The biggest fraud Santhome Church tried to pull with Arch Bishop Arulappa and John Ganesh.

The case has been closed. And the dramatis personae prefer to maintain a studied silence. For fear that a post-mortem would reveal hidden cadavers in their cupboards.

For even a superficial examination of the fraud that shook the foundations of the Catholic Church in Madras in the late seventies and early eighties indicates that a lot of embarrassing details have been swept under the mat.

The infamous scandal had to be pieced together from court 

records, police files and the ramblings of the main character. As the Arch Bishop was ill with cardiac problems.

It all began in the early seventies. Ganesh Iyer, who had adopted the Christian faith and was a self-styled Bible preacher known as John Ganesh.

He is reported to have presented himself to Father Micheal of Tamil Illakiya Kazhakam as Dr.John Ganesh, professor of philosophy and comparative religions at the Banaras university,and recently returned from Jammu and Kashmir where he was involved in research on Christianity here

Michael put him on to another priest, Father Mariadas of Sriviliputhur.

John Ganesh impressed Maridas,by his xian knowledge and showing him pics of palm leaf writings and copper plate 
Inscriptions several centuries old.

Maridas funded 22,000 to Ganesh to research on these and when he ran out of money, enters Arch Bishop Arulappa of Santhome church. 

Arulappa was a Tamil scholar and had authored several texts, he also knew sanskrit. He had studied Thirukural extensively.

A.Bishop held the view that St. Thomas, before his martyrdom on a hill near Madras, now called St. Thomas Mount, met Tiruvalluvar and  influenced the bard to the extent of converting him to the nascent faith.

In 1975-76, John Ganesh began his research. And archbishop with funds

The archbishop had planned minutely how this was to be done. It was simple but ingenious. 

Simply brilliant, if perverted. He made Ganesh cut brown paper into long strips– irregular and uneven like ancient palm frond scroll.He then wrote whatever he was asked to on these strips.

Ganesh adopted a scrawl that was similar to ancient writings – often indecipherable. And the style of language was also lifted from the past. 

Laborious and involved. These strips of brown paper were then pasted with glue on white cardboard and then photographed

The photo print looked exactly like a photograph of ancient palm frond scrolls. The archbishop intended to pass these off to unsuspecting people as the real stuff.

Both made several such photographs. Hundreds, thousands.

To an unbelievable scale, entire Tirukkural were written this way and interspersed with Christian thought. 100℅ funded by the Arch Bishop Arulappa. 

Yes they forged the entire Thirukural as Christian text

The Arch Bishop in 1976 obtained a passport for Ganesh in the name of Acharya Paul and in 1977 both traveled to Vatican and met the Pope Paul VI , and Ganesh(A.Paul) actually presented his fraud findings of Thirukural palm pics to the Pope.

The press went gala over the findings of Thirukural of xian origins, and the Arch Bishop and Ganesh were mentally intoxicated over their success.

But Hindu orgs and Christians got a shock and realised the fraud which had been happening, and found out that Ganesh from Srirangam who claimed a bachelor was actually a married man and had together they had duped the church and archbishop's money to an amount of 14 lacs.

Investigations into the sordid episode began. The police, led initially by Inspector Seshadri and later by Inspector Chandrayaperumal searched iyer's residence.

They unearthed the "originals" of all the photographs produced by Iyer as proof of his research – writings on strips of brown paper cut to resemble medieval palm frond writings, pasted on sheets of white paper.

The police learnt that the photographs had been taken at a studio in Tiruchi and this led to the seizure of all the relevant original negatives, including stamps of museums and letterheads of various departments.

On February 6, 1986, P. Aruvudayappan, second metropolitan magistrate, Madras, delivered his judgment in case number 100087/82: 

"Taking advantage of the soft attitudes of public witnesses 2 and 3

(Father Mariadas and Father Arulappa)," he averred, "the defendant (Ganesh Iyer) guilty under various sections of the I.P.C. and has to undergo 10 months imprisonment and 5 month's rigorous imprisonment under section 12-B of the Indian Passports Act.

He had been arrested on April 29, 1980 and let off on bail on June 27, 1980.

What is even more curious is that a civil suit of compromise had been filed in the Madras high court. The compromise decree was taken up immediately after the conclusion of the criminal case.

This reduced Ganesh Iver's sentence. Rumors say this was in exchange for his silence.

1. Originally published under the title "Hoax!" in The Illustrated Weekly of
India, April 26 - May 2, 1987, Bombay.

2.Originally published under the title "What Wrong Have I Done?" in The
Illustrated Weekly of India, April 26 - May 2, 1987, Bombay.

Reference : The myth of st.Thomas and Mylapore Shiva temple

By Ishvar Sharan

@PrinceArihan FYI.