Almost all the historical books on India undoubtedly speak of Christianity, positively or negatively, in this country is of the first century A.D.[1] In the words of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India who wrote ‘Discovery of India’, “by story but invisible threads.. About her there is the elusive quality of a legend of long ago; some enhancement sees to have held her mind. She is a myth and an idea, a dream and a vision, and yet very real and present and pervasive. If you take any religion in India you have to rely more on the myths and traditions which the people consider more than history in their religious consciousness. In Hinduism you can have enough mythological figures and places which are considered to be the part of history. The expression of historical consciousness comes from historical writings. But there are embedded history in the myths and traditions. Traditions cannot be devalued in the pre-historical consciousness of a community. In the history of early Christianity where the existence of different churches is mentioned; India is also notified. The first Church was among the Jews and the Semitic people and the second Church was the Church in Jerusalem and of the different churches in Syria, Mesopotamia and in India[2].
If you take history from the view point of culture, then also we cannot deny the beliefs and customs of a community. Raymond Williams writes about three important ways of thinking about culture. They are culture as the ideal, culture as ‘documentary’ and culture as social, as way of life. He writes about the second form. “culture as documentary, in which human thought, language, form, convention and experience are recorded, in part as a descriptive act but also one of clarification where they are valued through comparison with the ideal, thought reference to the qualities of the text in question or through the traditions and the societies in which they appear so that valuations tied to some criteria for establishing its authenticity”.[3] If you take the life of a particular community in any historical situation, the structure of feeling of a social group is to be analyzed and clarified and valued. In that way the culture and customs of Marthoma community before the Synod of Diamper (1599) has to be valued as the part of the history which has its roots in the coming of St. Thomas in the Mussiris port.
The recent history writers of India tend to depict the history of the minority communities as baseless in order to boost their nationalistic history. “The nationalist historians concerned themselves with those ideas which were necessary to nationalist polemics. They questioned individual items of historical interpretation, rather than examining the validity of a theory as a total pattern of interpretations”.[4]Every community has the trend to reconstruct history seeking to project a unified community stance in all historical situations. If the history of religions in India is seen as the articulation not only of ideas and rituals but also the perceptions and motivations of social groups, the perspective which would follow might be different from those with which we are familiar.
The financially flourishing Ramayana Archeology even though without any tangible results, continues to be discussed seriously in some archeological and historical circles, despite the near absurdity of the idea.[5] The historical consciousness of the Marthoma Christians though they are divided, and they practise their faith in different rites as denominations, all of them are proud of claiming that their forefathers are baptized by the Apostle St. Thomas. They have never doubted this birth mark. They lived it even though they had, in course of time, to accept many foreign yokes as inevitable developments of the history. Benedict Vadekkekara writes, “Though the cross with pali writings were of later origin, the Marthoma Christians even made stories to make its form Marthoma, the Apostle”.[6] The Marthoma Margam is the proof that for the historical consciousness of this community in Kerala. There is a historically written tradition about the coming of St. Thomas in Western India (Acts of ST. Thomas). But there is an unwritten tradition which affirms that St. Thomas came to south India who preached in the name of Jesus Christ and the Nazrani community claimed that they received the fatith from ST. Thomas. And they named their sons ‘thomas’, ‘thoma’ after their father in faith. The business traditions give strong proof that there were trade links between the Romans with Southern coast of India more than with the Northern coast of India.[7] So any attempt from any corner of the historical world and from any historian to deny the first century origin of the Marthoma Chrsitians in South India will be futile. If Marthoma traditions are imaginative many of the Hinduistic claims of historical evidences are to be called to question.
Rev. Dr. Kuriakose Mundadan
Sathyadeepam
(A critique on Cultural Hisotry of Kerala Vol.1, by Rajan Gurukkal and M.R. Raghava Varier, published by the department of Cultural Publications, Government of Kerala, 1999)
[1] Dalmia Vasudha Heinrich von Stietencron (ed.) (1995): Representing Hinduism: The Constructions of Religious Traditions and National Identity, Sage Publications: New Delhi
[2] G. Chediath (2005): The Catholicos of the East, M.S Publications: Trivandrum.
[3] William, R (1961): The Long Revolution, Chatto and Windus: London, 41-71
[4] Thapar, Romila (1992): Interpreting Early India, Oxford University Press: New Delhi
[5] E.W. Hopkins (1901): The great Epic of India: Its Character and Origin, New York
[6] Vadakkekara, Benedict (1998): The Origin of Marthoma Christians, a Historical Search. Media House: New Delhi
[7] Tisserant, Cardinal Eugine: Eastern Christianity in India. LRC Publications: Kochi
