The Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple

Old Kapaleeswarar Temple, Mylapore

PART TWELVE

Whatever the scholars may say against the myth of St. Thomas in Malabar and Mylapore—and some of them are high ranking ecclesiastics of faith and integrity—India's political leaders, in keeping with their own tradition of ignorance and arrogance, have declared differently. 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. Although these Christians have their religious head in Antioch or elsewhere in Syria, their Christianity is practically indigenous and has few outside contacts.... To my surprise, we also came across a colony of Nestorians in the South. I had laboured under the impression that the Nestorians had long been absorbed in other sects, and I did not know that they had ever flourished in India."

Nehru's ignorance about the Nestorians in Malabar is indeed surprising, considering that their church was the only Christian church in India from the fifth to the fifteenth century.

Dr. S. Radhakrishnan was more circumspect in his statement. He said, "Christianity has flourished in India from the beginning of the Christian era. The Syrian Christians of Malabar believe that their form of Christianity is apostolic, derived directly from the Apostle Thomas. What is obvious is that there have been Christians in the West Coast of India from very early times."

But Dr. Rajendra Prasads St. Thomas Day speech at New Delhi, in 1955, where he parrotted Nehru, was simply rash. He said, "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 ..."

These statements would not be of any consequence in most countries of the world, made as they are by self-seeking politicians for their constituents. But in India the politician has usurped the authority of all professionals including the scholar, and their statements, thoughtless or motivated, are treated as God's own truth by everybody.

The myth of St. Thomas has also found sponsors in Madras City's English-language press. Both The Hindu and Indian Express have published sanitized versions of the story on the children's page of their newspapers after receiving copies of the first edition of this book. Their decision to do this was clearly made with malice aforethought and it has effectively put an end to any serious public discussion of St. Thomas in India.

T.T. Maps and Publications Ltd., the T.T.K. guidebook producer, has been as exploitive of the public trust and unprincipled in their conduct as the newspapers. They, too, after receiving a copy of the first edition of this book, have expanded on the fable of St. Thomas as history, bowdlerized the real story of San Thome Cathedral and the Kapaleeswara Temple, and published it all in A Road Guide to Madras.

Yet whatever effort Hindu publishers have put into promoting the St. Thomas myth in Madras, it still belongs very much to the Roman Catholic Church and is subject to her various conceits. When she wants to present herself as being socially conscious — which she is not and has never been—then St. Thomas too must be presented as having had a social conscience. In an Indian Express article called "In Memory of a Slain Saint', in 1989, C.A. Simon writes, "The oppressed and the downtrodden followed [St. Thomas] 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."

C.A. Simon's assertion is pure invention of course. St. Thomas was executed for crimes against society — whether in India or Parthia it does not matter here—and these crimes included the subversion of family life, enslavement of free-born women in the name of Jesus, and sorcery. Untouchability is still rampant among "St. Thomas" Christians today and has the sanction of the Church in the form of a bull issued by Pope Gregory XV (1621-1623) authorizing caste divisions within Catholic life. Indeed, the repressive social and religious theories contained in the Acts of Thomas and earlier Gospel of Thomas[36]—which confines St. Thomas to Palestine—and in the New Testament itself, show these preposterous claims for St. Thomas to be motivated additions to a fable that is already overburdened with moralistic wonders.

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