It seems clear from a number of articles published and from the letters of protest or criticism sent to the Madras editor and suppressed (of which I … - Ishwar Sharan

...But if for the sake of argument it is agreed that the depositions of Diogo Fernandez are not fabricated – he could have been an uninformed witness to the “discovery” (though it is very unlikely) – then it must be said that the relics themselves most certainly are, in keeping with the ancient tradition of fraud so dear to the Church, 60 Veda Prakash, in Indiavil Saint Thomas Kattukkadai, shows that the relics were produced out of materials brought from Goa and then planted in the empty tomb. He also shows that the Portuguese reworked the existing Syrian Christian version of the myth, changing the Syriac be ruhme, meaning “by spear”, to read Brahmins in order to implicate Brahmins in the apostle’s murder. The Malabar tradition was thus brought into line with the European romance, De Miraculis Thomae, where St. Thomas is killed by a Pagan priest with a lance – though the contradiction of lance in the story and spear-head in the reliquary remains today. ... The question of whether the Portuguese relics are genuine or not – and whether the South Indian legend is history or not – will be conclusively answered as soon as the Archbishop of Madras gives them to independent forensic experts for testing. But he may be also aware that such a gesture would be redundant, as all of the bones of St. Thomas were resting in the cathedral at Ortona, Italy, while Diogo Fernandez was digging for them in Mylapore. They had been there since 1258, and before that at Chios, Greece, and Edessa, and in 1566 the Bishop of Ortona had issued a Deed of Verification for these bones, which, in itself, proves that the bones produced by the Portuguese out of the Mylapore tomb cannot possibly be those of St. Thomas. ... The Portuguese themselves appear to have treated this “momentous discovery” in a cavalier fashion, which is why the relics got lost in 1525. When they were located again, in 1530, the bones and spearhead – shaped like an olive leaf, though there are no olive trees in India – were transferred to a small box, locked up in a chapel in the church, and the key kept by the pastor. ... This church, originally built in 1523 and called San Thome or San Thome de Meliapore, was subsequently enlarged and extended, and the encroachment on the Kapaleeswara Temple began in earnest. The Christians had done this before, building a church against a temple wall and then taking over the temple, and that the Shiva temple survived as long as it did, up to 1566 according to some authorities, is grand testimony to the patient and courageous resistance the Hindus of Mylapore had put up against this ruthless Catholic power. Diogo Fernandez’s “St. Thomas” relics still remain in the church today. The iron spearhead and piece of skull are kept in a monstrance, along with the relics of St. Francis Xavier, St. Isabella, St. Vincentio and the Martyrs of Morocco. The first “St. Thomas” tomb, which contained the “white” skeleton that was sent to Goa, is empty and ignored, but the second “St. Thomas” tomb is pointed out to pilgrims and tourists. It contains the remainder of Diogo Fernandez’s “findings”, the pieces of spine and thigh bone, and, presumably, the pot of “blood-bedewed” earth. ... Yet this is not the end of the bones at San Thome. The cathedral also has in its possession a piece of Church-certified Ortona bone which it obtained from Cardinal Tisserant in 1953, after he had deposited the apostle’s right arm at Kodungallur (and demoted him from being the great Apostle of the East to simply being the Apostle of India). The pastor of San Thome can now say with some pride that he is the keeper of a real St. Thomas bone – keeping in mind that the acceptance of the Ortona gift is also an admission that the Portuguese relics in his care are not those of St. Thomas.

These errors are deliberate and motivated, given their context and arrangement, and this St. Thomas entry in the Encyclopaedia has been written by a Catholic scholar who not only subscribes to the apostle’s alleged South Indian adventure, but wishes to place the Mylapore tale over that of the Malabar tradition. He does this by mixing the North Indian legend, represented by the Acts, with the South Indian fable that the Portuguese left in Mylapore, to promote his particular South Indian masala view. He gets away with the deception because nobody has read the Acts of Thomas and studied its references to the kings Gundaphorus and Misdaeus-Mazdai, and the execution of Judas Thomas on a mountain that contained an ancient royal tomb. On 19 September 1996 we decided to call the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s bluff and sent a letter, with a copy of this book (second revised edition), to the Encyclopaedia’s editor-in-chief in Chicago pointing out the errors in their St. Thomas entry. The editorial division representative Anthony G. Craine replied to us on 18 October 1996. He wrote, "We have received your book, and we have subsequently reviewed our coverage of Saint Thomas. While the Saint Thomas article that appears in the current printing of the Encyclopaedia Britannica differs slightly from the 1984 article to which you refer in your book, the current article does convey the same basic information. We have concluded that the portion of the article that refers to Thomas’ later life places too much emphasis on the unlikely scenario of his traveling to, and being martyred in India (emphasis added). We have referred this information to the appropriate editor so that the article can be revised in future printings of Britannica. We appreciate your bringing this matter to our attention."

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