Malabar region in the context of "Konkan"

The Saint Thomas Christians, also called Syrian Christians of India, Marthoma Suriyani Nasrani, Malankara Nasrani, or Nasrani Mappila, are an ethno-religious community of Indian Christians in the state of Kerala (Malabar region), who, for the most part, employ the Eastern and Western liturgical rites of Syriac Christianity. They trace their origins to the evangelistic activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century. The Saint Thomas Christians had been historically a part of the hierarchy of the Church of the East but are now divided into several different Eastern Catholic, Oriental Orthodox, Protestant, and independent bodies, each with their own liturgies and traditions. They are based in Kerala and they speak Malayalam. Nasrani or Nazarene is a Syriac term for Christians, who were among the first converts to Christianity in the Near East.

Historically, this community was organised as the Province of India of the Church of the East, by Patriarch Timothy I (780–823 AD) in the eighth century, it was served by bishops and a local dynastic archdeacon. In the 14th century, the Church of the East declined in the Near East, due to persecution from Tamerlane. Portuguese colonial overtures to bring St Thomas Christians into the Latin Church of the Catholic Church, administered by their Padroado system in the 16th century, led to the first of several rifts (schisms) in the community. The attempts of the Portuguese culminated in the Synod of Diamper, formally subjugating them to the Portuguese Padroado and imposing upon them the Roman Rite of worship. The Portuguese oppression provoked a violent resistance among the Thomasine Christians, that took expression in the Coonan Cross Oath protest in 1653. This led to the permanent schism among the Thomas' Christians of India, leading to the formation of Puthankoor or Puthankūttukār ("New allegiance" ) and Paḻayakūṟ or Pazhayakūr ("Old allegiance") factions. The Paḻayakūṟ comprise the present day Syro-Malabar Church and Chaldean Syrian Church which continue to employ the original East Syriac Rite. The Puthankoottukar, who continued to resist the Catholic missionaries, organized themselves as the independent Malankara Church and entered into a new communion with the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch, inheriting from them the West Syriac Rite, replacing the old East Syriac Rite liturgy.

Metropolitanate of India (Syriac: Beth Hindaye) was an East Syriac ecclesiastical province of the Church of the East, at least nominally, from the seventh to the sixteenth century. The Malabar region (Kerala) of India had long been home to a thriving Eastern Christian community, known as the Saint Thomas Christians. The community traces its origins to the evangelical activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century. The Christian communities in India used the East Syriac Rite, the traditional liturgical rite of the Church of the East. They also adopted some aspects of Dyophysitism of Theodore of Mopsuestia, often inaccurately referred as Nestorianism, in accordance with theology of the Church of the East. It is unclear when the relation between Saint Thomas Christian and the Church of the East was established. Initially, they belonged to the metropolitan province of Fars, but were detached from that province in the 7th century, and again in the 8th, and given their own metropolitan bishop.

Due to the distance between India and the seat of the Patriarch of the Church of the East, communication with the church's heartland was often spotty, and the province was frequently without a bishop. An eleventh-century reference states that the metropolitan province of India had been 'suppressed', due to communication difficulties. At the beginning of the fourteenth century the Indian Church was again dependent on the Church of the East. Although India was supplied with bishops from the Middle East, the effective control lay in the hands of an indigenous priest known as Arkkadiyakkon or Archdeacon. He was the community leader of Saint Thomas Christians. Even in times when there were multiple foreign bishops, there was only one archdeacon for entire Saint Thomas Community. As such, the Indian church was largely autonomous in operation, though the authority of the Patriarch was always respected.

The State of India, also known as the Portuguese State of India or Portuguese India, was a state of the Portuguese Empire founded seven years after the discovery of the sea route to the Indian subcontinent by Vasco da Gama, a subject of the Kingdom of Portugal. The capital of Portuguese India served as the governing centre of a string of military forts and maritime ports scattered along the coasts of the Indian Ocean.

Francisco de Almeida, the first viceroy, established his base of operations at Fort Manuel in the Malabar region, after the Kingdom of Cochin negotiated to become a protectorate of Portugal in 1505. With the Portuguese conquest of Goa from the Bijapur Sultanate in 1510, Goa became the major anchorage for the Armadas arriving in India. The capital of the viceroyalty was transferred from Cochin to Goa in 1530. From 1535, Mumbai (Bombay) was a harbour of Portuguese India, known as Bom Bahia, until it was handed over to Charles II of England in 1661 as part of the dowry of Catherine de Braganza. The expression "State of India" began regularly appearing in documents in the mid-16th century.

The Chaldean Syrian Church of India (Classical Syriac: ܥܕܬܐ ܕܡܕܢܚܐ ܕܐܬܘܖ̈ܝܐ; Malayalam: കൽദായ സുറിയാനി സഭ, romanized: Kaldaya Suriyani Sabha), or the Archdiocese of India and Southern Gulf Countries, is an Eastern Christian denomination, based in Thrissur, in India. It is part of the greater Assyrian Church of the East and is organised a singular Metropolitan (Archdiocese) See of India, and represents the part of traditional Christian communities that follow the East Syriac Rite in the Malabar region of India. It is headed by Mar Awgin Kuriakose.

The church uses the East Syriac Rite, and employs the Divine Liturgy of Saints Addai and Mari. Its members constitute a traditional community among Saint Thomas Christians (also known as Nasrani), who trace their origins to the evangelistic activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century. They are based mostly in the state of Kerala, numbering some 15,000 members in the region.

The Catholic Church in India is part of the worldwide Catholic Church under the leadership of the Pope. There are over 23 million Catholics in India, representing around 1.57% of the total population, and the Catholic Church is the single largest Christian church in India. There are 10,701 parishes that make up 174 dioceses and eparchies, which are organised into 30 ecclesiastical provinces. Of these, 132 dioceses are of the Latin Church, 31 of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church and 11 of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church. Despite the very small percentage-wise population that Indian Catholics make up in the country, India still has the second-largest Christian population in Asia, after the Catholic Church in the Philippines. All Catholic bishops, from all dioceses, come together to form the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, first convened in British India, in 1944. The ambassador representing the Vatican City, to the Government of India, is the Apostolic Nuncio to India. The diplomatic mission of the Holy See to India, similar to an embassy, was established as the Apostolic delegation to the East Indies in 1881. It was raised to an Internunciature by Pope Pius XII in 1948, and to a full Apostolic Nunciature by Pope Paul VI in 1967. Archbishop Leopoldo Girelli is the current Apostolic Nuncio, named by Pope Francis on 13 March 2021. The Apostolic Nunciature is located at 50-C, Niti Marg, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi.

The majority, about 78.3%, belong to the Latin Church, the rest are Syrian Catholic Christians. The Syro-Malabar Church, one of the Eastern Catholic Churches, makes up around 19.7% of Indian Catholics, while the Syro-Malankara Church accounts for approximately 2.0%. These figures reflect the diverse liturgical traditions within Indian Catholicism, with Eastern Catholic communities primarily based in the Malabar region (present-day state of Kerala).

The Nair (/ˈnaɪər/, Malayalam: [n̪aːjɐr]) also known as Nayar, are a group of Indian Hindu castes, described by anthropologist Kathleen Gough as "not a unitary group but a named category of castes". The Nair include several castes and many subdivisions, not all of whom historically bore the name 'Nair'. These people lived, and many continue to live, in the area which is now the Indian state of Kerala. Their internal caste behaviours and systems are markedly different between the people in the northern and southern sections of the area, although there is not very much reliable information on those inhabiting the north.

Historically, Nairs lived in large family units called tharavads that housed descendants of one common female ancestor. These family units along with their unusual marriage customs, which are no longer practiced, have been much studied. Although the detail varied from one region to the next, the main points of interest to researchers of Nair marriage customs were the existence of two particular rituals—the pre-pubertal thalikettu kalyanam and the later sambandam—and the practice of polygamy in some areas. Some Nair women also practiced hypergamy with Nambudiri Brahmins from the Malabar region.