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Old Kapaleeswarar Temple, Mylapore
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It is difficult to say whether Mylapore found its place in travel notes of many ancient foreign travellers because it had on its soil the tomb of St. Thomas or if the tomb itself was mentioned therein because of its location at Mylapore on the eastern coast. It is a historical fact that many foreign travellers used to visit this coast after sailing a long distance thanks to the Coromandel winds. Marco Polo, the great traveller, has referred to the tomb in his travel diary.
The present Gothic church was constructed over the tomb only in 1893; but it is going to be almost 20 centuries since the first church was constructed by St. Thomas, the father of Christianity in India, before his martyrdom in 73 A.D.
The tomb of St. Thomas, one of the twelve Apostles (disciples) of Jesus Christ, attracts people from all over the world. It is a pilgrim centre for Christians, especially during Christmas and Easter seasons. Its history, battles fought over the mortal remains of the saint, burial, excavation, relocation of the tomb, etc., all form part of a high drama the church witnessed over the centuries.
Today Santhome has in its possession only a piece of bone and the metal spearhead with which the saint was assassinated in Madras. These are kept under the safe custody of the priests. It is exposed for public veneration during the annual solemn novena for the feast of St. Thomas on July 3rd every year.
The expression A doubting Thomas originated after Thomas, disciple of Jesus Christ, who was not ready to believe the resurrection of the Christ when it was narrated to him by other disciples to whom Jesus appeared for the first time after the crucifixion and burial. Thomas declared: A Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.
According to the Bible, Jesus appeared again inside a closed room where all the disciples were planning their next course of action. Jesus called Thomas and asked him to put his finger on the mark of the wounds. Thomas was taken aback. Thomas felt divine reality encountering human weakness of doubt face to face. He was convinced. He knelt down and uttered: A Thou art my Lord and God.
Thomas landed at Maliankara (Cranganore in Kerala) in 52 A.D. with Habban, a foreign trader. He preached the Gospel, wrought miracles and went to Mailepuram (now Mylapore) and then on to China. He returned to Maliankara at the behest of the son-in-law of the Raja of Thiruvanchikulam.
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 them by the prevailing social norms. He condemned untouchability and attempted to restore equal status for women.
Many stories are sung as folk songs and have descended to us through the generations. One of them about the origin of the church at Santhome is very interesting.
A huge timber log was washed ashore by the waves. In spite of the battery of strong men deployed by King Mahadeva, they could not succeed in bringing it to the shore. As suggested by some of his courtiers, the king summoned the saint. St. Thomas performed another miracle. Pleased by this, the king offered a place near the shore where the timber was first sighted. Thus the old church at Mylapore was built.
As he preached and performed miracles, enemies also grew in number and strength. They vowed to finish him. He had to spend some time in a cave at Little Mount hiding from his enemies. Finally he was killed at what is now known as St. Thomas Mount.
His body was brought to Mylapore, buried and the exact location was forgotten for a long time. Later, in 1523, while digging for laying foundation for a new church they came across signs of the tomb. Immediately the priest in charge of the operation sought the help of higher authorities and then continued excavation.
They removed a lot of earth. After removing two concrete slabs placed between sand and earth they came upon pieces of bones and skull. At the foot there was an earthen vessel supposedly filled with earth taken from the spot where the saint's blood was shed. They further unearthed a metal spearhead having the shape of an olive leaf and also struck upon a wooden shaft.
The bones and other mortal remains were kept in a box and later buried at an undisclosed location near the church as the priest feared for the safety of the same since the news of possible attack by neighbouring kings were pouring in.
Rivalries among Dutch, French and British wrought devastation on Santhome. The Golconda Sultans attacked and occupied the place for years. In 1646, Mir Jumla, Nawab of Carnatic, also attacked.
Hyder Ali, Sultan of Mysore, besieged Santhome three times during 1769, 1780 and 1782.
Due to several attacks and siege, Santhome church was damaged beyond recognition. In 1893 the new church was constructed. The tall bell-tower is an evidence of Gothic architectural excellence.
The church was made a minor basilica in 1956 by Pope Pius XII. The basilica title is conferred on churches based on its antiquity, magnificence and celebrity. The word basilica means a church with honorific privileges. There are only four major basilica in the whole world. None of them is in India and the most prominent among them is the St. Peter's at Vatican.
The tomb of great historical importance is inside the church at Santhome near the sanctum sanctorum. It is open to visitors almost during the whole day. The Tourism Development Corporation on its conducted tours makes a stop at the tomb.
A lot of efforts are on to provide better facilities for the tourists visiting the church every day. Fr. Charles, assistant priest, further informed this writer that there may be celebrations on the 3rd of every month, starting from January 1990 onwards, with the help of parishioners.
This story, with photographs of Santhome Cathedral Basilica, appeared on 30 December 1989 on the front page of the Express Weekend. It was placed below a feature of Madras city history. No indication was given to show that one article dealt with popular legend and the other with historical fact. They were presented together to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the founding of the British factory north of Mylapore and Triplicane at the fishing village of Madraspatnam.
On reading the St. Thomas feature, we sent a letter of protest to the Indian Express editor exposing Simon's story. It was published on 13 January 1990 in the Express Weekend. The paragraphs that were excised by the editor are reproduced here:
Apropos of the article "In Memory of a Slain Saint" (E.W. Dec. 30), it is indeed astonishing that the Indian Express allows its respected columns to be used to promote this Catholic romance as historical fact in this age of excellent critical scholarship.1
In this book Papacy: Its Doctrine and History (Voice of India, New Delhi, 1986) the historian Sita Ram Goel writes about the St. Thomas myth:
Some Catholic scholars have been busy for many years marshalling literary and archaeological evidence in an effort to prove that St. Thomas came to India in 52 A.D., converted some Hindus in the South, and was killed by Brahmins at Mylapore in Madras while giving the Good News to the local people.
It would be a waste of time to present the pros and cons of this controversy which tends to become more and more technical. Suffice it to say that some historians have seriously doubted the very existence of an apostle named Thomas. Distinguished scholars like R. Garbe, A. Harnack and L. de la Vallee-Poussin have denied credibility to the Acts of Thomas, an apocryphal work on which the whole story is based. Some others, who accept the fourth century Catholic tradition about the travels of St. Thomas, point to the lack of evidence that he ever went east beyond Ethiopia and Arabia Felix. The confusion, according to them, has arisen because the ancient geographers often mistook these two countries for India.
The whole subject has been examined recently by Stephen Neill in his History of Christianity in India: The Beginnings to 1707 A.D. published by the Cambridge University Press, England, as late as 1984. He says,'A number of scholars, among whom are to be mentioned with respect Bishop A.E. Medlycott, J.N. Farquhar and the Jesuit J. Dahlman, have built on slender foundations what can only be called Thomas romances, such as reflect the vividness of their imaginations rather than the prudence of rigid historical critics.' Pained by the spread of this spurious history among large sections of Indian Christians, he observes,'Millions of Christians in India are certain that the founder of their church was none other than apostle Thomas himself. The historian cannot prove it to them that they are mistaken in their belief. He may feel it right to warn them that historical research cannot pronounce on the matter with a confidence equal to that which they entertain by faith.' Stephen Neill was a bishop who had spent long years in India.
There is also reason to believe that St. Thomas Church stands on the ruins of a Jain Neminathaswami temple and a Hindu Shiva temple which had a Nataraja shrine attached. The epigraphical data for the existence of the Jain temple on this site is recorded in Jain Inscriptions in Tamil Nadu by A. Ekambaranath and C.K. Sivaprakasham (Research Foundation for Jainology, Madras, 1987). The evidence for the existence of the Shiva temple, which may be the original Kapaleeswara Temple on the Mylapore beach that got eroded by the sea, is compiled in an excellent Tamil-language book called Indiavil Saint Thomas Kattukkadai (The Saint Thomas Myth in India) by Ved Prakash (R.A.F.R., Madras, 1989). This book is recommended for its wealth of information and is available from R.A.F.R., 57 Poonamallee High Road, Maduravayal, Madras 602102.
When this letter appeared in the Express Weekend without the last paragraph, which referred to the destroyed temples, we sent a letter of protest on January 16th to the Indian Express resident editor:
Apropos of my letter on St. Thomas and the St. Thomas Church, I must observe that the truncated version published in the Express Weekend on Jan. 13th, which omits all reference to the building of the church, is not acceptable and does not do justice to history.
As a Catholic apologist was given prime space in the Express Weekend on Dec. 30th to tell his version of this controversial story, the Indian Express is obliged to give space to another writer or at least permit an open review of the subject.
The destruction of temples by Muslims has been discussed in the Indian Express by many persons including Arun Shourie, as has the destruction of Jain (and if I remember correctly, Buddhist) temples in Kanchi and Kashmir by certain Hindu kings. The Christians have completely escaped this review though they were the worst perpetrators of these kinds of deeds. This is ironical, for Christian missionaries continue to try to force conversion and destroy village temples in Central India.
The editorial tactic of only permitting Christians to criticize Christians does not wash and indicates a double standard operating in the newspaper. The editors have never hesitated to permit Christians to lecture and criticize Hindus and Muslims when they choose to do so.
The Express Weekend refuses to review Ved Prakash's Indiavil Saint Thomas Kattukkadai ('The Saint Thomas Myth in India') or even list it as a book received, though in fact the newspaper has received four copies of it.
When the Pope in Rome can no longer enforce the Index,2 how is it that the Indian Express can censor our reading material, obstruct free access to information, and suppress discussion of a subject because it is controversial?
In honour of free speech, the very least you can do is give a fair review to this interesting little book on St. Thomas and the legends that surround him and the church at Mylapore.
Ved Prakash's book was never reviewed by the Indian Express, though the editor acknowledged receipt of a copy and promised to give it his attention.
But our protest did not go unnoticed, and as we had sent out copies of the January 13th letter to various interested people, the excised paragraph would appear in the Indian Express on February 10th in a letter from Swami Jyotirmayananda. His letter was cut too and those lines which offended the editor appear below in italics:
Sri Ishwar Sharan has rightly debunked the so-called historical feature 'In Memory of a Slain Saint' (E.W. Jan. 13) quoting distinguished historians who have seriously doubted the very existence of an apostle named St. Thomas.
In fact the feature that appeared in E.W. December 30th is false and misleading and there is a large body of evidence saying that there never was a Thomas at all, never mind that he came to Madras.
There is reason to believe that St. Thomas Church stands on the ruins of a Jain Neminathaswami temple and a Shiva temple which had a Nataraja shrine attached. The epigraphical data for the existence of the Jain temple on this site is recorded in Jain Inscriptions in Tamil Nadu by A. Ekambaranath and C.K. Sivaprakasham (Research Foundation for Jainology, Madras, 1987). The evidence for the existence of the Shiva temple, which may be the original Kapaleeswara Temple on the Mylapore beach that got eroded by the sea, 3 is found in 'The Saint Thomas Myth in India' (in Tamil) by Ved Prakash (R.A.F.R., Madras, 1989), who has provided a wealth of information on the subject.
This paragraph—for the non-publication of which we had taken the Indian Express editor to task-contained wrong information about the Kapaleeswara Temple and to make matters worse, the wrong information was attributed to a wrong source. The correct source for our wrong information about the original temple, was the 1985 edition of the T.T.K. Map's Guide Book to Madras which says, "A tradition has it that the first temple was by the sea but erosion caused it to be shifted inland."
The real tradition of course was that the 'erosion' of the original Kapaleeswara Temple on the seashore had been caused by Christians. This fact would finally be brought to light in the Express Weekend on March 3rd in a letter from Ved Prakash:
This refers to the letter of Swami Jyotirmayananda published under the caption "Santhome Church" (E.W. Feb. 10). Certain details he has mentioned about my book Indiavil Saint Thomas Kattukkadai ('The Saint Thomas Myth in India') are incorrect as pointed out below.
He writes, "The evidence for the existence of the Shiva temple, which may be the original Kapaleeswara Temple on the Mylapore beach that got eroded by the sea, is found in 'The Saint Thomas Myth in India' (in Tamil) by Ved Prakash (R.A.F.R., Madras, 1989), who has provided a wealth of information on the subject.' But, nowhere in the book do I mention that the Shiva temple on the Mylapore beach was eroded by the sea. What is mentioned about the Shiva temple is as follows: "...many evidences available in Santhome Church show there was a Shiva temple and it was occupied, then step by step demolished and converted into a church. Many documents and books also prove this. A fragmentary Tamil inscription of 8 lines on a stone found at the cathedral registers a tax-free gift for burning at night a lamp before the image of Kuthadumdevar (Nataraja) in the temple of Suramudayar (Suramudayar Kuthadum Devarkku) was found in 1924. It belongs to Vikrama Chola's time, i.e., 12th century. Moreover, when the urchava murthy was taken for procession from the existing Kapaleeswara Temple, there was a practice of lowering it reverently three times before the Santhome Church at that time (16th-18th centuries). The temple was there up to the 16th century. Then, when the Christians started demolishing it completely, Hindus built the present temple out of whatever they could salvage from the ruins of the old temple. (p. 41-42, Indiavil Saint Thomas Kattukkadai.)
The publisher is not R.A.F.R. Either it should be M.M.A.K. (Menattu Mathangal Araychi Kazhagam) or I.S.W.R. (Institute for the Study of Western Religions), 57 Poonamallee High Road, Maduravayal, Madras 602102.
This was the third and last letter published in the Express Weekend in reply to C.A. Simon's article. The letters were not a sufficient or comprehensive reply, but the Indian Express would not tolerate further criticism of the St. Thomas fable in its columns.
This article has been provoked by two write-ups in the Madras edition of the Indian Express. The first of these is A In Memory of a Slain Saint by C.A. Simon in the Express Weekend of the Indian Express of 30 December 1989, and the second, a rejoinder to it by Ishwar Sharan in the A Weekend Post of the Express Weekend of 13 January 1990.
The first write-up, C.A. Simon's, whether based on facts or fiction, is highly derogatory of Hinduism, which is, even to this day, highly tolerant of other religions. The chief items of information contained in C.A. Simon's writings are as follows: (1) St. Thomas, one of the twelve apostles of Christ (a disputed fact), came to India in A.D. 52 with Habban, a foreign trader. (2) He landed at Maliankara (Cranganore) in Kerala, preached the Gospel, wrought miracles, and got many converts. (3) Then he came to Mailepuram (Mylapore), then went to China, after some time returned to Maliankara, and from there came again to Madras where he spent the rest of his life teaching, preaching and drawing a large number of the oppressed and the suppressed into his fold. (4) He performed miracles which made the local king Mahadeva offer him a place near the seashore where the old church of Mylapore now stands. (5) His conversion activities incensed the orthodox and enemies from their rank vowed to finish him. (6) He had therefore to hide himself in a cave at the Little Mount near the present St. Thomas Mount (about five kms. away from Mylapore). (7) Finally, he was murdered there, i.e., at St. Thomas Mount, by those fanatical enemies, and (8) his body was brought to Mylapore and buried in A.D. 73 at a spot which was forgotten for many centuries.
But the greatest miracle was to occur in 1523, nearly fifteen hundred years after the saint was supposed to have died. That was the rediscovery of the tomb and remains of the murdered saint by the priest in charge of the Mylapore church for building a new church—pieces of bones, a skull, a vessel containing mud supposedly from the place where the saint's blood was shed, and a spearhead of the shape of an olive leaf fixed on a wooden shaft.
Wonder of wonders! Even after about fifteen centuries these remains, including the stick, had not become fossilized or crumbled into dust, but could be got intact and buried at an undisclosed place in the church. That church was damaged beyond recognition in the course of the battles waged round it during the rivalry between the Dutch, the French, and the British and Hyder Ali. (Strangely, the Portuguese are not said to be involved in it, perhaps because they were the heroic defenders!) At last in 1893 the present Santhome Church with Gothic architectural excellence was built. (It must be by the Portuguese and none else.) The papal seal over this whole story was stamped in 1956 when Pope Pius XII gave it recognition as a Minor Basilica , all the four major ones being outside India.
The above legend, that is dexterously built into a mighty balloon to boost Christian fanaticism, is neatly pricked in the rejoiner by Ishwar Sharan, published as a letter to the editor in the A Weekend Post of the Indian Express of 13 January 1990. The points mentioned by him are as follows: In his book Papacy: Its Doctrine and History, Sita Ram Goel writes:
Some Catholic scholars have been busy for many years marshalling literary and archaeological evidence in an effort to prove that St. Thomas came to India in 52 AD, converted some Hindus in the South and was killed by the Brahmins in Mylapore in Madras. Suffice it to say that some historians have seriously doubted the very existence of an apostle named St. Thomas. Distinguished scholars like R. Garbe, A. Harnack and L. de la Vallee-Poussin have denied credibility to the Acts of Thomas, an apocryphal work on which the whole story is based. Some others who accept the fourth century Catholic tradition about the travels of St. Thomas, point to the lack of evidence that he ever went beyond Ethiopia and Arabia Felix. The confusion, according to them, has arisen because the ancient geographers often mistook these two countries for India.
He further refers to Stephen Neill's book History of Christianity in India: From the Beginnings to 1707 A.D. published by the Cambridge University Press, England, in 1984, as follows:
A number of scholars, among whom are to be mentioned with respect Bishop A.E. Medlycott, J.N. Farquhar and the Jesuit J. Dahlman, have built on slender foundations what may be called Thomas romances, such as reflect the vividness of their imaginations rather than the prudence of rigid historical critics.
Pained by the spread of this spurious history among large sections of Christians, he observes:
Millions of Christians in India are certain that the founder of their church was none other than apostle Thomas himself. The historian cannot prove it to them that they are mistaken in their belief. He may feel it right to warn them that historical research cannot pronounce on the matter with a confidence equal to that which they entertain by faith.
Stephen Neill was a bishop who had spent long years in India.
To these we want to make ensuing comments to disprove these assumptions of pious Christians. Further absurdities in Thomas legends are revealed in S. Muthiah's Madras Discovered published by Affiliated East-West Press. The following are the facts gleaned from it: Thomas shunted between St. Thomas Mount and Mylapore, separated by about five kms., doing his preaching work and converting thousands. He lived in a cave at Little Mount in Saidapet, three kms. from St. Thomas Mount. There is, to the east of the cave, an opening which is said to have opened in those days into a tunnel from the Little Mount to St. Thomas Mount. The saint is supposed to have fled from his persecutors through this cave. He was however murdered by them at St. Thomas Mount. Mylapore has only the honour of being the place where his dead body was brought and buried. From there his remains were taken to Edessa in Syria where every July a great festival is held to commemorate his reburial. From Edessa they are said to have been moved to the Greek island of Chios, thence to Ortona on Italy's Adriatic coast where they remain to this day. But each resting place still has some relic of Thomas—Madras has a small hand bone and the head of a lance in the St. Thomas Basilica crypt.
More miracles in proof of this legend of murder are yet to come. In 1547 the Vicar of Mylapore during excavation at St. Thomas Mount discovered a A bleeding cross with old Pahlavi inscriptions. It had spots that looked like blood stains which, it is claimed, reappeared after being rubbed away. This cross is built into the wall behind the altar of the church on the Mount dedicated to Madonna of the Mount. The tradition about this cross is that it was chiselled from a rock by the apostle himself. It is said that it used to bleed periodically. The first publicly noticed bleeding was on 15 December 1558 and the last in 1704.
Apart from these fanciful anecdotes about St. Thomas in Madras, Christianity of a brand which had nothing to do with Western Christianity had come to the Malabar coast very early. Sometime about A.D. 450 one Canai Thomas with seventy-two Syrian families arrived in Kerala and whatever traces of early Christianity there were got mixed up with this Syrian brand of it. So these Christians, known till then as Nazaranis (Nazarenes), got also the name Syrian Christians. 1 Their connection to this day is with the Orthodox Church of Syria. The grafting of this powerful group with the existing fragmentary Christian groups must have led to the identification of Kerala Christians with the Thomas tradition, to which they hold steadfastly to this day. The St. Thomas of their fancy must really be Canai Thomas of Syria. The members of this community were adventurous traders with business connections with many countries abroad, and through commerce they brought much wealth to the country. They therefore enjoyed the patronage of the local kings. Their numbers increased not only by the absorption of the existing fragment of the Christian community but the influx of many Hindus from highly aristocratic classes owing to the rigorous rules of excommunication that prevailed among them. Such excommunications were common among them for breach of caste rules, and these excommunicated individuals, men or women, had no other course than to join this new community. This crossbreed Christian community of Kerala is distinguished from the converts by later Catholic and Protestant missionaries both in appearance and talents. In modern India they are everywhere found to occupy high positions in the professional and business life of the country. Their names too are usually different from the European names by which most of the later converted Christians were known till very recent times.
Now to go back to the legend of St. Thomas in Madras. It is clearly the fabrication of the Portuguese to camouflage their destruction of the Hindu Temple of Kapaleeswara which was situated on the seashore, probably at the very place where Santhome Church now stands. The great Saivite saint of sixth century A.D., Tirujnanasambandar, sings in the 6th Poompavai Padikam Thevaram:
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.
In the same strain sings Arunagirinathar, who came to Mylapore in 1456, in his Tirumayilai Tiruppugazh:
O Lord of Mailai (Mylapore) temple, situated on the shores of the sea with raging waves...
This clear and indisputable evidence gives the lie to the legend that the Portuguese invented to hide their nefarious work. The Portuguese domination of Mylapore was 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 till 1962. In Goa their 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 Saraswats. 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 Kapaleeswara Temple. Thanks to the British domination of the region 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. And so they kept an attitude of indifference towards the religion and religious edifices of the people in whose midst they carried on their trading activities, which eventually led to the establishment of a political empire.
The destruction of the seashore Temple of Kapaleeswara is said to have taken place in 1561. The new temple at its present site, about one km. to the west, was built by pious Hindu votaries about three hundred years ago, i.e., about two hundred and fifty years after its destruction. When the Santhome Church was repaired in the beginning of the current century, many stones with edicts were found there. Among them one mentions Poompavai, the girl whom Tirujnanasambandar is said to have miraculously revived from her ashes kept in an urn.
These are all matters of the forgotten past. Both the Kapaleeswara Temple and the Santhome Church are now thriving and catering to the spiritual needs of the Hindus and the Christians. In such a situation it is better not to rake up the memories of these unpleasant facts. According to forward-looking people many things of the past are better forgotten than remembered and ruminated upon. The history of the Kapaleeswara Temple and Santhome Church belongs to this category.
But the priests of the Santhome Church will not allow this. They want to keep the flame of fanaticism bright. It is distressing to note the following passage in C.A. Simon's write-up in the Indian Express of 30 December 1989:
Today Santhome has in its possession only a piece of bone and the metal spearhead with which the saint was assassinated at Madras. These are under the safe custody of the priests. It is exposed for public veneration during the annual solemn novena for the feast of St. Thomas on July 3rd every year.
What is still more threatening is the concluding sentence:
Fr. Charles, assistant priest, further informed this writer that there may be celebrations on the 3rd of every month, starting from January 1990 onwards, with the help of the parishoners.
This attempt to keep up the fanaticism of the minority may inflame the fanaticism of the majority too, and lead to situations like the Babri Masjid controversy. All right-thinking men should foresee and avoid the occurrence of such a contingency.
This article appeared in the June 1990 issue of The Vedanta Kesari, published by the Sri Ramakrishna Math in Mylapore, Madras. It had been submitted three months earlier to the Indian Express, Madras, but had elicited no response from the fearless newspaper-though, as will be seen, the resident editor was fully aware of its existence in his office.
Ram Swarup of New Delhi, on reading the article, sent a letter to The Vedanta Kesari editor on June 27th:
Reference Swami Tapasyananda's piece, "The Legend of a Slain Saint to Stain Hinduism", in your journal of June 1990. I beg to point out respectfully that a most excellent article has been marred by a bad ending. Can't we in all veracity speak of Semitic iconoclasm without first accusing ourselves of fanaticism? And where is the much feared Hindu fanaticism in the so-called Babri Masjid' controversy? Does it consist in our remembering that fanatic forces destroyed our temples and that we must do something about it? But must we start indulging in self-condemnation even before we have started doing anything and the issues have joined? In the language of the Gita, this state of mind comes from hridaya-daurbalyam and karpanya-dosha and can achieve little.
The psychological disarmament of Hinduism has been going on for a long time and we have learnt to pull down our defences even before we have built them. Unfortunately, it has been often preached by some of the best minds of Hinduism.
This letter was not published by The Vedanta Kesari as the magazine does not publish letters to the editor.
We had also sent copies of Swami Tapasyananda's article to C.A. Simon, the Archbishop of Madras at Santhome, and the Indian Express editor. C.A. Simon was the only one to respond with a letter on August 9th. He had learned from the Express Weekend editor that we planned to include his article in the appendix of the first edition of this book, and though he had not yet been informed of the project, he wrote:
Thank you for sending me the xerox copies of the articles written by Swami Tapasyananda and published by Vedanta Kesari.
My interest in that article is purely academic as I am not championing anybody's cause. Also I was not aware of the version given in your letter or in the article.
Main sources for my article was two books:
A few of the leaflets were also referred for the article. A facsimile of postal stamp released by Govt. of India during the occasion (said to be) of the 19th centenary in 1972 also was seen. The speech given by Dr. Rajendra Prasad, former president of India, "Remember St. Thomas came to India ..." was also referred.
I am trying to say that the article was not written with any malafide intention, and I was not aware of the controversial version given by Sri Sita Ram Goel. Since I am aware of it now I note to honour the other version also.
I learned that you are going to publish a book and intend to include my article as the Christian version. As I do not stand for any religious sect or group you may desist from doing so. Instead you may refer to more authoritative works of this subject if you feel so.
Being a scholar of great understanding about the subject, I hope, you may take this in proper spirit.
You may bring this to notice of Swami Tapasyananda in order to clear any misunderstanding.
Kindly acknowledge this letter. You may feel free to write to me.
We did indeed acknowledge this letter and replied to it on August 14th as follows:
This will acknowledge receipt of your letter of August 9th.
My essay on the myth of St. Thomas has been written in reply to your article which appeared in the Indian Express of 30 December 1989.
Considering this, and that you and the Indian Express initiated the controversy by publishing the sly communal tale as Madras city history, you can hardly ask me to desist from reprinting it.
Your article is the subject of public discussion and a necessary reference, and is being reproduced as an appendix to my reply. 2
It is difficult to believe that your interest in St. Thomas is only academic. You have not named any unbiased scholar nor given any credible academic reference.
In fact you have written an excellent piece of Roman Catholic propaganda—in the steps of Rt. Rev. Herman D'Souza who went to great lengths to manipulate Indian history and vilify Hindus in his work—and I must congratulate you on your success.
As you quote Marco Polo and Rajendra Prasad as proof that St. Thomas came to India, so Indians will now quote you and the Indian Express as further proof that St. Thomas came to India.
Your letter amounts to a disclaimer and should really be directed to the editor of the Indian Express, but if you wish to communicate further with me you are of course welcome to do so.
This was the end of the correspondence. C.A. Simon did not communicate further with us and as no disclaimer appeared in the Express Weekend, it may be assumed that neither he nor his editor regretted the publication of the A historical communal tale in Indian Express columns.
Young photographer P. Justine braved the murderous traffic roaring incontinently up and down the Anna Flyover to take this infuriating picture—infuriating because of the sheer gall of American evangelists coming here and not only proselytising but disfiguring public walls with their offensive posters. Our Corporation, hard-up and overstretched as usual, have to spare workmen to scrape them off again, as seen in Justine's picture. Can't these tainted people be prosecuted? Why are they allowed into the country at all? Now see if you believe what follows, which is quoted from a leaflet, dated 1985, lying beside me. A small van loaded with scriptures was hijacked recently-and our people lived to tell of it. Our Bible van was stopped and surrounded in the jungle by a gang of heavily armed men... Nervously the small band of Bible Society volunteers eyed their savage-looking captors. Surely they were only moments away from death. In India's jungles, who would even know where to look for them... The natives fingered their weapons ... they had never heard the name of Jesus before... One of the team preached the first sermon about Jesus these primitive people had ever heard.
And so it goes on, ending with the usual appeal for twenty--five dollars-more if you can spare it--to bring the word of Jesus to India's ignorant natives. And where do you suppose this desperate saga of courage and fortitude took place? In the bandit-infested ravines of Madhya Pradesh? In the deep jungles of Bastar or distant Mizoram? No, believe it or not, all this is supposed to have taken place near Goa! Goa! Of all places, Goa, highly literate and solidly Christian since the 15th century. And if any of you ignorant natives out there who have never heard the name of Jesus don't believe me, they are welcome to come and see the leaflet from which I have quoted.2 But before you do so it might be as well to be reminded that the very first evangelist--one Thomas by name--landed on our shores within a few years of the Crucifixion, some five centuries before America was discovered . We have never needed another.
This item appeared in Harry Miller's column "Madras—City of Neglect" in the Indian Express of 29 January 1990. Because of its reference to the landing of St. Thomas on Indian shores—a provocative statement that Miller and his editor were aware of, made as it was a month after the appearance of Simon's article—we sent a letter on January 30th to the Indian Express, with a copy to Harry Miller, with the specific request that it be published:
Apropos of the feature "Madras: City of Neglect" (I.E. Jan. 29), Harry Miller, like most Indians, seems unaware that the story of Thomas in India is in fact a Roman Catholic romance based on the apocryphal book called the Acts of Thomas. This work, which is included in Catholic bibles, 3 has no historical credibility whatsoever according to eminent scholars like L. de la Vallee-Poussin, A. Harnack and Richard Garbe. Other authorities maintain there never was an apostle named Thomas, while some who accept that he lived say that he did not travel beyond Arabia Felix and Ethiopia—two countries that were often mistaken for India by ancient geographers.
Gibbon wanted to know if this Thomas of legend was an apostle, Manichaean or Armenian merchant.
Prof. Jarl Charpentier of Uppsala University wrote in St. Thomas the Apostle and India, in 1927, "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.
Bishop Stephen Neill in his History of Christianity in India: The Beginnings to 1707 A.D. (Cambridge University Press, London. 1984), laments the spread of this spurious history among Indians.
Sita Ram Goel in his Papacy: Its Doctrine and History (Voice of India, New Delhi, 1986), has carefully analysed the many reasons for the Church to spread and maintain this myth. Two pertinent reasons are:
Moreover, there is epigraphical evidence that the St. Thomas Cathedral Basilica on the Mylapore beach stands on the ruins of a Jain Neminathaswami Temple and the original Kapaleeswara Shiva Temple that got eroded by the sea.4 The data for the existence of the Jain temple on this site is recorded in Jain Inscriptions in Tamil Nadu by A. Ekambaranath and C.K. Sivaprakasham (Research Foundation for Jainology, Madras, 1987), and the evidence for the existence of the ancient Kapaleeswara Temple, which was in fact destroyed by Portuguese Catholic missionaries in 1566, is compiled in an excellent Tamil-language book called Indiavil Saint Thomas Kattukkadai (The Saint Thomas Myth in India) by Ved Prakash (Menattu Mathangal Araychi Khazhagam, Madras, 1989).
This letter was not published, nor did Harry Miller acknowledge his error—though he is always the first to jump on the next man for making a mistake—and over the year 1990—the period these articles cover—the Indian Express editor would occasionally pass items promoting the myth of St. Thomas as Indian history. We would reply to these items, as would others, but our letters were never published. We would eventually have to concede that the editor was not going to allow the truth about this tale, or the City's churches, 5 to appear in Indian Express columns. 6
1 This paragraph was converted by the editor into the prosaic introductory line: "This refers to "In Memory of a Slain Saint" (E.W. Dec. 30)."
2 The official list of books Catholics are forbidden to read.
3 The words "eroded" and "sea" should have been in quotation marks.
1 Thomas of Cana and the seventy-two Syrian families arrived in 345 C.E. They were the first Christians to arrive in India. Swami Tapasyananda has made an error here and identified the Jerusalem merchant with a later migration from West Asia. All Christian groups in Malabar, whether called Nazaranis or Nestorians, were of Syrian or Persian origin. They were divided into two basic groups: those who married Indians and those who did not.
2 In the first edition of this book, published in February, 1991, where Simon's article will appear in the appendix.
1 The photograph above the article showed Madras Corporation workers removing a long line of posters advertising a hallelujah meeting from the flyover wall.
2 Sri Aurobindo in The Foundations of Indian Culture, quoted by Arun Shourie in A Secular Agenda, was also constrained to note "the intemperate drunkenness of denunciation and vomit of false witness, hatred, uncharitableness and all things degrading and unspiritual and unclean that are the mark of a certain type of 'Christian literature'."
3 This is not true. It is in fact very difficult to find a copy of the Acts of Thomas anywhere except in a Jesuit library.
4 This dubious quotation from the 1985 edition of the T.T.K. A Map's Guide Book to Madras (see page 158), would be brought to our attention for months to come and in that it was noticed by so many readers shows that the citizens of Madras were fully aware that the temple had been destroyed by Christians -- a fact that we state in the next sentence of this letter.
5 Letters pointing out that Luz Church, Santhome Cathedral, Our Lady of Health Church and Our Lady of Expectation Church were built on temple sites were also suppressed.
6 After reading about our encounter with the Indian Express, an intelligence officer who poses as a journalist told us that the distinguishing features of the Indian editor and journalist are arrogance — they think that they are the only ones who know anything — and a general contempt for the intelligence of the reading public.