Families in India

Indian census data allows us to identify districts with low and very low female/male ratios caused by fatal daughter syndrome.  We may look within these districts to observe an all-pervasive class system marked by the ranking of the extended families which characterize the Hindu culture. That is, the extended families are the repositories of social power, economic power, and political power---a combination of powers rank ordered in the comprehensive hierarchical family systems of India.  All are strongly patriarchical (excepting the weak patriarchy of Kerala).

These Indian class ranked families are integral to the Hindu caste system. Muslims and Christians living in the same localities are accorded a kind of proportional class standing within the overall Hindu culture. Those districts with the lowest female sex ratios are clustered in the northern states adjacent to New Delhi where the dominant land owning caste is often the Rajputs. Although Rajputs are not the dominant caste in a majority of India census districts, naming a caste is important because marriages are not allowed (by hard-line religious and social traditions) across caste lines or into the Muslim or Christian communities.

The class hierarchy of the extended families among the Rajputs is replicated within the many castes and sub-castes. That is, a highest-ranking (dominant) caste sets a pattern of family behavior which is emulated by other castes (also Muslims and Christians) in the locality or region. This commentary on the family class system is offered here in a generalized form affording only a background for the relevant marriage and family life practices in India outside the special case, Kerala.

Among the Rajputs (and the customs established within other patriarchical castes) the purity of the male lineage, father to son, is a highest value consistently protected. Systematic suppression of female sexuality is the patriarchical method for maintaining male-lineage purity. The sexuality (physical beauty, demeanor, manners, and skills) of a female may be her means of self expression (thus a part of her power relative to others, particularly males). This sexuality is suppressed by family institutions, disempowering females. Although more extreme in India, the struggles of females to circumvent such disempowerment in western patriarchical families have been a familiar plot central in countless novels in the West. In India every opportunity for expression of each female’s sexuality, excepting only in her husband’s bed, is circumscribed or denied.

All marriages are arranged by family elders; girls are seldom allowed any role in these negotiations. Maintaining and improving the class status of the family is seen as the central goal of each marriage plan. The maintenance of her husband’s family line is the brides opportunity and destiny. The arranged marriages of the royal and other high-ranking families of Europe generally had this family power function.

The basic marriage rule is: outside of family and within caste. The critical problem in marriage arrangements flows from the need to maintain or improve the class standing of the extended family. If a daughter should be married into a family lower in the class ranking, the daughter’s birth family looses status. On the other hand, a son may marry down provided the bride’s family can afford a large dowry. Inasmuch as class ranking is based on the somewhat interchangeable elements of wealth and social power, a significant infusion of wealth into the groom’s extended family could maintain or even improve a family’s class ranking.

As we compare the Kerala family structures, it will become important to note that at marriage in North India the bride moves into the household of her husband. The daughter-in-law arrives as the least significant member of her new family---an obedient slave to her husband and his mother. She is also cut off from her birth family by distance and restricted visiting customs. As an outsider in her new extended family, she may be denied female support, and may exercise influence in family decisions only through the intervention of her husband acting on her behalf. Even here she is disempowered. Husbands are discouraged from forming affectionate bonds with their wives---such attachments diminish a husband’s allegiance to the family patriarch and attention to his first responsibility---the extended family.

Years may pass before the bride’s status may be secured by the birth of sons bonded to her and acting on her behalf. Before puberty daughters are helpful to mothers, but at marriage their value to their natal household disappears as they devote themselves to their husband’s welfare producing sons for the benefit of his family lineage and caring for his parents. Anthropologists have a word for this female disempowering family structure, hypergamy---brides marrying socially and economically upward within caste into more esteemed extended families requiring compensation for what would otherwise be a misalliance.

Within the powerful Indian family customs, the failure of a family to arrange the marriage of their daughter brings shame on her natal family and serious loss of family status. In spite of legal allowance for divorce and regardless of the cause, if a daughter should be divorced, irrespective of cause, she may not be accepted back by her natal family.

One student of North Indian families (Luschinsky) has described with feeling the terrible dilemma internalized by Indian women.

When Bipat's mother gave birth to a fourth son, a Thakur women who was among the first to hear passed the word to others. Her broad smile spoke for itself before she related the news and said, "Every time a boy is born in the village, I feel happy. The whole day I can't think of anything else, I feel just as happy as I would feel if a boy were born in my own family." This same women looked very downcast when a baby girl was born in her family not long afterward. Far more girls than boys had been born in her family in recent years, and the financial burden of their marriages was telling on the family reserve. They longed for more male members of the family, but their wishes were not being fulfilled.   On day this Thakur women held her baby grand daughter up in the air and said, "Now she should die. I tell her she should die. She is growing bigger and soon there will be the problem of finding a husband for her. For the last five days, my nephew, has been wandering here and there in search for grooms for Tara and Kishora. It’s a great worry." Often when she thought of the consequences of another female member of the family, she spoke in this way, but always in her personal relations with the baby, she was loving and affectionate. If the baby were to die, the grandmother would be greatly affected by the loss. No one could doubt this. But a baby girl is not just a person in her own right. She is also a member of her sex group and she places upon her parents many obligations and responsibilities. The family system of India causes families, especially families near the top of the status hierarchy, to need more sons. The traditional solution has been less daughters---female infanticide in the nineteenth century and girl child neglect in the twentieth century. As the number of status striving families has increased in the twentieth century, the pressure for more sons has increased. Increasing fatal daughter syndrome has caused the abnormal decline of the female/male ratio throughout the twentieth century.

(Families in Kerala) (Directory)  March 20, 2000