Devdutt Pattanaik | It is not just Hindus who love an imagined past

Right now, new history is being written for Indians. Based on astronomical information from ancient texts, there are claims of how events in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata occurred in 5000 BC and 3000 BC, long before even the pyramids were built in Egypt. Archaeologists are now busy finding palaces (some underwater) and artefacts to align with this popular narrative that will stretch India’s history to the last Ice Age. None of this history is peer-reviewed. But they are all politically approved.

This, however, is not unique to India, or to the 21st century.

In the 19th century, some Europeans argued that the Bible was real history, and concluded that the world began in 4000 BC. But then dinosaurs were discovered! The Bible clearly did not have all the information about the world. Even today in many states across the United States there is stiff opposition to the teaching of evolution in schools. In some states, predominantly the Bible Belt states comprising Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, among others, evolution lessons are complemented with lessons on Creationism and the ‘Intelligent Design’.’

We know that all biblical incidents are restricted to the Near East, and Middle East, and at best stretch as far as Rome. But as Christianity spread westwards to Europe, new stories about Jesus appeared. One claimed that he was married to Mary Magdalene and she travelled to Europe to bear his unborn child, to protect him from the hostile male followers of Jesus who had declared her to be ‘whore’, and insisted Jesus was a celibate man, who was divine, and born of a virgin.

These men established a church that is a metaphorical Jesus who rises after death to a real descendent of flesh and blood. It was argued that the true lineage of Jesus was protected by the Knights Templar. The Knights Templar was a historical order of warriors and bankers, who rose to prominence during the Crusades, around the 12th century. But when they fell out of favour with the King of France in the 14th century they were accused of homosexuality and witchcraft, and their order disbanded. Their spectacular fall gave rise to many conspiracy theories, including the idea that they were keepers of the Holy Grail, a code for the bloodline of Jesus, who could challenge the authority the Catholic Church had given itself.

In America, there is the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints that claims that Eden is not mythological but located in Jackson County, Missouri. That in 600 BC when the First Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed and the Jewish people exiled to Babylon, Lehi travelled from the Middle East to America by ship. They also say that in 33 AD, after his crucifixion, Jesus appeared and preached his Gospel in America.

This is different from the one taught by the Catholics and the Protestants. Memory of these events was documented by one Mormon on golden plates that were discovered near New York in the 19th century, by Joseph Smith, who was divinely inspired to translate this Book of Mormon. The original plates were lost but the translations form the foundation of a very successful American church. Hundreds of thousands of people in the United States believe this story as history. No one can convince them otherwise.

In China, there is a movement to prove that the Bible is not a Western text, but that ancient Chinese characters contain secrets that prove knowledge of Genesis. They claim that Shang Di, the pre-Buddhist High God of China is the same as the God of the Bible. Being graphic, Chinese script can be interpreted in many ways. So Chinese Christian Evangelists argue how the symbol in ancient Chinese for ‘migration’ indicates a long march from the West, i.e. Mesopotamia, where Eden and the Bible are traditionally located. Symbols used for men and women are linked to Adam and Eve. The symbol for ‘righteousness’ is traced to lamb and spear, and that is linked to the idea of Jesus, the lamb who is sacrificed for the sins of man. Those who wish to believe find this all very rational, and plausible. 

Imagined history has always served ideologies. Colonial powers have sought to present pre-colonial states as barbaric and savage to justify their imperial outreach. Muslims insist that a society before conversion to Islam is ignorant (jahila). For Marxists and Cultural Marxists, the world is full of social injustice, which is why a revolution is needed.

In India today, the rising tide of Hindutva ideology needs to show that all that happened before its arrival was colonial, Western, and anti-Hindu. Only that will establish the new rulers of the land as saviours, and justify their acts of dismantling institutions. We must not forget that the cross on which Jesus was crucified was discovered in Jerusalem only three centuries later, in 327 AD, by Helena, mother of Constantine, the first Roman Emperor who converted to Christianity to keep his empire united.

Devdutt Pattanaik is the author of more than 50 books on mythology. X: @devduttmyth.