Kerala BJP Vice President AN Radhakrishnan on Sunday (April 16) trekked to a hilltop shrine in Malayattoor village of the Ernakulam district, on the occasion of a festival held there on the first Sunday after Easter.
The shrine is dedicated to Saint Thomas, an apostle who was believed to be one of the 12 followers of Jesus Christ. It is said that he arrived at the location of the shrine after reaching India in 52 AD. Devotees believe he performed a miracle and left a footprint on the hilltop.
While the RSS refused to comment on the visit, Sangh-linked think tank Bharatheeya Vichara Kendram’s director R Sanjayan said there was no historical proof that St Thomas visited India.
“It is only folklore that St Thomas established churches in Kerala. But the visit of Radhakrishnan to Malayattoor need not be linked with the RSS stand on St Thomas. It (about St Thomas) would continue to remain as an academic dispute. The visit of a BJP leader to the shrine would be part of the practical politics of BJP and there could be irrational aspects in it as in the pragmatic politics of all other parties. There is also hypocrisy in the debates over BJP-Christian dialogues,’’ he said.
Who was St Thomas and what is known of his visit to India? We explain.
Who was Saint Thomas?
In Christian mythology, it is believed that when Jesus Christ set out to preach his beliefs and message, he had 12 apostles or disciples whom he chose to spread his word. St Thomas, one of those apostles, is mentioned in The Gospel of John, the fourth of Christianity’s authoritative books that give an account of Jesus’s life.
His devotion to Jesus is expressed here. At the Last Supper, soon after which Christ was crucified and then resurrected, Thomas could not comprehend what Jesus meant when he said, “I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.” Thomas’s question “How can we know the way?” caused Jesus to answer, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”
Thomas was not among those disciples to whom the risen Christ first appeared, three days after his crucifixion at the hands of the Romans. When they told him, he requested physical proof of Christ’s Resurrection, thus leading to the title of ‘Doubting Thomas’ being associated with his name. His wish was fulfilled when Christ reappeared and specifically asked Thomas to touch his wounds from his punishment. This made Thomas the first person to explicitly acknowledge Jesus’ divinity.
And what is known of St Thomas’s visit to India?
Some accounts say that Thomas went on to preach the religion in West Asia and then came to India in 52 AD, establishing the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, whose members are known today as Syrian Christians.
“At least from the fourth century, the Indian Church entered into a close relationship with the Persian or East Syrian Church. From the Persians, Indians inherited The East Syrian language and liturgies, and gradually came to be known as Syrian Christians,” the Church’s website states. The Smithsonian Magazine, a magazine of Washington DC’s Smithsonian Institute, noted, “Historians surmise that the diverse, rich trading center of Kerala may well have drawn this Palestinian Jew of the Roman Empire who wished to preach the Gospel.”
However, after the seminal episode of the Resurrection of Christ, there is not a lot known about Thomas’s life, though most sources agree that he died in present-day Chennai. Today, the St Thomas Church in the city’s Mylapore area is believed to be the place where the apostle was laid to rest. The church was built over his tomb in the 16th century by Portuguese explorers.
The church is one of the only three known churches in the world built over the tomb of an apostle of Jesus, the other two being St Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City and Santiago de Compostela Cathedral at Galicia in Spain.
Why is St Thomas’s visit disputed?
His visit is disputed partly because of a lack of account about their details, though his tomb is mentioned by travellers who came to India, such as the 13th Century merchant Marco Polo. As the Kerala government’s website states, “The visit of St. Thomas is still a matter of dispute among historians. There are only very limited details about him in the Bible.”
It further notes, “He appears thrice in the Gospel of St. John … The oldest document in this score is the book Acta Thomae, written at Edessa in CE 2-4 centuries.” This book, it says, describes St Thomas’s first mission, when he reached the capital of the Parthian King Gondophares, who ruled Afghanistan and Punjab with Takshasila as the capital. He then carried out evangelical activities there and went to southern India and finally Chennai.
Historian William Dalrymple noted in a 2000 article in The Guardian that a text on the saint’s life was found in a nearly 2,000-year-old library in the St Catherine’s monastery in Egypt in the 19th century, titled ‘The Acts of St Thomas’.
“The manuscript told a story that had been forgotten in the traditions of the western Church. According to the Acts, St Thomas was Jesus’s twin (the Syriac for Thomas – Te’oma – means twin, as does his Greek name, Didymos); like his brother, he was a carpenter from Galilee,” he wrote.
As for why evidence for his activities might then not be prominent in India, he wrote, “The entire historical documentation of the St Thomas Christians was reduced to ashes in the 16th century – not by Muslims or Hindus, but by a newly arrived European Christian power: the Portuguese. As far as the Portuguese colonial authorities were concerned, the St Thomas Christians were heretics, an idea confirmed by their belief in astrology and reincarnation, and the Hindu-style sculptures of elephants and dancing girls found carved on their crosses.”
In 2006, Pope Benedict XIV caused a controversy when he said in an address, “Let us remember that an ancient tradition claims that Thomas first evangelized Syria and Persia…then went on to Western India..from where also he finally reached Southern India.” This again led to a debate about Thomas’s first arrival in India.
