitra continued. “His Christianity was influenced by Hinduism as we find that the New Testament of the Bible was more akin to Hinduism than Judaism.”

“In Bhavishya Maha Puran, a text dating back to the second century AD, there are references of Christ's interaction with King Shalivahan, the grandson of Vikramaditya, in Kashmir,” he added. “Scholars say it happened after Christ's resurrection.”

“There are many documents in the vault of the Vatican and the church doesn't publish them because they obviously want to project Christ as a god and not as a human,” the filmmaker argued. “Assimilation of all such stories raises the question why there was no proper research on the alternative theory about Christ.”

In November 2003, noted German scholar H.J. Trebst, who has been researching on the subject of Christ's missing 12 years, had invited scholars to a seminar at Puri, Orissa. In that seminar, several scholars contended that Christ had visited Puri where he had studied Veda and yoga before returning home to preach Christianity.

Trebst, himself, claimed that Christ also studied Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent.

According to Trebst, Puri was a famous seat of learning some 2,000 years ago and history has revealed that various religious leaders visited the city over the centuries.

There is also a belief that Christ's tomb is in the Kashmir Valley and foreigners, especially Israelis, visit it in large numbers. The main attractions in the valley for Israelis are two graves – believed by some to be those of Christ and Moses.

Incidentally, a section of the local population believes that Kashmiris are one of the lost tribes of Israel. Aziz Kashmiri, author of the book “Christ in Kashmir”, insists that Kashmiris are descendants of one of the 10 lost tribes of Israel and that Christ died during one of his visits to the valley.

Mitra's film, seeks to focus on these very questions through the discourses of an archaeologist and novelist played by noted Bengali award–winning actors Soumitra Chatterjee and Aparna Sen.

"We have shot in Ladakh, Kashmir, the Silk Route, Kerala, Varanasi and Puri for the film – following the trail of Christ," said Mitra.

According to Mitra, the History Channel has shown interest in his film and it is time “serious research began to verify the alternative theory about Christ and his Indian connections.”

About 2.3 percent of India's population of 1.1 billion follows Christianity, with about 60 percent of them being Catholics.