The troubled legacy of Kerala’s ancient Christians

Rajiv Theodore
Sun, 22-12-2019 06:50:50 PM ;

Long before it reached many parts of Europe, Christianity came across the Arabian Sea to Kerala along the thriving spice trade routes. Today about seven million people, a fifth of Kerala’s population, call themselves St. Thomas Christians after Jesus’ apostle, who many here believe arrived in India in 52 A.D. Even today, parts of some liturgies are sung in Syriac, close to the Aramaic language spoken by Christ. Although Christians have lived and worshipped in Kerala for some 2,000 years,  the last century has been marked by a bitter feud and factional fighting in the churches.

The  never-ending inter church strife is being played out even today in the streets of Kerala and the latest such incident, the September 2019 clashes, comes to mind apart  which took place between the rival Christian groups that had erupted in Piravom a suburb of Kochi. The police took into custody the head of the Jacobite church, Joseph Mar Gregorius which further escalated the violence. In the eye of the storm was a 6th century  church, one of Kerala’s oldest. A 2017 Supreme Court allowed Orthodox church to offer prayers at the church, much to the dismay of the Jacobites.

Kerala which has the largest Christian population in India and which also boasts of a legacy soaked in antiquity, has been witnessing intense discord  between two factions of Christians --the Kerala Malankara Orthodox Church and Jacobite Syrian Christian church.  These communities are infact one of the oldest existing Christian communities in the world.  The fight among the Kerala Christians could be traced back to 1599 when a Synod was held in Ernakulam area.  The Synod came out with rules and regulations for the St Thomas Christians and formally united them with the Catholic church ( the Portuguese had institutionalised Catholicism owing allegiance to the Pope,  in India during the 16th century). But very soon the orthodox members , the Malankara Christians separated from those churches in Kerala which were under the Pope in Rome and alternatively declared that they would only owe their allegiance to the Patriarch of Antioch. According to church traditions, this ancient Patriarchate was founded by the Apostle Saint Peter.

In 1912, the Malankara Church split into the Malankara Orthodox Church and the Jacobite Syrian Church on the question of the supreme head. The Malankara Orthodox Church considers the Malankara metropolitan its head while the Jacobite Syrian Church recognises the patriarch of Antioch as its spiritual head. Both factions trace their origin to Saint Thomas. However the two groups came together in 1934 to elect a bishop and believed all powers should be vested with the Bishop Baselious Geevarghese Catholica of  Kottayam. But things again soured after 1970 as the Patriarch of Antioch involved himself in the daily church affairs. He even appointed three bishops in Kerala which finally triggered a protracted period of violence and ugly church politics.

The Supreme Court intervened and  In 1995 the court ruled that the 1934 agreement will stand - which was in favour of the Orthodox church. Now as a reaction to the Court verdict, in 2002 the faction which supported the Patriarch of Antioch named themselves Jacobite Syrian Christians. Again, large scale violence  enveloped the church landscape as the two factions fought each other on the streets, captured churches that had belonged to them for centuries.  In the St Mary’s church case the Supreme Court in 2017  allowed the Orthodox church to offer prayers at the church, much to the dismay of the Jacobites. The Court also dismissed petitions filed by the Jacobites seeking a review of the court’s earlier verdict giving the Orthodox group control over more than 1,100 parishes and their churches. The Jacobites claim the court’s verdict deprives 1.2 million devotees of a place of worship. The Supreme Court’s earlier verdicts had also gone in favour of the Orthodox faction, which counts 2.5 million members.

‘’Indian Christianity is a like a multi-layered cake…theologically hybrid that there are so many actors and hence the action. Other religious communities too have not been spared from such divisions and violence. The focus of the Kerala groups is based more on a personality and many times even revolved around powerful families,’’ Dr Bernardo Michael , Professor & Co-Chair, Dept. of History, Messiah College, Pennsylvania said over the phone to Matters India.

 It must be recalled here that long before Christianity had reached the outskirts of Europe, Kerala had a full-fledged Christian community and a tradition that surpassed the Portuguese who had always boasted of a rich Roman Catholicism. Despite brazen street fights today, Kerala is home to nearly a third of all Indian Christians and has a rich legacy to boot --that perhaps for 15 centuries of the first millennium, the Kerala Christians enjoyed a degree of exclusivity with the churches of western Asia including the Patriarchate of Antioch and were devoid of any links with Rome. They developed the Eastern or Syriac liturgy, said mass in Malayalam and were influenced by the Nestorian doctrine regarded by Rome as heresy of the indivisibility of Christ's nature. When the Portuguese arrived in the Kerala coast for dominating  the spice trade the soon found the harsh truth that the  Malayali Christians were totally ignorant of the Vatican but owned allegiance to the Nestorian Church headed by the Patriarch of Antioch in modern-day Turkey. Similarly, their liturgical language was not Latin but Syriac, by virtue of which they were known as Syrian Christians. The liturgical language Syriac, a formation of Aramaic was the  dialect of Jesus and St Thomas. Besides the common tag of being all ‘Christians’ they were unlike the Portuguese and observed a branch of the faith that Roman Catholicism neither approved of nor upheld.

The following centuries saw many of the erstwhile Kerala Christians being compelled to accept the Catholic faith and denounce the Eastern Orthodox rites of their ancestors. Also a wave of European missions struck Kerala, many new brands of the faith were established along with churches having their own distinctive features especially in the northern parts.

 

 

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