India (East Syrian ecclesiastical province)

India (Syriac: Beth Hindaye) was an ecclesiastical province of the Church of the East, at least nominally, from the seventh to the sixteenth century. The Malabar Coast of India had long been home to a thriving East Syrian (Nestorian) Christian community, known as the St. Thomas Christians. The community traces its origins to the evangelical activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century. The Indian Christian community were initially part of 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. As such, the Indian church was largely autonomous in operation, though the authority of the Patriarch was always respected. In the 16th century, the Portuguese arrived in India and tried to bring the community under the authority of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church. The Portuguese ascendancy was formalised at the Synod of Diamper in 1599, which effectively abolished the historic Nestorian metropolitan province of India. Angamaly, the former seat of the Nestorian metropolitans, was downgraded to a suffragan diocese of the Latin Archdiocese of Goa.

After a section of the Church of the East became Catholic in 1553, both the Nestorian and Chaldean churches intermittently attempted to regain their old influence in India. Between the 17th and 20th centuries several attempts, not always successful, were made by both churches to send bishops to the Malabar Christians. On occasion the Vatican supported the claims of Catholic bishops from the Chaldean Church, particularly during the period of the Portuguese ascendancy in India.

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