The Syrian Christians Of Kerala - Part 1
(This Essay is an extract from a book titled “George Joseph, the Life and Times of a Kerala Christian Nationalist” [Orient Longman, New Delhi] by Prof George Gheverghese Joseph. CRI wishes to thank Prof George Gheverghese Joseph )
A serious misunderstanding of the Syrian Christian heritage is prevalent even today among the more perceptive and knowledgeable Indians. Even a commentator of the calibre of Nirad Chaudhuri is misinformed about the origins of the Syrian Christian community.
“I have not included in my account the oldest Christian community in India. It is formed of the Syria Christians of Kerala of the former Princely State of Travancore. They came over from Syria when the Arabs conquered their country, and since their arrival in India they have been living here as colonists. (The Continent of Circe, 309) “
The statement is riddled with inaccuracies which will become evident to the reader in the course of this essay.
From time immemorial, a member of Syrian Christian was popularly known in Kerala as a Nasrani (meaning from Nazareth, the birthplace of Jesus Christ). The term ‘Syrian Christian’ is of Dutch origin and now a commonly used name for the community. And, despite some misgivings, we will continue to refer to the group by that name.
The name, ‘Syrian’, has little to do with the country, Syria. It was probably derived from ‘Cyrus’ the king of Persia (559-529 BC), who conquered Babylon and liberated the Jews by permitting them to return to Judea. The name ‘Syrian’ is equivalent to the term ‘Christian’ and was used for the first time, to refer to Christ’s disciples in Antioch, because early Jewish converts to Christianity believed that Cyrus resembled Christ, the liberator of captive mankind. From them the term ‘Syrian’ spread first among the newly converted Christians of Mesopotamia, Persia and further east. The name eventually came to refer to those connected with the Church of Antioch at the very beginning of Christianity. It was referred to as the ‘Syrian Church’ in the epistle of St. Ignatius (the third Patriarch of Antioch), to the Romans in AD 107. The label was also attached to the churches in the East as far as India, which submitted to the ecclesiastical authority of the ancient capital of Syria. When the Dutch first appeared in Kerala, the old Christians that they came across were labeled ‘Syrian’ Christians and the more recent Portuguese converts as ‘Latin’ Christians, a distinction that remains even today.
The Community
Historical research into the Syrian Christians of Kerala has often tended to dwell far too heavily on the question of the validity or otherwise of St. Thomas bringing Christianity to this part of India. The arrival of Doubting Thomas of the New Testament at the port of Kodungallur in 52 AD is an important part of an oral tradition of all Syrian Christians, kept alive in each generation by songs and stories about miracles and conversions performed by him during his stay in Kerala. Irrespective of whether it happened or not (and on the existing evidence it could well have happened), the St Thomas connection is important to all Syrian Christians, whatever their differences, for their very identity has been shaped by this tradition.
Associated with this tradition is yet another legend. It is believed that St. Thomas converted some thirty-two Brahmin Families (the numbers vary with account) out of which eight are normally given precedence in the Syrian Christian society. One of the families, Pakalomattom, is believed to have been granted the traditional privilege by St. Thomas of supplying metrans (bishops). The second in order of precedence n traditional Syrian Christian society was the family of Sankarapuri. The membership of these old families was, until recently, an important index of social status within the community.
While this early conversion must have resulted in the loss of the caste status of this group, they still retained certain privileges. An infusion of immigrant Christian traders of East Syrian stock and the ensuing economic benefits led to the granting, over many centuries of further privileges and honors by the Hindu rules of the region. The community reached its peak of influence during the reign of Marthanda Varma. He recruited several thousand Syrian Christians into his army during his campaign of conquest in North Travancore. His state trading monopolies depended heavily on the skills of experienced Christian traders. Based around important market towns such as Kanjirapalli. Mavelikkara, and Sherrallai, these traders played an important role in processing pepper and forest-based commodities for export.
As a reward for their services, a few Syrian Christian families were given honored privileges in many state rituals by the rulers. In Cochin, Syrian Christian prelates participated in the installation ceremonies of the rulers. During the premier Kerala festival, Onam, part of the regalia for the rituals was stored in a Cochin Syrian Christian church. The procession carrying the Hindu deity, Krishna, at that festival was expected by custom to make a brief stop at the home of a prominent Syrian Christian family who had contributed to the cost of financing that procession. The high status of the Syrian Christians in Hindu society was reflected everywhere by their right of access to Hindu society was reflected everywhere by their right of access to Hindu shrines and ‘sacred space’. In Alleppey, a newly emerging urban center in Tranvancore, during the eighteenth country, a Hindu temple and a Syrian Christian church were built on adjoining sites, a practice found in the case of older churches and temples in places such as Niranom, Chengannur, Kallopara, and Parur between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Christians continued to use Hindu style torches, umbrellas, and banners at their festivals to honor saints and bishops of the Syrian church. There was at least one Hindu temple that lent its temple elephants for Syrian Christian festival processions.
Caste and the Syrian Christians
These privileges and reciprocal religious ties were the litmus test of the standing of the Syrian Christians within the Hindu social hierarchy. While they survived, the Syrian Christians were recognized as the equivalent of a high Hindu caste group from the Nair subdivisions and linked to these groups in social and religious life. But the retention of their high status conditional on their belonging to a totally segmented caste structure of the day.
The retention of caste privileges by the Syrian Christians was ensured in several ways. A series of customs and rituals heavily influenced by high-caste Hindu practices, relating to food, occupation, and rites relating to the preparation of good and whom one ate with became a part of a complicated system of ritual pollution that the Syrian Christians inherited from high caste Hindus. The Syrian Christians also implicitly accepted distance pollution, a peculiar fact of the traditional Kerala caste Structure. A custom that survived until recently among some Syrian Christians of Kottayam is that during the Easter service street procession, shouts of ‘poyin, poyin’ (go away! go away) were heard, warning members of the lower castes to remove themselves from their path. Also, in earlier times, the Syrian Christian katanar (priest) was sometimes called upon to perform an unusual task by the Nairs and Brahmins to ‘purify’ by touching objects ‘polluted’ by contact with lower castes.
In other matters also, the Syrian Christians had a lot in common with the Nairs, A faith in horoscopes, the tying of a minnu (pendant with a cross superimposed on the Hindu leaf motif) to solemnize marriage, ceremonial bathing to remove the pollution of death and insistence on vegetarianism during mourning, the ceremony of annaprasanam (the first feeding of a child with rice) were but a few of the customs shared by the two communities.
There were, however, some interesting difference between the Hindu community and the Syrian Christians. The relative paucity and vulnerability of the latter may explain their overriding concern to establish genealogical connections between families (a favorite subject of conversation even today whenever Syrian Christians in Kerala or outside gather) and to keep marriage endogamous and status driven (or more recently money driven). Councils, such as the church sabha, formed for corporate action and decision, exerted control over individual members in a manner not dissimilar to caste organizations – disgrace, ostracism, and excommunication being its instruments. Strong conformity existed in matters of dress, etiquette, food, and occupational choice and leisure pursuits. Interest in intellectual or artistic pursuits was rare, unlike the Hindus of the same status, and was often seen as mere pretension or distraction.
It is, however, in their reluctance to augment their numbers through evangelism and in their treatment of co-religionists from other denominations that the Syrian Christians sowed their exclusiveness. Conversions from lower castes and outside groups have been frowned upon from a long time. And even when it took place in the early years of Christianity in Kerala, a strict endogamy was maintained and applied rigidly. While these ‘old’ Christians were allowed to worship in Syrian Christian churches, this privilege was not extended to the ‘new; Christians converted by European missionaries.
Indeed, the relationship between the Europeans and Syrian Christians is a complex one. It has over the years dramatically impacted on the symbiotic ties that have existed between the Syrian Christians and their Hindu neighbors and become significant in shaping the identity and lifestyle of the average Syrian Christian during significant part of this century
The Portuguese and the Syrian Christians
For the Portuguese on their arrival in Kerala, the Syrian Christians were the obvious choice in their quest for local support. The myth of Pester John (a legendary Christian King of the East) and the hope of finding ‘lost’ fellow Christians somewhere along their journey had in part inspired the early Portuguese navigators as they set out on their voyages of exploration. The fact that these sought-after Christians turned out to be skilled warriors and privileged traders with easy entry into the courts of the local rulers made them all the more desirable in the eyes of their European co-religionists.
However, the Portuguese were faced with an immediate problem. Their arrival in India happened to coincide with an influx of bishops and monks from the Syrian Christian Churches in West Asia claiming authority from the Nestorian Catholicos, a recognized authority figure among the Syrian Christians of Kerala, Between 1503 and 1582 at least nine delegations of foreign prelates made their way to the Malabar coast. The local Christians received these foreign dignitaries with great pomp and ceremony to the chagrin of the Portuguese who considered these strangers as ‘vile Nestorian heretics’. Worse still for the Portuguese, these strangers were suspected of attempting to usurp the authority of their own priests, thereby making their task of turning Syrian Christians into their allies and converts even more difficult.
Faced with this problem, the Portuguese resorted to a well-used tactic. In 1542, the first batch of Jesuits was dispatched with the task of ‘winning’ the Syrian Christians to the cause of the pope and Portugal. To do so they had to break the Syrian Christian allegiance to their ‘heretical’ West Asian bishops and prelates. The Jesuits also set themselves the task of eradicating elements of the Syrian Christian forms of worship that failed to conform to the conventions of Roman Catholic orthodoxy or that had been ‘corrupted’ by Hindu influences, By the 1560s, the Jesuits through their influence at the course of the local rulers began harrying the West Asian prelates. They even managed to persuade the Raja of Cochin to withdraw his recognition of the local archdeacon. This archdeacon had resisted the Jesuit attempt to ‘reform church ritual; and expunge ‘heretic’ saints from the Syrian Christians sacred calendar. The Portuguese, on the instigation of the Jesuits, destroyed the tombs at Kollam (Quilon) which were believed to contain the remains of two of the most revered prelates, Mar Sapor and Mar Prodh. They seized a number of Syriac and Malayalam devotional and religious texts and those deemed to be ‘heretical’ were either burnt or expurgated. The ancient Syriac liturgy was brought into line with official Roman Catholic forms. For example, images of saints were not found in Syrian Christian churches before the arrival of the Jesuits. Neither were the sacraments of confession, confirmation, and extreme unction part of the traditional liturgy. This rituals were introduced in to the ancient Church for the first time under the influence of Jesuits.
In 1599, at a Church Synod held at Udayamperur, the entire Syrian priesthood were asked to revoke their allegiance to the West Asian Catholicos, to abjure from all ‘heretic’ doctrines and observances, and to swear allegiance to Rome. A substantial section of the Syrian Christians succumbed to the Portuguese blandishments and accepted papal authority. They retained this attachment ever since.
The decrees of the Synod were an explicit affirmation of the Catholic Church line. But they could not reshape the Syrian Christian world-view. The veneration of cult saints from West Asia carried on as before, the many surviving holy tomb shrines retained their ancient power, and new sites were added to the region’s sacred landscape, as streams of West Asian bishops continued to make their way to Kerala, Even the hereditary priestly lineage survived; some adopted celibacy in conformity with the Catholic dogma but continued to pass on their titles from uncle to nephew. The Synod had also condemned Syrian Christian priests for casting horoscopes in the Hindu manner, for using pagan techniques for exoticism, divination, and dream interpretation and for considering dust from Syrian Christian cult shrines as a miraculous healing agent. These practices continued into the early decades of the twentieth century.
For all the vehemence of their attacks, the Jesuits succeeded in sustaining this ambivalent relationship with the Syrian Christians until 1652, when the Portuguese authorities brought about the death of a West Asian bishop who had arrived in India bearing credential from the Catholicos in Antioch. The horror of this act ― the shedding of blood of a person imbued with sacred authority – was enough. It provoked a mass renunciation of the Syrian Christian ties with Rome. The martyred cleric, Mar Ahatallah, was immediately added to the pantheon of miracle working Syrian Christian martyrs. A group of katanars laid hands on the head archdeacon from the traditional Pakalomattom lineage while at the same time touching one of the most sacred stone crosses, the Koonen cross, at Mattancheri. This physical contact with a famous cult artifact was believed to endow the priests with the power of consecration. They declared the archdeacon the chief prelate with the title Mar Thoma I in place of the deceased prelate from West Asia. This direct confrontation with the Portuguese created a lasting cleavage between Roman Catholic Syrian Christian owing allegiance to European missionary bishops and Rome, and those known as ‘Orthodox Syrian Christians’ who only recognized the authority of the hereditary Pakalomattom metrans.
After the revolt of the Koonen cross, the Syrian Christians were left with a divided structure of authority that was to generate further dissension and strife for the next 200 years. A tendency towards fissure had been introduced into what was earlier a united group. And this tendency was exacerbated by subsequent developments so that by the end of the nineteenth century there were a dozen different denominations competing for recruits and resources.
The British and the Traditional order
From the end of the eighteenth century, the Syrian Christians and some, Nairs began to lose their position as privileged warriors and office-bearers within the states of Cochin and Travancore. These changes started with the collapse of the political order that was largely the creation of the eighteenth-century rules of this region. First, there was the humiliations brought on by the forces of Tipu Sultan who reduced Cochin to a tribute-paying client state. To counter this threat, in 1795, the Raja of Travancore and of Cochin entered into alliances with the East India Company. This fatal embrace also meant their paying a stiff price, for, they were soon reduced to the status of vassal states.
The noose was tightened still further with the appointment of the first British Resident in 1800 to the royal courts of Travancore and Cochin. A rapid disintegration of the states military apparatus followed the British assumption of the defense role. The resulting cuts in military expenditure led to uprisings in the Travancore and Cochin armies in 1804 and 1808. After putting down the second of those outbreaks, the Company forced the two states to disband their armies.
The collapse of the military system in Travancore and Cochin coincided with serious dislocations that occurred in the Malabar economy owing to a fall in the volume of sea-borne commodity exports and the disruption of overland trade routes into the neighboring region of Tamil Nadu. For the Syrian Christians, heavily dependent on trade and commercial agriculture, this confluence of economic and political circumstances could not have come at a worse time. However, the most damaging effect of the British incursion was that it hastened the breakdown in the relationship between the Syrian Christians and their Hindu neighbors.
Images Courtesy -Google Images from http://mgocsmdiaspora.org/ nasrani.net/ kavilaiveettilzachariahfamily.org