Indian Christianity is the oldest in the whole world. The Vatican is a late development. Jesus remained in Kashmir completely tired, perhaps finished with humanity and the hope for some better future for it, because if this was the result – that you crucify a person who works for you and for your redemption, your salvation…. Of course he was not an idiot: he learned the lesson.

For the remaining time Jesus stayed silent. Yes, a few people came to him on their own. But it was not a problem because in India there have been so many incarnations of God, and it is an accepted fact that it is nobody else’s business: if somebody feels he is an incarnation of God, let him be.

What is wrong in it? Somewhere else the same person will be crucified, will be imprisoned; he will be psychoanalyzed, deprogrammed. All kinds of stupid things will be done to the person because he thinks he is an incarnation of God, but in India he will be worshipped.

Nobody will object to it. There is no question of objecting, because one thing is certain: that you cannot judge whether he is or he is not; there are no criteria, no methods to measure. And India has seen so many people like Jesus that it has come to realize that each one of them was so unique that you cannot derive any criteria from one which can be applied to another.

Buddha was just himself. No similarity between Buddha and Krishna can be found; everything in them is just the opposite to each other. But India has lived thousands of years of religious philosophizing, teaching, arguing. It has attained to a certain liberality of mind as far as religion is concerned.

India knows that a Krishna can be an incarnation of God, although he lives in a palace with every luxury; Buddha can be an incarnation of God although he renounces his kingdom, luxuries, comforts; Mahavira can be an incarnation of God, although he discards even his clothes and lives naked.

India has seen so many ways of people like Jesus that it has come to one conclusion: leave the person alone. If you can learn something from him, good; otherwise there is no harm in paying him respect. Perhaps he is right; and if he is wrong, what are you losing? Giving respect, even to a wrong person, is not bad.

So in Kashmir Jesus was not troubled by anybody. He was not news there. In India such people are not news. Thomas, he sent to the south of India for a special reason. Northern India is very sophisticated, and all these great teachers, Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Patanjali, Gorakh, Kabir – it is an unending line – were all born and lived in northern India, for the simple reason that northern India is Aryan.

South India is non-Aryan, it has Negroid blood. Once south India was just part of South Africa; South Africa has drifted away. Now it is a late discovery in geography that continents go on drifting, they are still drifting. The drift is very small, one foot in a year, so you cannot feel it. But continents are continuously drifting, they are not fixed: in thousands of years, of course, much change happens.