K. Sankaran, J.

1. The longstanding disputes between two sections of the Malankara Jacobite Syrian Christian community relating to the right to the possession and management of certain trust properties endowed for the benefit of the Malankara Jacobite Syrian Church and community, led to the institution of the present suit which has given rise to this appeal.

2. Plaintiffs 1 to 3, claiming to be properly and legally elected trustees entitled to the possession and management of the trust properties, instituted the suit for recovery of possession of the properties from defendants 1 to 3, on the allegation that they have gone out of the Church and are in wrongful possession of the trust properties. Even apart from the position of the plaintiffs as trustees, they sought to sustain their claim for recovery of the properties as members of the community suing with the sanction of the court under R.8 of O.1 of the Code of Civil Procedure. The suit was instituted in the year 1938 and after an elaborate and protracted trial the first court dismissed the suit in the year 1943. The present appeal is by the plaintiffs against that decision. A Full Bench of the Travancore High Court which heard the appeal allowed it by a majority of 2:1, on the 8th August 1946. That decision is reported in 1946 Travancore Law Reports 683. The defendants respondents filed a petition on 22nd August 1946 seeking a review of that judgment. A Full Bench of the Travancore Cochin High Court heard that application and it was dismissed on 21st December 1951. The respondents application for leave to the Supreme Court was also rejected. But special leave was granted by the Supreme Court and accordingly the respondents preferred an appeal to the Supreme Court against the order dismissing the review petition. Ultimately the Supreme Court allowed that appeal and accepted the review petition and set aside the decree dated 8th August 1946 passed by the Travancore High Court allowing this appeal. The case was remitted to the High Court with the direction that the entire appeal should be reheard on all the points unless both the parties accept any of the findings recorded in the earlier decision. There has been no such agreement by the parties, but on the other hand they have chosen to argue afresh all the points involved in the appeal. The grounds raised in the appeal memorandum and those raised in the memorandum of objections filed on behalf of the respondents, cover the entire field of controversy in the suit.

3. For a clear understanding of the important points that arise for decision in this appeal it is necessary to briefly advert to the contentions of the parties. According to the plaintiffs all the properties scheduled to the plaint are trust properties endowed to the Malankara Jacobite Syrian Church and they have to be managed by three trustees of whom one is to be Metropolitan, and the others, a clergyman and a respectable lay member of the Church to be elected by the Church. The Patriarch of Antioch is the ecclesiastical head of the Malankara Jacobite Syrian Church, and only a person duly ordained by the Patriarch or his delegate and accepted by the Malankara Jacobite Syrian community could become the Malankara Metropolitan. This position has all along been accepted by the community and affirmed by the decisions of courts, the earliest of such decisions being the decision of Travancore Royal Court of Final Appeal in S. A. No. 3 of 1061. Copy of the judgment in that case has been produced and marked as Ext. DY. That decision was in favour of Mar Joseph Dionysius who had been ordained and appointed as Malankara Metropolitan by the Patriarch of Antioch and who had been accepted by the community. The trust properties involved in that suit were recovered by him from Mar Thomas Athanasius, who had claimed himself to be the Malankara Metropolitan in defiance of the authority of the Patriarch of Antioch over the Malankara Church. Mar Joseph Dionysius along with two ot