Santhome Church Chennai Siva Temple St.Thomas Fraud ,Dr.Koenraad Elst

Hinduism History Practices Mantras

Madras , aka, Chennai has a lot of tourist attractions. One such is the Santhome Church in Mylapore. This is not only a Church but a religious spot for the Christians. The Church is dedicated to St,Thomas who is reported to have landed in Chennai around 300 AD and spread Syrian Christianity . This Saint Thomas was infamous Acts of Thomas by Bardesanes, and this is the source of the legend of St. Thomas in India. Dr. Elst studied under Jesuits at Katholieke Universiteit in Belgium, Europe’s oldest Catholic university at Leuven, has done extensive research on this subject and says that At.Thomas is a Fraud perpetrated on the Indians by corrupt Catholic priests to spread Catholicism in India. The original Kapaleeswarar temple in Mylapore was ransacked , demolished by The Portuguese . a Church was built and was named as San Thome Cathedral Basilica on the Mylapore beach in Chennai. The original structure was a Shiva Temple, that of Kapaaleswara. Dr.Elst writes thus, “ 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.” More https://ramanisblog.in/2014/01/18/santhome-church-is-kapaleewsarar-temple-st-thomas-fraud/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ramanispodcast/message