Dr. Rekha
Reader, Deptt. Of Sociology,
MGKVP, Varanasi. U. P.
The family in India
is been changing its appearance from ‘joint family’ due to various factors that
exist in the society due fast industrialization and globalization. Nowadays,
nuclear family is appearing faster in cities and villages, moreover, the norms
of joint family disappearing in the same manner due to modernity. ‘Family’, now
losing its value and recently changed ‘joint family’ has taken different
direction, which is debatable issue that whether the changed family condition
is better or was it previously, when ones discuss about ‘family sanctity’.
In India the joint family has endured for as long as
many records exist. Even about 1000 BC,
in the time of the Mahabharata, the joint family existed more or less as it
exists today. A joint family is a group of people who generally live under one
roof, who eat food cooked in one kitchen, who hold property in common, participate
in common family worship and are related to one another as some particular type
of kindred.
A joint family has always an ancestral seat or
locality. However humble an Indian might be, he will always refer to his
ancestral village as his home. As all services were paid for in land in ancient
days, every Indian had a small family holding in some village- may be just a
strip of land or for an artisan, just a small house. This connection of a
family with a locality lingers even after the family has finally migrated out
of its village. Such families keep on worshipping the gods of their former
locality or come back time and again to keep certain vows made to these gods.
The kin group making up a joint family is of two types. In the northern type those men who trace
descent from a common male ancestor form the core of the family; with them are
associated women who are brought as brides and the young unmarried daughters of
the family. Thus there are three or four generations of males related to the
male ego as grandfather and his brothers, father and his brothers, own brothers
and cousins, sons and nephews and wives of all these male relatives, plus the
ego’s unmarried sisters and daughters. The northern type of family is thus
patrilineal and patrilocal and the married women in such a family live in the
house of their father-in-law.
The beauty about the Indian culture lies in its
age-long prevailing tradition of the joint family system. It’s a system under
which even extended members of a family like one’s parents, children, the children’s
spouses and their offspring, etc. live together. The elder-most, usually the
male member is the head in the joint Indian family system, which makes all
important decisions and rules, whereas other family members abide by it
dutifully with full respect.
Importance Given to
Protocol in Joint Family System in India
A major factor that keeps all members, big and small,
united in love and peace in a joint family system in India is the importance
attached to protocol. This feature is very unique to Indian families and very
special. Manners like respecting elders, touching their feet as a sign of
respect, speaking in a dignified manner, taking elders’ advice prior taking
important decisions, etc. is something that Indian parents take care to inculcate
in their kids from very beginning. The head of the family responds by caring
and treating each member of the family the same.
Discipline in Indian Joint
Family System
The intention behind the formation of any social unit
will fail to serve its purpose if discipline is lacking and the same applies to
the joint family system as well. Due to this reason, discipline is another
factor given utmost importance in the joint family system in India. As a rule,
it’s the family head that prevails upon others. In case of any disagreement,
the matter is diligently sorted out by taking suggestions from other adult
members. One usually also has to follow fixed timings for returning home,
eating, etc.
As joint families grow ever larger, they inevitably
divide into smaller units, passing through a predictable cycle over time. The
breakup of a joint family into smaller units does not necessarily represent the
rejection of the joint family ideal. Rather, it is usually a response to a
variety of conditions, including the need for some members to move from village
to city, or from one city to another to take advantage of employment
opportunities. Splitting of the family is often blamed on quarrelling
women-typically, the wives of co-resident brothers. Although women’s disputes
may, in fact, lead to family division, men's disagreements do so as well.
Despite cultural ideals of brotherly harmony, adult
brothers frequently quarrel over land and other matters, leading them to decide
to live under separate roofs and divide their property. Frequently, a large
joint family divides after the demise of elderly parents, when there is no
longer a single authority figure to hold the family factions together. After
division, each new residential unit, in its turn, usually becomes joint when
sons of the family marry and bring their wives to live in the family home.
The peoples of the northeastern hill areas are known
for their matriliny, tracing descent and inheritance in the female line rather
than the male line. One of the largest of these groups, the Khasis--an ethnic
or tribal people in the state of Meghalaya-are divided into matrilineal clans;
the youngest daughter receives almost all of the inheritance including the
house. A Khasi husband goes to live in his wife’s house. Khasis, many of whom
have become Christian, have the highest literacy rate in India, and Khasi women
maintain notable authority in the family and community.
Perhaps the best known of
India’s unusual family types is the traditional Nayar taravad, or great
house. The Nayars are a cluster of castes in Kerala. High-ranking and
prosperous, the Nayars maintained matrilineal households in which sisters and
brothers and their children were the permanent residents. After an official
pre-puberty marriage, each woman received a series of visiting husbands in her
room in the taravad at night. Her children were all legitimate members
of the taravad. Property, matrilineally inherited, was managed by the
eldest brother of the senior woman. This system, the focus of much
anthropological interest, has been disintegrating in the twentieth century and
in the 1990s probably fewer than 5 percent of the Nayars live in matrilineal taravads.
Like the Khasis, Nayar women are known for being well-educated and powerful
within the family.
Malabar rite Christians,
an ancient community in Kerala, adopted many practices of their powerful Nayar
neighbors, including naming their sons for matrilineal forebears. Their kinship
system, however, is patrilineal. Kerala Christians have a very high literacy
rate, as do most Indian Christian groups.
The joint family is no longer has kept its norms, the
modernity and change due to global culture is paving the way ‘nuclear family’.
In India, the nuclear family is common is cities and villages. The tradition
and pattern of the society has changed its shape drastically in the late 20th and in the 21st century. Recently, in
November 2009, in Pune, most household women preferred nuclear family in
comparison to joint. This outcome shows the changing family values in the contemporary
Indian society. The trend that has been began in the urban and rural areas of
India would not stop. Family norms would no longer remain same as it was in the
ancient Hindu tradition. The impact of modernity and globalization is linked to
changes in the social values of the ‘family’. In India, the future of ‘nuclear
family’ is pre-eminent in comparison to ‘joint family’.
