Blowin’ hot air in the wind

So, Bob Dylan is the wrong kind of prophet. That’s what the current pope thought when Dylan performed in a concert with the late Pope John Paul in Bologna, Italy, in 1997.

Or so Pope Benedict has written in a recently released book of memoirs.
Funny, the pope should think so. I mean that he should actually declare that Dylan was a prophet, even if of the bad kind. For once, I can find myself agreeing with a religious authority.

In my crusty, suspicious old sceptical-secular mind, I had always considered Dylan to be a prophet, a cultural one but a prophet nonetheless. For, a prophet could be a proclaimer of the so-called will of god, as was Moses or John the Baptist or Mohammed. Or, he can be someone who founds a new set of beliefs or theory to challenge mindsets.

In the latter sense, Dylan — along with the Beatles — was a prophet of that irreverent, iconoclastic decade of the 20th century, the Sixties. They wrote and sang — against war and for peace, ideas that were dear to Jesus Christ — to shape global popular culture amidst political and social turmoil across the world.

As John Lennon said — to the immense chagrin of devout Christians —they were more popular than Jesus.

In our beloved city at the moment we have a bunch of chagrined Christians. Assembled under the banner of the curiously named Catholic Secular Forum, they have been going ballistic about a documentary movie called The Lost Tomb of Jesus, which was reportedly to be shown by the Discovery Channel but is now unlikely to be aired in India.

The channel seems to have chickened out, never mind their lame press releases saying they never intended to show the documentary in this country. And the Forum is delighted. It believes that its demand for the film to be banned was what made the channel back off.

Undoubtedly, the film challenges a key religious belief by claiming to show evidence from tombs near Jerusalem that Jesus and family were probably buried there.

Which, if true, would mean that Jesus did not ascend to heaven to rejoin his father, at least not in a bodily sense as shown over the centuries since his death in countless depictions of the ascension. And there’s more. The film also claims that two of the discovered coffins belonged to Mrs. Christ, Mary Magdalene, and their son, Judah. What? Jesus married?

Ok, I can see it may upset devout Christians. Much as Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses upset Muslims or Husein’s portrayal of Saraswati wearing next to nothing upset some Hindus.

But what I cannot understand is why various religious groups routinely expect this supposedly secular state of ours to capitulate to sectarian demands by banning or otherwise circumscribing works of art or literature.

Of course, the state does. But it shouldn’t, simply because it is not the business of a secular state to intervene in matters religious. That’s what secularism is at its core. State and religion must remain separate.

Ah, but the fervent secularist has a weak platform these days. As a devout non-believer, I demand the right to see a documentary that reportedly takes a historical look at the possibility that Jesus Christ was a human being, doubtless a noble-minded one with a record of several good deeds to his name, but a flesh and blood human, like the rest of us.

Alas, being a non-believer is not enough; I guess I must first create my own constituency.

Believe me, I am a cautious admirer of the man Jesus, because I think he was the source of a lot of ideas that motivated several latter-day thinkers and social changers.

He seems to have been a firm believer in the equality of all human beings and his advocacy of brotherly love and non-violence - as in turning the other cheek when you are hit by someone or in imploring everyone to love their neighbours — inspired in part one of our own prophets, Mohandas Gandhi.

That’s why I am glad that someone is trying to prove he was in fact a historical figure and not someone who claimed he was the son of god and left for home like a rocket 40
days and nights after rising miraculously from the dead.

Actually, the documentary may well be a smart idea of James Cameron — he of the Titanic — to cash in on what he knew would be a controversy. Those who want it banned may well be helping publicise the movie way beyond what a simple
advertising campaign could have hoped for. Discovery Channel should now stop acting coy and just show it.

To tackle the protesters venting hot air, take a leaf out of the prophet Dylan’s lyrics. After all, he has written many a modern gospel of protest. When challenged by unreason and intolerance, the answer my friend, he might say, is to blow some wind in their faces.

Email: gautam@dnaindia.net