Fr. Dr. K. M. George

The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, together with all churches belonging to the Nazarani Christian community of Kerala, traces its origin to the work of St. Thomas the Apostle of Christ who is believed to have arrived at the ancient seaport of , Kodungalloor (Crangannore) on the Malabar coast in CE 52. In writing about the history and identity of the ancient Christian community in India one has to deal with the figure of St. Thomas both historically and symbolically. While most historians of the west in the colonial period doubted the authenticity of the St. Thomas story, the Christian community in Kerala clung to it as part of its most sacred and cherished tradition. Here one has to look critically at the dominant historiography as developed in the European west and as applied to the non-western world in order to grapple with the issue of early Christianity in India.

In this brief article I shall mention the major historical landmark in the life of the Malankara Orthodox Church and point out some of the key methodological problems we confront in retelling our history and defining our identity. This is done in an ecumenical spirit remembering that the ancient Christian community in India was one body, one family and one church until the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16th century who came as traders and as missionaries of the Roman Church but soon became colonial and ecclesiastical overlords. With their occupation of this ancient Eastern Church started a series of unfortunate divisions that plague us till this day. The present writer fervently hopes that the lost unity of the St. Thomas Christians would be restored in the 21st century.

Name and Family

The name of the church appears in formal documents as Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church under the Catholicate of the East. The Catholicos, the head of the Church now resides at the headquarters of the Church at Devalokam, Kottayam, Kerala, India. (The present Catholicos is His Holiness Baselios Mar Thoma Mathews II. The title Mar Thoma meaning St. Thomas appears formally with the name of every Catholicos in order to signify the apostolic successior: and the continuity of the apostolic seat from Thomas the Apostle of Christ).

The Church is variously and popularly referred to as Malankara Sabha in Malayalam, as The Indian Orthodox Church by some of its historians, as the Syrian Church in some non-Christian circles, as the Jacobite Church by the undiscriminating members of some other Churches. Greeks and other Eastern Orthodox sometimes refer to this church as the ancient Church of Malabar.

The Malankara Orthodox Church is a founding member of the World Council of Churches in 1948 and is in the family of Oriental Orthodox Churches with the Coptic, Syrian, Armenian, Ethiopian and Eritrean Churches. The Church, together with other Oriental Orthodox, is a dialogue partner with the Eastern Orthodox Churches of the Byzantine liturgical family since 1967, unofficially with the Roman Catholic Church under the aegis of the Pro Oriente Foundation since 1971 and officially with the Roman Catholic Church since 2002. There is also an official bilateral dialogue going on between the Malankara Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church in India since 1986. The Church is also participating in dialogues with the Anglican Church, the EKD or the federation of Protestant Churches in Germany and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. The first division in the one church of St. Thomas in India occurred during the occupation of the church by the Portuguese. The Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama landed on the Kerala coast in 1498. The real division occurred after the mid 17th century, precisely after the historic pledge of the Coonen Cross in 1653 when the Christian community rose in protest against the Portuguese and the Roman Catholic colonial domination of the ancient Christians of St. Thomas. The history up to this point is common to all presently different churches that were one and the same church in the pre-Portuguese period. But in narrating this story some of these churches take their later ecclesiastical connections and attribute them anachronistically to the earlier period of Indian Christianity. This is a serious methodological fallacy. The common knowledge handed on to the successive generations arises from the strong conviction that the Indian Christians of St. Thomas were an independent local church (local in the technical ecclesiological sense in which it is used in early Christian ecclesiology. In this sense the Church of Rome, the Church of Alexandria, the Church of Antioch and so on are all local independent churches but inter dependent in faith and sacramental communion).

The Malankara Orthodox Church is deeply aware that the St. Thomas tradition has been kept unbroken in spite of the vicissitudes of history and the various contacts, both friendly and unfriendly, with the ancient Church traditions outside India like Persian, Roman, Syrian and Anglican. We can legitimately say that the community always silently assumed in its self -understanding three elements:

(a) the church in India was founded by St. Thomas the apostle and is apostolic like any other church in the world founded by Peter, Paul and other apostles.

(b) The church in India is Eastern in its ethos and worship and is clearly distinguished from the Latin/Western tradition. This awarness of distinction dawned on them when they first met the Latin West through Portuguese colonial conquerors.

(c) The Church is fully self-governed by its own local heads and is rooted in the social and cultural soil of India.

This awareness always remained latent in the mind of the Church, and there was no challenge to it from any quarters before the arrival of the Portuguese Roman Catholics. It became articulate and explicit beginning with the resistance at the forced Synod of Diamper called by the Portuguese Roman Catholic Archbishop Menezes in 1599. The resistance, however, had been suppressed by the iron hand of the colonial master for more than half a century, but it exploded in the 1653 uprising of the Coonen Cross Oath.

The oral tradition and folklore of the Church had always celebrated the founding of seven churches in Kerala in the Malabar / Malankara region on the South West Coast of India, presently known as Kerala. Some of these historical sites like Niranam are still venerated as centers of the early church in India. In the same way the various Christian families in Kerala trace their family tree back to the four families in which St.Thomas was believed to have established priesthood through laying on of hands in order to continue the ministry of Christ in India. These so-called folk traditions are integral to the self-understanding and identity of the Malankara church. In fact the members of the ancient Christian community, irrespective of their present church affiliation, firmly share this deep conviction. This provides a common ground for the self-understanding of the presently separated churches which emerged from the undivided tradition of 1653 years or so.

This shows, in ecumenical terms that the present division of St. Thomas Christians is a rather recent one and is fomented and sealed by the intervention of colonial and ecclesiastical interventions from Christian centers outside India as mentioned above.

Spiritually and liturgically the ancient Indian church in the medieval period before the Portuguese era was with the Persian church.

Apparently this was a cordial relationship that fully respected the autonomy / autocephaly of the Indian church and its particular cultural context. The Persian Church in the Mesopotamian region became associated with the name of Nestorius; Patriarch of Constantinople who was condemned as a heretic at the Council of Ephesus in A.D.431. This incident in the 5th century happening within the Roman Empire did not affect the reputation of the Persian church flourishing in the Mesopotamian region and reaching out in an amazing missionary enterprise to several countries in Asia up to China. There is no evidence that the St. Thomas Christians in India were aware of the political and ecclssiastical implications of the issue of Nestorius and the Persian church’s association with that name. For the Indians the connection was primarily liturgical and pastoral. The doctrinal and political ramifications of an event that happened in the far away Roman Empire in the 5th century were not probably known to them or irrelevant to their solid self understanding and heritage as the Christians of Thomas, the Apostle of Christ. Syriac language in its Eastern version was known to the Church only through the liturgical tradition. The Christian spiritual and ascetic tradition familiar to the clergy and the people were smoothly in agreement with some of the best spiritual practices of ancient Indian religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. The community affairs were conducted under the leadership of the clergy. There is no evidence that any bishop coming from the Persian tradition ever interfered with the freedom and self-government of the Indian Church.

Parting Ways

The Malankara Orthodox Church in its historical self - understanding claims abides by the Oath of the Coonen Cross of 1653. This was the uprising of the Nazarani Christian community against the Portuguese / Roman Catholic colonial domination of their ancient, independent, Eastern Church in India. In the dramatic act of holding on to the long rope tied to the stone cross in Mattanchery near Cochin, thousands of Malankara Christians took the solemn pledge that they would never go back under the yoke of Rome and the Portuguese. This was the declaration of independence of Indian Christians from foreign political and ecclesiastical colonialism. Essentially this was the first organized self - affirmation of the Indian Christian community against all forms of alien domination.

Although almost all of the Nazarani parishes then existing took part in the Coonen Cross, a large number of them were gradually lured away from their position of resistance back to the "old loyalty" or "Pazhaya Coor" (ie.. 53 Years of complete subjugation to Portuguese and Roman Catholic rule) by the concerted efforts of Carmelite missionaries sent by Rome. People who stood by their really old loyalty, that is, the pre-Portuguese and pre-Roman Catholic tradition were called "Puthen Coor" (new loyalty) probably because they sought to restore their Eastern Church connections. This is ironic, but can be understood in the colonial context. No wonder the imperial might of the Roman church and the colonial power of the Portuguese could easily interpret in their favour the history of a tiny Indian community in such a way that insiders could be made outsiders and real heirs could be called false claimants and vice versa. This is a major historiographical problem for the Malankara Church. The way they crushed the total opposition of an ancient, indigenous Christian community in India in the 17th century to impose foreign rule and doctrine bears witness to the tremendously oppressive colonial power of the rising West vis-a -vis the rest of the world, and the sad plight of the native communities in Asia, Africa and the Americas. Western Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, was a willing collaborator and beneficiary in the rise and expansion of European empire all over the earth.

Soon after the event of Coonen Cross the Indian Nazarani community consecrated the head of their community Archdeacon Thomas as a bishop with the title Mar Thoma. The very title of Mar Thoma they chose for their new spiritual and temporal head was ample evidence for the real conviction and feelings of the Indian Christian community. The Portuguese rulers and the Jesuit and Carmelite missionaries all had tried to wipe out the deep conviction of the Indian Christians about their apostolic rootedness in the Thomas tradition and their autonomy and indigenous character.

True children of the vigorous Counter Reformation and aggressive colonial and missionary movements, these Roman Catholics earnestly attempted to supplant the conviction of the Indian Christians with the medieval Roman Catholic concepts of Petrine primacy, universal church, universal papal jurisdiction over all Christians and so on. They highlighted the "Law of Peter" over against the "Way of Thoma" (Thomayude margam). They had no knowledge of the indigenous forms of Eastern Christianity nor any respect for the "dark skinned, barbarian" people outside of the west European region. The significance of the Coonen Cross and the later division of the one Indian Church to Pazhaya Coor and Puthen Coor has to be understood in the light of these circumstances.

A New Turn

The line of the indigenous Mar Thoma bishops continued in the tradition of the Puthen Coor people (later known as - the Orthodox /Jacobite Church). Faced with the imposing power and threat of the Portuguese / Roman church, the community leaders wrote to several Eastern Patriarchates like Alexandria and Antioch to bring them help against the western invaders. Thus in 1665 came Abdul Jaleel Gregorios, a bishop from Jerusalem belonging to the West Syrian Patriarchate of Antioch. He began to introduce the practices of the West Syrian Church in India, a process completed over the next two centuries by successive bishops from the Syrian Orthodox Church in the Middle East visiting Malankara.

The title Mar Thoma was changed to Mar Dionysius by another Syrian bishop Mar Gregorios who re - consecrated Mar Thoma VI in 1770. Once again we see the efforts of foreign prelates to mask or eradicate the tradition of St. Thomas symbolized by the title Mar Thoma. They invariably see it as, a threat to their authority and dominion. We will see this colonial interest to keep the Indian church under subjugation reemerging in various forms in the relationship of the Malankara Church with the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch until today.

Although the title Mar Thomas was out of use for over a century and the title Malankara Metropolitan became prominent, especially for legal purposes, the former title was resumed by the Catholicate of the East in the 20th century.

The Mission of Help

The arrival of the Anglican Missionaries at the beginning of the 19th century, and their proposal of the "Mission of Help" apparently to reinvigorate the ancient Malankara Church had far reaching consequences for the unity of the Church. Under the spell of the British colonial rule, Kerala witnessed an all round renaissance in education and social order. The founding of the Kottayam College, presently known as Old Seminary or Orthodox Theological Seminary at Kottayam by Pulikottil Joseph Mar Dionysius II in 1815 with the help of the British Resident Col. Munro and the Travancore Royal family was a major landmark in the cultural history of Kerala.

The collaboration between the British missionaries and the Malankara Church came to an end in 1836 with the Mavelikara Synod where the Malankara Church rejected the proposals of Bishop Wilson of Calcutta for ‘reforming’ the Church. However, the Protestant teachings of the Missionaries of the Church Missionary Society so influenced Abraham Malpan, a teacher of theology at Old Seminary that he began to edit the Eucharistic liturgy according to the theological principles of Protestant Reformation in Europe. This led to a crisis. After many years of bitter controversy and litigation, the Mar Thoma Church was formed in the latter part of the 19th century thus dividing the Malankara Church once again.

The Syrian Connection

In the fight with the Portuguese, and the British, with the Roman Catholic and Anglican Protestant missionary enterprises, the Malankara Church sought the help of the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch in order to maintain its eastern and apostolic character. Some of the bishops who arrived from the Middle East were very committed to the cause of Malankara Church. The Church is very grateful to them, for their sincere spiritual efforts to pastorally help the Indian Church. Unfortunately not all of them had the same pastoral intention. Some of the Syrian prelates began to exploit the muddled situation in the Indian Church and catered to their desire for lording over the Indian Church. The 19th century also witnessed the beginning of a chain of unfortunate litigation within the Malankara Church. Though details vary in each instance of the court case, there were common questions in the mind of the community like the following:

Has the Patriarch of Antioch any authority of jurisdiction over the Malankara Church?

Who has the power of temporal authority over the parish churches and their property - the Malankara Metropolitan or the foreign bishops delegated by the Patriarch?

What is the basis of the identity of the autonomy and identity of the Malankara Church? In what ways can it be fully expressed and realized?

The answers received from various quarters, both directly and indirectly, can be generally indicated as follows:

Firstly, in the circumstances of the Malankara Church in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries no one raised the issue of the authority of the Patriarch of Antioch, because the Church was in a life and death struggle, first with the Portuguese / Roman Catholic invaders, and then with the British / Protestant colonial reformers. The Syrian Church of Antioch was invited to help the Indian Church. It was clear in the minds of those Indian leaders who invited the foreign prelates that they were guests of the Malankara Church. According to the best of Indian hospitality tradition guest - host relationship is only politely assumed and not explicitly stated. Every time a foreign bishop conducted himself against this understanding there was simmering resistance in the minds of the leaders of the Malankara Church. It was in 1876 that the Patriarch Peter III decided to visit the Indian Church in the context of the fight between the Malankara Church and the Reform party. The Patriarch felt that his authority would be undermined if he did not act. The Synod that the Patriarch convened at Mulanthuruthy in 1876 was a crucial landmark in the organizational history of the Malankara Church. While acknowledging the positive organizational aspects, one should note that the Patriarch could affirm his direct jurisdiction over the Indian Church. He considered the ancient Malankara Church as some sort of an Archdiocese of the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch and subdivided it into seven dioceses. Later Patriarchs generally followed this line, and continued to affirm their direct jurisdictional power over the Indian Church.

The Malankara Church now woke up to the fatal consequences of this patriarchal claim. The Church had barely escaped the colonial clutches of Rome and the British. Now they found themselves in a new situation of subjugation to the Syrian prelates who were originally considered as brothers in faith, helpers and collaborators coming from a sister Church. The waking up process slowly expressed itself in the deep desire for an Indian Catholicos as the head of the Indian Church and symbol of the apostolic autonomy and indigenous identity of the Malankara Church.

Secondly, though the Malankara Church conceded a brotherly spiritual and pastoral care of its faithful by the foreign bishops (they were invited to do so), there was absolutely no doubt in the mind of its leaders about the autonomy of the Malankara Church. The Malankara Metropolitans understood themselves as heads and rulers of the Church in the succession line of Archdeacons and Mar Thoma Bishops. Gradually, however, the Syrian bishops and Patriarchs understood themselves, as in any colonial situation, as the rulers of the Malankara Church. They expected the Malankara Metropolitans, or later Catholicoses, to behave as their subordinates. While the Indian Metropolitans and Catholicoses asserted their community’s selfunderstanding of the succession of the apostle Thomas and explicitly affirmed the freedom and identity of the Indian Church, the Patriarchs began to undermine the very tradition of St. Thomas and used spiritual weapons like excommunication of the Indian leaders. For example, the infamous bull No. 203 (June 1970) of Patriarch Yakoob III stating that St. Thomas was not a high priest, and not even priest, because he was absent when Jesus commissioned the apostles, were targeted at the apostolic claims of the Indian Church, ("...for he was not a priest as it is evident form the gospel of St. John 20:21-24. As he was not a priest how did he become high priest?", asked Patriarch Yakoob III).

Unfortunatley, like the Portuguese and the British, the Syrians also succeeded in further dividing the Malankara Church, because one section of the Church, though a minority, supported the uncanonical claims of Patriarchal authority over the Indian Church and agreed to the Patriarchal act of totally trivializing the venerable Indian heritage of St. Thomas and humiliating the great leaders of the Indian Church through such illegitimate acts like excommunication.

(It should be remembered that when the Syrian Antiochian Church came into contact with the Malankara Church from 1665 and onwards, the Syrian Church, in spite of its glorious past, was a small, poor, scattered and illiterate community in the Middle East under the oppressive Muslim rule of the Ottoman Turks. It was always a point of pride for them that they could rule over a church in India with a far larger number of faithful than their own, over a community that was socially superior, economically strong and politically free. People in India received these bishops with generous hopitality and devotion simply because of the latter’s spiritual garb and fair skin! A similar situation prevailed in the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church with respect to the white Latin / European bishops who ruled over them until the end of the 19th century. The well-known fulminations of a prominent 17th century Syro-Malabar clergyman like Paremakkal Thoma Kathanar against the arrogance of such white skinned European clergy and how they treated the dark-skinned Indians are worth remembering here.)

The Catholicate, Symbol of Freedom and Autocephaly

The event of momentous importance in the history of the Malankara Church after the Coonen Cross Oath of 1653 was the instituting of the Catholicate in 1912. This was not a sudden happening, but the climax of a long process of awakening in the Indian Church ever since the Portuguese occupation of the Church. All the aspirations of the community to express its identity and apostolic freedom culminated in the Catholicate. The question whether it is a "re-establishment" of the persian Catholicate of ancient days or "establishment" of an independent Catholicate as the symbol of the identity of the ancient Church of St. Thomas in India is irrelevant to a large extent. We cannot ignore the historical aspects of such an institution nor can we underestimate its actual missionary and canonical potential in India. A Christian Church like the Malankara Church with a profound awareness of its apostolic roots, freedom, and long herigate in India has all the authority to institute its own head and organize its own hierarchy like any other ancient apostolic church in the world.

In the 1930s Mar Ivanios, head of a monastery and one of the bishops of the Malankara Orthodox Church joined the Roman Catholic Church with some of his clergy and faithful and set up what is known as Malankara (Rite) Catholic Church. This was a typical case of Uniatism practised by the Roman Church amidst all Eastern Church since the 16th century.

Search for Unity

In 1934 the Malankara Association, the representative body of the people and the clergy of the Church adopted a constitution for the Malankara Church. The then seperate positions of the Malankara Metropolitan and the Catholicos held by two different incumbents were integrated in one incumbent of the apostolic seat of St. Thomas as both the temporal and spiritual head of the Malankara Church. The Constitution, however generoulsy and with a view to future unity of the two factions, provided space for a Patriarch recognized by the Malankara Church, as spiritual head without any power of ordination or jurisdiction, appointment or disposal in the Malankra Church.

Already at the beginning of the 20th century the Malankara Church was divided into two factions: one side supporting the Patriarchal claims of jurisdiction over Malankara and other side holding the ideal of the indigenous, autonomous Malankara Orthodox Church ruled by its own Indian heads. Since the prominent leader of the Indian side then was Malankara Metropolitan Geevarghese Mar Dionysius (Vattasseril), it was called by the other party as Metran’s faction. The Patriarch wreaked vengeance on Mar Dionysius, an outstanding theologian, administrator and saintly figure, by "excommunicating" him uncanonically. The Malankara Church and the civil courts in India rejected the excommunications as an illegal, individual and uncanonial act of a foregin prelate who wanted to suppress the genuine canonical aspiration of the apostolic church of India to manage its own affairs without alien intervention.

The long litigation between these factions was ended in 1958 by the verdict of the Supreme Court recognising the authority of the Catholicos cum Malankara Metropolitan over the Malankara Church. The Patriarch’s party that contested his authority was ordered by the Supreme Court to pay up all the court expenses incurred by the Catholicos side. Immediately after the Supreme Court verdict, the then Patriarch Yakoob III of Antioch and the Catholicos Baselius Geevarghese II agreed to a historic peace settlement by accepting and acknowledging each other. The Catholicos exchanged the Reconciliation document with the Patriarchal delegate Metropolitan Mar Julius at the Old Seminary, Kottayam in December 1958. All peace-loving people of Malankara and members of the sister churches rejoiced at this precious gift of peace. The Malankara church became one, spiritually and administratively.

Unfortunately this blessing remained only for about 12 years. The Catholicos had exchanged the peace doucment, with the formula ‘accepting the Patriarch of Antioch subject to the constitution’. However, the Constitution of 1934 and the title of the Catholicos/Malankara Metropolitan and his apostolic authority all were questioned in a new series of litigation by the Patriarchal party. This led to another historic verdict of the Supreme Court in 1995 re-affirming the validity of the Constitution of 1934 and the authority and position of the Catholicos cum Malankara Metropolitan. The court instructed the Catholicos to convene a Malankara Association meeting of all the parishes of the Malankara Church in order to begin a new era of peace and unity. Although the Association was validly and canonically held in the presence of a Supreme Court observer in 2001 at Parumala, unity was not achieved, not because of the lack of desire for peace on the side of the common people and parishes, but because of the great manipulative skill of a church leader who had ambitions to fulfil in a divided church. Four bishops on the former Patriarchal side declared allegiance to the Constitution of 1934 and to the Catholicos and along with their priests and faithful were reunited with the Malankara Church. The Catholicos publicly declared that doors were still open for peace and unity and exhorted all leaders to respect the people’s desire for unity.

It is important to note that both factions held on to their common ground of the same liturgy and same faith in spite of long years of litigation. It is really one Church. The litigation and division were essentially on account of the dispute on authority and jurisdiction, particularly in temporal matters and not on matters of faith. The Supreme Court has upheld more than once the constitution of 1934 as providing solutions for these disputes and as an effective instrument for unity. But far above such legal aspects, most of the true believers are conscious that the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church is really one body in Christ, in one faith and one worship. Many fervently are "hoping against hope" that the Church would be united once again for the glory of God. (The present writer, for instance, who enjoyed the bliss of unity in the 1960s has never accepted that there are two different church with the names Jacobite and Orthodox, but keeps its oneness in his heart in all humility and hope in God’s healing power.)

Conclusion

Retelling the sad story of division among the Nazrani Christians of Kerala has to be necessarily an exercise of hope for unity as well. Looking at the history and identity of Malankara Orthodox Church from an ecumenical perspective, I am led to raise some broad, elementrary questions that I hope will remain with us in order to help us in some soul-searching and to take us out of the present state of separate existence.

1. If the Nazrani Christian community of St. Thomas could remain as one single Church and family until the 16th century, who divided us and for what cause?

2. To what extent are we justified in fighting each other in the name of Rome or Antioch, Bagdad or Canterbury? Can we the Christians of St. Thomas with as much antiquity, apostolicity and autonomy as these ancient churches organize our affairs on our own without any subservient reference to them or accepting any alien superior authority except that of loving communion?

3. Can we agree on an essential basis of common Christian faith and practice of the undivided Church, choose our own head for the united Church, and evolve our own Indian system of hierarchy and administration while maintaining very cordial and Christian communion with other Churches?

4. What are the racial and economic factors involved in our peopl’s and leaders’ easy submission to foreign ecclesiastical authority during the colonial period as well as in the contemporary post-colonial era?

5. How can we reinstate our own ecclesiological historiographical methods unlike those used by the dominant Churches and colonial masters from the West for their own interests, so that we as a united Church can do effective Christian witness in our pluralistic and secular context?