Mary Roy, a fighter to the core who saved Syrian Christian women from discriminatory succession law

Kottayam’s most famous and most-talked-about face, Mary was the founder and creator of Corpus Christi, one of the best-known public schools in India, rechristened later as Pallikoodam. She was the school’s principal from its humble inception in 1967 to 2011, when she chose retirement.

Heroic reputation

Across Kerala, where 18.38 percent of the population is Christian, Mary enjoyed a heroic reputation because she obtained a landmark Supreme Court order in 1986 that quashed the TCSA and ensured equal rights for Syrian Christian women in the properties of the families in which they were born.

A born fighter, she single-handedly waged the long legal war against the law, which challenged gender parity and equal justice. As she mentioned in numerous interviews and articles, years-long suppression on account of her gender finally pushed her against the wall, and she initiated the big fight.

She won the war, giving a jolt to the orthodox elements among the influential Syrian Christians in Kerala.

According to the now-defunct TCSA, the widow of a man who dies without leaving a will would receive a mere life estate over one-third of his share and his daughter would receive a quarter of a share of the son.

In the decades-long court battle, she had only one demand: An equal share of the properties between male and female successors of the deceased head of the Syrian Christian family.

On occasion, she recounted that even her close relatives, including her immediate sister, were angry over her big fight for justice. The community, since then, has kept a safe distance from her.

But she was least bothered. Equipped with the Supreme Court order, Mary approached the Kottayam district court in 1989 seeking a sixth of a share in her father’s property. When the lower court ruled against her, citing technical reasons, she approached the Kerala High Court and won a favourable verdict. Mary thus introduced herself as a born fighter to all those who met her at Pallikoodam.

Featured in daughter’s book

Mary Roy with a young Arundhati Roy. (C Sunil Kumar/Mathrubhumi)

When The God of Small Things became a global publishing sensation, many people asked Mary whether the central character, Ammu, represented her. There were reasons for the readers to conclude that the novel’s plot had borrowed the trials and tribulations of Mary, who was born in Christian orthodoxy, married a Bengali Hindu, and returned home after divorce, to fiercely engage with prevailing gender-related debates in Kerala.

She told interviewers that Ammu was indeed based on her, and the only exception was that she never had an affair with a low-caste man, as portrayed in the novel. She repeatedly said there was no space for the novel’s protagonist Velutha in her life.

On her part, Arundhati started writing the novel after informing Mary that some parts of the content could hurt her. Mary said she did not read the novel for a long time, until one day her daughter came over and read the book aloud to her.

Mary used to say she was honest to the core, and lived an open life, with barely anything to hide.

Jesus Christ Superstar

On October 15, 1990, Mary Roy organised a mega cultural event at her school Corpus Christi. She trained and prepared over 100 students to stage a version of the 1970 rock opera ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Tim Rice.

Minutes before the staging, she received an order from then Kottayam District Collector Alphonse Kannanthanam banning the staging of the opera as it would hurt Christian sentiments.

The unexpected order caused severe anxiety to Mary and her students. She wondered why the opera hurt Christian sentiments only in Kottayam, while it was getting wide applause among Christians across the globe.

Interestingly, she received support from a radical Christian priest to challenge the collector’s order in courts, and it took 25 years for the courts to term that order invalid.

Kannanthanam, who joined the BJP and became an MP and Union minister after taking VRS from the civil service, faced Mary’s wrath after a district court declared the order null and void in 2015.

“No Christian leader complained about the opera. The order was the culmination of a personal vendetta of Kannanthanam,” she charged. Kannathanam responded by saying he just went with the rule book and no vendetta was involved.

Strife within family

Besides Mary, her elder brother George Isaac — a pickle manufacturer in real life — also figured in the book as a character named Chacko. And she will also be remembered for long for her highly sensational public fights with her elder brother.

She vehemently denied his accusations of accepting exorbitant donations to admit students to the Pallikkodamher school. George said his daughter was thrown out of the school when he refused to pay.

While claiming that all private schools were charging donations from parents, Mary said her school was charging much less than the prevailing standard. She said she had to accept donations to stabilise the school, which has a reputation for high-quality academics.

On the allegation of throwing out her brother’s daughter, she said the trouble began when he created a scene in the school demanding that his daughter be admitted without any payment. She said she asked him to leave with his daughter only when he shouted at a particular person over their refusal to alter the school’s rules.

George was a Rhodes scholar from Oxford, and half of Mary’s prolonged legal battles were against him, as she looked to regain her share of the family property, which included a modest cottage in Udhagamandalam, also known as Ooty.

It was to this cottage that an emotionally-battered Mary returned with two kids in 1963, following the collapse of her marriage to Ranjit Roy, uncle of NDTV chief Prannoy Roy.

Early-life strife

Mary Roy. (C Sunil Kumar/Mathrubhumi)

Mary said she met Ranjit through his elder brother — Prannoy Roy’s father — while working as a secretary at a Kolkata-based company named Metal Box.

She used to claim it was not a love marriage, and she married him to escape her fate in her community. She said her family was least concerned about the inter-religious marriage as it did not involve dowry.

Ranjit hailed from an aristocratic zamindar family in West Bengal. Mary used to cite Ranjit’s alcoholism as the reason for the divorce, and she said he never assaulted her.

There has been no bitterness between them even after separation. She said she never preferred a formal divorce because it was unimportant. Mary had no plans of remarriage.

Due to growing disenchantment with the hilly charms of Ooty, Mary moved back to Kottayam and started her public school. People like Kottayam-based journalist Geetha Bakshi, who knew Mary for a long time, testify that she was embittered and cynical most of the time.

She had a negative impression of men, and always preferred to deny the possibility of a second marriage.

She used to recollect regularly the occasions when her brother forced her and her children to vacate the cottage where they dwelled. According to Mary, even her mother used to live for her sons.

Mary Roy will be buried in her residential compound close to the Pallikoodam school on Friday. In her death, Kerala lost its famous fighter for justice and gender parity.