St Thomas church Mylapore

The Mylapore St. Thomas myth that doesn’t seem to die: Part 2

Read Part 1 here.

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!

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.


Deprecated: file_exists(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($filename) of type string is deprecated in /home/indiafacts.org/public_html/wp-includes/comment-template.php on line 1617

14 Comments

  • sumathimegavarnam@gmail.com'
    June 11, 2015

    Sumathi Megavarnam

    Very Good EYE OPENING ARTICLE , Still the Nefarious activities of the xtian missionaries are going on Unabated & a good No of Morons are getting converted thick & fast by the Complete false hood propagandas of the Church

  • […] The chief source of this tale is a Gnostic Syrian fable, Acts of Thomas, written by a poet named Bardesanes at Edessa around 201 CE. The text says the apostle went from Palestine eastwards to a desert-like country where people are ‘Mazdei’ [a term used for Zoroastrians] and have Persian names. The term “India” in Acts is used as a synonym for Asia. The Acts identifies St Thomas as Judas, the look-alike twin of Jesus, who sells him into slavery. The slave travels to Andropolis where he makes newly-weds chaste, cheats a king, fights with Satan over a beautiful boy, persuades a talking donkey to confess the name of Jesus, and is finally executed by a Zoroastrian king for crimes against women. His body is buried on a royal mountain and later taken to Edessa, where a popular cult rises around his tomb. Even in this story, it is clear that St. Thomas never visited India. There is another popular fable among Indian Christians about one Thomas of Cana, a merchant who led a group of 400 Christians from Babylon and Nineveh, out of Persia in the 4th century CE, when Christianization of the Roman Empire motivated the Persians to persecute their Syriac-speaking Christian minority. These Christians apparently landed in Malabar around 345 CE. Based on this tale, a section of St. Thomas Christians believe Thomas of Cana to be known as St. Thomas. And so it is clear that nothing much is known about St Thomas beyond these stories which have been refuted by historical evidence. Even after reading the refutation of this tale of St. Thomas by strong historical evidence, the likes of Tharoor will claim that these ‘fables’ are historical facts, in no less than a full length book of the genre Pax Indica belongs to. The reason is not far to seek: Tharoor’s parroting of the St. Thomas myth arises from the Indian secularist template for keeping the secular fabric of India intact. But there are deeper, more fundamental reasons why the St. Thomas myth must be debated and re-debated. The reason is given in detail by Sita Ram Goel in his 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. To reword a phrase used by the famed novelist S.L.Bhyrappa ‘Secularism can never be strengthened by projecting historical lies.’ Hence it is imperative for students of history as well as those claiming to be historians to challenge these distortions in our public discourse.  References: 1.      Ishwar Sharan- ‘The myth of St. Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple’ 2.       Sandhya Jain-  ‘Merchant Thomas to Saint Thomas’ 3.       Tejasvi Surya- The Mylapore St. Thomas Myth that just doesn’t seem to die: Part 1 [and 2] […]

  • shivesh.r@gmail.com'
    October 4, 2013

    shva

    Hindus suffered at the hands of Portuguese christian fanatics and muslim invaders. Its a fact that almost all old churches in South India have been built on the remains of destroyed Hindu temples. Similarly its a historical fact that mosques in Varanasi, Dwarka, Mathura and many other places were built after vandalizing temples in those places. These places were chosen as they were important Hindu pilgrimage sites. But whatever happened in history has happened and can’t be undone. I and I am sure many others only ask for truth to prevail; let people of other faith acknowledge that wrongs were done to the native hindus and let them reject the missionary and communist propaganda that continues to legitimize violence by external aggressors against peaceful hindus. (I have read such justifications as- temples had to be destroyed as they were symbols of brahminic tyranny and that by forcing conversions, hindus were being protected against cruel brahmins. Only these communists/missionaries never thought why have hindus and mostly low caste hindus prevailed over thousands of years if their own religion was tyrannical to them. ). Societal harmony is not built by negating, distorting and white-washing history that communist historians have done in India. It is built by acknowledging history and resolving to not let the wrongs continue. This is the bare minimum that christians and muslims in India should do for their hindu neighbors. And of course nobody is asking to demolish all churches and mosques built on the remains of hindu temples.

  • pp_chn@twitter.example.com'
    October 1, 2013

    pp_chn (@pp_chn)

    Hindus should start handing over pamphlets of the true history to the incoming tourists, outside the Church.

    • ar.amitsharma@yahoo.co.uk'
      October 12, 2013

      amit sharma

      Great idea

  • majid.farhan@outlook.com'
    October 1, 2013

    Majid

    Will you in the same breath accept and publish about Ramayana and Mahabaratha as only Epics and Mythology and written as stories and none of the characters existed in reality? Your own words are true if you just change the subjects to Hindu Mythology !!

    The saddest part is that such fabrications continue to be peddled audaciously. Indeed, the dissemination of superstitions about and early in India is almost all-pervasive: from tourist guide books, official gazettes, school textbooks and, needless, publications and websites. As a consequence, every boy and girl in the country believes that king and his murdered . 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.

    • charvaka007@gmail.com'
      October 3, 2013

      charvaka

      What you said is also true for Muslim mythologies .But I would be teared apart if I say this publicly by the “tolerant” Muslim men and fatwa would be issued to kill me!!

    • shanthshivam@gmail.com'
      October 3, 2013

      shanth

      Why do you guys call it Hindu Mythology? What is your understanding of these puranas ans stories? Don’t you see the existence of Ramayana and Mahabharata in India. What effort have you guys put to trace it? Come to Tamil Nadu and I will show many places that are found in Ramayana. In Kerala you will find many places that are mentioned in Mahabharata.

      Why should I, as an Indian and a Hindu, listen to people conditioned by those who allegiance to Semitic religious narrative?

      First of all ask yourselves what your roots are. Do not come and equate other religious practices with Sanatana Dharma. It is ageless and timeless and never talks of Sectarian Gods and beliefs. It is universal in Character and spirit.

      One more thing: There is no one book, Only one God, One founder, one goal of total conversion, at any cost or means to achieve total conversion, resort to lies and destruction and bloodshed. All the above qualities can be found in Christian, Islamic and Communist ideologies. Dharma is not to be found in any of these traditions. Indian traditions are on the other side of spectrum that I just listed.

      The article is focusing on a deliberate attempt to subvert that which is native and local. The author is raising this issue. We do not have to account for our liberty to choose to accommodate views from other traditions because the victim or the people who suffered from Kapaleeshwar Temple’s destruction were Hindus. So kindly keep your counsel to yourselves.

    • sumathimegavarnam@gmail.com'
      June 11, 2015

      Sumathi Megavarnam

      CUT YOUR CRAP SHIT RANTINGS……………if you are an Indian Muslim don’t forget the fact out of fear for life only your ancestors would have got converted so stop your rhetoric……if you still owe your allegiance to someone else please leave to that place/country where you are most Welcome

  • hebbarsrinivas@gmail.com'
    October 1, 2013

    Srinivas Hebbar

    Speak to any Konkani from Goa, Karwar, Vengurla and you will be shocked to hear how their forefathers carried idols of gods & goddesses on their heads and hid in forests, to escape the Portuguese. Most of the older churches there have been built on the ruins of temples

  • shiv.prasath83@gmail.com'
    October 1, 2013

    shiva

    Dear India Facts, the same type of story is also present in Pondicherrry. where the Immaculate Conception Cathedral (samba kovil) is build upon a siva temple. There was tension in 1992 for the reconstruction of temple, but it faded out.

    http://www.ifpindia.org/ecrire/upload/digital_database/Site/Pondi/data/part_2_1_2_temples.html

  • deebeespam@gmail.com'
    October 1, 2013

    dee bee

    Very nice article. The truth is so clear. It is much better to denounce a cult built on false myths, rather than pretend faith and accept an untruth.

  • sudhirakondi@twitter.example.com'
    September 30, 2013

    Sudhir (@sudhirakondi)

    very informative. I had heard just about the Mylapore temple but never knew the history about it. As your concluding remarks say it, penetrating the tourism sector in a planned manner can help show the truth out. For e.g. looking at the maps or guide books tourists carry along and see if the distorted history can be corrected using facts in them.

  • sighbaboo@twitter.example.com'
    September 30, 2013

    sighbaboo (@sighbaboo)

    You have done yeomen service for writing this up so cogently. Thanks