The Rozabal Line

The Rozabal Line is the debut novel of Ashwin Sanghi. The author has taken up the creative liberty of using various religious facts in order to whip up an epic fictional thriller. Sanghi speculates that Jesus Christ survived the crucifixion and spent his missing years in India, and that the men searching for Jesus were Buddhist Monks who were searching for the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. He mentions that the lost tribes of Israel may have settled in Kashmir. The author also introduces St. Thomas as one of Jesus’s closest friends and Mary Magdalene as a woman from the ancient Mauryan Empire headed by Ashoka. The book further features terrorist attacks that share some parallels with the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Sanghi’s hypothesis goes on to establish that Jesus’s descendants are today’s Kashmiri Islamists. The author draws some similar lines between the fate of a group of terrorists and that of Jesus and his 12 apostles. The book traces the roots of various religions and states that all their origins are closely knit. The Rozabal Line was first published in 2007 under Sanghi's pseudonym Shawn Haigins in the United States. The revised edition was later published in India under Sanghi’s own name in 2008 before Westland published it in 2010. India Today ranked The Rozabal Line as one the top five bestselling fictional works in India. The Rozabal Line has received favourable reviews from national dailies such as The Hindu and Tehelka as well.