Patna: A leading heroine of Bollywood has termed as “awful” the refusal of a Jacobite parish in Kerala to bury her grandmother, who was born a Christian.

Madhu Jyotsana Akhauri, maternal grandmother of Priyanka Chopra, died on March 3 at the age of 94 in Mumbai, western India. As she was born Mary John, a member of the Jacobite Church, she had expressed the desire to be buried in St John’s Attamangalam parish in Kumarakom, near Kottayam , where she had been baptized. Her father, who had helped design the church, was buried in the parish cemetery.

When Chopra and her family came down to Kerala for their grandmother’s funeral, the Kumarakom parish refused to bury her in its cemetery citing church rules. The parish officials said the woman had married a Hindu and practiced Hinduism.

“The act of church was awful. But we should not concentrate on it. Rather we should look that we lost a family member,” said Priyanka Chopra told Asia News International in Patna, capital of Bihar where she is on an assignment.

George, a family member, told Asia News International, “Priyanka was raised by this grandmother. The two were very close.”

Akhouri’s cousin Elias Kavalappara said the woman had confessed and even taken Holy Communion in the same church two years back. “I don’t see any reason why she should be denied her last wish. I am not going to take this lying down. This is the 21st century, not some dark age,” he told ndtv.com.

The funeral was finally conducted at another Jacobite church –St Thomas Jacobite Church at Ponkunnam — some 50 km east of Kumarakom, also in Kottayam district.

The Jacobite Church, or the Jacobite Syrian Christian Church, is an autonomous Oriental Orthodox Christian Church. The Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, Ignatius Aphrem II, is its supreme head. It functions as an organized distinct Indian body within the Syriac Orthodox Church.

The Church, which traces its origin to St Thomas the Apostle, is tradition-bound with strict and rigid laws.

The Chopra family members said the elderly woman had not stopped going to church after her marriage to a Hindu doctor in Bihar where she had gone to work as a nurse.

Among prized possessions of the Attamangalam church is a rare painting by Raja Ravi Varma gifted by Akhouri’s family. But she couldn’t find a place to rest beside her father, in the church cemetery.

Church trustee Abraham PV told NDTV, “We could not bury her because after her marriage she lived like a non Christian – like a Hindu. After that she never came back to join us again. If she had given us a petition while she was alive, we would have done everything we could but we can’t help in this after her death.”

According to rules, one has to apply for re-membership in written, which the Chopra family didn’t.

Akhauri was a freedom fighter, social activist and a former legislator.