Schism of 1912
ongoing church dispute in India
The Malankara Orthodox-Jacobite church dispute or the Schism of 1912 was the split in the Malankara Syrian Church that led to an ongoing series of church disputes in Kerala, India. The dispute, also known as the Second Community Case or the Second Vaṭṭippaṇa Case (Malayalam: രണ്ടാം സമുദായക്കേസ്, രണ്ടാം വട്ടിപ്പണക്കേസ്), has been intertwined with continuous litigations and has resulted in the formation of two rival church bodies, namely the autocephalous Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, and the Malankara Jacobite Syrian Church, an autonomous church under the Syriac Orthodox patriarchate of Antioch. Although the Indian supreme court judgement of 1995 made a terminal legal conclusion of the dispute, the disagreements related to the administration of the parish church property continues to cause occasional law and order problems and significant obstruction to a permanent solution of the dispute. The dispute in three of these parishes was moved to the court and its final verdict was made by the Supreme Court in 2017, in favour of the Malankara Orthodox Church.
The dispute remains unresolved, and police interventions to implement the judgement continue to meet intense protest and confrontation in churches currently administered by the Jacobite Church. The continuing dispute also led to increased sectarianism among members of the once undivided community and the solidification of the schism between the two rival factions.
Presently, according to data from the Indian government, the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church is significantly larger than the Jacobite Syrian Christian Church adding another layer of complexity to the schism. Further issues have been caused by the churches geographic concentrations with the Jacobite faction dominant throughout the Ernakulam district, leading to scenarios of split-parishes with large parish disparities like Marthoman Cheriapally in Kothamangalam which has 3,000 Jacobite families to 8 of the Malankara Orthodox faction.
First schism
In 1908, Dionysius Vattasseril, who was elected as the Malankara Metropolitan in 1909 by the Malankara Jacobite Syrian Christian Association, travelled to Mardin to be consecrated as a bishop by Ignatius Abded Aloho II, the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch. He was accompanied by another bishop-elect, Monk Paulose Kochuparambil.
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The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as ongoing church dispute in India. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q20582500. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1912, 1995, 2017 and 1908.
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