Donald, Nidhin, ‘Every Family Its Own Historian? : The Case of Syrian Christian Family Histories’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 57, Issue No. 28, July 09, 2022
Very few academic documents, other than ethnoreligious texts and hagiographies, have captured the lives of Syrian Christians or “Nasranis” — a privileged minority settled in Kerala. While The Christians of Kerala written by Susan Visvanathan explores the cultures and practices of Syrian Christians (Yakobas), Privileged Minorities by Sonja Thomas studies the privileges enjoyed by the community through oral histories and ethnographies capturing the history and socio-economic conditions of the community, their interactions and assimilations with other social groups in Kerala. Nidhin Donald’s article, ‘Every Family Its Own Historian? : The Case of Syrian Christian Family Histories’, draws attention to a different aspect of the community; the family histories documented by affluent families of the Syrian Christian community used to maintain a hierarchically prominent position in society.
