How Judas brought
Christianity to India
Everyone has got the story wrong. Judas didn’t hang himself. Why
should he have done that? He came to India; in fact, he was its first
NGO leader. This is how it all happened. Judas was a good guy. Anyone who knew
him would have said so. He was a very devoted family man, looking after the
interests of his brothers, and his cousins, getting money from here and there
to help them up the ladder so to speak, not to say anything of the care he
lavished on his own children, which was natural. Despite these homely concerns,
he was also quite public spirited, slaving away in the cause of the poor and
downtrodden. One could say he was the archetype of the civil society activist.
Things were very difficult in his times, not like ours. There was
the colonial Roman army to contend with, and a Roman Governor who hardly knew
local customs, and what’s more didn’t care. All the other Jewish militants just
went about their protests in a bull-headed way, with the result they got
nowhere, except to jail, where they got thrashed. Judas was not afraid of
getting a beating in the public cause, but he was more level-headed than his
hot-tempered colleagues and saw no reason why he should become a marked man, a
usual suspect, when real benefit for the poor and needy could be achieved
through more subtle ways. So, while he bravely and forthrightly abused the
Roman rulers in secret talks deep down in sheltered caves, out in the open he
went about like any law-abiding citizen, to throw the Romans off the scent, as
he carefully explained to his circle. He even went so far as to make friends
with some of the lower down officials – such friendships could come in handy
when any of the poor got into trouble, he said. Everyone appreciated his
cleverness.
He was one of the first companions of Jesus. Judas himself always
maintained in later years that he had been the very first, the first to detect
Jesus’s greatness, the first to bring him to the notice of the common people.
If it hadn’t been for Judas, Jesus might have remained un-noticed, another
dreamer locked away in a monastery, without being able to make a difference. If
the truth be told, Judas said later with self-deprecating modesty, it was Judas
who made Jesus a Social Change Agent.
This is not to say that he was some kind of humble follower, some
cutter of wood and drawer of water for the Master, as so many others were. No,
Sir! Is that the way to bring about Social Change? Is that Democratic? No! He
stood right behind the shoulder of Jesus, but he also did his best to guide
him. Let us be honest. Jesus was always a dreamer – this is not said in any
disparaging way – Jesus himself admitted he was not of this world. It was left
to Judas to anchor their mutually developed philosophy of action, it is
important to point out after a long passage of time that their ideas were
mutually developed with everyone’s consent – well, some fellows like Matthew or
Mark were really no use and what did a doctor like Luke know about social
reality or that other strange guy John, really Jesus was quite indiscriminate
how he picked up these people – so let us say it was mostly Judas, and of
course Jesus to some extent, who shaped what we know as Christianity today.
Anyway, the key point is that when Jesus tended to be wasteful, it
was Judas who spoke to him sharply. Where was the need to waste so much oil,
when the money could be used to help the poor? And how could he allow that
woman to wipe his feet with her hair! This was just going back to traditional
gender-insensitive feudal ways of – let a spade be called a spade – using
women! So it was really only Judas who focused on the needs of the poor in all
of that bunch. If he had had only a little bit more time, he would have licked
them all into shape to be good social change activists.
But time was not what he had. The Romans wanted to put an end to
subversion. Annas and Caiaphas, being old-fashioned feudal theologians, didn’t
want any change in the social order. Now Judas did try to negotiate. He put
forward a real programme that would be acceptable to all stakeholders. Even the
budget was approved, and they released thirty pieces of silver for grassroots
development work. Judas had been happy. He rushed to give Jesus the good news
and in his exuberance kissed him on his hairy cheek. That fool Peter ruined
everything in his illiterate fisherman’s way by attacking a Roman soldier who
had accompanied Judas to safeguard the money. He almost killed the soldier, the
blood flowing out of his ear was something to be seen. Judas naturally felt
responsible, and spent the next two days seeing to it that the soldier got
proper medical attention. If anything had happened to him, that would have been the end of the development
programme.
Since Judas couldn’t be in two places at once, he wasn’t there to
control Jesus, or explain what that man meant with all that wooly nonsense
about his kingdom being in heaven and all the rest of it. That fool Peter made
it worse by blabbering that he didn’t know Jesus, when everyone knew he did, so
that made the authorities doubly suspicious. Everything could still have been
saved if Judas hadn’t been attending on the Roman soldier. He would have
negotiated. After all he knew Barrabas quite well, had worked with him on some
humanitarian projects, and of course he knew Annas and Caiaphas, who didn’t,
and some via media could still have been worked out, maybe even the release of
both the criminals over a joint two-year period, who knows. Even in Golgotha there was no responsible man, just a bunch of
weeping females. It was just a matter of giving a simple baksheesh to a soldier
or two – he would even have spent liberally of his grant of thirty silver
pieces if he had been there – and the soldiers would have hoisted up Jesus,
supported him there for a bit and then brought him down. No one would have been
the wiser, the storm would have wiped out all evidence, and he would certainly
have greased palms to see that Jesus led a peaceful life from then on. But it
had all been botched by those feckless disciples, as they called themselves.
Well, after Jesus was gone there were all these superstitious
stories spread by those women about the resurrection and all that, what could
one expect from them? He of course had withdrawn to the country till things had
quietened down, you had to in the interests of the poor and downtrodden whom he
served, and whose leader he was. But later, later he was there in front of the
Roman Governor’s Palace every day asking for justice, a judicial probe,
compensation to the bereaved family, which he himself undertook to administer.
Thinking about those days, Judas was convinced that it was his fearless stand
and the articles he wrote in Aramaic that at last drove a frightened Roman
government to drive the Jews out of Jerusalem.
During the initial days of the diaspora he was everywhere organizing everything
to take care of all people, coordinating with the Romans, utilizing the money
they gave him to see that everyone left without any trouble.
He of course had to leave as well. That’s when those thirty pieces
of silver came in handy to procure a tropical outfit. He didn’t go quietly. No,
Sir! He was on the last camel train and as Jerusalem
sank out of sight, he clenched his fist and said ‘Rome shall pay!’ and, see, how it has paid!
He had decided to go to Kerala in India. He had heard a lot from
sailors about its riches, its spices, its beautiful women, but that was not why
he went there. He wanted to spread Christianity to the farthest reaches of the
globe. Now the credit for bringing Christianity to India is mistakenly given to
Thomas, but Thomas was a nobody, a bookish chap doubting this and doubting that,
and if the truth be told he was really a bourgeois, not someone like Judas who
had de-classed himself.
Yeah, but you don’t start straight off, especially with a bunch of
heathens, and say you have brought them a new religion. You lead up to it
gradually if you want to win disciples and keep them. So, Judas decided he
would fund his church by getting into the spice trade. The Romans loved pepper,
and how, and he was right where it grew. Everything went well at first, and
Judas was able to rent a small house in Kozikode, the port of the country, and
there are people who can still point out the place where it stood two-thousand
years ago. Later he bought a large mansion, and had a retinue of servants, of
course to spread the word of God, not just to serve him. He was becoming rich,
and to increase his popularity he started giving sermons. Well, if he didn’t
know how to do that, who did?
But you know, things never go straight, especially with good people.
During his sermons, troublemakers started piping up. They had heard all that
before, they said. Some old fogey would start quoting from Hinduism, or
Buddhism, or Jainism, oh, there were a million of these benighted beliefs, you
would wonder God didn’t strike them dead. Then there would be jabber, jabber,
everywhere, and before he knew it someone would jump onto the dais and take
over. Judas was getting quite fed up trying to bring religion to these idiots,
but he soldiered on hoping he would get some disciples, who would pay fees to
support a holy man like himself. But then, one evening a sailor who had been to
China
started in on some guy called Confusion, believe it or not, and that was when
Judas finally gave up preaching to these heathen.
Troubles never come singly, and the next Roman ship that came to
port was full of his pepper bags, rejected as soiled with grit. The local
Governor was quite unpleasant, and even went so far as to threaten Judas for
the adulteration, as if it was his fault. Judas pleaded that it was the dirty
blacks he was forced to employ who were guilty, but he was alone in a godless
world, what could he do, he was ruined, and no one showed the least sympathy.
He wrote letters to every official in Kozikode till finally he got a
job as a teacher in the local school and everybody loved him, that was the
trouble. Well, what happened was not his fault, he would maintain it to his
dying day. These heathen girls bloomed early and they were shameless. What
could he do, simple monk that he was, if she forced herself on him… god, but
she was well stacked. It was the scandal of the season and the girl’s parents
wanted to send him to jail, for her own fault, mark that, but some clever dick
lawyer got him off saying he was a stranger and no doubt accustomed to
licentious behavior in his homeland. Judas was so furious about those slighting
remarks about Jerusalem
that he punished the guy by refusing to pay him any fees.
There was nothing else he could do but get a government job. The
Zamorin, as the king was called, as outlandish as his name, appointed him to
translate holy books from the Aramaic, and gave him a pack of lazy pundits, who
did no work but quibble over every word, and dispute the meaning of phrases
that were quite obvious to Judas. He got very tired of all this pedantic
nonsense, and finishing texts in a hurry, for who wanted to be stuck in dusty
libraries all day, would go over their heads and slip the manuscripts direct to
the publishers. Since he was doing all the work anyway, it was only justice
that he should ask for a small fee, shall we say, from the publishing houses.
Those jealous pundits leaked it to the Zamorin, and he was upbraided in full court
for kick-backs and corruption, and poor workmanship, and what not, he left the
place in disgust, he was not fired as his detractors would have it.
Judas realized he was in a fix. All doors in that benighted country
were closed to him, and being penniless was especially exasperating when he
looked around at all the good food, the beautiful girls, the fine clothes, and
all the luxury enjoyed by all those undeserving people who should really have
been serving a godly man like him.
Then he hit upon an idea that made him famous, rich, and pious all
at the same time. He decided he would start humanity’s first ever
non-governmental organization. He was a natural preacher, so he would start an
educational centre. All the children did go to school, but he would teach them
what they could never learn anywhere else. He would teach them about Nature and
the Holy Spirit. The name of the centre,
he thought, should have a special zing to it. Then came the inspiration. He would call it the Junior Environmental
Sciences Urban Society [JESUS], an acronym which he could use to extract
munificent donations from the guilty Caiaphas, of course all in the service of
the poor and downtrodden. He was wondering if he should ask the Zamorin to open
his centre, when he found out just by chance that the captain of the small
Roman trading post there was none other than the centurion who had been on duty
at Golgotha on that fateful day. After
reminiscing about the good old days, he asked the centurion to be the chief
guest. Jesus, he was sure, would have liked that touch.
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