TERZIARI CARMELITANI SCALZI SIROMALABARESI. – The first indigenous congregation of East India, founded in 1831 at Mannanam (Malabar) by the priests Tomaso Palakal and Tomaso Porukara, under the name “Servants of Mary Immaculate of Mount Carmel,” later changed to its present title. On 1 October 1860 they were aggregated to the Carmelite Order.
Purpose: educational activity through schools and colleges of every level, through preaching, and through the press (in 1846 they opened one of the first printing presses using the Syro-Malabar language), disseminating Catholic thought. They received definitive approval in 1906, and now number 433 religious in 29 houses, all in India. The mother house is at Ernakulam.
BIBL.: C. J. Varley, The Syrian Carmelite congreg. in Malabar, in Cath. Direct. of. India, Madras 1920, pp. 13-27; P. Guglielmus, The Carmelite Congr. of Malabar, Trichinopoly 1932.