A couple of years ago, I read this:
Jesus was a man of color who was murdered by law enforcement and state-sanctioned violence for insurrection against the Roman Empire.
What a powerful and succinct summary, right?
Consider the image below of The Holy Family:
Perhaps you are thinking that something is a tad off. And then you perhaps notice that Mary has a Hindu "dot" on her forehead, with wavy light colored hair. It can’t be a Hindu image because the woman is not dressed in the traditional sari. Hindu women in history were not portrayed with pearl necklaces, but with gold and silver and precious stones.
The note at the Cleveland Museum of Art is even more head-spinning: "c.1620s Northern India, Mughal court, early 17th century"
An artist in the Mughal court created this "Indian"-looking image of Mary holding Jesus. The details provided by the museum add a lot more in case our eyes miss them:
This painting of Joseph, the Virgin Mary, and the infant Jesus is based on European sources, but it also contains several details that are specifically Indian. For example, although Mary is dressed in classical European-style robes, she is adorned with jewelry of rubies and emeralds, the preferred gems of Mughal royalty. Her fingertips are also red with henna, and she wears a bindi on her forehead. The detailed rendering of the vase evokes the Catholic St. Francis as well as Indian worship of the sun. The vessel itself points to the appreciation of Chinese blue-and-white ware imported from imperial Ming-dynasty kilns to the court of Jahangir (reigned 1605–27).
The Mughals. In the English language, we use a word "mogul" when we refer to highly powerful businessmen. Well, this word reflects the powerful and influential "Mughal Empire" that ruled over a large part of the Indian subcontinent, until it was replaced by the British.
The Mughal dynasty began in 1526, when Babur defeated the reigning sultan in Delhi. The empire had some of its glorious years under Akbar and Shah Jahan—it was Shah Jahan who built the Taj Mahal. Babur descended from Timur (also known as Tamerlane), who was Turkic, with some Mongol heritage.
The arts flourished under the Mughals, and The Holy Family is a classic example by itself. The painting also easily conveys the level of global exposure and awareness four centuries ago.
India’s federal government, powered by Hindu nationalism, has problems with the Mughal empire though. In their political rhetoric, the Mughal rule was as much a colonization as was the British Raj, or even worse the Raj. As bizarre as it might sound, the Hindu nationalists are therefore pressing ahead to rewrite history. Or, even write Mughals out of history textbooks altogether:
When Indian children began the school year this week, students in thousands of classrooms were issued new textbooks on history and politics that either watered down or purged key details from India’s past that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party finds inconvenient to its Hindu nationalist vision for the country.
Among the rewrites: “Chapters on Mughal history, covering hundreds of years of Muslim rule, were either slashed or removed.”
Recall George Orwell’s line? “Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”
So, what is the point in rewriting the history?
The alterations, which had been under discussion since last year before being formalized in the newly printed curriculum, follow other efforts by Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., to erase prominent Muslim marks on India’s history and politics, including the frequent changing of street and city names from Muslim to Hindu.
Meanwhile, in my adopted country, followers of Jesus are openly talking about Christian nationalism. “How Christian is Christian Nationalism?” asks this essay in The New Yorker.
The events of January 6th bolstered a growing belief that the alliance between Trump and his Christian supporters had become something more like a movement, a pro-Trump uprising with a distinctive ideology. This ideology is sometimes called “Christian nationalism,” a description that often functions as a diagnosis.
Does it matter that it is a minority of the population that is church-going? Or, is it the fact that it is a minority that is making them hyper-nationalistic?
In 1999, Gallup found that seventy per cent of Americans belonged to a church, a synagogue, or a mosque. In 2020, the number was forty-seven per cent—for the first time in nearly a hundred years of polling, worshippers were the minority. This changing environment helps explain the militance that is one of the defining features of Christian nationalism. It is a minority movement, espousing a claim that might not have seemed terribly controversial a few decades ago: that America is, and should remain, a Christian nation.
And just like their Hindu counterparts, Christian nationalists also want to rewrite history and ban books.
If only Christian nationalists would ask themselves the question that was often to be found in billboards across the country a couple of decades or so ago: WWJD?