Velankanni and Hindu Temple
Devotees approaching the Velankanni church on knees - a Hindu tradition T his series started as a response to the claim made by one Vidyasagar Gurumoorthy that a Hindu temple had existed in the place of the present Catholic Basilica in Velankanni. The previous posts attempted to show the absurdity of that claim. There is presently no credible historical, archaeological or epigraphic evidence establishing the existence of a Hindu temple on the site of the present-day basilica in Velankanni. This does not rule out local folk worship or even a modest village shrine somewhere in the vicinity. But the possibility of something having existed is not evidence that it did exist. As already argued in a previous post, Velankanni was an obscure, minor fishing hamlet. All major Tamil Hindu structural temples of that era required royal patronage and were concentrated in nearby urban and religious hubs like Nagapattinam, Thanjavur and Tiruvarur. Local traditions and oral histories record ...
