The expression of female sexuality in India is restricted by community norms and strictly enforced within the family class hierarchies. The Indian marriage norm is monogamy negotiated between the families of the bride and the groom. With exceptions for families with western connections, it is presumed that neither the bride nor the groom should be consulted in these marriage arrangements. These marriages must be within caste and in addition the need of the families to maintain or improve their class standing prohibits the marriage of girls into lower class families. That is, female sexuality may be expressed upward or laterally relative to a bride’s natal family class, but never downward.
The hard-line rules for female sexual expression---enforcement of early marriage for girls, no divorce, and no widow remarriage creates for men a virtual monogamy within their class and caste. Male sexuality does find expression with females of lower class and/or caste. That is, male sex relations outside of marriage with women of lower class or caste is often tolerated. Such outside-of-marriage encounters degrades the woman involved to the bottom of the status ladder, outcasting---social standing about equal to a domesticated animal.
The restricted female expression of sexuality among the Rajputs looks like a severe application of the sexual mores of the English upper middle class in the Victorian age. On the other hand, the freer pattern of female sexuality exemplified in the Nayar taravads has no well-know western equivalent. Nayar females are allowed limited freedom in the expression of their sexuality. The sexual expression allowed Nayar women is best understood in the history of a most important Nayar institution called a taravad---extended matrilineal families resident in a large-home compound.
Patriarchy is evident everywhere in India; we find no evidence that matriarchy has ever prospered. On the other hand, different family structures have persisted in India for centuries. Consider matrilineality versus patrilineality and matrilocality versus patrilocality. As an example of a strong combination of matrilineality and matrilocality we looked at the Nayar caste in Kerala. For an example of a strong combination of patrilineality and patrilocality we looked at the Rajput caste of North India. Both of these land-owning castes contain an internal hierarchy of social-economic classes.
Displaying lineage through the female line---matrilineal decent---is evident; mothers can always be known. In contrast, lineage expressed through the male line, patrilineality, has the potential for error. In order to reduce all chance errors to zero, rigid restrictions on female sexuality are enforced. The patrilineality of the Rajputs accommodates the participation by female elders in marriage arrangements, but otherwise patrilineality disables females---no exercise of feminine wiles, no female divorce, and no female remarriage. Nayar matrilineality enables females in the choice of marriage partners, divorces, remarriages and even polyandry.
As soon as Rajput girls reach menarche they are excluded from public sight and their families earnestly seek to arrange their marriages bargaining with as much dowry as possible. Although restricted by customs of propriety, Nayar girls are allowed to attend school and be seen in public. A Nayar man who finds a girl attractive may approach the girl’s family with a marriage petition. The Rajputs are duty bound to marry every daughter; on the other hand, a Nayar daughter retains her secure place in her mother’s taravad whether married or not.
Within marriage, Rajput daughters are further disabled. The bride moves from her family home to reside with her husband’s family---patrilocality. In her new Rajput home, her status is low, subordinate even to children in the household. Initiatives by the bride are allowed only via her husband, a man she had not met before her wedding day, a man who values his extended family above his wife. She should not talk to and certainly not influence males other than her husband. Visits to or from her mother and her sisters are restricted and may be denied.
In contrast to the disablement of females in Rajput patrilocality, females are empowered by Nayar matrilocality. In Nayar marriages, wives stay within the shelter of their mother’s households {f3} throughout their lives, and husbands continue to live in their mother’s households. A Nayar wife lives with her grand mother, her mother, her aunts, her uncles, her sisters, her brothers, her cousins, and assorted children. These close blood relatives provide a sympathetic reference group empowering a Nayar female at every crossroad throughout her life. A husband is allowed to visit his wife’s family compound and her apartment at her convenience.
Neither the Rajputs nor the Nayars are regarded as the highest Hindu caste. This honor goes to the Brahmins, the exclusive caste of religious teachers. Brahmins do not restrict themselves to religious pursuits and have an internal class system somewhat like the Rajputs. As far back as written history will carry us, there has been in Kerala a caste of super Brahmins known as Nambudiris or Nambudiri Brahmins. Nambudiris practiced an extreme form of primogeniture. Only the eldest son was permitted to marry.
This practice of first-son-only marriage produces a number of sons and daughters who may not marry. Excess daughters were relegated to a long life as virgins unseen outside their household compounds. Excess sons could not cross caste barriers to marry lower caste daughters, but liaisons with Nayar females was permitted. These liaisons between Nambudiri men and Nayar women were essentially the same (from the Nayar point of view), as the marriage of a female into a higher Nayar class. That is, the children of Nambudiri men and Nayar women belonged to the Nayar mother and her taravad. The Nambudiri fathers of children by Nayar women had no claim to these children and no ascribed responsibility for them. (Jeffrey)
We turn now to the population-growth effects of the differences in the expression of female sexuality among the Rajputs and the Nayars within their respective class hierarchies. Among the highest classes of the Nayars a few daughters entered into marriages with Nambudiri sons. At each step going down the Nayar class hierarchy, a potential for a few daughters to marry up was created. In addition, a girl might choose to not marry at all, (Raju) further reducing the number of girls who must find husbands. Available daughters were valuable tavarad assets---a potential for improvement of the status of the family class up the Nayar hierarchy.
With no upward possibilities for daughters at the top of the Rajput class hierarchy and almost no allowance for non-marriage, the Rajput class-improving strategy became more sons. Families with wealth impoverished themselves by paying large dowries to marry their daughters up. Higher ranking families replenished their wealth by accepting daughters and wealth from lower class families. As a family planning problem, the recognized strategy was more sons. Within the Rajput caste, the more-sons solution (by means of less daughters) long ago became female infanticide. (Vishwanath) In the twentieth century, excessive mortality of little girls in now accomplished by food, health care, and education discrimination against girl children. (girl child neglect)
The effect of the Rajput, less-daughters strategy, was first noted in the ratio of females/males in the surviving populations in the states where the Rajputs have dominated. In addition, the effect of the less-daughters strategy is further revealed in the abnormally high death rates of Rajput girls ages 0 to 10 as contrasted to the death rates of Rajput boys ages 0 to 10. This abnormally high death rate for girls found in lesser degrees throughout the India (excepting Kerala), called fatal daughter syndrome, accounts for the long-time decline in the Indian ratio of females to males.
The Rajput solution to a perceived excess-daughter problem (when emulated by other communities and localities throughout India) is a fundamental cause for slow improvement of well-being in India. The crucial social-psychological question in this account becomes: What are the effects on millions of Rajput and other caste daughters who struggle and survive deprivations of food, health care, and other needs---deprivations not experienced by their brothers? We argue that the capacity of these girls to bond with other humans is impaired. This impairment limits their influence in the application of female skills (efficiencies in the use of limited resources) to the human life processes creating well-being for others.