The churches that changed hands.
The Supreme Court's 2017 judgment gave administration of more than 1,100 Malankara parishes to the Orthodox side under the 1934 constitution. Jacobite parishes largely refused to comply, the Kerala government did not enforce it, funerals were delayed for days where cemeteries were in dispute, and in December 2024 the Court found the Jacobite side in contempt and ordered six named churches handed over. The judgments accumulate and the parishes stay where they are.
The 2017 judgment in K. S. Varghese and others held that the 1934 constitution governs Malankara parish churches and that the Jacobite side had no ground for a separate claim. Enforcement has been the problem: the Kerala government, facing a large and organised community, has moved slowly, proposed an ordinance in 2019 and 2020 to permit shared use of cemeteries, and been criticised by the courts for inaction. There have been standoffs at church gates, police deployments, hunger strikes and bodies kept in mortuaries. Both churches have lost members to the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church and to Pentecostal congregations over the course of it, which neither side likes to discuss.
The same ground, other faiths
claims that share this one's ideasSign in to open the first thread. Everything here is attributed.