Jesus of Nazareth was an Asian teacher, born in the Middle East, living among farmers, fishermen, and artisans. His parables of seeds, fields, and sheep were deeply rooted in an agrarian culture under Roman occupation. His message was simple yet radical: compassion for the poor, resistance to injustice, love of neighbor, inner purity, forgiveness, and non-violence.

In spirit, he belongs alongside the great satgurus of Sanatana Dharma and the East - the Buddha, Nanak, Kabir, and many voices of truth who renounced worldly power and lived for others. His words harmonize with the wisdom of dharma and yoga. Gandhi said the Sermon on the Mount “went straight to my heart.”

Ramakrishna saw Jesus as an avatara. Yogananda described him as a yogi of Christ-consciousness, and Vivekananda praised him as the embodiment of renunciation. However, Christianity, by the time it reached Asia, had been filtered through Europe and, especially, Anglo-Saxon power. The Jewish Jesus became a blond, blue-eyed Christ of empire. His prophetic teachings were recast into doctrines of sin, guilt, substitutionary atonement, and eternal punishment. Church art, architecture, and ritual reflected Western culture more than Semitic simplicity.

It is true that missionary schools, hospitals, and churches provided services, but they carried within them the broader agenda of conversion, binding education and health to the loss of tradition. Missionaries offered care, but always with a price: the price of the soul. What appeared as service was also a strategy of conquest. To convert was to step into a European package, to sing English, Portuguese, Dutch, or French hymns, to follow foreign rituals, and to live under outside authority. The Portuguese even used the Inquisition in Goa to force conversions. Later, American missionaries arrived with money and institutions, turning conversion into a well-funded project of control.

The Anglo-Saxon mind admires conquest and power. Their heroes were not teachers of compassion but warriors and emperors: Alexander, whom they called “the Great,” the Caesars of Rome, Napoleon, Churchill, even Hitler. In their imagination, greatness was measured by the sword - by how much land was taken and how many nations subdued. This admiration for conquest shaped their culture, their politics, and eventually their religion.

When they adopted Christianity, they did not lift up Jesus, the satguru of love and humility. Instead, they turned him into a banner for empire. The cross became a flag of conquest. The message of forgiveness was overshadowed by the march of armies and the building of empires. Jesus, who walked among the poor of Galilee, was used in the Anglo-Saxon project to conquer the world. From the Crusades to colonial missions, from slavery justified by the Church to wars fought in the name of Christian civilization - the Vietnam War, the invasion of Iraq - the pattern is clear: empire in the name of Christ, power in the place of truth. Conversion, therefore, has never been neutral. It was bound up with empire, a continuation of conquest in the spiritual realm. The Anglo-Saxon Church became the doorway not to Jesus the satguru, but to the Christ of Western power. Conversion was less about encountering the living Asian teacher and more about joining a colonial institution.

This is why Indian voices across the modern era accepted Jesus but rejected conversion. Gandhi found the Sermon on the Mount transformative, saying it “went straight to my heart.” He admired Jesus as the greatest satyagrahi but condemned conversion as “a form of violence against the soul.” Ramakrishna accepted Jesus as an avatara, one incarnation among many, and declared, “As many faiths, so many paths.” For Ramakrishna, conversion was meaningless when all rivers flow to the same ocean. Vivekananda honored Jesus as the embodiment of renunciation and service, yet warned that “conversion is the deadliest poison that ever sapped the fountain of truth.” Yogananda presented Jesus as a yogi of Christ-consciousness, insisting, “It is not necessary to leave your faith to know Christ, for Christ is universal.” Tagore respected Jesus as a prophet of love but condemned missionary zeal as cultural conquest.

Conversion uproots people from their traditions, replaces evolved and sophisticated religious heights with simplistic dogmas, and uses force in place of dialogue and discussion. It undermines the dignity of native faiths, masks domination as service, and substitutes the Asian Jesus of compassion for the Anglo-Saxon empire. Indian thought has always upheld the principle of religious pluralism: “Truth is one; sages call it by many names.” If all religions are rivers flowing to the same ocean, then conversion is unnecessary. Jesus himself, when seen in his true light, belongs naturally to this vision - a satguru, teacher, healer, renunciate.