Lineage and descent in India

Lineage or descent is a concept of kinship in which name and property gets transferred from one generation to another through known ancestors

There are two types of patrilineal rules:

1. Dayabhaga law - son has right in the property by the virtue of their birth ever when father is alive. Assam and Bengal.

2. Mitakshara law - where son can only get share in property when father is dead. Rest of India.

Types of kinship systems

Kinship system refers to a set of persons recognized as relatives either by virtue of a blood (consanguinity) or marriage (affinity) relationship.

Iravati Karve – first systematic attempt to classify and compare kinship system;

1. North zone – Indo-European languages

2. South zone – Dravidian languages

3. Central zone – zone of transition

4. Eastern zone – Austro-Asiatic languages

Kinship system in north India

Kinship groups

1. Patrilineage – Unilineal descent groups. Mostly patrilineal.

1. Cooperation – patrilineage cooperate in ritual and economic activities.

2. Conflict – T. N. Madan shows how in Kashmir village rivalry among brothers leads to partition of the joint family

3. Inheritance of status and property – patrilineal mode of inheritance

2. Clan – lineage is an exogamous unit. A larger exogamous unit is called the clan. Among Hindus this category is known as gotra.

3. Caste and sub-caste – exogamous groups.

4. Fictive kin – people who are not related either by descent or marriage form the bonds of fictive kinship with each other.

Kinship terminology

1. Descriptive nature of Indian kinship terms:

2. Social behaviour:

3. Kinship term signifying social behaviour:

Marriage rules

People know whom not to marry. There are negative rules of marriage.

1. Clan exogamy:

2. The four clan rule:

1. His father’s gotra

2. His mother’s gotra

3. His father’s mother’s gotra

4. His mother’s mother’s gotra

3. Marriages within the sub-caste:

1. The rule of hypergamy - woman is always given to the family, which is placed in the house above her own.

2. The rule of no reversal - implies negative rule of prohibition with matrilateral cross-cousins. Man cannot marry his father’s sister’s daughter.

3. The rule of no repetition – if father’s sister has been married in a family, one’s own sister cannot be given in marriage to that same family. Implies negative rule of prohibition with matrilateral cross-cousins. A man cannot marry his mother’s brother’s daughter.

Ceremonial exchange of gifts among skins

Louis Dumont points out that Mother’s brother (uterine kin) and wife’s brother (affinal kin) has similar ceremonial functions.

Wife’s brother after few years becomes mother’s brother to the children; hence there is little difference between the two.

Kinship system in south India

Kinship groups

Mainly categorized in 2 groups;

1. Patrilineage – ties of descent and residence help in formation of kin group. Recognized both in south and north India.

2. Affines – related through marriage. The nature of interaction between a patrilineage and affine as described by Dumont is always cordial and friendly.

Indirect pangali – if a group A is one’s patrilineage and group B is affine then member of group C which are affine of group B will become classificatory brothers to people in group A called pangali.

Kinship terminology

Clear cut structure with a great deal of precision.

Main features as per Louis Dumont are;

1. It distinguishes between parallel and cross cousins:

2. Classificatory nature of kinship terminology:

1. Parallel cousins

2. Cross cousins

Marriage rules

Positive rules of marriage.

3 types of preferential marriage rules;

1. Man with his elder sister’s daughter

2. The rule of return - Man with his father’s sister’s daughter

3. The rule of no return or the rule of repetition - Man with his mother’s brother’s daughter

Restrictions regarding marital alliances:

1. In certain castes a man can marry elder sister’s daughter but not younger sister’s daughter.

2. A widow cannot marry his deceased husband’s elder or younger or even his classificatory brother.

3. A person cannot marry in one’s own immediate family and lineage.

Ceremonial exchange of gifts among skins

Gifts can be distinguished in two categories;

1. From bride’s family to groom’s family or the reverse. Between affines.

2. Within each of the two groups. Internal exchange of gifts.

Because of positive rules of marriage often certain individuals are placed in the positions of receivers and givers at the same time. There is a merging of relationships.

Comparisons of north and south Indian kinship systems

Differences

Similarities

1. Caste and kinship inextricably intertwined. The notion of purity and pollution influences the kinship system

2. Unilineality of the two kinship systems

3. According to Louis Dumont, the very recognition of the distinction between bride-givers and bride-takers across north and south India shows the basic similarity in the kinship systems.

Family and marriage in India

Family

Compositional aspect - group comprising of parent and children. In some cases patrilineage or matrilineage or a group of cognates.

Residential aspect - usually share a common residence.

Relational aspect - reciprocal rights and duties towards each other.

Types of family – Pauline Kolenda

1. Nuclear family – couple with or without children

2. Supplemented nuclear family – nuclear family along one or more unmarried, separated or widowed relatives of the parents other than their unmarried children

3. Sub-nuclear family – fragment of a former nuclear family

4. Single person household

5. Supplemented sub-nuclear family – group of relatives, members of a formerly nuclear family along with some other unmarried, divorced or widowed relative who were not a member of the nuclear family

6. Collateral joint family – 2 or more married couples between whom there is a sibling bond

7. Supplemented collateral joint family – collateral joint family along with unmarried, divorced or widowed relatives.

8. Lineal joint family – 2 couples between whom there is a lineal link.

9. Supplemented lineal joint family – lineal joint family along with unmarried, divorced or widowed relatives who do not belong to either of the lineally linked nuclear families.

10. Lineal collateral joint family – 3 or more couples are linked lineally and collaterally

11. Supplemented lineal collateral joint family – lineal collateral joint family along with unmarried, divorced or widowed relatives who belong to one of the nuclear families.

12. Residual class

Nature of joint family:

1. What constitutes joint family:

1. Commensality

2. Common residence

3. Join ownership of property / coparcenary

4. Cooperation and sentiment

5. Ritual bond

2. Who constitute a joint family:

1. Kin relationship between the members

2. Number of generations in one unit

3. Sharing of common property

Inapplicability of the ideal of joint family living:

1. Demographic factor

2. Economic factors

3. Role of women

4. Mobility

Factors of change and process of disintegration of the joint family:

1. Economic factors

2. Educational factors

3. Legal factors

4. Urbanization

Factors of change leading to reinforcement of joint family:

1. Joint family ethic – K. M. Kapadia

2. The industrial centre has simply become a new area for the working of the joint family system – Singer.

3. Industrialization serves to strengthen the joint family system – Pauline Kolenda.

Family and Marriage in India

Household Dimensions of the Family Traditionally most parts of India are characterized by patrilineal, patrilocal and patriarchal type of extended families. Except for few pockets of India like Nairs, Bhans etc. all others were of patriarchal type. Henry Maine gave the name joint family for extended family because except for Bengal, in other parts it was characterized by joint rights of ownership of land. All males born in the family are joint owners of land. In legal language it is called coparcenary rights.

Perhaps such type of families didn’t exist in Rig-Vedic times. Rig Vedic times were

characterized by nuclear households. Family is a kinship group but household is a residential group who share common residence and cooperation for management of domestic economy. Quite often composition of family and household may be similar. But it need not necessarily be so. They may constitute a number of households though they remain as a family i.e. they recognize obligation of kinship ties towards each other. Household may consists of other members who are not linked by distance relatives and kinship groups.

When we look at Rig-Vedic literature, we find frequent mention of term ‘Dampati’ which means conjugal couple i.e. co-residing. Household was nuclear but not an isolated wholly like that of modern industrial societies. These households extended as part of large kinship groups. Household families were nuclear, because agriculture has not developed yet. Agriculture has dual demands.

(1) Agriculture demands a large supply of labor. So, agricultural communities/groups those who maintain large households tend to maintain large household.

(2) Also there is a reverse relationship. Agricultural groups have sizable food availability which is possible to sustain a large group. We find everywhere that extended type of family exists only in agrarian societies. In preagrarian societies there existed an extended household but not extended family. Around 1000 B.C. - 600 B.C., when Aryans were settling in gangetic plains, extended family developed. Aryans had no knowledge of plough. Here alluvial soil, water was available for irrigation. Due to discovery of iron settled community life developed. This process occurred till 600 B.C. By 600 B.C. tribal polity was changing to settled agriculture polity.

With this change, there were also changes in familial polity. We find that ‘Dampati.’as a term became infrequent, whereas ‘grihasthi’ as a term became frequent. By around this time family has crystallized. Also this kind of family was institutionalized. In Manusmriti, a formal kind of recognition was given to this kind of family. By Ist A.D. this kind of family developed and the characteristic of the family were shaped by system maintenance needs i.e. need of such a group to survive under those climatic, technological and geographical conditions, then, this kind of familial organization persisted, because India was overwhelmingly an agricultural society till 20th century.

Although such kind of family was seen as an ideal family organization, in practice such kind of family was not sustainable for occupational castes. It was only suitable for land owning groups. Among occupational castes, nuclear household was frequent. In traditional India, women were withdrawn from work and were kept behind purdah as a status symbol.

Ms. Pauline Kolenda added one more dimension based on empirical studies i.e. based on case of divorce. Wherever divorce were frequent, nuclear households were common. Where divorce was not permitted, joint households were permitted.

Louis Dumont studied about ‘Kalars’ an agricultural land owning Jati in Tamil Nadu. He observes that most families were nuclear, although they were land owners as divorce rates were common.

But in North India, Rajputs were overwhelmingly a joint family as divorces were rare, though they were also land owning communities. Nevertheless, this kind of family was more popular among Dwija castes and land owning groups. But over a period of time, this type came to be accepted as a general type of family.

Characteristics of this family

It has to be seen in two dimensions.

(a) Structural dimension

(b) Functional dimension

Structural dimension means patterns of relations. Irawati Karve defined a joint family. “A joint family is a group of people who generally live under one roof, who share a common kitchen, who hold property in common and participate in common family worships and are linked to each other either though bonds of affinity or consanguinity. “An ideal type of joint family consisted of a man and his wife, their adult sons and their wives and children and they younger unmarried children of the parental couple”. It is an ideal type model and in practice such type of group is not found. In practice there exists lot of variations. Pauline Kolenda identifies 12 different kinds of family which are all variants of this kind of idea type model of family.

Structural Dimensions:

(1) Rule of descent: How property and group membership was transmitted over generations. It was by patrilineal descent principle. Property is transmitted along male line and is held jointly by all in family system. Maintenance needs is to preserve male unity for survival of familial groups.

(2) Conjugal bond: In a joint family marriage is an alliance between families. Conjugal bond is characterized by:

(a) Mate selection by family elders for whom family compatibility in primary criteria.

(b) Subordination of affined ties to consanguinal ties. They discouraged high emotional intimacy between husband and wife. Affinals were periphery whereas consanguine were core. Women acquired status of core after she gave birth, especially a male child as it defined her social identity. Open display of affectivity is suppressed in Hindu joint families. Husband and wives rarely interacted and even addressed each other with teknonymy.

Traditional Indian women were victims of patriarchy. Traditional Indian women lost

intimate bond with husbands and tried to compensate it with their sons. Mother in law pouching with vengeance on daughter in law, is born out of deprivation experienced by mother in law. It is a conflict between two victims of patriarchy and not between male and female. This is the anomaly of Indian ethos that women as a mother is glorified but as wife is considered temptress to be controlled and suppressed. As a wife she is seen as an agent for cleavages in family, but as a mother she is seen as promoter of family unity. It was believed that 1000 men can live together, but two women can’t stay together. That is why marriage by personal choice was not allowed as it would lead to high intimacy between husband and wife.

So, women were married early and were socialized to suit needs of family. Women were also kept uneducated. Due to rigid sexual division of labor, there was total withdrawal of women from community life. Literacy among women at time of independence was 18% so, women were an excluded group.

(3) Filial Ties: It means parental ties. It followed the gerontocratic principle. Older the person, higher was the authority. There were no egalitarian ties. Often it was found that, there was high intimacy between alternative generations but avoidance between consecutive generations. Older the sibling lesser the intimacy. For example: father’s brother (uncle) was feared but grandfather was loved. But siblings of opposite generations have tender relations. As female siblings would be transferred to husband group, they would be vulnerable in husband’s household and thus needed help of male siblings.

(4) Occupational Tasks: As far as occupational tasks are concerned, there existed a strict sexual division of labour. There was compulsory domesticity for women as a norm. In a joint family women were confined to household chores. Men looked into community affairs and farms etc.

Compulsory domesticity was not norm for landless women because they also had to work on farms to support the group.

(5) Authority: Authority was graded in terms of gerontocratic principle. Older man

exercised authority over men and women.

(6) Ethos of family was based on collectivism. Individual was subordinated to group.

Studies of Dharwad as an example of Matrilineal type of extended family.

(1) Ownership of land was vested in woman

(2) Land was transferred from mother to daughter, but management of land was by

males.

(3) Karnavan—eldest male who exercised control in all economic matters (Nairs).

(4) Incest avoidance for male, and control of property management. There was also a Thali ceremony. Elite among Nair will maintain alliance with Namboodris.

Mother’s brother will act as social father. Theoretically, Nair women can have 12 visiting husband. But in due course of time, there were conflicts between mother’s brother and sister’s son. Thus, these communities started breaking down into smaller units and today “veedu” which is a nuclear family is prominent is Kerala. But still inheritance is on female lines, though today the changing trend is towards symmetrical nuclear type of household to adapt to compulsions of urban living which gives rise to status incompatibility.

Spread of modern education, media exposure emphasized on values of individuality, mobility, secularism and rationalism. As these values are creeping in, the collective bond of joint family is breaking. Joint family is based on ethos of collectivism having

precedence over individualism. Joint family celebrates ‘Shasta Poorthi’ (completion of 60 years) of eldest male in family. Traditional family didn’t encourage individualism and high intimacy in couples. So, individualism encourages Valentine’s Day but collectivism discourages it.

If selection is based on personal choice it leads to nuclearization. Joint family meant subordination of women to men. There was extreme vulnerability of bride in joint family. Along with that ethos of freedom and autonomy were absent. But the idea of nuclear family is creating disorganization within extended family. But the idea of joint family still lingers in minds of Indian.

Changes in Family (Joint or Nuclear)

Extended family performs multiple functions. It is a characteristic of agrarian societies. Family was basic unit of production. Difference in rural and urban families in medieval India was not significant. It was the chief source of socialization and politicization. Family also performed political functions. In village communities, representation is based on family being taken as a unit. Family also performed religious functions.

In India, a sizable number of festivals and functions are based on family and are performed in the family. Family was a multipurpose unit. Such kind of family has been changing. And the change was more conspicuous after independence. Industrialization and urbanization were the prime reasons for this change. Industrialization separated production from domestic unit. Urbanization created physical separation and the cumulative degree of both is high degree of status differences due to occupational differences.

Social legislation has also contributed towards nuclearisation. Hindu marriage act allowed divorce. Succession act allowed women to inherit property. All these forces of change have given rise to a trend towards nuclearizing. But does it mean that in India joint family is on decline (breaking). Before we get into the controversy, it is important to clarify that nuclear families are not a new phenomenon in Indian society. According to Yogender Singh, lower caste families, whose chief occupation was agricultural labour, were mostly nuclear. But this nuclearity was often due to negative rather than positive causes. These negative factors were absence of landed property, lack of sufficient and stable means of livelihood and shifting mode of occupation.

Such nuclear families had many characteristics of traditional joint family, such as

excessive dependence on kinsmen and elders, and authoritarian interpersonal relationship in family. This has also been confirmed by I.P. Desai. In other words, although nuclear family is not a new structure in Indian society, the reason for its existence and its characteristics were very different from the western type of nuclear families, which mainly came into being because of Industrial revolution and are characterized by individualism.

Most sociologists agree that the numbers of nuclear family are increasing both in rural and urban areas. Also there is agreement on the point that more nuclear families exist in urban areas. But according to most sociologists, this should not lead use to conclude that nuclearity of joint family is taking place. According to them family jointness still continues to be a major sociological phenomenon in the Indian social structure, being unaffected by the differences of religion, caste, urbanization and occupation.

The concept of ‘jointness’ in the term ‘joint family’ has varied with different scholars. When some scholars (like Irawati Karve) regards co-residentiality as important in jointness, others (Cohen, S.C. Dubey etc.) co-residentiality and commensality as essential ingredients of jointness. However, I.P. Desai gives importance to “fulfillment of obligation” towards kin, even if residence is separate and there is no common ownership of property.

“Fulfillment of obligation” refers to identifying oneself as member of a particular family rendering financial and other kinds of help and following joint family norms. By family jointness they take into consideration not the composition of residential family group. But the nature and quality of social interaction emanating (giving out) from their supposedly nuclear family, which interlinks it in sentimental bond, ritual and economic obligations to other family units. This view has been supported by I.P. Desai, K.M. Kapadia, S.C. Dubey and Yogendra Singh to name a few.

Desai thinks that when two families having kinship relationship are living separately but function under one authority, it will be a joint family. He calls it a “functional joint family”. According to Desai who did a study in ‘Mahuba’ not only the Hindus but also Jains and the Muslims have joint families. He observed that a greater degree of jointness was co-existing with agriculture as well as business and other occupations and that longer urban stay did not dissolve jointness.

K.M. Kapadia in a comparative study of ‘Navasari Town’ and 15 villages found that joint family pattern was not only generally predominant but was stronger in the towns as compared to villages. Thus, it has been observed by I.P. Desai, S.C. Dubey and other that nuclear family in India is merely a stage in the joint family cycle.

However, the internal organization of family has changed. Status of women raised,

relations between parents and children are becoming egalitarian. It is not true to say that joint families have vanished. But definitely the type of family changed to suit needs of modernization.

Emerging Trends of Indian joint Family

It could be said that emerging trends of Indian joint family structure is changing from

traditional to transitional family. It includes:

1. Neolocal Residence – After marriage children may live for sometimes with their

parents but soon they prefer to live separately. As urbanization and industrialization proceed more and more young married couples and their family find their residences

being determined by their location of their jobs. Neolocal residence is therefore becoming more common. Sometimes these neolocal families eventually, return to their stem (parental) family but often they do not.

2. Functional jointness - The neolocal residence may lead to weakening of ties with tertiary and distant kin but not with primary and secondary kin living separately. The married sons and their wives continue to fulfill their obligations to their parents and siblings. The ties are maintained with them not only because of the obligation to them but also because of the affection and respect for them. Mutual help in various exigencies of life (sickness, oldage, accident, unemployment etc.) and economic cooperation with primary and secondary kin remain important characteristics of neolocal families.

3. Equality of individuals - Treating spouse and other members of the family on basis of equality is part of a larger ideological change. As such, parents in the family no longer try to impose their authority on the children but give them more freedom now to determine their own goals and means to advice them. The worth of the individual is recognized and his/her wishes are now considered more important in the new family. The individual’s status is evaluated not by his age or relationship but by his own accomplishments. As such the status of the family is determined for each generation anew.

4. Equal status of women - The joint family has been associated with the subordination of women. The emerging family is doing much to change this. The women are gaining a certain power. Coupled with this is the fact that child marriages have been replaced by adult marriages and the fact that education for girls is spreading rapidly. Women have also started taking up jobs in the expanding economy and their salary is used for meeting the family expenses and raising the quality of life. In such families men have come to treat women on terms of equality. While the philosophy of equal rights for women received more acceptance in families of working women. In families of non-working women however, this is not much talked of. Because the women’s inability to make any economic contribution, the power of money leads men in such families to expect deference from their wives. No family system will grant full equality to women as long as the daily work involving house and children is regarded as women’s responsibilities.

5. Joint male selection - In the traditional family, the marriages for the children were arranged by parents without consulting them. In the transitional family, the parents and children jointly make selection of the spouses. This joint selection reduces the chances of conflict and the newly married couple spends a few months/years in the parental family before establishing a separate household.

6. Weakening of family norms - The family norms in the transitional family has weakened to the extent that distribution of opportunities and rewards is determined by individuals qualities and not by his membership in the family. Indian traditional family was structured according to highly ‘particularistic’ criteria. Particularism refers to the distribution of opportunities and rewards according to one’s membership in the family rather than according to any special qualification, or ability which an individual possess. By contrast, the demands of the modern industrial economy requires the application of ‘universalistic’ criteria. Universalism involves the assignment of opportunities on the basis of special training and skills irrespective of family and other relationship. Thus the emerging trend of Indian joint family structure can be summed up at following:

1) The number of ‘fissioned’ family is increasing i.e. son prefers to live separately from their parents. But at the same time continue to fulfill their traditional obligations towards them.

2) There is more jointness in traditional communities and more nuclearity in communities exposed to outside influence.

3) The size of traditional family (co-resident and commensal kinship unit) has

become smaller. It may be concluded that the trends described are just the trends. It would be a mistake to conclude that traditional joint family is breaking down and/or patriarch parent’s domination is disappearing. The conjugal families might be found here and there in some urbanized and industrialized regions but such families cannot be viewed as symptoms of the breakdown of time honoured ways. The trend towards conjugal families is yet to appear. The rural communities is totally unaffected by this system.

So long the cultural ideas that a male should look after his parents and his teenage brothers and sisters persists, the functional type joint family will be sustain in our society.

Patriarchy, Entitlements and Sexual Division of Labour

Patriarchy

In the Indian society context, kinship systems are largely (though by no means

exclusively) based on patrilineal descent, such ideas are seen as the foundation of

‘patriarchal’ ideology which rationalizes the differential access of men and women to the material and symbolic resources of society.

In Rig-Veda, although descent was partrilineal, patriarchy was not institutionalized and there was no exclusion of women from community life. As land was not privately owned, there was no question of entitlements of land. Women also participated in religious activities. Familial organizations were nuclear. There was concept of ‘Dhampathi’ which indicates conjugal family with wife and children.

By 6th century B.C. we find that the term Dhampathi has vanished and replaced by gravasthi. By this time settled agricultural life developed. Aryans moved to gangetic plains. So, extended familial groups (Joint family) developed. In fact this was the time hierarchy and inequality was emerging.

With joint family, there was a debasement of role of women. Sexual division of labour became entrenched, compulsory domesticity became the norm. Early marriages developed which led to exclusion of women from education. As women came to be excluded from community, a woman was seen as a liability due to dependence on husband family. For perseverance of cohesion of joint family, they were denied control over resources. Only entitlement that existed was Streedhan. And out of the system maintenance need of joint family, there developed practice of subordination of women to men. That is how patriarchy came to be institutionalized.

The formal recognition of patriarchy was given with Manusmriti, where in it was envisaged that women should always be subordinated to men. She was seen as property of her father, to be gifted (Kanyadan) at the time of her marriage. This tradition got ossified with feudalization of economy.

Henry Sumner Maine (Law Member of the Council of the Governor General in India from 1862 1869) relying on the classical textual sources of Hindu law read along with contemporary enthnographic and administrative reports, projected the Indian joint family as a living example of the earliest or ‘ancient’ form of the human family whose outlines he discerned also in the legal system of ancient Rome as well as in Celtic and Slavic survivals of earlier forms of social organization. Maine termed this type of the ‘patriarchal family’ for the reason that it was constituted by a group of persons related in the male line and subject to the absolute power (patria potestas) of the senior-most male member.

Many of the early generation of Indian sociologists similarly identified the patriarchal

joint family as the traditional form of the family in India (excluding some Dravidian

kinship system). According to P.H. Prabhu joint family is a unifying civilizational ideal

that had been very widely held by all Hindus - the rich as well as the poor, the learned as

well as the lay, the city men as well as the village folk. This viewpoint was vigorously

propounded in the writings of the sanskritist/sociologist G.S. Ghurye in his erudite (work) ‘Family and Kin in Indo-European culture’.

Entitlements and Sexual Division of Labour

Sexual division of labour means arrangement of work or responsibility in the society on the basis of sex. Crucial to the familial organization of production is the sexual division of labour, both within the household itself and between the private realm of the household and the world outside.

Feminist scholars, particularly those operating within a Marxist framework, have seen women’s confinement to the domestic, reproductive sphere, their inability to access the public domain on equal terms with men, and the ‘naturalization’ of this arrangement at the ideological level (‘woman’s place is in the home’) as the historical and contemporary source of women’s subjection.

Following the suggestive lead of Jack Goody and S.J. Tambiah, feminist social scientists have recently sought to explore connections between the sexual division of labour in the household and the wider political economy, the structure of property rights (entitlements), the nature of marriage payments (bride wealth or dowry), the frequency of divorce and remarriage, sexual permissiveness, restrictions on women’s movement in

public space (especially, the institution of purdah), and modes of production in different ecological environments.

An outstanding empirical investigation of the hypothesized connection between women’s work (particularly their participation in agricultural labour) and their overall social status is Ursula Sharma’s comparative case study of women’s economic roles in a village in Himachal Pradesh, where women participate actively in paid and unpaid agricultural work, and one in Punjab, where women have been increasingly withdrawn from the agricultural labour force.

Though the Himachali women were publicly more visible, Sharma concluded that they did not on this account have conspicuously more domestic or extra-domestic ‘social power’ than their Punjabi counterparts. She attributed this to a complex of social structure and cultural factors, but especially to women’s effective exclusion from inheritance rights in land in both states (notwithstanding the formal provisions of the Hindu succession Act of 1956), and their ultimate economic dependence therefore on their male kin.

Additionally, even where women did have title to property (in inherited land, in dowry

goods, or in wages), Sharma stressed, this property was rarely given cultural and social structural constraints under their own control and management. Women’s socio-economic status in terms of the rate of their participation in the workforce has also been addressed by Ursula Sharma in the course of the study of the economic roles of employed women and housewives in an urban centre of north India (Shimal, Himachal Pradesh). As in the rural study already mentioned, Sharma found that neither ownership of property nor monetary earnings in themselves could ensure women’s economic independence, since their control over these resources was constrained by generational and sexual asymmetries of power within the household, and by social codes of feminine deportment (behavioral attributes). In any case, without reciprocal adjustments by their male kinsmen, women’s participation in the labour force for the most part resulted in their shouldering the ‘double burden’ of unpaid housework and paid employment.

The economic and political role of the household as an intermediary unit between the

individual and the state is prominently acknowledged in public policy and administration, public goods and services being routinely allocated to the household as if it were a single unit of consumption. Similarly, the household is seen a self-regulating administrative unit, whose individual members are identified in terms of their relations to the household ‘head’ (usually assumed to be senior-most male member), who is their representative in the public domain and whose authority over other members is questioned only in the event of exceptional abuse of power.

In the context of the Indian family, Amartya Sen points to gender as a major basis of disadvantage, affecting notions of entitlement and access to land, food, education and medical attention, and severely compromising the life chances of females vis-à-vis males, differentially through the life course. This approach has been further elaborated by Bina Agarwal, like Ursula Sharma she has stressed that it is particularly their restricted access to land as the major productive resource in India that has placed the greatest limits own women’s fall-back or bargaining position in the family.