Why is there still discrimination against Latin Catholics in Kerala? Any reason why ppl still won’t change?
A very close friend of mine comes from a Latin Catholic family and is getting married to his longtime girlfriend, who belongs to the Syro Malabar Catholic community. During a family gathering, one of the bride’s uncles made a comment about my friend’s family belonging to a supposedly “low-caste fisherman community.” When it became awkward, they brushed it off as a joke.
For context, my friend is a doctor, his parents are well known lawyers in Kochi, and even his great grandfathers were doctors and lawyers. Meanwhile, the bride’s family runs a business and isn’t particularly wealthy or highly educated. Not that any of this should matter, because these things shouldn’t determine their worth in the first place.
What upset my friend wasn’t being associated with the fishing community. There’s absolutely nothing shameful about that. It was the assumption that being Latin Catholic automatically made his family socially inferior.
What was supposed to be a happy evening turned into an awkward one. Thankfully, his gf is a great person and apologized on her uncle’s behalf that very evening.
I come from a Syro malabar family myself and has a gf from the Latin community and we’ve never looked down on anyone because of their caste or religious background. My parents taught me better. But I’m not going to pretend this attitude doesn’t exist within parts of the Syrian Christian community.
My question is, when are we going to move past this obsession with caste among Christians in Kerala? How are we still making these distinctions in 2026, especially when we’re supposed to belong to the same faith?