MOSUL AND ITS MINORITIES
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—May I be permitted, in the interests of accuracy, to point out an error into which the reviewer of Mr. Luke's book on this subject has fallen ? After saying that by the title " Metropolitan of India " we usually mean the Anglican Bishop of Calcutta, he adds : " There is another Metropolitan of India. the Assyrian Patriarch of Malabar, who is the spiritual head of a million South Indian Christians." In this statement there is a twofold error. In the first place the title is borne, not by the Patriarch himself, but by his representative in India, the Chaldean Bishop of Malabar. In the second, the authority of that Bishop is acknowledged only by one very small section of the Syrian Christian community, numbering, according to the census of 1921, less than 2,000. If Syrian Christians who have joined various branches of the Protes- tant Church are included the total number of Syrians in India may indeed amount to nearly a million. But of these nearly half belong to the Church of Rome, more than a quarter to the Jacobite Church, which has as its head the Patriarch of Antioch, while over a hundred thousand belong to the Reformed (Mar 'Thome) Syrian Church, which is subject only to its own bishops in India. Mr. Luke states the matter accurately when he says that the Nestorian Church, which once counted its bishops by hundreds, is now reduced to four,- but one of these bears the title, pathetic memory of a great past, of
Metropolitan of India.—I am, Sir, &c., J. H. MACLEAN. Edinburgh.
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