This website hosts the 2010 revised and updated edition of The Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple. It is a complete study of the St. Thomas in India legend — its origin, history, ideology, and communal ramifications — and is named after the main, 24-chapter essay by Ishwar Sharan. The book includes 28 independent, penetrating articles by senior journalists and scholars, and exposes in detail the anti-Hindu bias in India’s secular English-language media.
Another part of the book documents the pronounced Christian bias of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and popular online reference portal Wikipedia. Both encyclopedia’s carry fanciful, non-factual entries for St. Thomas the Apostle in India that they refuse to correct or change.
And last but not least, the book documents the destruction of the original Kapaleeshwara Shiva Temple by the Portuguese and its replacement by the San Thome Cathedral Basilica on the Mylapore beach in Chennai.
This online edition can be easily searched using the search field in the side bar. There are many relevant reference links including a link to the original 3rd century Syrian religious romance, the infamous Acts of Thomas by Bardesanes, which is the source of the legend of St. Thomas in India.
Indologist Dr. Koenraad Elst has written a comprehensive foreword for the new edition. His short foreword to the 1995 edition is posted below as he makes some pertinent remarks about Indian secularists and their uncritical acceptance of Christian mythology as Indian history.
Dr. Elst studied under Jesuits at Katholieke Universiteit in Belgium, Europe’s oldest Catholic university at Leuven, and is in a position to say with authority that the St. Thomas in India tale today is a fraud on the people of India by crafty, untruthful Catholic priests who make their living by fooling the faithful. He writes:
According to Christian leaders in India, the apostle Thomas came to India in 52 AD, founded the Syrian Christian Church, and was killed by the fanatical Brahmins in 72 AD. Near the site of his martyrdom, the St. Thomas Church was built. In fact this apostle never came to India. The Christian community in South India was founded by a merchant called Knai Thoma or Thomas of Cana in 345 AD — a name which readily explains the Thomas legend. He led four hundred refugees who fled persecution in Persia and were given asylum by the Hindu authorities.
In Catholic universities in Europe, the myth of the apostle Thomas going to India is no longer taught as history, but in India it is still considered useful. Even many vocal “secularists” who attack the Hindus for “relying on myth” in the Ayodhya affair, off-hand profess their belief in the Thomas myth. The important point is that Thomas can be upheld as a martyr and the Brahmins decried as fanatics.
In reality, the missionaries were very disgruntled that the damned Hindus refused to give them martyrs (whose blood is welcomed as “the seed of the faith”), so they had to invent one. Moreover, the church which they 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.
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. — Dr. Koenraad Elst
The Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple, third revised edition, 2010 is available from publisher Voice of India, New Delhi. It has an extensive bibliography and is a valuable tool for researchers and historians.
Kapaleeswara Shiva Temple: This is the second temple built in the 16th century by Mayil Nattu Muthiyappa Mudaliar after the Portuguese destroyed the original temple on the Mylapore sea shore and replaced it with the first St. Thomas Church.
San Tommaso Basilica, Ortona, Italy
The real tomb of St. Thomas in San Tommaso Basilica, Ortona
San Thome Cathedral, Mylapore, Madras, India
The fake tomb of St. Thomas in San Thome Cathedral, Madras
Now that’s what I call research. The catholic church is the murderer of millions.
Yashwant Arya Samaji
Is their any evidence made available at near beach for the old temple
of sri Kapaleshwar.?
Since the publication of my book in 1995, the authorities at San Thome Cathedral have cleaned up and renovated the fake tomb created by the Portuguese and removed a lot of temple debris that was lying in the church grounds and the Bishop’s House compound next door. There were also Hindu artifacts in the Bishop’s Museum. They may still be there, though the Church authorities had closed the museum after the publication of the first edition of my book in 1991. They would not give my research assistant access on two or three occasions.
Go to the article San Thome Cathedral Cover-up Uncovered for an eye-witness account of the removal of temple carvings and debris from the church grounds.
All of the broken temple columns and carved stones should have gone to the ASI or TN State Archaeological Dept. But these government agencies are politically controlled, not independent, and were not interested in recovering the old temple stones.
There used to be temple debris on St. Thomas Mount on the south-west side of the hill. I have not been there for years and do not know if it is still there.
It does not matter whether we may have doubts whether St Thomas came to India or not…..to believers he came and the subsequent happenings of the Syrian christian community and its faith and traditions are alive and flourishing.
Mr Ishwar Sharan has his viewpoint…… and the people who believe have theirs…..Ishwar can write and people are free to read and decide for themselves…..we are a free society, Ishwar’s research is one among the various explanations to St Thomas and the Syrian Christian Community……more the merrier!.
The fabricated history of St. Thomas in India cannot be dismissed as the opinion of one researcher. It is the considered opinion of a number of leading historians over the last 200 years. It is the considered opinion of Pope Benedict XVI.
Syrian Christians are welcome to their myths of origin. But these should not be presented to Indians as Indian history (as a number of ill-informed prime ministers have already done). Nor should the Hindu community be accused of the murder of a Christian apostle who may not have even existed according to some Christian historians.
Christians have a long history of aggressively imposing their superstitions on non-Christians. This has got to stop. It is not acceptable conduct in the 21st century. Indeed, it has never been acceptable conduct among civilized people.
Indian Christians of all makes and kinds do not have a reputation for religious tolerance – quite the contrary, unfortunately – nor does the Indian Church have a reputation for telling the truth. Unfortunately!
It is indeed shocking to know that what we have believed all these years about St Thomas is a lie. But how come nobody has spoken about it publicly in Christian circles and there has been no opposition from anyone about the existence of the tomb of St Thomas at San Thome and the footprints and cross of St Thomas at Little Mount? And what about the St Thomas Christians of Kerala who claim to be there for centuries. If St Thomas did not come to Malabar then who converted them to Christianity? These things certainly need to be explained.
There has been a massive cover-up by the Catholic Church, the various governments of Independent India, and the mainstream secular media. You can’t make people know something about their history if they don’t want to know it and prefer pious fables instead.
The answer to your questions is in the book. Great effort has been made over the years to collect the data and write the book. But you have to read it yourself. Nobody can read it for you.
Nice to read your post. In my humble opinion, prejudice against any community is an affront to humanity. I am a so-called “forward caste” by birth, and so, there is no surprise in my “taking sides”, although I want to believe, I would have held the same ideal even if I were a christian or muslim by faith or belonging to so-called BC, OBC, SC or ST.
The hindu dharma has the high ideal of ‘vasudaiva kuTumbakam’ – vasuda (world) eva (itself is a) kutumbakam (family). Its just awe inspiring that despite onslaught by rigid cultures and marauding religions, and socio-economic movements with vested interests, the essence, the beauty of the dharma is still flourishing. And this can be attributed only to the seers, the sound thinkers of yore who did not bother about the “identity” of what the religion gave you, but stressed on its ability to make a man out of you, provide you an opportunity to realize your fullest potential.
Hinduism is not blind faith. Its not an anti-anything – unlike the western religions. Its not anti-dalit, as it is made out to be. There is no blasphemy involved. I am a vaishnavite belonging to a sect believed to be very “orthodox” in Karnataka, but I am comfortable dissecting the supremacy of vishnu/siva with a saivite or another vaishnavite, I am at ease when another tells how stupid everything looks from an atheistic perspective. My heart pains to hear the cruelties meted out to the fifth varna – borne out of a perversion of human intellect. Every religion has elements that spoil it, but overall, this benign outlook is not due to the recent socio economic freedom that the liberated West has “found”, but this is IMBIBED in the hindu dharma.
As a Hindu, I am allowed, nay encouraged to question. That richness, that openness is something very special.
Being a Hindu and a Malayali, I find the contents of this site shocking. It is indeed a shame that people look down upon the visit of St Thomas to India so much as to not recognize it. As Hindus and Indians we must be proud of the fact that St Thomas visited Indian and imparted diversity in India and not find reasons to disprove the same.
The legend of St. Thomas in India is a matter of Indian history, not only a romantic tale held by a particular religious community without consequences to the Hindu community and the nation.
After 25 years of studying the legend, I can say with some authority that there is no historical evidence to support the story that Thomas came to India. More than that, there is positive evidence that he did not come to South India. Perhaps you should put your childish Malayali prejudices aside and read the book.
If the St. Thomas in India legend was just a community origins tale then no harm would be done. But it is a vicious communal story concocted to malign the Hindu religion and its priests, and the Hindu community at large by accusing it of “deicide”–the murder of an apostle and brother of Jesus. It justifies the destruction of temples and their replacement with churches “built by St. Thomas.” This is not acceptable story telling today, and we will have no more of it.