21 Kinship in India

Sutapa Majumdar

epgp books

 

Introduction: What the module aims to highlight

 

This module is a sincere attempt to document a holistic understanding of the kinship system in India highlighting the concept and definitions of the kinship system as discussed by various scholars engaged in the understanding of the kinship pattern in India. It becomes quite obvious that the structure of the kinship system in India would be as diverse and complex as the country and hence it becomes a very challenging task to bring together the different perspectives of kinship. Kinship has been studied in detail by both, anthropologists and sociologists although their approach is quite different. There are two main approaches to study the kinship system in India- Indological, which has provided a framework to understand the elements of continuity and change in the system and anthropological- basically understanding kinship through descent and alliance. Following the same framework, this module too starts with a very broad understanding of the terminologies associated with the kinship system, moving to how the kinship system is grouped in four zones- east, west, north and south and what the specificity of the kinship structure in these four zones is. Moving further, the module highlights specific cases whereby, once again the complexities and significance of the kinship system in different parts of the country is discussed. The module ends with how kinship is still important in today’s time when the institutions of family, marriage and kinship are undergoing a sea of change. This section basically brings out the new trends of kinship study.

 

The entire module is divided into four main sections and each of the sections is closely connected with the others so as to maintain a steady continuity.

 

Kinship concepts and kinship terminologies:

 

Kinship and related concepts are interesting areas of exploration in social science research. Although kinship has been studied in detail by anthropologists and cultural studies scholars, it is quite a different scholarship as far as the study of kinship in sociology is concerned. Kinship reflects social classification and behaviour along with different social patterns. Different parts of the world have different kinship terminologies and variations, yet very interestingly we can find several common grounds as far as the kinship structure is concerned globally. Here we are specifically going to discuss the kinship patterns in India.

 

Now for analytical purposes, the question we may ask is who is a Kin and how is the Kin related to the kinship system. The first person implied in any kinship terms is the speaker, Ego on kinship charts. The last or (the nth) person is the referent. Universally, the first and the immediate sets of kinship can be between two persons: man’s father, woman’s daughter, man’s sister, etc. The exact description of other kinship positions, however, may require specification of an indefinite number of intervening relatives. These may be designated as the second, third, fourth . . . n-1 persons of kinship terminology. In addition, kinship terms also define the biological or quasi-biological relationship between the persons, essentially three in number: (1) biological generation, i.e., parent, child, and the derivative “child of my parent” or sibling; (2) mating or marriage, and (3) accidentals, divorce, and adoption). Within the kinship system, each person may be described in terms of sex; each relationship may be described in terms of relative sex, and some relationships (namely, those within the same generation) may be described in terms of relative age. Finally, various combinations of relationships may be defined as constituting kinship sets. Each of these sets may be further subdivided through specification of the sex, relative sex, or relative age of the various persons involved (Edmonson, 1957).

 

Kinship systems have often been theorized as classification systems and even as grammars. As a classificatory technology, kinship can be mobilized to signify not only specific kinds of connections and inclusions but also specific kinds of disconnections and exclusions. Since relations of power are central to the articulation of such classificatory moves, kinship also speaks of the possibilities for equality, hierarchy, and violence and together define and defy other categories of relation, including genders, sexualities, races, species, machines, nature, and culture ( Mckinnon & Franklin, 2000).

 

Malinowski (1930) in his paper on ‘Kinship’ opines that kinship presents several facets corresponding to the various phases or stages of its development within the life history of the individual. He believes that kinship is attached to one’s life since birth and continues till the end just like the way the word ‘mother’ is uttered first and is often the last word uttered. The original ties of kinship, according to Malinowski, is individual, which later develop, multiply and become largely communal so much so that at the end, the individual finds himself at the centre of a complex system of multiple ties; a member of several groups: the family, always; the extended household, in many communities; the local group, almost invariably; the clan, very often; and the tribe, without any exception.

 

Barnard & Good (1984), while defining ‘kinship relationship’, discuss the following conditions. Though, they believe that these attributes are not fixed and the definition can include many more characteristics. It is like an open ended checklist and further items could be added as required.

  • ascribed by birth and persist throughout life
  • initiated by marriage
  • explained or justified in terms of a biological idiom
  • create expectations regarding conduct
  • constitute an ‘in’ group or category, in opposition to those not so assigned
  • involve use of relationship terms in a reciprocal, systematic way
  • involve members of a single domestic unit or household
  • involve systematic, enduring relationships between domestic units or households
  • entail joint ownership, and/or use, and/or serial inheritance, of resources
  • serve as a medium for assigning hereditary social positions
  • assign responsibility for the nurture and upbringing of children
  • involve making presentations without expectation of immediate or direct return.

 

Needmen (1973), defines kinship as a social phenomenon which can be manifested at several different levels simultaneously. Thus, it consists of a set of ideas, a set of rules, and a range of behaviour, i.e., it has categorical, jural, and behavioural aspects.

  • The categorical level comprises of the ways people talk and think about kinship. This is largely taken for granted and is implicit. People use its categories, but cannot necessarily define them and are not required to do so in the normal course of events. The relationship terminology is the most obvious example.
  • The jural level comprises of the laws, customs, rules, and values which collectively represent society’s ideals about kinship. Jural rules are phrased in terms of the categories, but unlike them they are explicit, subject to disagreement, and can be broken. Marriage preferences are among the most studied phenomena of this type, but all statements about what ‘should’ or ‘ought to’ be done are included.
  • The behavioural level consists of what people actually do. Behaviour can be looked at in two ways: collective or statistical behaviour, e.g. marriage or divorce rates; and there is individual practice. Behaviour and jural rules are inter-related in a complex way, but two points are crucial: (i) rules do not necessarily determine behaviour and are just as likely to serve to justify it; (ii) consequently, behaviour which ‘obeys’ the rules is every bit as problematic as behaviour which ‘breaks’ them.

 

In defining kinship, D.N. Majumdar (Sharma, 2007) said, “in all societies people are bound together in groups by various kinds of bonds. The most universal and the most basic of these bonds is that which is based on reproduction, an inherent human drive and is called kinship.” Kinship is defined as a social relationship based upon family relations. The nature of this relationship can be both conjugal or affinal – that is based on marriage and consanguineal- which is based on the ties of blood (Theodorson and Theodorson, 1969 in Ahuja, 2012). Kinship system is referred to as a structured system of statuses and roles and of relationship in which the kin (primary, secondary, tertiary and distant) are bound to one another by complex interlocking ties. Kinship is one of the very important institutions of Indian family tradition. People turn to their kin for various reasons. Kinship system may also be defined as a “the customary system of statuses and roles that governs the behaviour of people who are related to each other through marriage or descent from a common ancestor” (Ahuja, 2012). Murdock, 1949 defines kinship system as a structured relationship in which kin are bound to one another by complex inter-locking ties. The kinship terminologies may be elementary in form, that is, which cannot reduced to other terms, derivative which is compounded from the elementary form, descriptive in nature, which combines two or more elementary terms and classificatory which is applied to persons of two or more kinship categories.

 

Kinship Groups in India:

 

Kinship groups play a very important role in the daily life, rituals and social ceremonies of the Hindus. In order to better understand the structure of the kinship system in India, it is necessary to divide the country into four zones to understand the complexity of the kinship system. Iravati Karve (1953) while discussing the kinship features of the Indian society divides the entire country in terms of language and topographical features-north, south, east and west. To put it in a slightly different way, we can also divide the entire nation under three broad kinship groups: Indo-Aryan (in the north, a subset of Indo-European), Dravidian (largely in the south) and Munda (central and eastern, affiliated with the larger Austro Asiatic family (Trautmann, 2000).

 

The Dravidian system holds a very important place as far as the study of the kinship system is concerned. Various studies bring out the fact that the Dravidian system in India goes back well over a thousand years in the written record. The Dravidian system of India is relatively resistant to changes beyond fairly simple transformations of the basic pattern. It is in fact quite conservative in its practices and functioning so much so that people who no longer speak Dravidian languages may not understand the kinship pattern at all. In this zone, the kinship system is relatively a complicated structure whereby both patrilineal and patrilocal and matrilineal and matrilocal dominates the family, caste and community equally. The important features of the Dravidian kinship patterns are:

  • In matrilineal camp all property belongs to the women- wife and the mother.
  • Each clan possesses a name of some animal or plant or some other object.
  • A person can only marry outside one’s own clan.
  • In marriages, the families exchange daughters.
  • Marriage between children of two sisters not permissible.
  • In a southern family, there is no clear cut distinction between family of birth and family of marriage.
  • No special norms of behaviour are applicable to married girls in the south.
  • Marriage does not symbolise women’s separation from the father’s house.

 

While discussing the Dravidian Kinship system, it becomes absolutely necessary to bring in the views of Dumont and Trautmann who are regarded as the most authoritative on the subject. Both of them characterize the system with reference to both the categorical and the jural levels.

 

Dumont (1953) defines the Dravidian Kinship system, “as combination of configuration of four principles of opposition: distinction of generation…, distinction of sex, distinction of kin identical with alliance relationship, and distinction of age. [Moreover,] the system embodies a sociological theory of marriage… and supposes—as well as favours—the rule of marrying a cross cousin.”

 

Trautmann (1981), while defining Dravidian Kinship system, includes sex, generation, relative age and crossness as important parameters. For him, the kinship system is a social organisation bounded by rules – the rules of cross cousin marriage.

 

Contrary to this view, Anthony Good (1996) argues that there is no such thing as the Dravidian Kinship System. This view of his is posited after deep engagement with the Dravidian Kinship system. Through his prolonged study of the community he concluded that there is no such thing as the Dravidian Kinship System because of the following reasons:

 

1.Empirically, the great majority of Dravidian speakers in South Asia do not have a Dravidian kinship system as conventionally defined. Neither the relationship terminology nor the preferential marriage rules are in fact as they have been conventionally represented.

 

2. Taxonomically, “the Dravidian kinship system” forms one element in an inadequately constructed typology of kinship systems.

 

3. Theoretically, the notion of a “kinship system” leads to an overly static analysis, and involves an unacceptable degree of reification.

 

Turning to the Indo-Aryan system of India, embracing the vast population of North India, unlike the Dravidian system, the Indo-Aryan system appears to be structured by the opposition of wife-givers and wife- takers, which differentiates the affine of one side from those of the other; and these are governed by a logic such that a giver of a giver is a giver, the taker of a taker is a taker, but the giver of a taker or a taker of a giver is a consanguine, i.e. a brother or sister (Trautmann, 2000). In the northern zone, the important features of kinship organization are as follows:

  • Kins junior are addressed by their personal names and senior to ego by their kinship term.
  • All children are equated with one’s own sibling group and all children of one’s sibling group are again equated with one’s own children.
  • The principle of unity of generation is observed, that is, both great grandfather and grandfather are given the same respect as the father.
  • Within the same generation older and the younger kin are kept distinct.
  • Duties and behaviour patterns of members of three generations are strictly regulated.
  • Marriage among close kin is not permitted.

The salient features of kinship organization of central India are not very different from northern India. The important features are:

  • Consanguinity is the main consideration for marriage.
  • Castes are divided into exogamous clans and arranged in hypergamous hierarchy.
  • The relationship between kin are governed by custom of ‘Neota-gifts’, according to which cash gift given is equal to cash gift received.

 

In the central part of the country, cross cousin marriage is not allowed; all consanguine of ego’s generation are called brothers and sisters. Marriage alliances are, nevertheless, repeated, but only with a one or three generation delay, that is, with more distant (second or fourth) cousins, who are not classed as brother and sister.

 

In eastern India kinship organization is different. The kinship organization here has no pattern. Mostly tribal in form, cross cousin marriages are rarely practiced, though bride price is common. After marriage a man lives in a separate household detached from parental dwellings.

 

 

Kinship functions in different parts of India:

 

In the following section, we will discuss how kinship prevails and functions in different parts of the country as argued by eminent sociologists and anthropologists.

 

Leela Dube (2000), in her paper on kinship and gender brings out the complex interplay of gender and kinship, drawing from her own life experiences. She quite clearly discusses how the roles and function of each and every member of the family was fixed and also quite gendered in nature. Her mother, whom she believed to be a progressive women of her time, carried out all duties of a mother and a wife as prescribed but also showed the way to a new ways of living, not shunning the existing system. For example, while imparting adequate training in housework to girl children, to make the girls ready for marriage; she also asserted that she wouldn’t like to be too strict with her daughters about the training, as no one could confirm the fate of her daughters after their marriage. In another instance, Dube discusses how she and her sisters were constantly reminded by their mothers not to fight over petty issues as a time may come when they might not even get a chance to see each other post their marriage. Yet in another instance, she discusses how her family didn’t resist her decision of marrying a man who didn’t belong to her community, Maharashtrian Brahmin, but was a Brahmin of a Hindi speaking community. All these instances bring out very clearly the rules of the kinship system, how one is bounded by the rules of kinship system and also the possibility of negotiation with the kinship system.

 

Madsen (1991) while discussing the Kinship structure in the Northern parts of the country, specifically amongst the Jats of Western Uttar Pradesh, discusses how the hypergamous stylisation of the wife-takers are considered superior and the wife- givers as inferiors in these parts of the country. Here, the notion of equality among kinship clan pervades the whole culture and a strong sense of brotherhood prevails. The kinship clan functions both on hierarchical and egalitarian values. Rules of marriage are quite strict here. Men and women of the same clan cannot marry each other as they are thought to be brothers and sisters. The Jats community observes certain marriage prohibitions to ensure that clans and khaps remain of equal rank despite the inequality generated by a marriage. Exchange of brides between two families in a reversible pattern is prohibited as it creates an alliance based on equality between two families. This could lead to the formation of closed groups exchanging brides among themselves weakening “loyalty” to the clan (Milner, 1988). To further ensure that marriages do not result in inequalities, the Jats adhere to the “four gotra rule.” This rule prohibits marriage between a boy and a girl who share any of the gotras of their father, mother, father’s mother or mother’s mother. The Jat kinship system has a certain internal consistency. The marriage prohibitions are mechanisms to regulate marriages to ensure inter-alia clan equality by putting a brake on both exchange marriages which may lead to the formation of closely related elite clans, and on repetitive unidirectional marriages which may create a hierarchical system of hypergamous clans.

 

While discussing the kinship ties amongst the Santal community in a village called Chuapara, in Dumka district, Jharkhand, India, Nitya Rao (2005), discusses the processes by which kinship relations, particularly patrilineages, are being strengthened amongst the Santal community in the village. Here the kinship relations are being reformulated in context of the struggle for a separate state of Jharkhand, emphasising on a tribal/adivasi identity. Kinship operates here in gendered ways in distributing resources and organizing work, time, and space (Dube 1997). Women here for the first time ever demanded for universal land rights which was bestowed on them in the year 1996 amidst a lot of chaos and conflict. Kinship in this community transmits both identity and resources. Kin groups have played an important role in legitimizing access to land and ensuring social agreement. Women have come in the forefront to protect their rights and are actively engaging with external state sources of legitimacy.

 

De Neve (2008), in the paper on Kinship and its morality in an urban industry in Tamil Nadu discusses the role of kinship and kin morality in contexts of work. The paper focuses on the ambivalent nature of kin morality when mobilised outside the household and the family. Ethnographic evidence shows how employers frequently invoke the morality of kinship and caste in an attempt to secure a reliable and compliant labour force and to avoid overt class confrontation.

 

However, employers’ efforts to promote kinship-real or fictive-and its morality in the workplace appear inadequate in the face of high labour turnover and frequently collapsing employer-worker relationships in small-scale industries. While employers’ repeated use of kin ideology succeeds in silencing the workers on the shop floor, it is much less effective in securing a stable labour force in the long run. The argument put forward in the paper points out the limitations of kin morality, and questions its effectiveness in informal contexts of labour employment. The discussion sheds new light on the role of caste and kinship in recruiting, retaining and disciplining labour in India’s informal economy.

 

New direction towards kinship studies.

 

In looking at emerging trends in the kinship and kinship studies, it can be said that there is now a trend towards the transformations of analytic concepts of kinship. Kinship at present times is constructed in a diverse fashion and the usage of kinship is widespread and not merely restricted to family, marriage, clan and caste. The broader definition of the kinship system entails trans- national, trans- cultural and cross border meaning and practices. Kinship now moves beyond ‘biology’ and being a ‘natural fact’ to a more complex interplay of surrogacy, egg donation, assisted conception, and cloning. Kinship is also understood in the context of genetic counselling, the Human Genome Diversity Project, and biomedicine. Further, Kinship is examined through photography, computerized artificial-life modelling, and claims to knowledge as intellectual property. While examining the historical and contemporary entanglements of the cultural meanings of blood, seed, lineage, and evolutionary inheritance—and the ways in which these are mobilized to create the inclusions and exclusions, an urgency is felt for a new understanding of the kinship pattern ( McKinnon & Franklin, 2000).

 

DID YOU KNOW?

 

1. Kinship is one of the universal phenomenon in human society and therefore plays an important role in both the regulation of behavior and the formation of social groups

 

2. The use of the term “system” implies that there is a complex relation of interdependence between the component parts: the social categories and the associated rights and duties.

 

3. In all societies, kinship is marked by a set of relationship terms that define the universe of kin and that may be extended metaphorically to nonkin and even to various aspects of the world of nature.

 

4. In England and Malinowski and Radcliff Brown have been crucial to the study of kinship system like Louis Dumont and Leela Dube in India

 

5. Kinship is one of the universal phenomenon in human society and therefore plays an important role in both the regulation of behavior and the formation of social groups

you can view video on Kinship in India

WEB LINKS:

  • http://nsdl.niscair.res.in/jspui/bitstream/123456789/239/1/4.5Indian%20social%20system_nilika.pdf
  • http://www.jstor.org/stable/27503827
  • http://www.jstor.org/stable/40661793

 

REFERENCES:

  •  A.J. Barnard and A. Good (1984): Research Practices in the Study of Kinship; London: Academic Press.
  • Dube, Leela. (1997): Women and kinship: comparative perspectives on gender in South and South-East Asia. Tokyo: United Nations University Press
  • Dube, Leela (2000): Doing Kinship and Gender: An Autobiographical Account; Vol. 35, No. 46 (Nov. 11-17, 2000), pp. 4037-4047; Economic and Political Weekly
  • Dumont, Louis (1981). Affinity as a Value. Chicago University Press.
  • Edmonson, M. S. (1957): Kinship Terms and Kinship Concepts; American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Jun., 1957), pp. 393-433; the American Anthropological Association.
  • Geert de Neve (2008): ‘We Are All Sondukarar (Relatives)!’: Kinship and Its Morality in an Urban Industry of Tamilnadu, South India; Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 42, No. 1, Indian Labour (Jan., 2008), pp. 211-246.
  • Good, A. (1996): On the Non-Existence of “Dravidian Kinship”; Edinburgh Papers In South Asian Studies.
  • Milner, Murray, Jr. (1988): Status Relations in South Asian Marriage Alliances: Toward a General Theory. Contributions to Indian Sociology.
  • Nitya Rao (2005): Kinship Matters: Women’s Land Claims in the Santal Parganas, Jharkhand; The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Dec., 2005), pp.725-746
  • R. Needham (1973). ‘Prescription,’ Oceania 42: 166–81
  • Sarah Franklin and Susan McKinnon (2000): New Directions in Kinship Study: A Core Concept Revisited; Vol. 41, No. 2 (April 2000), pp. 275-279; Current Anthropology.
  • Stig Toft Madsen (1991): Clan, Kinship, and Panchayat Justice among the Jats of Western Uttar Pradesh; the American Anthropological Association.
  • T.R. Trautmann (1981). Dravidian Kinship. Cambridge University Press
  • T. R. Trautmann (2000): India and the Study of Kinship Terminologies; , No. 154/155, Question de parenté (Apr. – Sep., 2000), pp. 559-571Published by: EHESSS.