In his book Caste and Kin in Central India, A.C. Mayer has reported his study of Ramkhedi village of Malwa. He has described the primary and secondary kin of the village families.
The primary kin consist of mother, father, brother and sister whereas marital kin such as brother’s wife, mother-in-law and others. Mayer’s study describes only the kin found in a patriarchal descent group. He does not make any theoretical attempt to compare the Ramkhedi findings to the findings of other anthropologists.
In short, it is obvious that kinship studies in India have been very restricted. What is conspicuous is that no micro or village study has been made of the Indian tribals. The only study which has wider implications is that of Iravati Karve. We, therefore, make a comparative analysis of Karve’s generalizations.
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In her study, Kinship Organization in India, Karve has conducted fieldwork in four regions of the country-northern, central, southern and eastern. In this study she differentiates kinship systems from the perspective of geography and language.
It must be said at this stage of our discussion that the kinship organization of India is quite complicated. It is not a monolith system as is found in Europe and the US. There is great dissimilarity.
K.S. Singh in his People of India has identified as many as 91 eco-cultural zones all over India, 4,635 communities (in other words, castes), 325 languages and 12 different language families. Given such multi-ethnicities, Karve has, in a broad way, studied two basic systems of kinship.
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These two divisions are inclusive of tribals of southern and eastern parts of India. These divisions also take into consideration both the matriarchal and patriarchal descent groups.
Whereas Dumont talks about the homogeneity in structural terms between the northern and southern kinship systems, Karve says that there is a marked diversity between the two.
If we examine Dumont it would really be difficult to find homogeneity in the kinship systems of Hindus, Muslims, Parsis, and other ethnic groups. It appears that the findings of Karve are closer to the diverse social reality of the country.