Woman members of both Jacobite and Orthodox factions at Mamalassery are in dire straits. Leela Varghese, of Mamalassery, has to go to the nearest police station every Saturday to sign the register. She doesn’t know what crime she committed. She is one of the many Jacobite women from Mamalassery against whom cases were levelled owing to the ongoing rift between the Jacobite and Orthodox factions. Ammini Yohannan, of Orthodox faction, has stopped going to the church as she feels that she is no more secure near the church premises.
“We are not only deprived of our rights to offer worship in the church but also were stripped of our dignity. The insults hurled against us were unwarranted. We were beaten up brutally,” say women of both factions. They complained that they did not gain anything from the ongoing feud but nightmares.
“We no longer goes to the premises of the church as we had seen many unidentified faces ready to strike us the moment we go there. We are fed up with this feud,” says an Orthodox believer on condition of anonymity. Whereas the Jacobite faction has started a prayer meet on the premises of the Mor Michael Syrian church, Mamalassery, which completed 100 days on Wednesday.
Jacobite Church Synod secretary Joseph Mor Gregorios told ‘Express’ that what they need is their right to worship.”
There is no violence involved. The prayer meet is a peaceful way of getting its rights back,” he said. Orthodox Syrian Church priest trustee Fr Johns Abraham Konattu said: “We are ready to abide by the rules of the court.”
The women of Jacobite faction say that they are not able to conduct any functions in their parish church whether it be a marriage or funeral or baptism. “We have to go to other parishes for marriages and baptisms. If death happens, there will be two funeral services, one with our parish priest who would conduct the service according to our faith.
Since the church was controlled by the other faction and to gain entry to the cemetery for the funeral, we had to accept the service according to their faith,” Leelamma George, a member of the Jacobite faction, says.
Though the women of both factions claim that they do not harbour any bad blood, the cordial relationship once existed between both the factions was long lost.
“The dreadful experiences we had to endure created friction. We were once held hostages inside the church. Those were the horrid hours of our life,” says Ammini.
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