Saturday, July 12, 2008

Textual evidence on Kapaleeshwarar temple at SEA-SHORE of Mylapore.

 

The Kapaleeshwarar temple visited by

Thirugnanasambandar,

and Arunagirinathar

and sung by them in immortal verses

had stood in the sea-shore - not at the inland.

Read the article below.

http://tamizhhindu.blogspot.com/2008/07/st-thomas-2.html

 

http://newstodaynet.com/col.php?section=20&catid=33&id=8866

 

 

 

Fraudulent myth of the tomb of St Thomas - II

V SUNDARAM Thu, 03 Jul, 2008 , 04:19 PM

 

In November 2006 Pope Benedict XVI had categorically stated that St.Thomas never visited South India. When Catholic Indian Missionaries want to manufacture false and fictitious fables to deliberately mislead the poor and gullible masses of India for purposes of mass conversion (known as `harvesting of souls'), then they are capable of treating even the Pope in Rome with supreme political contempt! The mega budget film on St.Thomas to be produced by Catholic Archdiocese of Chennai should be viewed against this background.

 

Historian Veda Prakash, after conducting a methodical research published a book in Tamil in 1989. In this book, he called the bluff of St. Thomas—a bluff marketed by the Catholic Church and its missionaries in India since the middle of the 16th century—and convincingly proved with irrefutable documentary evidence that the present Santhome Church, has been built on the very site where the original Kapaleeshwarar Temple of Mylapore stood for centuries till 1560's. Sometime after 1560, the Portuguese destroyed the Kapleeshwarar Temple on the beach at San Thome and built a church.

 

 

Veda Prakash's statement about destruction of the original Kapaleeshwara Temple by Christians was confirmed by Dr. R. Nagaswamy, formerly Director of Archealogy Tamilnadu. In an article `Testimony to Religious Ethos', published in `The Hindu' of 30 April, 1990, he wrote: `A great study of the monuments and lithic records in Madras reveals a great destruction caused by the Portuguese to Hindu Temples in the 16 century A.D. The most important temple of Kapaleeshwara lost its ancient building during the Portuguese devastation and was originally located near the San Thome Cathedral. A few Chola records found in the San Thome Cathedral and Bishop's house refer to Kapaleeshwara Temple and Poompaavai. A Chola record in fragment found on the east wall of the San Thome Cathedral refers to the image of Lord Nataraja of the Kapaleeshwara Temple. The temple was moved to the present location in the 16 century and was probably built by one Mallappa…. A fragmentary inscription, 12 century Chola record, in the San Thome Church region refers to a Jain Temple dedicated to Naminathaswamy'.

 

The point of view of Veda Prakash on the spurious and dubious visit of St.Thomas to Mylapore was later confirmed and established with formidable documentary and literary evidence by Swami Devananda Saraswathi (pen name: Ishwar Sharan) in his book titled `The Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple' published in 1991. Ishwar Sharan has demolished the fabled, fabricated and fraudulent myth of the visit of St.Thomas to Mylapore in the first century AD and his murder and martyrdom in 73 AD. My current story is wholly based on the facts presented by Ishwar Sharan.

 

The legend of St.Thomas in Madras is clearly the fabrication of the Portuguese to camouflage their destruction of the ancient Hindu Shiva Temple of Kapaleeswarar in 1561, which was situated on the seashore, at the very place where the San Thome Church now stands.

 

Nearly 1000 years before the barbarous and savage Catholic Portuguese

destroyed the Kapaleeswarar Temple,

the great Saivite Saint of sixth century AD Thirugnanasambandar,

sang 6th POOMPAVAI PADIKAM THEVARAM as follows:

மடலார்ந்த தெங்கின் மயிலையார் மாசிக்
கடலாட்டுக் கண்டான் கபாலீச்சரம் அமர்ந்தான்

Thirugnanasambandar wrote in a moving manner:

`The Lord of Kapaleeswaram sat watching the people of Mylapore—

a place full of flowering coconut palms—

taking ceremonial bath in the sea on the full moon day of the month of Masi'.

I am presenting below another beautiful verse of Thirugnanasambandar relating to Kapaleeshwarar Temple:

கானமர் சோலைக் கபாலீச்சரம் அமர்ந்தான்
தேனமர் பூம்பாவைப் பாட்டாகச் செந்தமிழான்
ஞானசம்பந்தன் நலம் புகழ்ந்த பத்தும் வல்லார்
வானசம் பந்தவத் தவரோடும் வாழ்வாரே.

In the same strain sang yet another great

Tamil Mystic, Saint and Poet Arunagirinathar

who visited the Kapaleeswarar Temple in San Thome in 1456,

in his THIRUMAYILAI THIRUPPUGAZH:

கயிலைப் பதியரன் முருகோனே
கடலக்கரைதிரை அருகே - சூழ்ம
யிலைப் பதிதனில் உறைவோனே
மகிமைக் கடியவர் பெருமாளே!

 

The above verse of Arunagirinathar can be translated into English thus:

`Oh Lord of Mylai (Mylapore) Temple, situated on the shores of the sea

with raging waves'.

 

The ancient Kapaleeswarar Temple at San Thome visited by Thirugyanasambandar in 6th century AD and Arunagirinathar in 1456 was destroyed by the Catholic Portuguese in 1561 to cleverly cover up this act of crime, the Catholic Church has come up with the fraudulent fable of Martyrdom of St. Thomas at Mylapore in 73 AD. The Portuguese domination of Mylapore lasted from 1522 to 1697, by which time the British had established themselves in the Fort St. George and adjoining territories and the Portuguese had to withdraw to Goa where their Empire lasted in 1962.

 

As Swami Tapasyananda has observed `In Goa Portuguese rule was noted for a spree of destruction of Hindu Temples and persecution of the Goanese, so much so that large sections of them had to flee that territory and settle all along the west coast of India. They are the Gauda Sarawats. The fate of these Goanese would have overtaken the Temples and the people of Madras also, a foretaste of which contingency they got in the destruction of the holy Kapaleeshwara Temple.

 

Thanks to the British domination of the region after 1697 and the consequent elimination of the Portuguese, this tragic fate did not overtake them. The British had more political maturity and diplomatic perception, which helped them perceive that trade was more important for themselves than religious propaganda'. No wonder that the British kept an attitude of indifference towards the religion and religious edifices of the people of India in whose midst they carried on the trading activities which eventually led to the establishment of a great political empire not only in India but in other parts of the World.

Sita ram Goel in his outstanding book titled `HISTORY OF HINDU-CHRISTIAN ENCOUNTERS (AD 304 TO AD 1996)' has given his magisterial verdict:

`The history of Christianity, crowded as it is with crimes of the most horrendous kind, provides a running commentary on the Christian doctrine. And the biggest share in Christian crimes down the centuries can safely be allotted to the Roman Catholic Church, its head, its hierarchy, its theologians, its religious orders and its missionaries. There is, however, one criminal field in which the Roman Catholic Church has remained unrivalled. No other Christian denomination—there are as many as 23000 of them _comes anywhere near the Roman Catholic Church when it concerns committing of blatant forgeries and foisting of pious frauds. It is no exaggeration to say that starting with Jesus Christ, the entire doctrinal and institutional edifice of Catholicism rests on a series of staggering swindles. The Roman Catholic Church in India has remained true to this tradition. The literature it has produced during the last five centuries is full of lies of the filthiest sort, not only about Hindu religion and culture but also about its own `religion' and role. And this garbage heap is topped by the hoax about the so-called St Thomas'.

 

 

After our Independence, the Catholic Church went on spreading the myth of murder and martyrdom of St. Thomas at Mylapore in the first century A.D. Meanwhile, the Liberation Theology of the Church had added a new dimension to it. St. Thomas started being sold not only as the first founder of Christianity in India but also as the first to proclaim a new social message in this country.

A section of the `secular' media in Madras, in the late eighties, presented this new portrait of St. Thomas through articles written by one C A Simon under the title `In Memory Of a Slain Saint'. After repeating the same old standard fraudulent story of the Catholic Church in India, C A. Simon struck a new revolutionary note: `St. Thomas spent the last part of his life in Madras preaching the Gospel. A large number of people listened and embraced the way of life preached by him. The oppressed and downtrodden followed him and claimed equal status in society as it was denied to them by the prevailing social norms. He condemned untouchability and attempted to restore equal status to women'.

This bold and brazen Christian scribe had written with great confidence because similar fictitious stuff, presented in a plethora of books as well as in the popular press, had passed off without being challenged. He was not aware that formidable Hindu Scholars had started examining Christian claims about Christian doctrines and Christian saints, as also calculated Christian calumny about Hinduism, Hindu society, Hindu culture and Hindu history.

It is very unfortunate that certain editors of the pseudo-secular media allowed their respected columns to be used to promote this Catholic romance as historical fact in this age of excellent and critical scholarship. Though Veda Prakash had sent his book on the myth of St Thomas to the media as early as in September 1989 for review, yet the media had ignored it. The media did not apply the same standard of censorship to C A Simon. While it treated Simon with respect, it treated Veda Prakash with utmost contempt. The anti-national and anti-Hindu pseudo-secular mafia of print and electronic mass media is being closely watched by the awakened Hindus of India today. Hindus of India are determined to win their war against the planned, organized and launched dissemination of disinformation in regard to Sanatana Dharma, Hindus, Hinduism, Hindu culture and Hindu society by the criminal cabal controlling the print and electronic media in India today.

(To be contd...)

(The writer is a retired IAS officer) e-mail the writer at vsundaram@newstodaynet.com

*****************************

Related article :-

http://tamilbrahmins.wordpress.com/2008/07/08/baptising-thiruvalluvar-to-besiege-the-hindus/

The Mylapore St. Thomas myth that doesn’t seem to die

Some myths die soon. Some take quite a long time to die. And there are some others which are kept alive by a few people whose very survival depends on the survival of those myths. One such myth that has been kept alive despite having been debunked time and again is the myth of St. Thomas Church of Mylapore in Chennai. My latest visit to this church opened my eyes to the disgraceful attempt by the Santhome church authorities to perpetuate a bundle of historical untruths. Let me narrate the experience in full.

The St. Thomas church of Mylapore is an imposing structure standing on the shore of the Mylapore beach and being one of the most famous churches in Chennai is a major tourist attraction. After going inside the cathedral and reading brief introductions about the apostles of Christ and their various exploits displayed on plaques placed in the cathedral, I went to the museum in the next building. Among the various relics and artifacts on display were also a few stones and pillars, which the museum told us, once comprised the very first church built by St. Thomas himself.  At the very first sight, these pillars triggered a few questions and some suspicions in my mind; the carvings on the pillars looked very similar to traditional Hindu temple carvings which are very unlikely to be seen in a church. The more I looked at the many stones and pillars displayed in the museum, the more suspicious I grew about the church and the story behind it.

The tomb of St Thomas is in the ground floor of this museum. When I went there I met a nun who was sitting in a corner reading the Bible. I thought that the best way to learn more about this church and St. Thomas would be to ask the nun. She was more than happy to explain to us the legend of St Thomas. Here is what she told me: St. Thomas was one of the direct disciples of Jesus Christ and he came to India in 52 CE to spread the ‘good news’. He was the first saint who brought Christianity to India. He first came to the shores of Kerala and from there travelled across South India before coming to Mylapore. Here, by his miraculous powers he healed hundreds of wounded, gave sight to the blind and cured many stricken with incurable diseases. These miracles not only got him a large following among the masses but also earned him royal patronage.

By this time, I already had many questions pounding in my head, especially about the year she had mentioned – 52 CE. Had Christians come to India as early as 52 CE? Weren’t the Syrian immigrants the first Christians to come to India and didn’t they come much later? Even if it was St. Thomas who arrived first, how did he manage to travel to India, crossing the seas, that early in time? The nun’s story was starkly different from what I had read in history books. Nevertheless, I didn’t interrupt her at that point and heard her out further: As the miracles St. Thomas performed earned him larger followings each passing day, he also invited a lot of ire from the traditional Hindu people of the region – especially the Brahmins who were apprehensive that their stranglehold over the society might slip away from their hands. Meanwhile thousands of people realized the falsity of the Hindu religion and embraced the true faith thanks to St. Thomas. The king also gave St. Thomas a piece of land near the beach – the place where the church is standing today. St. Thomas built this beautiful church on that land. I interrupted her at that point because I wanted to know what was there in this place before the church was built.  Well, a lot of Brahmins stayed at this place. It was predominantly a Brahmin area. Many of them left this place after the church came up while many others accepted the true faith and continued to live here, the nun answered. She then took me over to the other side of the room and pointing at a tableau, continued, So this tableau depicts how the end of St. Thomas came about. The Brahmins in the state were getting extremely jealous of St. Thomas’s popularity among the masses and realizing that their hegemony was under severe threat, decided to kill St. Thomas- the peace loving apostle of Christ- when he was in deep prayer on the mountain. You can see in this tableau how the wicked Brahmin priest is piercing a spear into St. Thomas when he was lost in prayer. St. Thomas attained martyrdom in 72 CE.

I had to ask another question at this point. The man with the spear in the hand hardly looked like a Brahmin. His depiction was more like that of a local fisherman. More importantly, the said Brahmin was not wearing the sacred thread. When I asked her that the absence of the sacred thread, which all Brahmins wear was very strange, she conveniently told me that there are hundreds of sects among Brahmins and that this particular man in the tableau might have belonged to a sect which did not wear one. Her answer was not very convincing. She then took me to the adjoining room which had the tomb of St. Thomas and explained that the saint’s mortal remains were kept there: St. Thomas continues to remain an inspiration for the faithful. His martyrdom has sanctified this land and even to this day this place draws millions of people from all over the world. His spirit is guiding us in relentlessly carrying forward the task of spreading the ‘good news’. Upon asking if people from other faiths also come here, she told me that a large number of Hindus come and many are convinced of the greatness of the Christian faith and embrace it. I thanked her for taking us around and explaining about the place and took her leave.

My doubts however, did not leave me in peace. I told my friends that there were three things in particular that I wanted to verify:

1. If St. Thomas had really come to India, what was the year he first set foot here?

2.  What stood on the place the church presently stands? The traditional Hindu carvings on the pillars – alleged to have been used in the original church built by St. Thomas– suggest that a temple might have existed on the spot.

3. If St. Thomas was indeed in India, how did his end come about? Was he murdered when he was in prayer?  More importantly, was he murdered by a Brahmin?

Although it’s not very hard to locate any information you want in this age, very often even the so-called trusted sources can be adulterated to suit political ends. Here’s what Wikipedia says on the subject:

“According to tradition, the Apostle reached Muziris, India in 52 CE and baptized several people who are today known as Saint Thomas Christians or Nasranis… After his murder and death by spear in India, the remaining relics of Saint Thomas the Apostle were enshrined as far as Mesopotamia in the 3rd century, and later moved to various places. In 1258 some of the reputed relics were brought to Abruzzo, in Ortona, Italy, where they have been held in the Church of Saint Thomas the Apostle.”

This just confused me even more. I just had come back from Mylapore after visiting what I was told is St. Thomas’s tomb and Wikipedia says that his relics are in Ortona in Italy! And so I dug deeper and found Ishwar Sharan’s ‘The myth of St. Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple’ where a series of articles conclusively and comprehensively answered these questions with sound historical evidence.

So, did St. Thomas really come to India? If he indeed did, when and what historical or other evidence exists to prove this?

The St. Thomas-in-India story is not a new one; it has been making the rounds right from the fourth century. Ishwar Sharan elucidates this in the introduction to his book.

The legend of St. Thomas in India has its origin in the third century Gnostic religious text known as the Acts of Thomas. Judas Thomas called Didymus, identified in the Acts as the look-alike twin brother of Jesus, had travelled in Syria and Persia and had established a church in Fars (somewhere in erstwhile Persia). Judas Thomas was known as the Apostle of the East in all of West Asia and India up to the 1950s. His cult was brought to India by Syrian Christian refugees from Edessa and Babylon in the fourth century. Between the fourth and the sixteenth centuries, the Syrian Christians reinvented the tale many times over until at last they had St. Thomas coming to India himself to evangelize the heathen. St. Thomas then becomes the founder of Christianity in India and their very own “Indian” apostle.

This story was faithfully carried forward even by Marco Polo and from him by the Portuguese who captured and controlled the Coromandel Coast for quite a long time.

“The legend was later embellished by Marco Polo in the thirteenth century, who made the extraordinary claim that the apostle’s tomb was on the Coromandal Coast, and then it was taken over by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, who following Marco Polo decided, Mylapore with its great temple to Shiva was the place where St. Thomas was buried. They added their own redactions of the Acts of Thomas to the legend, their favourite being St. Gregory’s De Miraculis (Beati) Thomae, and in 1523 having established themselves in the thriving Mylapore sea port, began destroying temples and building their St. Thomas church on the ruins, pretending the sites were those of St. Thomas’s martyrdom and burial.”

There are a number of historical and even Christian religious texts which themselves question the veracity of the legend of St. Thomas.

–          A.D. Burnell, in an article in the Indian Antiquary of May 1875, writes, “The attribution of the origin of South Indian Christianity to the apostle Thomas seems very attractive to those who hold certain theological opinion. But the real question is, on what evidence does it rest? Without real or sufficient evidence so improbable a circumstance is to be at once rejected. Pious fictions have no place in historical research.”

 –          Prof. Jarl Charpentier, in St. Thomas the Apostle and India, writes, “There is absolutely not the shadow of a proof that an Apostle of our Lord — be his name Thomas or something else — ever visited South India or Ceylon and founded Christian communities there.”

–           Rev. J. Hough, in Christianity in India, writes, “It is not probable that any of the Apostles of our Lord embarked on a voyage … to India.”

In other words, the story of St. Thomas coming to India is primarily based on a hagiography called the Acts of Thomas – in which we find no indication of Thomas ever landing in India – and which, being a hagiography, has no historical authenticity. The story was then reinvented many times over by the Syrian Christians who sought refuge in India, and was later picked up and reported by Marco Polo in his encounters with some of these Syrian Christians. From here, the story was lapped up by the Portuguese who then ‘established’ the link between this legendary St. Thomas and India by building the church on the Mylapore beach.

Yet, to this day this myth lives on. Attempts are being made to unabashedly perpetuate the propagation of this falsehood. Tomes of literature are written by theologians who pass off as historians and other ‘eminences’ who invariably have some ideological or political agenda. Starting from the Protestant missionary Claudius Buchanan to the Roman Catholic historian Fr. A Mundanan and the ‘historical fiction’ writer of our own time, William Dalrymple, all have parroted the same fabrication that originated with the Syrian Christians and have tried to legitimize it as the ‘truth’.

So what stood on the spot the church presently stands, and what explains the carvings on the stone pillars in the museum?

What stood on the place the church presently stands?   

And so, it was pretty clear to me that the St. Thomas coming to India story is a myth. But that doesn’t answer the question of what originally stood on the site of the St. Thomas church.

The early Portuguese encounters with India have been exceptionally bloody. In their quest of ridding the pagan land of false faith and in their mission of spreading the good news, the Portuguese went about destroying Hindu temples and other places of worship on a large scale. The Portuguese were more zealous in this religious quest than the British.  After tracing the St. Thomas legend to South India the Portuguese sought to ‘cement’ this firmly by replacing the Shiva temple on the Mylapore beach with a church in the memory of the fictional St. Thomas.

As to the evidence of a Shiva temple standing on the site of the St. Thomas church, we can turn to Ishwar Sharan’s book again.

Iyadigal Kadavarkon, the sixth century Shaivite prince of Kanchipuram, Jnanasambandar and Arunagirinathar, the sixth and fifteenth century Shaivite poets, consistently mention in their hymns that the Kapaleeswara Temple was on the seashore.

Jnanasambandar writes, “The Lord of Kapaleeswaram sat watching the people of Mylapore — a place full of flowering coconut palms — taking ceremonial bath in the sea on the full moon day of the month of Masai.” 

Nine centuries later, and one century before the arrival of the Portuguese, Arunagirinathar writes, “O Lord of Mylapore temple, situated on the shores of the sea with raging waves….”

So what happened during the invasion of the Portuguese? What happened to this temple of Lord Kapaleeshwara located on the ‘shores of the sea with raging waves’? Ishwar Sharan quotes N. Murugesha Mudaliar and PK Nambiar.

–          N. Murugesa Mudaliar, in Arulmigu Kapaleeswarar Temple Mylapore,writes, “Mylapore fell into the hands of the Portuguese in 1566, when the temple suffered demolition. The present temple was rebuilt around three hundred years ago. There are some fragmentary inscriptions from the old temple still found in the St. Thomas Cathedral.”

–          P.K. Nambiar, in Census of India 1961, Vol. IX, Part XI, writes “It is a historical fact that the Portuguese, who visited India in the 16th century, had one of their earliest settlements at San Thome, Mylapore. In those days they were very cruel and had iconoclastic tendencies. They razed some Hindu temples to the ground. It is probable that the Mylapore temple referred to in the Thevaram hymns was built on the seashore and that it was destroyed by the Portuguese about the beginning of the 16th century.”

Like in most other places where their religious places have been destroyed and desecrated, the Hindus relentlessly made efforts to reclaim and rebuild the temple. Ishwar Sharan quotes M. Arunachalam and says, “Later, devout Hindus built the present temple of Mylapore at a different site, a few furlongs west, out of whatever they could salvage from the ruins of the old temple. A number of carved temple stones can still be seen on the compound wall of the church.” 

And this ‘replacing the temple with the church’ did not happen without bloodshed. In the foreword to the book, celebrated scholar on Hinduism, Dr. Koenraad Elst writes “… the church which they(Christians) claim commemorates St.Thomas’s martyrdom at the hands of Hindu fanaticism, is in fact a monument of Hindu martyrdom at the hands of Christian fanaticism. It is a forcible replacement of two important Hindu temples — Jain and Shaiva — whose existence was insupportable to the Christian missionaries”. 

And as to how many Hindus were slaughtered, Dr. Elst says,

“No one knows how many Hindu priests and worshipers were killed when the Christian soldiers came to remove the curse of Paganism from the Mylapore beach. Hinduism does not practice martyr-mongering, but if at all we have to speak of martyrs in this context, the title goes to these Jina- and Shiva-worshipers and not to the apostle Thomas.”

While the nun had told me that St. Thomas was murdered by wicked Brahmins who could not digest his popularity, history was telling me the exact opposite story – of a temple demolition and slaughter of Hindus by the invading Portuguese Christians. This was what the Hindus got in return for giving shelter and refuge to the persecuted Syrian Christians—they had, apart from being labelled as the ‘murderers’ of the holy saint, their temples destroyed and their people butchered.

Yet, this historical fact has been carefully kept in the dark. From my experience of travelling around the country, I say with confidence that there are several such instances where Hindu temples have given way for churches. The Archaeological Survey of India has not investigated the origins of early Christian churches in India in the same way that it has studied old mosques and other Muslim monuments. However, this work has been done by German scholars and awaits translation and publication in English. Most sixteenth and seventeenth century churches in India contain temple rubble and are built on temple sites and a deeper investigation in this direction needs to take place.

And then we have the third question of the story of the Brahmin killing St. Thomas.

Ishwar Sharan explains again.

“The Portuguese were familiar with the St. Thomas legend long before they arrived in India. They knew Marco Polo’s Il Milione, made popular in Europe in the fourteenth century, and the earlier sixth century Latin romances De Miraculis Thomae and Passio Thomae…The Passio Thomae had St. Thomas killed by a Pagan priest with a sword, and De Miraculis Thomae had him killed by a Pagan priest with a lance. These stories were at odds with the one found in the Acts of Thomas, which had the apostle executed on the orders of a Persian king, by four royal soldiers with spears.”

The stories were completely at variance with each other. But that won’t be an issue when you can yourself invent a new version! That is what the Portuguese precisely did.

“The Portuguese preferred the Pagan-priest-with-a-lance story found in De Miraculis Thomae. They added Marco Polo’s seaside tomb to it, and elements from Syrian Christian traditions that they had gathered in Malabar, and concocted a legend…”

 And so here we have how the Pagan-priest–with-a-lance became a wicked-Brahmin-priest-with-a-spear.  This was how a St. Thomas who never came to India became a martyr and the local Brahmin priest became the wicked murderer. This again was the classic instance of the nefarious design of the Christian missionaries to not only convert large masses of Hindus to Christianity, but to also paint the Brahmins as wicked oppressors because they stood as an obstacle in their conversion pursuit.

As Dr. Koenraad Elst says,

“The well-spring of anti-Brahminism is doubtlessly the Christian missionaries’ greedy design to rope in the souls of Hindus. From there onwards, it spread through the entire English-educated class and ultimately became an unquestionable dogma in India’s political parlance. Communist historians and sociologists have been fortifying it by rewriting Indian history as a perennial struggle between Brahmin oppressors and the rest. When defending the Mandal report in 1990, the then Prime Minister of India V.P. Singh could say that Brahmins have to do penance for the centuries of oppression which they inflicted on the Backwards, without anyone questioning his historical assumptions. Anti-Brahminism is now part of the official doctrine of the secular, socialist Republic of India.”

The St. Thomas-in-India story, I realized, was only one example of the state of public discourse in India, which is completely divorced from truth and honesty, which have been sacrificed at the altar of a spurious brand of secularism.

When I told a few friends of my research into this issue and the shocking revelation that followed, they asked me a few very pertinent questions. “What difference does it make whether Christianity came to India in the first or the fourth century?” “Why raise such a squabble when no one denies that the Syrian Christians of Malabar are old immigrants to this country?” “What difference does it make if St. Thomas was killed or not?” “What difference does it make whether a Brahmin killed St. Thomas or not?” I found satisfactory answers in Sita Ram Goel’s Papacy: Its Doctrine and History.

Firstly, it is one thing for some Christian refugees to come to a country and build some churches, and quite another for an apostle of Jesus Christ to appear in flesh and blood for spreading the Good News. If it can be established that Christianity is as ancient in India as the prevailing forms of Hinduism, no one can nail it down as an imported creed brought in by Western imperialism.

Secondly, the Catholic Church in India stands badly in need of a spectacular martyr of its own. Unfortunately for it, St. Francis Xavier died a natural death and that, too, in a distant place. Hindus, too, have persistently refused to oblige the Church in this respect, in spite of all provocations. The Church has to use its own resources and churn out something. St. Thomas, about whom nobody knows anything, offers a ready-made martyr.

Thirdly, the Catholic Church can malign the Brahmins more confidently. Brahmins have been the main target of its attack from the beginning. Now it can be shown that the Brahmins have always been a vicious brood, so much so that they would not stop from murdering a holy man who was only telling God’s own truth to a tormented people. At the same time, the religion of the Brahmins can be held responsible for their depravity.

Fourthly, the Catholics in India need no more feel uncomfortable when faced with historical  evidence about their Church’s close cooperation with the Portuguese pirates, in committing abominable crimes against the Indian people. The commencement of the Church can be disentangled from the advent of the Portuguese by dating the Church to some distant past. The Church was here long before the Portuguese arrived. It was a mere coincidence that the Portuguese also called themselves Catholics. Guilt by association is groundless.

Lastly, it is quite within the ken of Catholic theology to claim that a land which has been honoured by the visit of an apostle has become a patrimony of the Catholic Church. India might have been a Hindu homeland from times immemorial, but since that auspicious moment when St. Thomas stepped on her soil, the Hindu claim stands cancelled. The country has belonged to the Catholic Church from the first century onwards, no matter how long the Church takes to conquer it completely for Christ.

It is mainly for these reasons that we need to stir up debate on this issue. Sadly, even the biggest of political leaders in India have unquestioningly accepted and promptly parroted this historical fable. Jawaharlal Nehru wrote in one of his travel books,

“Few people realise that Christianity came to India as early as the first century after Christ, long before Europe turned to it, and established a firm hold in South India…”

Dr. Rajendra Prasad’s St. Thomas Day speech at New Delhi, in 1955, where he parroted Nehru, was equally ignorant:

Remember St. Thomas came to India when many countries in Europe had not yet become Christian and so these Indians who trace their Christianity to him have a longer history and a higher ancestry than that of Christians of many of the European countries. And it is a matter of pride for us that it happened.…

Ishwar Sharan’s path breaking book was published for the first time in 1995 and ever since, the diocese has resorted to the old trick of suppresio veri and suggestio falsi.

Even after Pope Benedict XVI himself clarified that St. Thomas never came to India and despite several publications debunking the historical veracity of the St. Thomas legend, the Mylapore diocese, the secular intelligentsia and the mainstream media are peddling the same falsehood brazenly.

The Mylapore diocese in 2008, also planned the production of a mega budget movie on the life and times of St. Thomas, his visit to India and St. Thomas’s purported conversation with Tamil Saint Thiruvalluvar and Thiruvalluvar’s alleged conversion to Christianity!

More on St. Thomas Church Mylapore

The Mylapore St. Thomas Myth that just doesn’t seem to die: Part 1

Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica: Their counterfeit St. Thomas entries exposed

The St. Thomas myth as historical fact in Pax Indica

Christian inculturation of Hinduism in Tamil Nadu

The saddest part is that such fabrications continue to be peddled audaciously. Indeed, the dissemination of superstitions about St. Thomas and early Christianity in India is almost all-pervasive: from tourist guide books, official gazettes, school textbooks and, needless, Christian publications and websites. As a consequence, every boy and girl in the country believes that a Mylapore king and his Brahmin priest murdered St. Thomas on Big Mount. They cannot help but believe it because that is what they are taught “on good authority” either by the teachers in their schools or by the newspapers.

As I was about to leave the precincts of the church, a new batch of tourists entered in a large bus. They headed to the museum where the nun devoutly took the tourists around the church narrating the St. Thomas fable. It then struck to me that it’s precisely what we must do – exploit the power, reach and influence of tourism to challenge the distortions in our public discourse.

This is the kind of discovery of India that young people of our country must be exposed to, and not the Nehruvian kind.