Scholars have been discussing since several years the question of the disintegration of the Hindu joint family in India. No social institution can withstand change for long. The Indian family system including the traditional Hindu family system too has undergone changes.
The question that is debated is whether these changes are causing the disintegration of the family or not. There are three views among the scholars relating to this question. They are mentioned below.
(i) The joint family system is not only changing fast but also tending towards disintegration: K.T. Merchant [1935], A.M. Shaw [1955-58], Aileen Ross [1961], William Goode [1963], Prameel Kapoor [1970], B.R. Ghosh [1974] – and others supported this view on the basis of their field studies.
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(ii) Joint families are successfully continuing in India withstanding all the disintegrating forces: This view has been held by the scholars – K.M. Kapadia [1956], I.P. Desai [1964], B.R. Agarwala, M.S. Gore [1968] and others on the basis of their field studies conducted at Surat, Navsari, Baroda, Poona, Kheda, Delhi, Rohtak and other places.
(iii) Joint families though are changing fast they continue to stay with relatively smaller size: Dr. Iravathi Karve, David G. Mandelbaum and others strongly held this opinion.
Joint family is facing changes. It is true that joint family system is undergoing fast changes. Some of these changes have disintegrating influence also. This disintegration is more evident in big cities and in industrial centres than in rural areas. But the disintegrating rate is slow and not fast. If some forces are at work towards the breaking up of the joint family system, some other forces are striving for maintaining its existence.
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Forces of Chang are not destroying the system as such. Since India is a land of villages, the joint family system has still scope for its continuation in the villages. The forces of mechanisation, industrialisation, urbanisation, education, etc. have not taken place to the extent of destroying all the prevailing joint families.
Joint family is not dying out. As K.M. Kapadia has pointed out, “the general assumption that the joint family is dying out is invalid.” The rural people who desert their joint families and move to the cities due to some economic and other exigencies still want to have their connection with their parental joint families.
They want to visit their native families at least at the time of marriages, festivals and such other family rites and ceremonies.
Educated Indians still feel morally obliged to retain their links with the traditional joint families. They consider it their moral duty to bring up their younger brothers and sisters in the lines of education and employment.
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The sentiment of jointness is very much alive in them and they cherish it as a cultural objective. Hence joint families do not dwindle away so easily. On the contrary they are making enough compromises with the modem trends for their survival.