The Real Kashmir

Seven Jaini

Kashmir (Pakistani side) Beautiful forests continue across the line of control into Indian-held Kashmir and soon mountains convert into the flat plain of Kashmir Valley. On the northern side (farther into Pakistan) forests end and these mountains are snow capped. The very calm indigo blue Neelum River is seen (Yasin Ilyas). See more

"Oh, let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dream
I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been
To sit with elders of the gentle race, this world has seldom seen

They talk of days for which they sit and wait and all will be revealed
Talk'n song from tongues of lilting grace, whose sounds caress my ear
But not a word I heard could I relate, the story was quite clear."

Thus begins the most famous exposure the hidden land of Kashmir, India ever got in the West -- an ode by the 70's era British rock band Led Zeppelin ("Kashmir" the song). Kashmir's ongoing political dispute is whether, in fact, it is part of India or Pakistan. BBC VIDEO Both regional powers claim it. Recent protests highlight that tension. Jammu & Kashmir, is the only Muslim-majority state in Hindu-dominated India. No map demarcates its official borders other than with a moving Line of Control in "Indian-administered Kashmir."

Kashmir's Islamic majority aspires to eventual independence but in the meantime would settle for becoming part of Pakistan, as firsthand reports to this reporter indicate. Kashmiris suffer greatly under Indian police and military repression. They are abused and detained, summarily executed and "disappeared" on a regular basis -- in scenes eerily similar to Israeli-Palestinian and other Middle Eastern conflicts. Just as Palestinians cling to their homeland and hope for help from the Arab world, so Kashmiris reject Indian ambitions to administer the area. They neither sympathize with nor fully understand why the binding choices made by a Raj many decades ago should perpetuate the injustice they feel.

Indus River, moving through Pakistan, on its way to the Arabian Sea

As Gandhi and Nehru split on the composition of the newly liberated India, its ethnic makeup led to the formation of Pakistan, a Muslim separatist nation, Britain patted itself on a job well done: that job, of course -- just as in Iraq, Iran, and Kuwait -- was to sow the seeds of political strife long after it retreated militarily. When a super-power no longer is respected as a conqueror, it often settles for the secondary role of divider. The pattern is insidious and all too common. See BBC scenarios for the future division of the region.

Beautiful Kashmir Valley, ringed by the Himalayas (spencerscomet)

For decades, Kashmir has been disputed by two great regional nuclear powers. Accordingly, soldiers have been stationed with periodic shelling of strategic bases on both sides. China, with a border interest of its own in the region, has been been close at hand in a stalemate with India. The mutual antagonism formed the political basis and will to support the "Tibetan government in exile" in Dharamsala, India. China regards support of the Dalai Lama as tacit aggression. Kashmir lies on the route to Tibet and Nepal. This mountainous Himalayan region, with its many Tibetan refugees, is the home of the last remaining Buddhist-majority region in India.

Prayer flags in the state of Jammu & Kashmir, India

That region is known as Ladakh, with a capital city resembling a miniature Lhasa named Leh, which experiences back-and-forth foot traffic to Tibet. Hemis Gompa, just outside of Leh, is an ancient Tibetan Buddhist monastery. This is where Jesus Christ is documented to have come during the "missing years" of his life, by joining and traveling with a caravan from the Near East along the silk route.

Himalayan "Gompa" (Buddhist monastery) in Ladakh, India

His tomb (and bodily remains) are buried in Kashmir contrary to Christian fundamentalist teachings. Jesus, known as Saint Issa in the East, is recognized and revered as a "prophet" by Muslims and as a "bodhisattva" by area Mahayana Buddhists. But turmoil seems to find him wherever he goes, just as in days of old.

Anticlimax: Jesus' tomb, Kashmir, India

“Nearby is situated the stone of the grave which, according to the people, is the prophet's who arrived from a far off place during ancient times. Anointed for Kashmir: This spot is famous as the resting place of a messenger: I have read in an ancient book that a prince from a foreign land arrived here and engaged himself in piety and prayers [and] became a messenger of God for the Kashmiri people. In that ancient book his name is mentioned as Yuz Asaf.” [more]

"The king asked the holy man who he was. The other replied: 'I am called a son of God, born of a virgin, minister of the non-believers, relentless in search of the truth....and I was called Isa-Masih.'" Full Translation

"All I see turns to brown, as the sun burns the ground
And my eyes fill with sand, as I scan this wasted land
Trying to find, trying to find where I've been.

Oh, pilot of the storm who leaves no trace,

Like thoughts inside a dream
Heed the path that led me to that place,

Yellow desert stream
My Shangri-La beneath the summer moon,

I will return again
Sure as the dust that floats high in June,

When movin' through Kashmir."

The controversy of the lost years of Jesus and the Buddhist roots of his life, ministry, and yogic powers were first explored by in 1887 by a Russian scholar and Orientalist named Nicolas Notovich (a.k.a., Nicolai Notovitch), who came across written historical records in his travels through Kashmir and detailed that shocking discovery in his book.

"Jesus in India" -- the movie (click for trailer)

However, his was neither the first discovery nor the last search for concrete evidence of a literal Buddhist-Christian connection. There was American cult leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet's research (see contents). Immediately following Notovich, the Indian Swami Abehdananda followed his footsteps to verify the claims. Derivative new works (some Muslim), albeit largely ignored in Christendom, are numerous and growing.

Thus, it matters to Buddhists (and pan-Buddhist Americans) what happens in Muslim-Kashmir, Buddhist-Ladakh, and Hindu-India in general. Anyway one looks at it, it's "holy" land.

"Oh, father of the four winds, fill my sails, across the sea of years
With no provision but an open face, along the straits of fear

When I'm on, when I'm on my way, yeah
When I see, when I see the way, you stay, yeah

When I'm down...
Well I'm down, so down
Ooh, my baby, let me take you there
Let me take you there. Let me take you there."

RECENT STRIFE

Sardaro Bibi, a Gujjar or nomad woman, shows the remains of her house after it was torched at Garkhal village, about 38 km (24 miles) north west of Jammu 8/12/08. When a mob shouting praises for a Hindu god torched this Muslim hamlet, any hopes of religious peace in India's Kashmir state may have been destroyed along with these charred homes and scarred drums of ruined wheat. The burning of several hamlets in early August was one of at least 72 attacks on Muslim homes in Jammu and Kashmir state over the last three weeks as a land row over a Hindu shrine escalated, state officials said. Picture taken 8/2/08 (REUTERS/Amit Gupta (INDIAN-ADMINISTERED KASHMIR).

A Kashmiri Muslim woman shouts at an Indian policeman during a protest in Srinagar 8/13/08. Indian Kashmir on Wednesday began a three-day mourning period for at least 20 Muslim protesters shot dead by police this week as the region simmered over a land row that has revived independence calls (REUTERS/Fayaz Kabli, INDIAN-ADMINISTERED KASHMIR).

Gujjars or nomads stand near their damaged belongings after their house was torched at Garkhal village, about 38 km (24 miles) north west of Jammu August 12, 2008. When a mob shouting praises for a Hindu god torched this Muslim hamlet, any hopes of religious peace in India's Kashmir state may have been destroyed along with these charred homes and scarred drums of ruined wheat. The burning of several hamlets in early August was one of at least 72 attacks on Muslim homes in Jammu and Kashmir state over the last three weeks as a land row over a Hindu shrine escalated, state officials said. Picture taken 8/12/08 (REUTERS/Amit Gupta, INDIAN-ADMINISTERED KASHMIR).

JESUS IN INDIA

If one is only now hearing of this amazing Himalayan discovery, it is no accident. Elizabeth Clare Prophet is dismissed although she brought together the testimony of four eyewitnesses of the remarkable writings documenting Jesus' stay in India. Thorough and determined, a disciple turned detective, she tells the intriguing story of the international controversy that arose when the manuscripts were first discovered in 1887 by Nicolas Notovitch and how experts "proved" that they did not exist, only to have them rediscovered in this century by Swami Abhedananda, Professor Nicholas Roerich, and Madame Elisabeth Caspari.

CLARIFICATION

Wisdom Quarterly, while certainly siding with India, can in no way condone or dismiss injustices or acts of political aggression by any side for whatever reason. While aggressive provocation is reprehensible, retaliation is doubly so. Palestinian actions may not be right, but Israel is certainly not justified in its hegemony or state-sponsored "counter" terrorism. While far more Jews than Muslims are Buddhist, from as far back as the time of Jesus, and while it was Muslim invaders who destroyed Buddhism in India and desecrated sacred Buddhist sites and artifacts, Wisdom Quarterly nevertheless sides with the oppressed -- even when those oppressed are Muslims as we find all over the world. Christian crusaders launched "holy" wars in the past under popes just as they do now under Bushes. Governments like China abuse and overtake neighbors like Tibet, and Tibetans riot in protest. Wisdom Quarterly firmly rejects the stand that political power -- be it American, Arab, Israeli, British, Indian, Chinese, Burmese, Sri Lankan, Cambodian, German, Roman, or even Peleponnesian -- in any way legitimizes acts of aggression. What alternative does Wisdom Quarterly support and advocate?