essay on family structure in india

CHANGING FAMILY STRUCTURE IN INDIA | Sociology Optional for UPSC Civil Services Examination | Triumph IAS

Table of Contents

CHANGING FAMILY STRUCTURE IN INDIA

(relevant for sociology syllabus: paper 1 –  systems of kinship:- contemporary trends, family and marriage in india), (relevant for gs syllabus: paper1-  effects of globalization on indian society ).

• Families have both structure and function. Like the skeleton and muscles in a body, the structure is what gives a family it’s size and shape. Also, like organs within the body that perform necessary functions to keep the body working, there are certain necessary functions that keep families healthy. It sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability.
• It asserts that our lives are guided by social structures, which are relatively stable patterns of social behaviour. Social structures give shape to our lives – for example, in families, the community, and through religious organizations and certain rituals, or complex religious ceremonies, give structure to our everyday lives. Each social structure has social functions or consequences for the operation of society as a whole.
• Social structures consist of social relationships, as well as any social institutions within a society. One example of a social structure is a social class (upper-class, middle-class, and poor). Another example of a social structure is the different levels of government. Family, religion, law, economy, and class are all social structures.

INDIA AND ITS FAMILY STRUCTURE

• India has a rich family structure with a patrilineal background, which help the family members to sustain a life with kinship groupings. Earlier, mostly joint families were found where family members live together under one roof. They all mutually work, eat, worship and co-operate each other in one or the other way.
• This also helps the family to get strong mentally, physically and economically, the children also get to know about the values and traditions of the society from their grandparents and elders. The family system has given a lot of importance in India and has worked more often to make the bonding among families stronger.
• The family system has given a lot of importance in India and has worked more often to make the bonding among families stronger . Meanwhile, urbanization and westernization had its influence on the basic structure of the Indian family structure. The division of the joint family into smaller units is not the symbol of people rejecting this traditional structure. The circumstances and conditions also made the need for people to split the family.
• The family as a social institution has been undergoing change. Both in its structure and functions changes have taken place. In India, as in many traditional societies, the family has been not only the centre of social and economic life but also the primary source of support for the family members.
• The increasing commercialization of the economy and the development of the infrastructure of the modern state have introduced a significant change in the family structure in India in the 20th century. Especially, the last few decades have witnessed important alterations in family life.
• India’s fertility rate has fallen, and couples have begun to bear children at a later age. At the same time, life expectancy has increased, resulting in more elderly people who need care. All of these changes are taking place in the context of increased urbanization, which is separating children from elders and contributing disintegration of family-based support systems.

FACTORS AFFECTING FAMILY STRUCTURES

• Change in Fertility: An inevitable outcome of declining fertility rates and increasing age at first birth in most of the countries in the world, including India, is a reduction in family size. Fertility declined due to the combined effect of substantial socio-economic development achieved during the last two decades and the effective implementation of family planning programmes.
• Hence, it has become irrational for many people to have large families as the cost of children is increasing. In traditional societies, where human labour was a source of strength to the family, more children were preferred to fewer. But as the economic contribution from the children in a family decreased, because of a move away from agriculture, the need for large numbers of children decreased.
• Improvements in health care and child survival also contributed. The emphasis was on the quality of life rather than the number of children, a new concept added to the family.
• CHANGE IN AGE OF MARRIAGE: In many countries in the world where significant declines infertility are being experienced, reductions in the proportion of people never married have often coincided with or preceded declines in marital fertility. A substantial increase in the proportions never married, among both males and females, at young ages, has been noted in many countries. A consequence of the increase in the proportion of never-married young adults is the gradual upward trend of the average age at marriage. Postponement of marriage among females resulted in the postponement of childbearing with a reduction in family size.
• CHANGE IN MORTALITY : Mortality declines, particularly infant mortality, everywhere preceded the decline of fertility. Improved survival rates of children mean that when women reached the age of 30 they increasingly had achieved the completed family size they desired. Earlier, much larger numbers of births were required to achieve the desired completed family size.
• In the last three decades, infant mortality has declined significantly in every country and this trend undoubtedly influenced the fertility decline. Mortality decline, followed by fertility decline, altered the age structure of the population and also the structure within individual families.
• MARRIAGE DISSOLUTION : It is no longer the case that all marital unions, whether formal or informal reach final dissolution through death. A considerable proportion of unions are disrupted suddenly for reasons such as desertion, separation or divorce. An obvious failure in a family relationship is where husband and wife cease to live together.
• Those women who are divorced at latter ages mostly remain single for the rest of their lives and live with their dependents. The idea that when a couple has children it will be less likely to divorce is widely accepted in most societies. However, it is believed that in the last couple of years even in most of the Asian cultures, including India, a growing proportion of divorces involve couples with young children (Goode 1993).
• PARTICIPATION OF WOMEN IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: The commercialization process which opened markets in many developing countries has succeeded in replacing the traditional co-operation in the economic relationship, with that of competition.
• In this process, the social institutions in these countries found themselves in conflict with the key aspects of the new economic systems. The economics of the family and the sexual division of labour within the family is very much determined by opportunities in the labour market. The developing economies of system India have facilitated the freeing of women from household chores and their entrance to the labour market.
• The declining ability of men to earn a ‘family wage’ along with the growing need for cash for family maintenance has resulted in an increasing number of female members (particularly the wife) in the family engaging in economic activities (Lloyed and Duffy 1995).
• Talcott Parsons, theoretical insights on the family have attracted widest attention and deliberation. Parsons (1954, 1956) argues that modern industrial society has led to the growth of what he calls “isolated nuclear family”. This family is structurally isolated as it does not form an integral part of the wider kinship group.

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changing family structure changing family structure, age of marriage, contemporary trends contemporary trends, family and marriage in India family and marriage in India, family planning family planning, family support system family support system, fertility rate fertility rate, globalization globalization, India India, joint family joint family, kinship kinship, marriage dissolution marriage dissolution, mortality mortality, Sociology Sociology, urbanization urbanization, westernization westernization

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• Indian J Psychiatry
• v.55(Suppl 2); 2013 Jan

Indian family systems, collectivistic society and psychotherapy

Rakesh k. chadda.

Department of Psychiatry, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India

Koushik Sinha Deb

Indian society is collectivistic and promotes social cohesion and interdependence. The traditional Indian joint family, which follows the same principles of collectivism, has proved itself to be an excellent resource for the care of the mentally ill. However, the society is changing with one of the most significant alterations being the disintegration of the joint family and the rise of nuclear and extended family system. Although even in today's changed scenario, the family forms a resource for mental health that the country cannot neglect, yet utilization of family in management of mental disorders is minimal. Family focused psychotherapeutic interventions might be the right tool for greater involvement of families in management of their mentally ill and it may pave the path for a deeper community focused treatment in mental disorders. This paper elaborates the features of Indian family systems in the light of the Asian collectivistic culture that are pertinent in psychotherapy. Authors evaluate the scope and effectiveness of family focused psychotherapy for mental disorders in India, and debate the issues and concerns faced in the practice of family therapy in India.

INTRODUCTION

The term family is derived from the Latin word ‘familia’ denoting a household establishment and refers to a “group of individuals living together during important phases of their lifetime and bound to each other by biological and/or social and psychological relationship”.[ 1 ] The group also includes persons engaged in an ongoing socially sanctioned apparently sexual relationship, sufficiently precise and enduring to provide for the procreation and upbringing of children.[ 1 ] Unlike the western society, which puts impetus on “individualism”, the Indian society is “collectivistic” in that it promotes interdependence and co-operation, with the family forming the focal point of this social structure. The Indian and Asian families are therefore, far more involved in caring of its members, and also suffer greater illness burden than their western counterparts. Indian families are more intimate with the patient, and are capable of taking greater therapeutic participation than in the west.

In a situation where the mental health resource is a scarcity, families form a valuable support system, which could be helpful in management of various stressful situations. Yet, the resource is not adequately and appropriately utilized. Clinicians in India and the sub-continent do routinely take time to educate family members of a patient about the illness and the importance of medication, but apart from this information exchange, the utilization of family in treatment is minimal. Structured family oriented psychotherapy is not practiced in India at most places in India, except a few centers in South India. Research publications on family therapy from India are also few. Thereare some evidence from published “family intervention studies”, but whether all non-pharmacological interventions with family members can be considered as “family therapy” is a matter of theoretical debate.

Sholevar[ 2 ] defines family therapy as any use of a family-focused intervention to bring out behavioral and/or attitudinal changes in one or more family members” Although the “family” may be involved in many schools of psychotherapy, “family therapy” represents the most direct branch of psychotherapy that deals with the family system as a whole.

This paper discusses the features of Indian family systems in the light of the Asian collectivistic culture that are pertinent in psychotherapy and family therapy as used in India, and its further scope.

UNDERSTANDING THE INDIAN FAMILY FROM A PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC STANDPOINT

Role of culture and collectivism in shaping the family.

Families do not exist in isolation and family dynamics are often best interpreted in the context of their societal and cultural background. Culture has been shown to determine the family structure by shaping the family type, size, and form[ 3 , 4 ] and the family functioning by delineating boundaries, rules for interaction, communication patterns, acceptable practices, discipline and hierarchy in the family.[ 4 – 6 ] The roles of family members are determined largely by cultural factors (as well as stages of the family life cycle),[ 4 , 7 ] and finally, culture also explains families’ ways of defining problems and solving them.[ 7 ]

Culture, however, is not an external passive influence on the families but families themselves serve as the primary agent for transferring these cultural values to their members.[ 8 ] Parents help children to learn, internalize, and develop understanding of culture through both covert and overt means.[ 9 ] Family members modify behaviors in themselves and others by principles of social learning. In this process, the general norms and beliefs may be modified to suit the needs of the family creating a set of “family values” – A subset of societal norms unique to the family.

It is imperative then, that therapists understand the impact of culture on family functioning as well as in conflict resolution and problem-solving skills of the family members.[ 10 ] One such important dimension of Asian and particularly Indian culture that affects family functioning is collectivism.[ 11 – 13 ] “Collectivism” refers to the philosophic, economic, or social outlook that emphasizes the interdependence amongst human beings. It is the basic cultural element for cohesion within social groups, which stresses on the priority of group goals over individual goals in contrast to “individualism”, which emphasizes on what makes the individual distinct, and promotes engagement in competitive tasks. “Horizontal collectivism” refers to the system of collective decision-making by relatively equal individuals, for example, by the intra-generational family member; while “vertical collectivism” refers to hierarchical structures of power in a collectivistic family, for example, inter-generational relations in a three generation family.

Classically, the cultures of Western Europe and North America with their complex, stratified societies, where independence and differences are emphasized, are said to be individualistic, whereas in Asia, Africa, parts of Europe and Latin America where agreeing on social norms is important and jobs are interdependent, collectivism is thought to be preponderant.[ 14 , 15 ] Studies comparing Caucasians or Americans with people from Asian cultures, such as Vietnamese or Filipino[ 13 , 16 ] do show that individualistic societies value self-reliance, independence, autonomy and personal achievement,[ 16 ] and a definition of self apart from the group.[ 13 ] On the other hand, collectivistic societies value family cohesion, cooperation, solidarity, and conformity.[ 16 ]

Such cultural differences mean that people in different cultures have fundamentally different constructs of the self and others. For more collectivistic societies like ours, the self is defined relative to others, is concerned with belongingness, dependency, empathy, and reciprocity, and is focused on small, selective in-groups at the expense of out-groups. Relationships with others are emphasized, while personal autonomy, space and privacy are considered secondary.[ 17 ] Application of western psychotherapy, primarily focused on dynamic models, ego structure and individuals, therefore, becomes difficult in the Indian collectivistic context. The point has been well discussed by Indian psychiatrists in the past. As early as in 1982, Varma expressed limitations to the applicability of the Western type of psychotherapy in India,[ 18 ] and cited dependence/interdependence (a marker of collectivism) in Indian patients with other family members as foremost of the seven difficulties in carrying out dynamic and individual oriented psychotherapy. Surya and Jayaram have also pointed out that the Indian patients are more dependent than their western counterparts.[ 19 ] Neki, while discussing the concepts of confidentiality and privacy in the Indian context opined that these terms do not even exist in Indian socio-cultural setting, as the privacy can isolate people in interdependent society.[ 20 ] Neki recommended a middle ground with family therapy or at least couple of sessions with the family members along with dyadic therapy in order to help the progress of the psychotherapy.[ 21 ] Family, therefore, forms an important focus for change in collectivistic societies, and understanding the Indian family becomes an essential prerequisite for involving them in therapy.

The traditional Indian family

Any generalizations about the Indian family suffer from oversimplification, given the pluralistic nature of the Indian culture. However, in most sociological studies, Asian and Indian families are considered classically as large, patriarchal, collectivistic, joint families, harboring three or more generations vertically and kith and kin horizontally. Such traditional families form the oldest social institution that has survived through ages and functions as a dominant influence in the life of its individual members. Indian joint families are considered to be strong, stable, close, resilient and enduring with focus on family integrity, family loyalty, and family unity at expense of individuality, freedom of choice, privacy and personal space.[ 22 ]

Structurally, the Indian joint family includes three to four living generations, including grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews, all living together in the same household, utilizing a common kitchen and often spending from a common purse, contributed by all. Change in such family structure is slow, and loss of family units after the demise of elderly parents is counterbalanced by new members entering the family as children, and new members (wives) entering by matrimonial alliances, and their offsprings. The daughters of the family would leave following marriage. Functionally, majority of joint families adhere to a patriarchal ideology, follow the patrilineal rule of descent, and are patrilocal; although matrilocal and matriarchal families are quite prevalent in some southern parts of the country. The lines of hierarchy and authority are clearly drawn, with each hierarchical strata functioning within the principal of “collective responsibility”. Rules of conduct are aimed at creating and maintaining family harmony and for greater readiness to cooperate with family members on decisions affecting almost all aspects of life, including career choice, mate selection, and marriage. While women are expected to accept a position subservient to males, and to subordinate their personal preferences to the needs of other, males are expected to accept responsibility for meeting the needs of others. The earning males are expected to support the old; take care of widows, never-married adults and the disabled; assist members during periods of unemployment and illness; and provide security to women and children.[ 1 , 23 ] Psychologically, family members feel an intense emotional interdependence, empathy, closeness, and loyalty to each other.

The changing Indian family

The socio-cultural milieu of India is undergoing change at a tremendous pace, leaving fundamental alterations in family structure in its wake. The last decade has not only witnessed rapid and chaotic changes in social, economic, political, religious and occupational spheres; but also saw familial changes in power distribution, marital norms and role of women. A review of the national census data and the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data suggests that, gradually, nuclear families are becoming the predominant form of Indian family institution, at least in urban areas. The 1991 census, for the first time reported household growth to be higher than the population growth, suggesting household fragmentation; a trend that gathered further momentum in the 2001 and the 2010 census. A comparison of the three NFHS data [ Table 1 ] also shows that over the years there has been a progressive increase in nuclear families, more in urban areas, with an associated progressive decrease in the number of household members.[ 24 – 26 ] Other important trends include a decrease in age of the house-head, reflecting change in power structure and an increase in households headed by females, suggesting a change in traditional gender roles.

Summary data from the National Family Health Survey

However, though traditional joint families have been significantly replaced by urban “new order” nuclear families, it would be wrong to look at present Indian families in such simple bimodal groups. The family systems presently have become highly differentiated and heterogeneous social entities in terms of structure, pattern, role relationships, obligations and values. Joint families that stay under same roof, but with separate kitchen, separate purse and with considerable autonomy and reduced responsibility for extended family members are common and represent “transitional families”.[ 27 ] Others may stay in separate households but cluster around in the same community. Such transitional families though structurally nuclear, may still continue to function as joint families. Sethi, back in 1989 pointed out the strong networks of kinship ties in Indian “extended families”, and observed that even when relatives cannot actually live in close proximity, they typically maintain strong bonds and attempt to provide each other with economic help and emotional support.[ 1 ]

Effects of societal and familial change on mental health

Social and cultural changes have altered entire lifestyles, interpersonal relationship patterns, power structures and familial relationship arrangements in current times. These changes, which include a shift from joint/extended to nuclear family, along with problems of urbanization, changes of role, status and power with increased employment of women, migratory movements among the younger generation, and loss of the experience advantage of elderly members in the family, have increased the stress and pressure on such families, leading to an increased vulnerability to emotional problems and disorders. The families are frequently subject to these pressures.

Countries within the developing world are impatient and intend to achieve within a generation, what countries in the developed world took centuries. Hence societal changes here are not step by step or gradual, but rapid, the process inevitably involving “temporal compression”. Additionally, the sequences of these societal changes are haphazard or “Cacophonic”,[ 28 ] producing a condition that is highly unsettling and stressful. For example, in a household where a woman is the chief breadwinner but has minimal standing in decision making, the situation leads to role resentment and disorganized power structure in the family. Indeed, studies do show that nuclear family structure is more prone to mental disorders than joint families.[ 29 ] Fewer patients with mental illness from rural families have been reported to be hospitalized when compared to urban families because of the existing joint family structure, which apparently provides additional support.[ 30 ] Children from large families have been found to report significantly lower behavioral problems like eating and sleeping disorders, aggressiveness, dissocial behavior and delinquency than those from nuclear families.[ 31 ] Even the large scale international collaborative studies conducted by WHO – the International Pilot Study on Schizophrenia, the Determinants of Outcome of Severe Mental Disorders and the International Study of Schizophrenia – reported that persons with schizophrenia did better in India and other developing countries, when compared to their Western counterparts largely due to the increased family support and integration they received in the developing world.[ 32 ]

Although a bulk of Indian studies indicates that the traditional family is a better source for psychological support and is more resilient to stress, one should not, however, universalize. The “unchanging, nurturant and benevolent” family core is often a sentimentalization of an altruistic society.[ 33 ] In reality, arrangements in large traditional families are frequently unjust in its distribution of income and allocation of resources to different members. Exploitation of family resources by a coterie of members close to the “ Karta ” (the head of family) and subjugation of women are the common malaise of traditional Indian family. Indian ethos of maintaining “family harmony” and absolute “obedience to elderly” are often used to suppress the younger members. The resentment, however, passive and silent it may be, simmers, and in the absence of harmonious resolution often manifests as psychiatric disorders. Somatoform and dissociative disorders, which show a definite increased prevalence in our society compared to the west, may be viewed as manifestations of such unexpressed stress.

Therefore, rather than lamenting on the change in societal structure and loss of the joint family, the therapist should be aware of the unique dynamics of each family he treats, and should endeavor to find and utilize the strengths therein, while providing ways to cope with stress within the limits of the available resources.

UNDERSTANDING PSYCHOTHERAPY FROM THE FAMILY PERSPECTIVE

Family oriented psychotherapy: history and scope in india.

Social interventions with families to help them cope with problems have always been a part of all cultures in form of a variety of rituals, for example, the rituals surrounding death of family members. The roots of the formal development of family therapy, however, dates back to the early 1940s, when pioneers like John Bowlby in the United States; John Elderkin Bell, Nathan Ackerman, Theodore Lidz, Lyman Wynne, Murray Bowen and Carl Whitaker in United Kingdom; and D.L.P. Liebermann in Hungary began seeing and observing family members in therapy sessions.[ 34 ] The initial strong influence from psychoanalysis soon gave way to concepts from social psychiatry, learning theory and behavior therapy, and the early concepts of theoretical framework for family therapy were formed.[ 2 ] In the mid-1950s, Gregory Bateson and colleagues at Palo Alto in the United States, introduced ideas from cybernetics and general systems theory in psychotherapy.[ 35 ] The systems approach did not focus on the linear causation model of individual psychology, and instead emphasized on feedback and homeostatic mechanisms that operate in family systems. The famous “circular causation and process” model was forwarded and here-and-now interactions between family members started being viewed as a major factor in maintaining or exacerbating problems, whatever be the original cause.[ 36 ] Simultaneously, Murray Bowen at the National Institute of Mental Health, worked on his hypothesis on family systems, based on his observations on the father-mother-child triad. Bowen's observations on triadic relationship, fusion and distancing, nuclear family emotional process, multi-generational transmission processes and family constellation forms the basis of the family systems theory, which later came to be known as the Bowen's theory.

By the mid-1960s, a large number of distinct schools of family therapy had emerged, some of which included brief therapy, strategic therapy, structural family therapy, and the Milan systems model. Concurrently and somewhat interdependently with the systems theory, intergenerational therapies emerged, which theorized the intergenerational transmission of health and dysfunction and usually dealt with at least three generations of a family. After the late-1970s, the field of family therapy saw many practical modifications of the earlier rigid theoretical frameworks, especially in the light of accumulated clinical experience in treatment of serious mental disorders. In the past few decades, there has been a general move towards integration and eclecticism, with practitioners using techniques from several areas, depending upon their own inclinations and/or the needs of the clients.

In India, work in family therapy started in the late 1950s, coinciding with the period of increased interest in psychotherapy in India. Vidya Sagar, who worked with families at the Amritsar Mental Hospital in the 1950s, is credited as the father of family therapy in India. His own writings on the topic are sparse, but he was able to involve families of patients in understanding and taking care of their patients with psychiatric illness, and to support each other through group participation.[ 37 ] Vidya Sagar found that involving the family significantly reduced the hospital stay, increased acceptance of the patient by the family, and enhanced family coping skills.[ 38 ] In a similar attempt about the same time, the Mental Health Center at Vellore[ 39 ] started admitting all psychiatric patients along with their families to unit family rooms. Mental Health Center, Vellore tried to focus on family education and family counseling on how to deal with the index patient and showed promising results of the family interventions. 1960s was also the time of beginning of the general hospital psychiatric units (GHPUs) with inpatient facilities, where patients were admitted mandatorily with a family member with focus on family education and counseling. The similar practice has been followed at all the GHPUs, which have been established in India over the last 5 decades. These units, though may not be conducing family therapy, are working with family involvement in treatment of the persons with mental illness.

Another major boost to family therapy in India occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore started working actively on family members of patients with psychiatric disorders, which ultimately resulted in the formation of a formal Family Psychiatry Center in 1977. Early work from the center showed that families could be taught to cope with their burden through education, counseling and group support in an effective manner.[ 40 ] Subsequent work by researchers[ 41 – 43 ] showed the usefulness of involving families in the management of a variety of psychiatric disorders including marital discord, hysteria and psychosis. In the late 1980s, the center developed Indian tools for working in the field of family therapy, notable amongst which are the Family Interaction Pattern Scale, the Family Topology Scale[ 44 , 45 ] and the Marital Quality Scale.[ 46 ] In the late 1980s and 1990s the center started training post graduates in psychiatry in concepts and schools of family therapy and started orienting itself to structured rather than generic family therapy. At the turn of this century, it became the only center in India to offer formal training and diploma course in family therapy.[ 47 ] Though the center in past had practiced various dynamic and behavioral models, currently it follows primarily a systemic model of family therapy.[ 48 ]

In the non-government sector, though there are family therapy practitioners, particularly in the cities of Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, they are mostly scattered and often suffer from the lack of training and resource facilities. The Schizophrenia Research Foundation at Chennai, which works with long-term care and rehabilitation of the chronically mentally ill patients, conducts a family intervention program, focused on education and coping of family members with the illness of the index patient. The Indian Association for Family Therapy, founded since 1991, has also been working in the field to provide a platform for private therapists.

Effectiveness of family oriented psychotherapy in India

Although a significant number of therapists practice family therapy in India in government and private settings, the published literature on the subject is surprisingly sparse. Most publications are issue based experiential accounts of the practitioners, rather than evidence based merits of particular therapy modalities. Even then, most intervention studies report significant benefits whenever family have been involved in management of psychiatric disorders. Table 2 summarizes the findings of major family intervention studies from India.

Summary of the findings of family intervention studies from India

A large body of published work in family therapy in India comes from the Family Therapy Center, at NIMHANS.[ 49 ] In one of the earliest studies from the center, it was found that staying with a preferred family member reduced duration of hospital stay in psychiatric inpatients.[ 42 ] In another definitive study on the effectiveness of family therapy in Indian setting, Prabhu et al . in 1988 followed-up 60 families over 2 years, who had received brief integrative inpatient family therapy. Two third of the group did very well or moderately well.[ 50 ] Later studies have reported improvement with family therapy in patients with a wide range of psychiatric problems, including schizophrenia,[ 51 ] alcohol dependence,[ 52 ] eating disorders,[ 53 ] epileptic psychosis,[ 54 ] adolescent conduct disorder,[ 55 ] marital problems,[ 56 – 59 ] family violence[ 60 , 61 ] and in families coping with people living with HIV AIDS.[ 62 ]

In addition to the interventional studies, experiential accounts and reflective writings by therapists working with families in India help us to understand issues, practical difficulties and unique advantages of the Indian setting. Table 3 summarizes the major points of various published studies on family therapy by Indian practitioners in last 15 years, that throw light on the process issues rather than the outcome.

Summary of experiential and reflective journal articles on family therapy in India

Family oriented psychotherapy: Process and issues in practice

Ideally, any psychotherapy would include intake process, therapy proper and a termination phase. In family therapy, aim of the intake phase is to understand the families’ perception of the problem, their motivation to undergo therapy, and the therapist's assessment of the suitability and type of family therapy to be applied. Assessment of the family forms an important part of the intake phase and different therapists employ different techniques for the purpose like the three generation genogram; life cycle chart, structural map or the circular hypothesis. The three generation genogram diagrammatically lists out the patient's generation and two more related generations and helps to understand trans-generational patterns of interaction. The life cycle chart explores the functions of the family and roles of different family members. A structural map shows the different subsystems in the family, the power structure and the relations between the family members. This can show if relations are normal, overinvolved, conflictual or distant. The circular hypothesis generally used in systemic therapy helps to understand the meaning of the symptoms for the patient and the role of the family members in maintaining them.

As most of these assessment tools were originally developed in the west, they need to be suitably modified for use in the eastern culture. In the last few decades attempts have been to develop culturally sensitive tools to assess Indian family in treatment. The Family Topology Scale[ 52 ] is a 28 item scale that measures family types, and groups them into the five subtypes of normal, cohesive, egoistic, altruistic and anoxic. Another tool, the Family Interaction Pattern scale,[ 44 ] looks into the developmental phases of the family. The scale has six subscales looking into leadership, communication, role, reinforcement, cohesiveness and social support. For assessing marital problems in Indian couples two tools are available: Marital Adjustment Questionnaire[ 92 ] and Marital Quality Scale.[ 46 ] Marital Adjustment Questionnaire[ 92 ] attempts to assess marital adjustment in Indian couples, and measures seven aspects of family functioning, including personality, emotional factors, sexual satisfaction, marital role and responsibility, relationship to in laws, attitudes to children and family planning, and interpersonal relationships. Marital Quality Scale[ 46 ] is a more comprehensive instrument for assessing marital problems and looks into 12 dimensions of understanding, rejection, satisfaction, affection, despair, decision making, discontent, dissolution potential, dominance, disclosure, trust and role functioning. Such emic assessment tools are invaluable in understanding the unique problems of the family in our culture.

The therapy proper is the phase, where major work on the family is carried out. The school of therapy used depends on various factors. For example, the degree of psychological sophistication in the family will determine if psychodynamic techniques can be used. The nature of the disorder will also determine the therapy, like the use of behavioral techniques in chronic psychotic illness. Therapist's comfort and training, and the time the family can spare for therapy are other determining factors. Dynamic approaches generally take months to years, where as focused strategic techniques can bring benefits over a few sessions.

Endo-cultural issues may crop up at the initial phases, which threaten to jeopardize the therapy outcome. The therapist needs to be aware of them and be sensitive and considerate. Although Indian families are more encouraging and supporting of their mentally ill member, the rigid hierarchical structure of Indian families often hinders free communication of thoughts and feelings. Therefore, the therapist may encounter difficulties in improving family communication pattern. The “karta” (head) of the family may resist attempts of family members to usurp his authority and so may not allow other family members to express feelings. The therapist may come to an impasse, if he attempts to challenge the authority of the father or sides with the wife rather than with the husband in couple's therapy. Additionally, given the diverse cultural and social background, the therapy needs to be tailored to the needs of individual family, keeping factors such as socio-economic status, educational level and family structure (nuclear, transitional, joint, traditional) into account. Directive approaches may be more suitable for traditional families, as the therapist is often looked upon as charismatic, authoritarian and in control of the session.[ 93 ]

New and unexpected problems arising out of the rapid changing social scenario also need to be addressed. Family and couple's conflict arising out of factors such as conflicts in families over dowry, or related to inter-caste marriage; sexual problems arising out of physical separation of couples due to job timing or placement; disagreement about child rearing practices (both within couples and intergenerational); conflicts related to husband's role in sharing in domestic chores for working couples; problems with unsupervised children, and loss or displacement of role or function of the elderly are only a few of the problems unique to modern Indian families.[ 90 ] In family therapy focusing on adolescent and children, substance abuse, juvenile delinquency, school dropout or low school attendance are common amongst the lower socioeconomic classes. Parent-child conflict from increased autonomy and individuation of the child are common in nuclear families. In recent times, increased demands on children or adolescents for academic achievements from parents, the culture clash with children going for night-outs, parties, raves and adolescent sexual experimentation have been reported by Indian therapists as common issues while dealing with adolescents.[ 86 ] Although most of these problems are the same that troubled the west in the 1960s and the 1970s, our cultural differences make the therapist look and treat these problems as new.

It might be beneficial for the therapist to understand that in India and other similar collectivistic societies, the concepts of self, attitudes, values and boundaries are defined differently from those of the western world. In collectivistic societies the self is largely defined through the collective identity with family identity forming a significant component of the self-identity.[ 94 ] Therefore, individuals from such societies, when they stand up for their individual rights are termed rebellious, disobedient, or disrespectful. In therapy, if the person resists the solutions proposed by family members, the person may often be accused of not respecting important members of the family and/or community.[ 15 ] Attitudinal differences in collectivistic societies hamper treatment seeking too. People from collectivist societies often tend to keep their personal problems to themselves, especially if their own opinions and experiences are inconsistent with the conventional wisdom and mores of the family. Typically, only in severe cases, the people seek support from outsiders, and even then at the cost of significant resistance from other family members, who may perceive help seeking from the therapist as a measure of failure of the family to solve the problem of their member.[ 95 ] Additionally, involvement of outside strangers in resolving personal problems may be perceived by members of the collective society as intruding in the family's private affairs, undermining the family's harmony, and/or as a potential threat to their reputation. Collectivist values make each member of the family responsible for the behavior and the life conditions of every other family member, even to the extent of denial of individual needs and aspirations. In therapy, this often leads to over involvement, lack of privacy and space for the client. Indeed, negative expressed emotions that might hamper therapy and positive expressed emotions that help, have both been found to be more significant predictors of outcome in our country compared to the west.[ 96 ]

Finally, the therapist should be aware of the psychotherapeutic concepts derived from Indian philosophy and religion, as they have been found to be effective and culturally more acceptable in certain cases. The concept of “Shivite” stemming from the Hindu mythology of God Shiva and representing a phallic symbol can be used in dynamic psychotherapy.[ 97 ] The legend of Savitri has been used as a framework for psychotherapy by Surya and Jayaram.[ 98 ] Wig has used the term Hanuman complex[ 99 ] for the mythological story of Lord Hanuman needing external help being reminded about his forgotten powers. The concept can be used to help patients understand the process of psychotherapy and identifying one's hidden strengths. Varma used principles from the communication of Buddha in psychotherapy, which he viewed as an ‘interpersonal method of mitigating suffering’. He has also emphasized on the use of concepts of Karma and Dharma in psychotherapy.[ 18 ] Neki used the concept of “Sahaja” and the role of “nirvana” in psychotherapy. He also propounded on the directive interaction between the therapist and the patient using the “Guru-Chela” paradigm.[ 100 ] Although such concepts may not be universally applicable, particularly in the changed urban modern scenario, they can be effectively used particularly in traditional systems to make therapy more acceptable and effective.

The termination phase summarizes the original problem, reviews the beneficial changes and patterns of interaction that have emerged through therapy, and stresses on the need for sustaining the improvements achieved. The follow-up sessions may be continued over the next 6 months to a year to ensure that the client therapist bond is not severed too quickly.

Indian families are capable of fulfilling the physical, spiritual and emotional needs of its members; initiate and maintain growth, and be a source of support, security and encouragement to the patient. These fundamental characteristics of the Indian family remain valid even now despite the changes in the social scenario. In a country, where the deficit in mental health professionals amounts to greater than 90% in most parts of the country, the family is an invaluable resource in mental health treatment. From a psycho-therapeutic viewpoint, in collectivistic societies like ours, the family may be a source of the trouble as well as a support during trouble. It is therefore, plausible that the family might also provide solutions of the trouble and indeed, interventions focusing on the whole family rather that the individual often results in more gratifying and lasting outcome. Sadly, the progress made in the last few decades has been minimal and restricted to few centers only and family therapy has not found popularity amongst the mental health community. Lack of integration of psychotherapy in postgraduate curriculum, lack of training centers for clinical psychologists, and lack of a good model of family therapy that can be followed in the diverse Indian setting are the three cardinal reasons for the apathy. This does not absolve the mental health professionals from the responsibility of providing solutions for the problems of the family, which seems to have multiplied during the same time. The Indian family, which often feels bewildered in these times of changed values, changed roles, changed morality and changed expectations is in need of support and is ready for family therapy. If developed enthusiastically, family therapy might be the right tool to not only help the families in need but also to develop a huge resource in community-centered treatment of mental-health problems.

Source of Support: Nil

Conflict of Interest: None declared

Doing Sociology

The contemporary indian family: transitions and diversity edited by b devi prasad, srilatha juvva and mahima nayar (2020): a review by priyasha choudhary.

The Indian family has undergone considerable changes in structure and dynamics. From the traditional form of the joint family (D’cruz and Bharat, 2001) to the current diverse family forms, such as single-parent households, adoptive families, disabled families, and queer families (Chakravarti, 2008; Ghosh and Sanyal, 2015; Swaddle & Desai, 2019), the family unit has been witnessing a multitude of changes in different developmental stages. The pandemic has only accentuated such changes (Chowkhani, 2022). Any scholarly engagement with the family needs to highlight ‘family’ as not just a stable institution but a dynamic construct that is taken up in diverse ways depending on the context. The Contemporary Indian Family Transitions and Diversity , edited by B Devi Prasad, Srilatha Juvva and Mahima Nayar and published by Taylor and Francis in 2020 illuminates the shifting and fluid qualities of the concept of the family. It provides a glimpse of the changing practices in the family and highlights the gendered nature of oppression that shapes individual subjectivity in the Indian context.

It is an insightful collection of essays that explores the varied mechanisms through which family structures and dynamics have transitioned in the Indian context. The book has nine chapters, with an introduction and a concluding chapter. Following a historical tracing of the family from pre-modern to contemporary times, the book highlights the changing nature of the field of family studies in terms of its shift from macro-level patterns to micro-level dynamics. Various approaches to understanding this trajectory, along with policy and individual-level changes, are discussed in the book’s introduction, setting the background for subsequent chapters.

The first and second chapters depict how actual families often differ from normative depictions. These chapters also trace how development and state interaction shape family dynamics and emphasize that ‘the family, a kinship group, is not a static institution but rather, it plays itself out through the household as it goes through its developmental phases’ (Prasad et al., 2020, p.37). The second chapter traces the trajectories in the discipline of family studies in the Indian context, highlighting how culture gives new meanings and nuances to universal concepts. The third- and fourth chapters dwell on how media and technology shape family dynamics in the Indian context and use a structural perspective to understand the multifaceted impact of poverty on families in both rural and urban contexts, respectively. 

The fifth and sixth chapters unravel the experience of families and women living in conflict zones. The fifth chapter outlines how indigenous knowledge and subjectivities are impacted when families live in conflict zones. The tribal communities of India have been at the receiving end of violence and oppression since colonial times. The ever-growing need for the state to intervene in their affairs and the constant tussle between the two has had a long-lasting impact on the lifeworld of tribal people. The chapter examines the Adivasi community in the central Indian context, specifically Chhattisgarh. There is also a detailed discussion of the brutal and unjustified violence (state-led and otherwise) inflicted upon women, men, and children. The sixth chapter continues this discussion about conflict and family by shedding light on the gendered nature of the struggle in conflict areas, specifically Kashmir. Women have always been the first target and the worst affected community during the conflict. As witnessed during the partition between India and Pakistan in 1947, by inextricably linking virtue and honour to a woman and her body, mass abductions, rapes, and the killing of women took place on a colossal scale (Das and Singh, 1995). Violence of various kinds was inflicted upon them, and the brunt of sustenance and recovery also invariably fell on them. The chapter highlights how women cope with the stress of a lost husband and the challenges of raising children and sustaining the family and social fabric. An interesting observation in the chapter is that many women increasingly move into the public sphere through their activism and in search of ‘justice’. Many also take on additional responsibilities as their husbands are absent; however, this is not necessarily associated with increased autonomy or agency. The societal pressures and demands from the family make this increased participation a performative phenomenon, even though they are still associated with their primary role of caregivers/wives. It is also noted that women often negotiate public spaces and activist circles through their maternal location, as their participation in the public sphere constitutes a rupture in their traditional roles. (Prasad et al 2020, p.140)

The seventh chapter discusses how families make sense of queer family members, revolving around issues of acceptance, changing family dynamics, and new kinship relations. The LGBTQ+ community in India has faced and still faces a tremendous amount of stigma from the state and the family. It intersects with other systemic and structural issues that exacerbate their situation. It would have been good to see a discussion of the issues faced by the transgender community in this chapter. The eighth chapter explores disability as a lens to understand family dynamics in households with one or more deaf families. It sheds light on how disabled people challenge normative understandings about parenthood and disability, exploring issues around stigma, communication, difference, and social relations. The final chapter binds the entire text together and orients the reader to the bigger picture emanating from the book. The discipline of family studies has undergone various trends, gesturing towards the possibilities of new kinds of families, such as same-sex families and intentional families. [i]

In conclusion, the book sheds light on the dynamic and evolving nature of the Indian family. Over time, the traditional joint family has given way to diverse family structures. The chapters focusing on conflict zones bring attention to the struggles faced by indigenous communities and women, underscoring the intersectionality of violence and gender. Meanwhile, the discussion on queer family members highlights the challenges of acceptance and changing family dynamics within the LGBTQ+ community as they confront societal stigmas and discrimination. Furthermore, exploring disability as a lens to understand family dynamics presents a compelling perspective on how disabled individuals challenge societal norms and redefine parenthood and family roles. These transformations suggest that marginalized communities are forging new paths, striving for empowerment and inclusivity. 

The book provides a valuable contribution to family studies, offering fresh insights into the multifaceted and evolving nature of families in the Indian context. By understanding and embracing the fluidity of the family institution, society can better adapt to its members’ diverse needs and experiences, fostering a more inclusive and compassionate environment for all. A more nuanced consideration of other forms of families, for instance, adoptive families, or even single-parent-led families would have enriched the text even further. Moreover, a keen eye for the rural-urban divide and differences in the experiences is a must when looking at family structures which were missing in a few chapters. Nonetheless, the book is a significant resource for scholars and researchers from anthropology, sociology, feminist theory, family studies, gender studies, and psychology. It urges us to rethink and redefine the concept of family in the context of contemporary India and its rich tapestry of evolving family structures and dynamics.

[i] See, e.g. the emerging discourse of ‘single studies’ in India (Chowkhani, 2022).

References:

Chakravarti, U. (2008). Burden of Caring: Families of the Disabled in Urban India. Indian Journal of Gender Studies . 15(2): 341–363.

Chowkhani, K. (2022). Successfully Aging Alone: Long-Term Singlehood and Care during COVID-19 in India. Eldercare Issues in China and India . (pp. 145–154). Routledge.

Das, V., and Singh, B. (1995). Critical Events: An Anthropological Perspective on Contemporary India . New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

D’cruz, P., & Bharat, S. (2001). Beyond Joint and Nuclear: The Indian Family Revisited. Journal of Comparative Family Studies . 32(2): 167–194.

Desai, R. (2019). What It’s Like to Be Openly Queer and Exist Within an Indian Family. The Swaddle . https://theswaddle.com/what-its-like-to-be-openly-queer-and-exist-within-an-indian-family/

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Priyasha Choudhary is a MA in Development Studies from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Hyderabad.

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Transformations in Kinship Relations in a Globalized India: Interrogating Marriage, Law, and Intimacy

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This paper intends to review sociological/anthropological literature from India on marriage and family structures within a transformative landscape. Most of the essays, social events, laws, and judgments that will be used in this article will be post-millennium, indicating an engagement with the politico-cultural impact of globalization in India. The objective through this article is to indicate that in the last two decades, contestations around love, consent, “honor”, and freedom have become important concepts that sociology has been engaging with or is expected to engage with. While it is important to note a shift in sociological studies on marriage, family and kinship forms since the ones from the 1970s to 1990s, it is equally necessary to acknowledge that heterosexual marriage remains a dominant structure through which kinship is still popularly imagined or practiced. By discussing briefly four recent narratives of love, all of which were sub-texts of violence as well, this paper will engage with questions around the social impossibilities of inter-community and inter-caste marriages and same sex intimacy, while the Indian judiciary brings the principle of constitutional morality into the domestic space. This paper wishes to finally propose a real need to foreground intimacy as a sociological subject of enquiry in India.

I wish to thank Professor Ino Rossi for his patience and perseverance with this paper. I am grateful to Professor Habibul Khondker for having faith and introducing me to the editor of this collection. I am extremely thankful to Dr B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi for allowing me to design and transact the MA Sociology compulsory course on Relationships and Affinities, the ideas explored in which form the basis of this paper.

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Sen, R. (2020). Transformations in Kinship Relations in a Globalized India: Interrogating Marriage, Law, and Intimacy. In: Rossi, I. (eds) Challenges of Globalization and Prospects for an Inter-civilizational World Order. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44058-9_32

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20 Family and Household

Sutapa Majumdar

Table of Contents:

1.  Introduction

2.  Introducing Household

3.  Family in India

4.  Family as a site of Inequality

5.  Family and Economy

6.  Family in Diaspora

Family and Household

What’s the module about?

This module is an attempt to holistically examine and understand the concept of family and household in the Indian context. Family and households are both very close to human existence and hence we tend to believe that we know everything about it just to realise that it is not that simple. Hence this module is prepared to help the readers get a very crisp yet detailed understanding of the nuances of family and household specifically focussing on Indian context.

The entire module is sub divided into various sections- ranging from introducing the concept of family and household to going deep into the form, nature, types, myths, characteristics and future of these two inseparable institutions. An attempt is made to bring in the views of different eminent scholars working on family and household. Later, the module discusses how family and household as institutions can also be a site of oppression, hierarchy and inequality. The other section of the module focuses on the impact of family on economy and how family functions in a diasporic environment highlighting the agency of women.

Although an attempt is made to bring in as many perspectives as possible for a complete understanding of family, there ought to be many more which are left untouched and is open to inclusion for understanding the concept of family.

1. Introducing family – concepts, forms, nature, types, myths and characteristics

Sociological research on Indian families has largely focused on questions of household form and structure, to the exclusion of not only the more nebulous dimensions of family life and relationships.1 The ideology of the joint family continues to influence resource distribution within a family even when most of its members spend some or the greater part of their lives in nuclear households2.

1 Patricia Uberoi, ‘The Family in India: Beyond the Nuclear versus Joint Debate’, in Veena Das (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Sociology and Social Anthropology (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), p.1073.

2 Patricia Uberoi, ‘The Family in India: Beyond the Nuclear versus Joint Debate’, in Veena Das (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Sociology and Social Anthropology (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), p.1073.

The idea that a family is a stable and cohesive unit of residence where the father is the provider and the mother is the nurturer is at present a myth, as globally we see the emergence of new forms of family which are born out of the grave of the traditional family structure consisting of both parents, their children and members of the extended family. The reality is that trends like unwed motherhood, rising divorce rates, smaller households and the feminisation of poverty is on the rise and occurring worldwide3. It is indeed difficult to define family as one might argue that we already know everything there is to know about family as we ourselves are part of it. Such confidence, negligence and assumptions about the natural understanding of the family stop us in formulating an all embracing definition of family. For instance, George Peter Murdock (1949) while illustrating the difficulties inherent in the formulation of the definition of the family which can satisfy all, defines family as “a social group characterised by common residence, economic cooperation, and reproduction. It includes adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship, and one or more children, own or adopted, of the sexually cohabiting adults.

The family as an integrated and functional unit of society has, for a considerable period of time captured the attention and imagination of researchers. Due to the multiplicity of characteristics possessed by the family, research continues to expand and grow both in volume and depth. The structural, functional, developmental and integrative functions which the family fulfils in societies the world over make it an important unit of analysis for sociological investigation. Family has indeed evolved over the years and has been subjected to extensive and, in some cases, intensive influences from within and beyond the society (Sooryamurthy 2012).

Family is one of the most important social units of the human world. Almost everyone universally belongs to a family. The family is generally regarded as a major social institution and a locus of much of a person’s social activity. It is a social unit created by blood, marriage, or adoption, and can be described as nuclear (parents and children) or extended (encompassing other relatives).

Family is a unique institution in that it is at one and the same time both private and a visibly public institution. Family is a universal institution and oscillates between the most intimate to the most public in various contexts (Patel 2005).

3 From interview with Judith Bruce, an author of the Population Council study “Families in Focus as quoted in the New York Times International,May 30,1995.

A family is a group of persons directly linked by kin connections, where the adult members take up the responsibility of taking care of the children. Kinship ties are connections between individuals, connected by blood relation or marriage. Marriage between two adult individuals- male and female connects them to a kin relation who further connects to wider kin groups- parents, brothers, sisters, and other blood relatives through marriage. Family relationships are always recognised within wider kinship groups. In almost every society, we can identify two very distinct family type- nuclear family where two adults live together with their own children or adopted children in a household, and joint family- where two adults live with their children and also parents or other members of the same family. Traditional society included a third type of family, namely the extended family where close relatives other than the married couple and children, lived either in the same household or in a close and continuous relationship with one another. An extended family usually includes grandparents, brothers and their wives, sisters and their husbands, nieces and nephews (Giddens, 2009).

Family is also defined as a reproductive or biological unit, composed of a man and a woman having socially approved sexual relationship and whatever offspring they might have. As a social unit, a family is defined as a group of persons of both sexes, related by marriage, blood or adoption, performing roles based on age, sex and relationship and socially distinguished as making up a single household or sub-household (Ahuja, 2012). Murdock (1949) defines family as a social group characterised by common residence, economic cooperation and reproduction. Ross (1961) defines family as a group of people usually related as some particular type of kindred, who may live in one household and whose unity resides in a pattering of rights and duties, sentiments and authorities. Chattophadhyay (1961) defines family in three forms: simple , compound and composite . Simple family consists of man, wife and their unmarried children. Compound family is when one of the partners remarries after the death of one partner with children and also produces children out of the second marriage. Compound family can also be defined as a family where either or both the man and the woman remarries in spite of being married and lives with their two sets of children in a composite household, taking it to the next level of composite family.

Burges and Locke (1963), have classified families as institutional and companionship on the basis of the behaviour of the individuals. In the first type of family, all behaviours are controlled by some rules and regulations and in the second type of family; behaviour arises from mutual affection and consensus of the members. On the basis of kinship ties, families have been classified and conjugal and consanguine family. Conjugal ties gives importance to marriage and the consanguine ties is related  to the blood. Zimmerman (1947) classifies families into trustee , domestic and atomistic families. Trustee families are those where individuals have no right, the power rests with the head of the family. Domestic family tries to maintain the balance between individuals and the head of the family and atomistic families give way to new ways of life, and believe that the traditional beliefs, customs and mores need to change with the changing times. Ahuja (2011) talks of fissioned family which, in structure and function is a nuclear family separated from the parent family.

Various researches on family, household and kinship suggests that globally family has developed in a phased manner , that is to say that in some parts of the world, families were either too small or too large, two extended or too constrained, too diverse or too uniform. Many sociologists argue that in the pre modern world, family type and characteristic were not very different from the present times. One striking difference may be diverse functions of the family that has evolved with the need of the time. In the olden days, family and the households were intricately connected to each other and in fact, larger community or commune functioned as a well knit family, which is very rare to find now.

There are different myths surrounding family and the conservative believes that traditional families were much better than the families of the present times because of the virtue of being disciplined, stable and connected to each other. But is it really so? Evidence shows, that in the Victorian era, families suffered many odds, beginning with a very restricted mobility of women, to overtly promiscuous men, limited life span, increased death of children and erratic work schedule. In the European world, women could hardly go out of their homes to work or spend time as they were fully domesticated which undermined women’s ability completely. There were hardly any emotional relations between men and women except for sexual intimacy and that too all sexual act was controlled by men for reproduction purpose. Hence, sex was never for pleasure but for procreation. Women had no control over their mind and body. Domestic life was very oppressive, domestic violence, abuse and alcoholism were severe and there were no mechanisms to confront these issues. Hence, one needs to think critically before claiming that traditional families were much better than the present day families.

Considering India, the belief that large and joint households were widely prevalent in pre-British India is probably false. The average size of the household in the early decades of the 19th century was more or less the same as it is now. The assumption of large households in the past has been based on confusion between the household, as a residential unity of patri-kin and their wives, and the family, conceived as an  ideal or a legal and emotional entity. Such residential unity was greater in towns than in villages, and in the higher and Sanskritised castes than among others (Shah, 1968).

2. Introducing Household- concepts, forms, nature, types and characteristics

A.M. Shah (1968) while discussing about the changes in the Indian family argues that both sociology and social anthropology has distinguished between ‘household’ and ‘family’. In common English parlance the word ‘family’ has several different meanings, including ‘household’; the common Indian word for the family, viz, kutumb , has likewise several different meanings but, for the sake of technical analysis, ‘household’ should be distinguished from the other referents of ‘family’. Households may be defined as a single individuals or groups of people who share a common housing unit, common living rooms and have a common kitchen. According to the census, households may range from the most simple single member household to a very complex household of many members. A ‘simple’ household is composed of a complete elementary family or a part of an elementary family. A ‘complex’ or ‘joint’ household is composed of two or more elementary families, or of parts of two or more elementary families, or of one elementary family and parts of one or more other elementary families.

In order to understand the characteristics of household holistically, it is important to understand their structure and compositions. The structure of the household becomes more complex as more categories of relatives are included; In a one member household there is no relationship; in a two member household there is one relationship; but beyond this the addition of one relative means an addition of more than one relationship. For example, the addition of a son’s wife to a household of father, mother and son, means the addition of relationships not only between the son and his wife but also, between father-in-law and daughter-in- law and between mother-in-law and daughter- in-law. Each person in a household is involved in ‘a complex pattern of behaviour with every other member. Everyone in a household has his own likes and dislikes, habits, tastes and idiosyncrasies. Life in a household is marked by sentiments and emotions, and co -operation as well as conflict. Another very important feature of households is the process of progression and regression. One household may be undergoing progression, another may be undergoing regression. As a result, there are always households in the society which are small and simple in composition, along with households which are large and complex in composition. Whatever be the maximum extent to which the principle goes in  progression in a particular section of the society, it is important to note that the processes of progressive and regressive developments go on simultaneously in the society taken as a whole. When a complex household, say, of two or more married brothers, is partitioned, two or more separate households come into existence, but at the same time a number of other relationships continue to operate. They would co-operate in economic pursuits, hold and manage property jointly, help each other on many occasions, celebrate festivals, rituals and ceremonies jointly, and so on. This is also a normal process, which highlights the importance of technical distinction between house-hold’ and ‘family’ mentioned at the outset. Thus, two or more house-holds may be separate but they may constitute one family.

3.  Family in the Indian context- Type, structure, changing form and future of Indian family.

Any discussion of family in Indian context cannot start without the mention of the rich history of joint family and extended family system which were more of a community living, very different from the way joint families functions in today’s time. Indians are known for their immense ties with their families and the values and beliefs that members of the families imbibe and practice wherever they are. Globally Indians are known for respecting and continuing being in a close knit family system, no matter how problematic or difficult it may be to continue identifying oneself with family rather than being an individual.

Different scholars have defined joint family system differently. While some of the scholars like Iravati Karve understands joint family as ‘co- residentiality’, other scholars like S.C. Dube and Paulin Kolenda give importance to commensality along with ‘co-residentiality’. T. N. Madan gives importance to joint property ownerships and I.P. Desai gives importance of duties and obligations towards kin even if there is no common residenceship and joint ownership of property. M.S. Gore defines joint family as “a family of co-partners and their dependence.” He believes that a joint family has filial and fraternal relationships rather than conjugal relationships, as seen in nuclear families. Ahuja, while defining joint family, classifies them in terms of kin- primary, secondary, tertiary and distant. His understanding of fissioned family, which is a form of nuclear family, rests on the premise that these families can be completely dependent or independent on some other nuclear family related through some type of kinship. For him, Fissioned family is a form of nuclear family separated from the father’s or married brother’s family (Ahuja 2011).

According to Ahuja, important characteristics of joint families are as follows:

• Joint family has an authoritarian structure, that is, the power mostly rests with the patriarch or the head of the family.
• In a joint family, individual interests are always less important than the family interests, that is to say that family always comes first whenever required.
• Status of the members in the family is determined by their age and relationship to the rest of family. This is very much hierarchical in nature.
• In a joint family, the conjugal relationships are always subordinate to the filial and the fraternal relationships.
• The family functions on the principle of joint responsibility.
• All the members get equal attention as per their age and positions in the family.
• The authority in the family between men and men, men and women, women and women is determined by the principle of seniority.

Focusing on the changing pattern of the family system, it may be argued that the ideas of jointness and joint family are never going to disappear from the Indian psyche as they are ingrained in our thought. What is going to happen or is already happening is that the large joint family is breaking down into small joint families, comprising of mainly two generations, who may or may not be completely independent but will be functionally dependent. This argument rests on different empirical studies conducted by various scholars like, I.P.Desai, Kapadia, Ross, Gore, A.M. Shah and many others (see Ahuja, 2011). The central arguments of all these studies are as follows:

• Although the number of fissioned families are increasing, traditional obligation towards parents are maintained or at least an effort is being made to perform the duties and obligations towards parents.
• Families exposed to industrialisation, urbanization and westernisation are changing into nuclear families, unlike in the rural communities.
• The size of the traditional joint families has become smaller.
• Functional joint family will prevail as long as old cultural values persist.
• The traditional families are changing into transitional and nuclear families, giving more opportunities to women and individual members within the family thus, strengthening the notion of equality and, in many ways weakening the family norms.

Further trying to understand the future of the Indian family system; G.C. Hallen4 claims that, family can never be in a state of complete disorganization. He takes the 4 G.C. Hallen, Professor and head, Department of Sociology, J.V. College, Merrut, India  position that the family is an eternal truth, an eternal reality; its seeming disintegration at any stage of national development is only a temporary phenomenon. He further argues that there is vast structural and functional difference within the institute of family generated by modernization industrialization, growth of urbanization, social movements, science and technology, modern means of communication, new ideas, and so forth. A lot of studies on structural and functional changes of the family system have generated fear regarding the sudden disappearance of the family system (Hallen, 1967). These studies point out that there is a significant change in the basic attitudes of the husband and the wife toward each other and toward the family system, their relationship being no longer characterized by mutual love and affection or a proper appreciation of the purpose of marriage and the family, but, instead, by an all-pervasive atmosphere of conflict and strife. It is further emphasized by these studies that the purpose of marriage and the family, namely, the procreation and upbringing of children and the perpetuation of the human race, has greatly changed. Marriage is now considered a source of recreation and romantic pleasure. It is considered essentially a legal bond of a temporary nature rather than a sacrament of permanent character. The studies also reflect that many modern organisation and institutions have taken over the traditional institutions, consequently transforming some of the important roles and diminishing the vital significance of the family.

For example, Dr. Panos D. Bardis, professor of sociology, University of Toledo, Ohio, reports from a major study dealing with comparative family sociology that, in India, “The large joint family household is becoming less common, while the number of smaller joint families with a shorter duration is constantly increasing. Remarriage of widows, especially ‘virgin widows’ – those whose husbands died before their marriage could be consummated – is less disapproved at the present time. Male children have been given property rights. Child marriage and female infanticide are gradually being legislated out of existence. The family is no longer functioning as an economic unit. Finally, in the area of courtship, young people are enjoying more freedom today, increasingly emphasizing romantic love, while premarital contacts between the two sexes, including practices such as ‘necking,’ have become rather common, especially in urban centres.” But is this really so? There are counter arguments by sociologists like Radhakamal Mukherjee, who believes that the fear of disintegration of traditional family is much exaggerated, as in reality, the disorganization of the Indian family has been going on, consciously or unconsciously, for several centuries, but the family system has successfully withstood this process (Hallen, G.C.1967).

The family is a fact of social life. It is spontaneous in its origin, growth, evolution, and present development. Therefore, before a hurried statement about the future of the family is pronounced on the basis of recent trends, it is imperative that this basic characteristic be fully weighed. In all developing countries, there is a fear that modern industrialization, growth of urbanization, social movements, science and technology, modern means of communication, new ideas, and so forth, have impinged upon the family system to such an extent that there is a danger of this institution disappearing in the near future.

Recent studies of structural and functional changes in the family systems in these developing societies have brought out that there is a significant change in the basic attitudes of the husband and the wife toward each other and toward the family system, their relationship being no longer characterized by mutual love and affection or a proper appreciation of the purpose of marriage and the family, but, instead, by an all-pervasive atmosphere of conflict and strife. It is further emphasized by these studies that the purpose of marriage and the family, namely, the procreation and upbringing of children and the perpetuation of the human race, has greatly changed. Marriage is now considered a source of recreation and romantic pleasure. It is considered essentially a legal bond of a temporary nature rather than a sacrament of permanent character. These studies also point out that, in modern society, many new organizations and institutions have come into existence and taken over the various traditional functions of the family, or to which the family members have deliberately transferred some of their important roles. Without these functions, which are no longer performed by the modern family, it is maintained that this institution has lost its vital significance in society, and that it has been robbed of its vigor (Hallen, G.C.1967).

Now to look a little deeper into the actual consequences of the changes in the family structure due to the changes in the social system and the future of the family, the following few points can be considered.

Family is a unique social institution. It is permanent in nature. Family performs various social, economic, political, religious, cultural, educational, and psychological functions that cannot be performed by other agencies. As far as the family system is concerned, the truth remains that, in view of its fundamental character, even a complete revolution in our social norms will not generate its permanent annihilation.

As far as the dangers of survival is faced by the traditional family in India are concerned, it appears that the impact of modern social disintegration on the family has been exaggerated. In reality, the disorganization of the Indian  family has been going on, consciously or unconsciously, for several centuries, but the family system has successfully withstood this process.

In regard to the procreation of children is concerned, which is a universal phenomenon, it may be argued that the reproductive function can be best fulfilled within the family. Outside the family, this function loses its substance and meaning.

Family, being a primary unit of society, is also an essential requirement for the growth, stability, and survival of the state itself. There is a very strong case for the persistence of the family in India and elsewhere due to the positive efforts of the state. In this connection, it may be stated that the sooner the better, if the state comes to realize that the family institution must be protected against all disruptive forces, and that steps have to be taken to strengthen it by suitable legislative measures.

The Indian family as a strong, cohesive, integral and fundamental unit is a solid foundation of the Indian social structure. It has survived the test of time during several phases of social growth and transition such as industrialization, modernization and globalization. Regardless of one’s status and background (caste/class) in the society, an Indian has always been treated as part of a family and his/her existence as a member of the society has always been referred to the family s/he belongs to. For the individual, the family is the first place where one could look for everything that is needed for her/his growth and development. The individual is intertwined with the family for nurture, growth, support, values and development. All the rest succeeds after this accepted belief and practice-that the individual is basically a member of the family -in the Indian social system (Sooryamurthy 2012). Hence, undoubtedly, the Indian family system is definitely surviving strong with changes as applicable and demanded by time.

4. Family as a site of equality, hierarchy and inequality

Society is unequally structured in terms of income, esteem, class and authority among others. Some members of the society, by virtue of representing a particular class, gain automatic access to different life chances while the rest find it quite difficult to do so, even if the legal barriers are removed to ensure equality (Beteille, 1993). Beteille, in continuation further argues that family plays a crucial role in the reproduction of social structure including structure of inequality. Family is a universal phenomenon in all human societies and although the effectiveness and functionality of the family varies globally, it is observed that it does produce varied inequality in respect to  socialization, assimilation, interaction and distribution of wealth. In fact, caste which has been historically thought of as a dividing factor has in modern times ceased to play an active part in the reproduction of inequality at least at the upper level of social hierarchy where it is no longer an agent of social control. Family, on the other hand, does bring inequality. Family reproduces inequality through disparities in the distribution of wealth. Unequal distribution of private wealth in the form of land and other material assets brings in disparities between families.

5.  Family and its impact on the Economy

Amartya Sen (1983), while discussing the importance of family and how family can contribute to the economy argues that historically family has never been thought of as an important factor in the functioning of an economy. The standard economic theories have been emphasising on the individual and his ability to generate revenue rather than the family’s contribution. The existence of families and the different roles that they play raises important and difficult issues related to economic theory and policy. Different forms of families give rise to different kinds of inequality. Evidence of inequalities within the family is widespread across the world but in poorer and developing countries like India, resource allocation is very lopsided and gender biased; the reasons being traditional ethos, culture and practices. There is a great reluctance to enter into an area of action that has traditionally been thought to be the preserve of the family head. Hence the inequality exists and only a radical step can a bring change.

He further argues in his paper “Cooperation, inequality and family” (1989) that family relations involve a combination of congruence and conflict. Obvious benefits accrue to all parties as a result of family arrangements, but the nature of the division of work and goods determines specific distributions of advantages and particular patterns of inequality. He further suggests that it is important not to lose sight of either of these functions that families fulfil, since a model of pure conflict (e.g., a “zero sum” game being played by the man and the woman) or a model of pure congruence (e.g., every member of the family having shared goals and identical interests) would undoubtedly miss something of substance in family relations.

6.  Indian family and Diaspora:

Diaspora by definition means a scattered population with a common origin settled in different geographical locations around the world. It also means displacement of  people from their original homeland5. The dispersion of people from India and the formation of Indian Diaspora communities is the result of different waves of migration over hundreds of years driven by a variety of reasons: slavery under mercantilism, indentured labour under colonisation, and guest work programmes post colonialism. This transnational engagement of people, riding on the processes of globalisation has been reinforced through global networks of families, friends and businesses, which are symbiotic and which enable the exchange of shared ideas of cultural, social and economic interests6 .The term “Indian diaspora” refers to all persons of Indian descent living outside India, as long as they preserve some major Indian ethno cultural characteristics. Only nationals of Pakistan and Bangladesh are excluded from this term since those countries were part of the larger British India before 1947 and thus constitute a special case7.The Indian Diaspora is estimated to be second largest in the world and has a diversified global presence. The Diaspora, estimated at over 25 million, is spread across more than 200 countries with a high concentration in regions such as the Middle East, the United States of America, Malaysia, and South Africa8.

Since it is clear that diaspora is displacement of people, families and household, from place of origin to a place of new settlement, there ought to be changes in the nature, concept and the functioning of the families. It is indeed complex in nature. In specific context to India, we know that there are many instances in which the families and households stay back in their homeland and the male members migrate to a foreign land in search of better opportunities. What happens to such families? How does such a family sustain and function? Who takes up all the responsibilities of continuing the system? These are some of the serious concerns to be considered while understanding the complexities of diasporas and family. Migration and displacement which may be both short term and long term changes the traditional structure of family- joint and extended families may transform into single and nuclear families. Many a times one may start a completely new family through marital ties, leaving behind their earlier families back home. If we consider only the southern states of the country, we will observe that a lot of the male population have migrated to Gulf, USA and other parts of the world, leaving behind their families and household in search of better opportunities overseas. It is only women, children and the older generations who are left behind and the role and function of each agency within family shifts due to shifting nature of family due to migration and displacement.

5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora

6 Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, Annual Report 2012‐13, p. 4

7 http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/emigration‐immigration‐and‐diaspora‐relations‐india

8’Engaging Diaspora: The Indian Growth Story’ – Eleventh Pravasi Bhartiya Divas (http://www.ficci.com/publications(studies), p. 32, 2013

In the northern parts of the country, especially in Punjab and Haryana, a lot of girls get married overseas and become a part of the Diaspora community. Many families have migrated permanently from Punjab to places like Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the US but have continued their ties with their extended families back home by regular visits, practicing similar religious rituals and cultural practices and through marriage. What is interesting to note here is that Diasporic families over time has made conscious effort to retain their traditional values and structure which in many ways families back home have not been able to maintain.

Not only does migration overturn conventional understandings of the family in the diaspora, it also changes the mode of relating to the family that is left behind as argued by Supriya Singh and Anuja Cabraal in their essay ‘Contested Representations of Remittances and the Transnational Family’. The paper examines the changing meanings that are attached to the idea of money in mediating relations in the transnational Indian family across generations and life stages. Money in India flow both ways- from parents to children and from children to parents. It may be offered as a ritual gift to mark life stages such as birth, marriage and death, or it may be given in response to a financial need as an outward expression of filial relationships. Remittances sent home signify a migrant’s overt expression of belonging to and caring for the transnational family. However as the relationship with the transnational family changes, the meaning of money changes with it: when pitted against the acts of physical care giving provided by other family members, usually siblings in the home country, the value of the money sent may not be the same as the value of the money received. This discrepancy may be understood in terms of the failure of money to sufficiently signify intimacy and care. But when links between the transnational family attenuate, and the mode of maintaining affective relations changes from remittances to gifts, conventional understanding of gifts as being more intimate than money is overturned to show how it is money that now counts as the currency of closeness9.

In a diasporic setting it is very interesting to explore the women’s role and agency since in many ways they co -opt and at times subvert the communication channels in family networks in order to negotiate economic hardships and gender-based oppression. In the process they tend to either become victims or emerge as stronger,

9 Ira Raja (2013): Introduction; South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies; 2013 Vol. 36, No. 1, 3–8, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2012.740781

more empowered and innovative beings10. Women’s agency refers to the capacity of women to make on their own rational choices or decisions and in this sense their agency involves social competence in different areas of action. Their discursive capabilities and practical consciousness and the dialectic of control are often reflected in modes of coping with new and many times oppressive social environments. As discussed above, a substantive number of women from the Northern part of India migrate to different foreign lands after marriage and cope with the excitement of new experiences and the joys and traumas of new situations which involves constant work on their capabilities of creating and then sustaining new relationships. This is women’s agency according to Jain (2006). The other option is also possible when women stay back with the family alone and negotiate everyday existence. Indian diasporic women, much like women in India, play a key role both in construction and sustenance of nuclear as well as extended family networks. Their role in socialisation of diaspora-born children is equally central. Quite like their men, the diasporic women often follow the strategy of splitting their private and public domains and maintain a rather fossilised version of Indian culture in domestic life.

10 Shobita Jain (2006): Women’s Agency in the Context of Family Networks in Indian Diaspora; EPW, June 10, 2006.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora
• Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, Annual Report 2012‐13, p. 4
• http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/emigration‐immigration‐and‐diaspora‐relations‐india

REFERENCES:

• Shah, A.M (1968): Lineage Structure and Change in a Gujarat Family in “Family, Kinship and Marriages in India” edited by Patricia Uberoi; OUP, 1993, Delhi.
• Ahuja, Ram( 2012): “Society in India: Concepts, Theories and Recent Trends”; Rawat Publications, New Delhi
• Beteille, Andre (1993): The Family and the Reproduction of Inequality in “Family, Kinship and Marriages in India” edited by Patricia Uberoi; OUP, 1993, Delhi.
• Burges and Locke (1963): “The Family: From Institution to Companionship”; American Sociological Series; American book Company.
• “Engaging Diaspora: The Indian Growth Story” – Eleventh Pravasi Bhartiya Divas (http://www.ficci.com/publications (studies), p. 32, 2013
• George Peter Murdock (1949): “What is family” in the site http://www.harton6form.co.uk/wp‐ content/uploads/Sociology‐2.pdf? Giddens, A. (2009): “Sociology”, Polity press, UK.
• Hallen, G.C. (1967): “Family researches in India‐some strategies”. Rohini Publications, Merrut, UP.
• Ira Raja (2013): Introduction; South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies; 2013 Vol. 36, No. 1, 3–8, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2012.74078.
• Maharaj, B & Sahoo, A.K (ed.) ( 2011): “Sociology of Diaspora”; Rawat Publishers.
• Mulloo, A. (2007): “Voices of The Indian Diaspora”; MBP publishers; New Delhi.
• Patel, T (2005): The Family in India‐Structure and Practice; Themes in Indian Sociology, Vol 6; Sage Publications, New Delhi.
• Patricia Uberoi, ‘The Family in India: Beyond the Nuclear versus Joint Debate’, in Veena Das (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Sociology and Social Anthropology (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), p.1073.
• Ross, Aileen D. (1961): The Hindu Family in Urban Setting, OUP, Toronto.
• Sen, Amartya (1983): Reproduction of Inequality, Economics and the Family in “Family, Kinship and Marriages in India” edited by Patricia Uberoi; OUP, 1993, Delhi.
• Shobita Jain (2006): “Women’s Agency in the Context of Family Networks in Indian Diaspora”; EPW, June 10, 2006
• Sooryamurthy, R: The Indian Family: Needs for a Revisit in Journal of Comparative Family studies, Vol.43, No.1, Jan‐Feb 2012.
• Zimmerman, C. (1947): “Family and Civilization”; Edited by James Kurth with an introduction by Allan C. Carlson; ISI Books, 2008

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Changing Family Structure in India Impact and Implications

Family is traditionally considered in all societies as the primary social unit of human existence and hence, the basis for expressing and moulding the basic tenets of social behavior and relationship in society. It has been a subject of interest and of serious study at various levels down the centuries, and has always attracted the attention of the social scientists, for long. In India, for most part, the traditional system had survived for centuries without any major institutional alterations or dislocations. However, with the advent of the British, and later with the processes of industrialisation, modernisation, and the recent trends of globalisation, the structural features and the functional implications of family have started changing. The present paper attempts to understand and assess the dynamics of family, focusing mainly on the variations in the structural and functional aspects of family with multiple implications for the emerging social realities and their possible impact and implications for the future of the Indian Society.

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Changing family structure in India

Families have both structure and function. Like the skeleton and muscles in a body, the structure is what gives a family it’s size and shape. Also, like organs within the body that perform necessary functions to keep the body working, there are certain necessary functions that keep families healthy. It sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability. It asserts that our lives are guided by social structures, which are relatively stable patterns of social behaviour. Social structures give shape to our lives – for example, in families, the community, and through religious organizations and certain rituals, or complex religious ceremonies, give structure to our everyday lives. Each social structure has social functions or consequences for the operation of society as a whole.

Social structures consist of social relationships, as well as any social institutions within a society. One example of a social structure is a social class (upper-class, middle-class, and poor). Another example of a social structure is the different levels of government. Family, religion, law, economy, and class are all social structures.

India and its family structure India has a rich family structure with a patrilineal background, which help the family members to sustain a life with kinship groupings. Earlier, mostly joint families were found where family members live together under one roof. They all mutually work, eat, worship and co-operate each other in one or the other way. This also helps the family to get strong mentally, physically and economically, the children also get to know about the values and traditions of the society from their grandparents and elders. The family system has given a lot of importance in India and has worked more often to make the bonding among families stronger. The family system has given a lot of importance in India and has worked more often to make the bonding among families stronger. Meanwhile, urbanization and westernization had its influence on the basic structure of the Indian family structure. The division of the joint family into smaller units is not the symbol of people rejecting this traditional structure. The circumstances and conditions also made the need for people to split the family.

The family as a social institution has been undergoing change. Both in its structure and functions changes have taken place. In India, as in many traditional societies, the family has been not only the centre of social and economic life but also the primary source of support for the family members. The increasing commercialization of the economy and the development of the infrastructure of the modern state have introduced a significant change in the family structure in India in the 20th century. Especially, the last few decades have witnessed important alterations in family life.

India’s fertility rate has fallen, and couples have begun to bear children at a later age. At the same time, life expectancy has increased, resulting in more elderly people who need care. All of these changes are taking place in the context of increased urbanization, which is separating children from elders and contributing disintegration of family-based support systems.

Factors affecting family structures Change in Fertility: An inevitable outcome of declining fertility rates and increasing age at first birth in most of the countries in the world, including India, is a reduction in family size. Fertility declined due to the combined effect of substantial socio-economic development achieved during the last two decades and the effective implementation of family planning programmes.

Hence, it has become irrational for many people to have large families as the cost of children is increasing. In traditional societies, where human labour was a source of strength to the family, more children were preferred to fewer. But as the economic contribution from the children in a family decreased, because of a move away from agriculture, the need for large numbers of children decreased. Improvements in health care and child survival also contributed. The emphasis was on the quality of life rather than the number of children, a new concept added to the family.

Change in Age of marriage: In many countries in the world where significant declines infertility are being experienced, reductions in the proportion of people never married have often coincided with or preceded declines in marital fertility. A substantial increase in the proportions never married, among both males and females, at young ages, has been noted in many countries. A consequence of the increase in the proportion of never-married young adults is the gradual upward trend of the average age at marriage. Postponement of marriage among females resulted in the postponement of childbearing with a reduction in family size.

Change in Mortality: Mortality declines, particularly infant mortality, everywhere preceded the decline of fertility. Improved survival rates of children mean that when women reached the age of 30 they increasingly had achieved the completed family size they desired. Earlier, much larger numbers of births were required to achieve the desired completed family size. In the last three decades, infant mortality has declined significantly in every country and this trend undoubtedly influenced the fertility decline. Mortality decline, followed by fertility decline, altered the age structure of the population and also the structure within individual families.

Marriage Dissolution: It is no longer the case that all marital unions, whether formal or informal reach final dissolution through death. A considerable proportion of unions are disrupted suddenly for reasons such as desertion, separation or divorce. An obvious failure in a family relationship is where husband and wife cease to live together. Those women who are divorced at latter ages mostly remain single for the rest of their lives and live with their dependents. The idea that when a couple has children it will be less likely to divorce is widely accepted in most societies. However, it is believed that in the last couple of years even in most of the Asian cultures, including India, a growing proportion of divorces involve couples with young children (Goode 1993).

Participation of Women in Economic development: The commercialization process which opened markets in many developing countries has succeeded in replacing the traditional co-operation in the economic relationship, with that of competition. In this process, the social institutions in these countries found themselves in conflict with the key aspects of the new economic systems. The economics of the family and the sexual division of labour within the family is very much determined by opportunities in the labour market. The developing economies of system India have facilitated the freeing of women from household chores and their entrance to the labour market. The declining ability of men to earn a ‘family wage’ along with the growing need for cash for family maintenance has resulted in an increasing number of female members (particularly the wife) in the family engaging in economic activities (Lloyed and Duffy 1995).

Talcott Parsons, theoretical insights on the family have attracted widest attention and deliberation. Parsons (1954, 1956) argues that modern industrial society has led to the growth of what he calls “isolated nuclear family”. This family is structurally isolated as it does not form an integral part of the wider kinship group.

Family is a very fluid social institution and in the process of constant change. The modern family or, rather the post-modern family is also witnessing several new forms of it cropping up. Modernity is witnessing the emergence of same-sex couples (LGBT relationship), cohabitation or live-in relations, single-parent households, a large chunk of divorced living alone or with their children.

very good. the problems were narrative with future vision.

is joint family disintegrating or the society is witnessing a new type of family structure? someone do put a conclusion below

thanks sister for giving this information

All Comments ( ) +

@ Manisha Dhami

PhD Research Scholar, Dept. of Human Development and Family Studies, Punjab Agricultural University, LUdhiana

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Indian Culture

The family is an important institution that plays a central role in the lives of most Indians. As a collectivistic society, Indians often emphasise loyalty and interdependence . The interests of the family usually take priority over those of the individual, and decisions affecting one’s personal life – such as marriage and career paths – are generally made in consultation with one’s family. People tend to act in the best interest of their family’s reputation, as the act of an individual may impact the perception of the entire family by their community.

Although most family members are within geographical proximity or part of the same occupational groups, the growth of urbanisation and migration has seen younger generations challenging these perceptions of family. Today, many people have extensive family networks that are spread across many different regions and hold different occupations. The links an Indian person maintains with their extended family overseas are often much closer than those of most people in English-speaking Western societies. Indians living abroad also maintain close connections to their family remaining in India through regular phone calls, sending remittances or visiting if circumstances allow.

Household Structure

The concept of family extends beyond the typical nuclear unit to encompass the wider family circle. These large multigenerational families can also be essential to providing economic security to an individual. They often provide a source of work in a family agricultural business or lead to opportunities in cities where kinship ties and third-party introductions are crucial for employment.

People may be encouraged to have relationships with their aunts and uncles that are just as strong as parental relationships. In many parts of India, it is common to find three or four generations living together. The father (or eldest son, if the father is not present) is usually the patriarch while his wife may supervise any daughters or daughters-in-law that have moved into the household. Extended families tend to defer to the elderly and observe a clear hierarchy among family members. In more urban areas, people will usually live in smaller nuclear families yet maintain strong ties to their extended family.

Gender Roles

The inequality between the status of men and women is quite pronounced in India. There are varying customs surrounding a practice known as ‘ pardah ’ that calls for the seclusion of women in certain situations. It is practised mostly in northern India and among conservative Hindu or Muslim families. In accordance with pardah, females are generally expected to leave the domestic realm only when veiled and accompanied by a man. Nuances in the custom vary between ethnicities, religions and social backgrounds. For example, married Hindu women in particular parts of northern India may wear a ‘ ghoongha t’ (a specific kind of veil or headscarf) in the presence of older male relatives on their husband's side.

The degree to which gender inequalities persist is undergoing continuous change. For example, a brother and sister in India are now likely to receive equal schooling and treatment in the educational system. Although still bound by many constraining societal expectations, educated women in society are becoming more empowered through employment opportunities and political representation. There are also affirmative action programs for women to help address structural inequalities.

Relationships and Marriage

Arranged marriages are common throughout India, though expectations and practices of marital arrangements vary depending on the region and religion. Marriages are typically arranged through a matchmaker, the couple’s parents or some other trusted third party. Unlike in the past where individuals would not be informed about their future partner, it is now more common for the family to consult the couple for consent before the wedding.

Arranged marriages are nearly always influenced by caste considerations. Therefore, endogamous marriages remain a common practice (limited to members of the same caste or, in some cases, religion). This is in part because arranging marriages is a family activity that is carried out through pre-existing networks of a broader community. Although people will marry within the same caste, families avoid marriage within the same subcaste. The institutions of arranged marriage and caste endogamy enable parents to influence the futures of their children as well as sustain the local and social structure. Intercaste marriages are almost never arranged. Such marriages are known as ‘love marriages’ and are becoming more common. Regardless of how one finds a spouse, the family is nearly always consulted in the marriage process.

Usually, weddings are conducted in the villages of the families, regardless of whether the family resides in their village or in a major city. Indeed, it is common for families to keep their village home for the purpose of weddings or other major family events. Weddings may span over a number of days and specific practices vary depending on the region and the religion of the families.

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• How Indians View Gender Roles in Families and Society

Indians accept women as political leaders, but many favor traditional gender roles in family life

Table of contents.

• 1. Views on women’s place in society
• 2. Son preference and abortion
• 3. Gender roles in the family
• Acknowledgments
• Methodology

This study is part of Pew Research Center’s most comprehensive, in-depth exploration of India to date. For this report, we surveyed 29,999 Indian adults (including 22,975 Hindus, 3,336 Muslims, 1,782 Sikhs, 1,011 Christians, 719 Buddhists, 109 Jains and 67 respondents who belong to another religion or are religiously unaffiliated). Many findings from the survey in India were previously published in “ Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation ,” which looked in detail at religious and national identity, religious beliefs and practices, and attitudes among religious communities. The survey also included several questions on gender roles in Indian society, but these questions were not analyzed in the previous report and are now being published for the first time. Interviews for this nationally representative survey were conducted face-to-face under the direction of RTI International from Nov. 17, 2019, to March 23, 2020.

To improve respondent comprehension of survey questions and to ensure all questions were culturally appropriate, the Center followed a multiphase questionnaire development process that included expert review, focus groups, cognitive interviews, a pretest and a regional pilot survey before the national survey. The questionnaire was developed in English and translated into 16 languages, independently verified by professional linguists with native proficiency in regional dialects.

Respondents were selected using a probability-based sample design that would allow for robust analysis of all major religious groups in India – Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains – as well as all major regional zones. Data was weighted to account for the different probabilities of selection among respondents, and to align with demographic benchmarks for the Indian adult population from the 2011 census. The survey is calculated to have covered 98% of Indians ages 18 and older and had an 86% national response rate.

For more information, see the Methodology   for this report. The questions used in this analysis can be found here .

More than half a century ago, India was one of the first countries in the world to elect a woman as prime minister , and the country currently has several highly influential women politicians, including Sonia Gandhi, the head of one of the major national parties . Today, most Indians say that “women and men make equally good political leaders,” and more than one-in-ten feel that women generally make better political leaders than men, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey of nearly 30,000 adults throughout India. Only a quarter of Indian adults take the position that men make better political leaders than women.

Yet, in domestic settings, Indians tend to say men should have more prominent roles than women. About nine-in-ten Indians agree with the notion that a wife must always obey her husband, including nearly two-thirds who completely  agree with this sentiment. Indian women are only slightly less likely than Indian men to say they completely agree that wives should always obey their husbands (61% vs. 67%), according to the survey, which was conducted between late 2019 and early 2020 (mostly before the COVID-19 pandemic ).

Many Indians express egalitarian views toward some gender roles in the home. For instance, 62% of adults say both men and women should be responsible for taking care of children. But traditional gender norms still hold sway among large segments of the population: Roughly a third of adults (34%) feel that child care should be handled primarily by women.

Similarly, a slim majority (54%) says that both men and women in families should be responsible for earning money, but many Indians (43%) see this as mainly the obligation of men. And Indian adults overwhelmingly say that when jobs are in short supply, men should have greater rights to employment than women, reflecting the continued prominence of men in the economic sphere. Eight-in-ten agree with this sentiment, including a majority (56%) who completely agree.

Indians value having both sons and daughters: Nearly all Indians say it is very important for a family to have at least one son (94%) and, separately, to have at least one daughter (90%). And most Indians say that both sons and daughters should have equal rights to inheritance from parents (64%) and have the responsibility to care for parents as they age (58%). But survey respondents are far more likely to say that sons, rather than daughters, should have greater rights and responsibilities in these areas. For example, while about four-in-ten Indian adults say that sons should have the primary responsibility to care for aging parents, just 2% say the same about daughters.

Related India research

This is one in a series of Pew Research Center reports on India based on a survey of 29,999 Indian adults conducted Nov. 17, 2019, to March 23, 2020, as well as demographic data from the Indian Census and other government sources. Other reports can be found here:

• Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation
• Religious Composition of India
• India’s Sex Ratio at Birth Begins To Normalize

Moreover, most Indians (63%) see sons – not daughters – as being primarily responsible for parents’ last rites and burial rituals. Religious funeral practices for loved ones are widely seen as very important , and at least according to Hindu tradition , sons must perform last rites for a parent to ensure freedom for the soul in the afterlife. Recently, women – including actress Mandira Bedi and the daughters of India’s former Chief of Defense Staff – have publicly challenged these norms by lighting family members’ funeral pyres.

These norms are part of a wider phenomenon in Indian society where, for a variety of historical, social, religious and economic reasons, families tend to place higher value on sons rather than daughters – a custom broadly referred to as “son preference.” Adult sons traditionally live with their parents and provide financial support to the family. Meanwhile, when daughters marry, their families may pay a dowry, an illegal practice that still features in some marriages , and daughters often live with their husband’s parents and fulfill obligations toward their in-laws. In recent years, Indian society has paid increased attention to improving the status of daughters – the government’s Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (“Save the girl child, Educate the girl child”) program, for example, seeks to prevent sex-selective practices during pregnancy and to ensure educational opportunities for girls by conducting public awareness media campaigns , among other policies.

Son preference and the increased availability of ultrasounds in recent decades have contributed to the selective abortion of female fetuses across India, despite the illegality of the practice. And for many years, India has had one of the most skewed sex ratios at birth in the world. For example, according to the 2011 census , there were 111 boys born for every 100 girls born in India, though recent data suggests the gap may be narrowing . 1

Many Indians see sex-selective abortion as acceptable in at least some circumstances: Four-in-ten Indians say it is either “completely acceptable” or “somewhat acceptable” to “get a checkup using modern methods to balance the number of girls and boys in the family,” a euphemism to connote sex-selective abortion. 2  A similar share (42%) says balancing the number of girls and boys in a family via modern methods is completely  unacceptable , while roughly one-in-ten describe the practice as “somewhat” unacceptable.

On this question and all others included in this report, differences in opinion between men and women and across age groups are modest. In other words, Indian women typically are not much more likely than Indian men to express egalitarian views on son preference and gender roles (see “ In India, men a little more likely than women to have conservative views on gender ”), and the same is true of young Indian adults (ages 18 to 34) relative to their elders.

This is the second report based on a Pew Research Center survey conducted face-to-face nationally among 29,999 Indian adults. Many findings from the survey were previously published in “ Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation ,” which looked in detail at religious and national identity, religious beliefs and practices, and attitudes among religious communities. The survey also included several questions on gender roles in Indian society, but these questions were not analyzed in the previous report and are now being published for the first time. (Another recent Pew Research Center report, “ Religious Composition of India ,” used Indian census data to examine how India’s religious makeup has changed since independence.)

Local interviewers administered the survey between Nov. 17, 2019, and March 23, 2020, in 17 languages. The survey covered all states and union territories of India, with the exceptions of Manipur and Sikkim – where the rapidly-developing COVID-19 situation prevented fieldwork from starting in the spring of 2020 – and the remote territories of the Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep; these areas are home to about a quarter of 1% of the Indian population. The union territory of Jammu and Kashmir was covered by the survey, though no fieldwork was conducted in the Kashmir region itself due to security concerns.

This study, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation, is part of a larger effort by Pew Research Center to understand religious change and its impact on societies around the world. The Center previously has conducted religion-focused surveys across sub-Saharan Africa ; the Middle East-North Africa region and many other countries with large Muslim populations ; Latin America ; Israel ; Central and Eastern Europe ; Western Europe ; and the United States .

The rest of this Overview covers perceptions of gender discrimination; how Indian attitudes on gender compare globally; the strong influence of education and religion in gender attitudes; the minimal differences in gender attitudes between Indian men and women, and among adults of different ages; and regional and state-level variation in how gender roles are viewed.

Indians perceive more discrimination against women than religious minorities, but most say women do not face ‘a lot of discrimination’

Almost a quarter of Indians (23%) say there is “a lot of discrimination” against women in their country, slightly more than the shares who say some religious groups or lower castes face a lot of discrimination. This means that the vast majority of Indian adults do not see a lot of discrimination against any of these groups.

About one-in-six Indian women (16%) said that they had personally felt discriminated against because they are a woman in the last 12 months before the 2019-2020 survey – comparable to the shares of women who said they have recently felt discriminated against due to their religion (16%) or their caste (14%). Similar shares of Indian men said they had faced recent gender (14%), religious (17%) or caste (15%) discrimination.

But far more adults see violence against women as a major national issue. As described in a previous Pew Research Center report , three-quarters of Indians say violence against women is a “very big problem” – greater than the share who say communal violence is a very big problem (65%), and similar to the shares who say this about crime and corruption (76% each). Police cases registered as “crimes against women” nearly doubled between 2010 and 2019 , and rapes and murders of women have led to massive protests across India .

The survey asked respondents which of two options is more important to improve the safety of women in their community: teaching boys to respect all women or teaching girls to behave appropriately. Roughly half of Indians say teaching boys to respect women is more important, while about a quarter of Indians say teaching girls to behave appropriately is the better way to improve women’s safety. An additional quarter of Indian adults don’t take a clear position between those two options, instead voicing that some combination of the two approaches is necessary, that improved law and order through policing will improve the situation or that women are already safe. Women are slightly more likely than men to say that teaching boys to respect all women is the more important way to improve safety (53% vs. 48%).

How India’s gender attitudes compare globally

Pew Research Center has asked a couple of the questions on this survey in many countries around the world, allowing a glimpse of where Indians fit globally when it comes to public opinion on these issues.

Across 47 countries and territories, a global median of 70% say it is very important for women to have the same rights as men, according to data from two recent waves of the Center’s Global Attitudes survey . This is similar to the share of Indians who feel gender equality is very important (72%). 3

Indians are less likely than people in North America (92% median ), Western Europe (90%) and Latin America (82%) to place high importance on women and men having the same rights. But they are more likely than those living in sub-Saharan Africa (48% median) and the Middle East-North Africa region (44%) to say this. Adults in Central and Eastern Europe (69% median) are roughly similar to Indians on this question.

Within South Asia, Indians are somewhat more likely than Pakistanis to say it is very important for men and women to have equal rights (72% vs. 64%).

Despite broadly aligning with global public opinion on equal rights for women, Indians tend to be more conservative than people in most other countries surveyed when it comes to gender dynamics in the home and in the economy.

For instance, across 61 countries surveyed from 2013 to 2019, a median of 17% completely agree with the statement “When jobs are scarce, men should have more rights to a job than women,” but roughly three times as many Indians say the same (55%). 4  In fact, only one surveyed country – Tunisia (64%) – has a higher share who completely agree with the notion that men should have greater rights to jobs in times of high unemployment.

On this measure, Indians are substantially more traditional than people from North America (4% median), Western Europe (7%), Central and Eastern Europe (14%) and Latin America (20%).

These attitudes, combined with a scarcity of jobs , may be one reason why India has one of the lowest female labor force participation rates in the world (21% vs. 53% global median), according to 2019 United Nations (UN) data . India’s male labor force participation rate is much higher (76%), and this within-country discrepancy contributes to India’s low ranking on the UN Gender Inequality Index (123rd out of 162 ranked countries).

The 2019 Global Attitudes survey in 34 countries also asked a question about gender roles that was not on the 2019-2020 India survey: “Which kind of marriage is more satisfying, one where the husband provides for the family and the wife takes care of the house and children, or one where the husband and wife both have jobs and together take care of the house and children?”

Indians are among the most likely to say the husband should provide for the family while the wife focuses on the home: Four-in-ten Indians prefer this traditional family dynamic, compared with a global median of 23%.

Indians with a college degree are less likely to hold traditional views on gender roles

Indian adults with a college degree are less likely than those without a college education to support conservative gender norms. For example, about a quarter of college-educated Indians (24%) say women in a family should be primarily responsible for taking care of children, while roughly a third of Indians with less formal education (35%) say child care responsibility should rest with women.

However, even Indians who have completed college sometimes do overwhelmingly endorse traditional views on gender-related issues. For instance, large majorities among those with a college degree (80%) and those with less education (88%) agree with the notion that wives must always obey their husbands.

Muslims more likely than other Indians to say men should provide a family’s income

India’s main religious groups have widely divergent opinions about gender roles in the family. For example, while nearly three-quarters of Indian Muslims (74%) say that sons should have the primary responsibility for a parent’s burial rituals, just 29% of Sikhs say that sons alone should handle last rites. Across several aspects of family life, this pattern repeats: Muslims are the most likely, and Sikhs are the least likely, to support traditional gender roles.

Muslims are somewhat less likely than Sikhs to have a college education (5% vs. 9%), based on the 2011 census , and as noted previously, Indians without a college degree are more likely to hold conservative gender attitudes. But even when considering education, Muslims are far more likely than Sikhs to support traditional gender roles in the family. For instance, about a third of college-educated Muslims (32%) say women should be primarily responsible for taking care of children, while only about one-in-ten college-educated Sikhs (9%) share this view.

The overwhelming majority of India’s Sikh community lives in the state of Punjab (India’s only majority-Sikh state), and people in Punjab consistently express less preference for traditional gender roles within the home – a pattern that is not just driven by Sikhs in the state. Indeed, Punjabi Hindus are much less likely than Hindus nationally to express traditional views on some gender roles. For example, while 34% of Indian Hindus overall say women should be primarily responsible for taking care of children, just 13% of Punjabi Hindus say this – similar to the 14% of Indian Sikhs who take this position. (See “ Southern states not necessarily more egalitarian than Hindi Belt states in gender attitudes ” for more on state and regional differences across India.)

For many years, Punjab has had one of the most skewed sex ratios across Indian states. According to the 2011 census , for every 119 boys born in Punjab, 100 girls were born. However, more recent data suggests the skew may be decreasing. In the most recently conducted National Family Health Survey (NFHS), there were 111 boys born in Punjab for every 100 girls. 5

In India, men a little more likely than women to have conservative views on gender

Across a variety of measures, Indian men are more likely than women – but only slightly – to take a traditional view of gender roles. For instance, 82% of men say that when there are few jobs, men should have more rights to jobs, compared with 77% of women who share this perspective.

Similarly, older Indians (ages 35 and older) are marginally more likely than younger adults to hold traditional views on gender roles. While 45% of Indians ages 35 and older say that men in a family should be primarily responsible for earning money, 42% of those ages 18 to 34 agree.

Even when looking at attitudes only among Indian women, the differences between younger and older adults are minimal, with older women slightly more likely than younger women (ages 18 to 34) to hold conservative views on gender roles. For example, 37% of older Indian women (ages 35 and older) think women in a family should be primarily responsible for caring for children, while a third of younger Indian women take this position.

Sidebar: India’s changing gender norms

The general consistency across age groups could suggest that Indian attitudes on family gender roles may not be changing very much over time. But a long-running survey shows that attitudes and behaviors on gender roles appear to have become more egalitarian since the end of the 20th century, with perhaps the biggest changes in the early 2000s.

India’s National Family Health Survey (NFHS) has been conducted five times, with the first happening roughly three decades ago. Typically, women ages 15 to 49 and men ages 15 to 54 in selected households are eligible to be interviewed. 6 By comparison, all Indian adults (ages 18 and older) were eligible to be included in the Pew Research Center survey. Differences in sampling and question wording make it difficult to compare the two surveys directly. Still, NFHS surveys are useful in analyzing data over time.

Between the survey’s second (1998-99) and third (2005-06) rounds of data collection, several measures showed a move away from traditional attitudes. For example, while 31% of married women under age 50 who were earning money in 1998 and 1999 said that their husband was mainly deciding how to use the money the wife earned, that number halved (15%) by 2005 and 2006.

Between the survey’s third (2005-06) and fourth (2015-16) rounds, changes have been more modest, though still with a slight tendency toward less conservative views. Over that decade, for instance, the share of married men under age 50 who said husbands should have the greater say in deciding about visits to a wife’s family or relatives declined slightly, from 26% to 21%. 7

Southern states not necessarily more egalitarian than Hindi Belt states in gender attitudes

Women in India’s Southern states generally have better socioeconomic outcomes, on average, than those in other parts of the country, particularly when compared with states in the Northern Hindi Belt. For instance, Southern women tend to be more highly educated and to live longer . This North-South divide is commonly discussed in academic literature .

But Southern attitudes toward gender roles are not necessarily more egalitarian. While Indians in the South are less likely than those in the Hindi Belt to say, for example, that a wife must always obey her husband (75% vs. 94%), Southern adults are more likely to say that men in families should be responsible for making decisions about expenses (25% vs. 13%) and that women should be primarily responsible for taking care of children (44% vs. 30%).

These regional analyses, though, mask significant variation within regions. In the South, people in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh often express more traditional views than those in Kerala: 81% of Karnataka’s residents and 60% in Andhra Pradesh think sons should be responsible for a parent’s last rites, while just 30% of Keralites say the same. Meanwhile, attitudes toward gender roles in Tamil Nadu and Telangana tend to vary quite a lot based on the issue; for example, Tamilians are among the least likely to say that a wife must always obey her husband, but the state also has the highest share of people who say women should be primarily responsible for taking care of children.

The Hindi Belt also has large variations between states on gender roles. For example, Uttar Pradesh is often among the most conservative states, while the National Capital Territory of Delhi is consistently at the other end of spectrum. For complete state-level details on these questions, see Chapter 3 .

How regions of India are defined for this report

Previous reporting from this survey largely used membership in India’s six zonal councils to define regions. In this report, however, it makes more sense to analyze at the state level due to wide variations among states within the same zone.

This report does, though, describe differences between two commonly discussed regions: the Hindi Belt and the South. While different definitions exist, a broad definition of the Hindi Belt includes the following 11 states and union territories, located in the Northern part of the country: Bihar, Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

The South includes the following six states and union territories: Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and Telangana.

Sidebar: National Family Health Surveys also show big variation within regions

Even though the surveys include different questions and have different sample compositions, NFHS surveys broadly show similar patterns to the Center’s recent survey: Southern attitudes and behaviors often are comparable to, or even more traditional than, those in the Hindi Belt, and states within both regions are diverse in how traditional gender roles are considered.

For example, in the most recently released NFHS data, about a third of men in Southern states (34%) say husbands should have a greater say than wives when making major household purchases, compared with roughly a quarter in Hindi Belt states (27%). 8

On this topic, within-region variation is stark in the Hindi Belt. While 37% of residents in Chandigarh think husbands should have more say than wives in major purchases, just 13% in Himachal Pradesh offer this opinion. 9

• These statistics are referred to as sex ratio at birth (SRB). International convention is to present SRB as the number of boys per 100 girls. In the census of India and India’s National Family Health Survey, however, this ratio is often expressed as the number of girls per 1,000 boys. This report follows the international practice, so all ratios are presented as the number of boys per 100 girls. Around the world, SRB naturally tends to skew slightly male (roughly 105 boys for every 100 girls). The exact causes of the skew are debated, but some scientists posit that the explanation may lie, at least in part, in higher female mortality rates early in pregnancy. ↩
• This is the first major study in India to ask about opinions of sex-selective abortion. Because the practice is illegal, researchers designed the question in consultation with a subject-matter expert and subsequently tested it with respondents before including it in the full survey – all part of the extensive questionnaire design process for this project. Testing found this question to be understood by respondents without being offensive. ↩
• This figure (72%) comes from the 2019 Global Attitudes survey and is slightly lower than the share (80%) who said this in the 2019-2020 India survey on which most of this report is based. Context effects could account for this difference: The survey question comes much later in the Global Attitudes survey than in the India-specific survey; and the Global Attitudes survey question is the third in a battery asking respondents to rank how important things are, while the question stands on its own in the India-specific survey. No matter the cause for the slight difference, a solid majority of Indians support equal gender rights. ↩
• This figure (55%) comes from the 2019 Global Attitudes survey and is nearly identical to the figure (56%) from the 2019-2020 India survey on which most of this report is based. ↩
• These statistics are referred to as sex ratio at birth (SRB). International convention is to present SRB as the number of boys per 100 girls. In the census of India and India’s National Family Health Survey, however, this ratio is often expressed as the number of girls per 1,000 boys. This report follows the international practice, so all ratios are presented as the number of boys per 100 girls. Around the world, SRB naturally tends to skew slightly male (roughly 105 boys born for every 100 girls). The exact causes of the skew are debated, but some scientists posit that the explanation may lie, at least in part, in higher female mortality rates early in pregnancy. ↩
• The more recent rounds of this survey have included a men’s module alongside the longstanding women’s module, although the questions asked of men sometimes differ from those asked of women. This analysis of NFHS data only includes respondents ages 18 to 49 for both women and men. ↩
• As of publication, the NFHS round five dataset (fielded 2019-2021) has not been released for analysis. Initial fact sheets from the fifth round (released at the end of 2021) indicate that women’s involvement in household decisions has slightly increased since the fourth round, suggesting that Indians may be continuing toward more egalitarian attitudes. Some of the largest increases in women’s involvement in decision-making between the fourth and fifth rounds are in the Hindi Belt locations of Delhi, Bihar and Haryana. ↩
• This analysis is based on men ages 18 to 49. As of publication, the NFHS round five dataset (fielded 2019-2021) has not been released for analysis. ↩
• Initial fact sheets from the fifth round of the NFHS (released at the end of 2021) again indicate that there is within-region variation on women’s involvement in household decisions. ↩

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Essay on family systems in india | sociology.

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Here is an essay on ‘Family Systems in India’ for class 11 and 12. Find paragraphs, long and short essays on ‘Family Systems in India’ especially written for school and college students.

Essay # 1. Introduction to Family Systems:

Whatever the type of social organisation, the family is the basic unit. It is often referred to as a remarkable institution. Family is the basis of the society, which concerns itself with love, sexual relationship, marriage, reproduction, maintenance, protection, socialisation of the child and various other roles involved in kinship organisation.

The process of socialisation begins within the family with the birth of a child. The family is responsible for the child’s ultimate behavioural pattern than any other single environmental factor. In the modern civilised societies, the process of child socialisation has come to assume utmost importance. The importance of childhood and the effects of home life on personality and character formation have been widely recognised. The main reason for all this being that the family monopolises the time and experiences of the child during his formative years. The ‘WE’ feeling in the families is a helping agent in transmitting the family attitudes and sentiments in the child.

The family is also recognised as an institution for the fulfillment of sexual needs through the husband-wife relationship. In the real sense, the family is the answer to man’s sex problems. The satisfaction of sex instinct makes for normal personality. Most societies have set up rather elaborate safeguards to ensure that sexuality is kept within the bounds.

The family as one of the chief agencies of social life is also required to perform social functions. This was not always so and in some societies it is not the case today. Over the years, wherever and whenever the women have been accorded a relatively equal status, the husband-wife relationship has taken on an added meaning in terms of companionship, shared activities, satisfaction of emotional needs and other manifestations of primary group association.

The family performs a number of other functions also such as relating to protection, inheritance, property rights, morality, care of the aged and the sick, the transmission of cultural values etc.

In our Indian culture, family ties have been very strong. The joint family system has been one of the characteristics of Indian social system and its features are more or less distinctive. Prof. Carve has defined a joint family as “a group of people who generally live under one roof, who eat food cooked at one hearth, who hold property in common and who participate in common family worship and are related to each other as some particular type of kindred.”

Essay # 2. Importance of Joint Family System:

The joint family system has enjoyed the importance in the Indian social system due to the following plus points:

1. Social Insurance :

The joint family provides all the family members with a system of social insurance. In times of distress, no single member is made to bear it alone. All the family members jointly bear the calamities and problems.

2. Safety and Security Needs :

According to Maslow’s need hierarchy, safety and security are the second level needs of the human beings. These needs are met only through the joint family system.

3. Diffusion of Affection and Dependence :

In the joint family, affection as well as dependence is diffused among so many relatives that the loss of even an important member, such as a parent, is less critical than in the nuclear family system which is so small that every member plays a decisive role. Thus, joint family is a revolving system which provides a full complement of young and adult people at all times to carry out its various functions.

4. Entrepreneurial Development :

The role of family system is very crucial in the entrepreneurial development. There are some who believe that the individual is constrained and held back by the group. On the other hand, there is some evidence that, at least in the initial stages, joint family may be a useful institution in capital accumulation. In our country, the joint family system has contributed to the establishment of textile mills, steel factories and other industrial enterprises apart from trading and banking as noted by economists.

The joint family system has some negative points also such as strain in the relationship among family members, larger amount of family strains and burden on the women, less peaceful life etc. With the passage of time, the deep sense of solidarity has led to nepotism and various other abuses so that the joint family system has started to weigh heavily on the younger generation.

Over the years the joint family system is almost on the wane, though, we do come across the existence of joint families here and there. The main reasons for the change in the role of the family system are the spread of education, technological development, unmanageable size of families and the Mitakshara School of law which permits the division of property even while the parents are alive etc.

Essay # 3. Changes in Indian Family System:

The changes which have taken place in the Indian family systems can be discussed as follows:

i. Increase in Income :

Ever since independence, the income has shown a remarkable upward trend in the Indian society. Both per capita income and national income have shown a steep growth. With the increase in income, the standard of living of the people has risen considerably. Because of technological improvements, there is mass production leading to lowering of costs. Low costs and low prices increase the real income of the people. With the rise of income, the demand for almost all types of consumer goods, whether durable or non-durable has increased. Today, even the villagers and urban slum-dwellers own mopeds, scooters, watches, televisions and even refrigerators etc. Thus, increase in income transforms the families in the social structure.

ii. Education :

In the words of Durkheem, “Education is the socialisation of younger generation. It is actually a continuous effort to impose on the child ways of seeing, feeling, action which he could not have arrived at spontaneously.”

Education has played an important role in changing the family system in our country. In India the literacy rate has increased from 18.13% in 1951 to 62% in 1997. With the acquisition of education, a person acquires high skills and is able to gain better employment opportunities than an uneducated person. Where both males and females are literate, income can be even higher. The income of the households where both males and females are literate is 58% higher than that of households with illiterate adults.

The higher incomes result in better standard of living. People start aspiring for more and more luxuries which increase the demand for manufactured goods. The level of education of masses has a large bearing on the life styles of people. That is why there is a difference in the life styles of people living in the urban areas and the rural areas.

Urban people enjoy more facilities as compared to rural people just because of their education. Now, with the spread of education in the rural areas, the standard of living of people in the villages has also started rising. In rural areas also, the people have started having cars, air conditioners, refrigerators, colour televisions etc. and in some villages people even own the personal computers. All these changes have been due to improvement in literacy rate in our country.

iii. Working Women :

In the past, the women who went out for work were always looked down. But nowadays, more and more women are coming out of households and seeking employment. The women who are employed are considered respectable in the society.

Employment is considered as an added qualification while getting married. Women now enjoy equal status with men and they supplement family income by their own earnings. The working wives affect both the ability of the families to purchase and consume. Due to increase in the number of working women the demand for consumer goods has increased to a great extent.

iv. Breaking up of Joint Family System :

Joint family system which used to be the main feature of Indian social structure has started disintegrating. Family structures have started changing from joint system to modern nuclear ones due to the changing economic scenario, existence of better employment in cities and the role of educated women as equal partners.

With this disintegration, family values and traditions are declining. The impact of grand-parents on their grand-children is only momentary and not permanent. These days younger generation is reluctant to remain under the command of elders. They want to enjoy their lives independently. People have started moving towards western culture.

With the breaking up to joint families, the nuclear families have come up. This has led to an increase in the demand for consumer durables. When there is a joint family, people own one car, one T.V., one refrigerator etc., live in the same house, but with the coming up of nuclear families, people have their own assets. This has led to an increase in demand for products having significant impact upon business.

v. Small Families :

Due to the increased literacy rate, working women, changing life styles and greater awareness, people prefer small families these days. Even the poor and uneducated people are aware of the family planning. In metros, the slogan of family planning “Hum Do Humare Do” has changed to the philosophy “Double Income, No Kids”.

People are no longer interested in producing children. As husband and wife, both are working, they hardly have any time for children. Moreover, with the breaking up of joint family system, the expenditure and responsibility of children is to be borne by the parents themselves. So they restrict the size of the families.

As small families have more income at their disposal, they enjoy better quality of life and other amenities of life. Children also enjoy a very important place. Parents want to give best education and life to their children. With the effect of advertisement on television, they themselves demand various special products, especially food and toy items. Due to this reason, demand for products like biscuits, cakes, ice creams, popcorn, chips, pizzas, burgers etc. have shown a great rise. Hence, the system of joint families affects the demand for various consumer durable as well as non-durable goods.

vi. Urbanisation :

Due to rapid industralisation and the breaking up of joint family system, people from rural areas have started moving towards the urban areas. Statistics reveal that the rate of urban population has continuously increased over the years. Life in urban areas, exposes people to experiences and objects vastly different from those, they are exposed to in smaller towns or villages. The main among these are more opportunities for earning and the availability of a wider variety and range of products and services.

With the passage of time, the people who have come from rural areas also develop an attitude of consumption born from greater desire due to greater exposure and the ability to purchase due to higher income generated by greater opportunity to earn.

vii. Development of Rural Areas :

Along with the urban areas, there has been a lot of development in the rural areas also after independence. The green revolution and good monsoons put enormous purchasing powers in the hands of people living in villages and small towns. Most of the rural people are dependent on agriculture and agricultural income enjoys the privilege of subsidised inputs and tax free revenue.

With rise in agricultural income, level of education and standard of living of people living in villages has improved considerably. Rural markets have started competing with the urban markets for the consumer durable goods. The companies which were concentrating only on metropolitan cities have started penetrating into rural markets. Thus, with the passage of time, the gap between the rural and the urban families has started becoming less and less.

viii. Declining Impact of Religion :

Religion used to play a very important role in Indian society. It was considered that true happiness lies in spiritualism. Even Indian philosophy has laid stress on spiritual pursuits. But with the passage of time and due to impact of westernisation, people now indulge themselves more in materialistic pursuits and goods.

Everybody is after amassing wealth even through immoral means. People have become wealth conscious. Materalism infuses in people, the desire to possess more and more worldly comforts. This is one of the major reasons for the changing role of Indian family system.

ix. High Incidence of Divorce :

In modern society divorce has become a common feature. Divorce is a legal status indicating a dissolved marriage relationship. Gone are the days when marriage was considered as a sacrament. Now it is considered as a civil status which remains intact only so long as it is convenient. Divorce is no longer considered a stigma.

The most important cause of divorce is the role conflict that arises due to the working wives. When the wife becomes economically independent, it may involve a threat to the male ego. Role patterns which remained virtually unchanged for centuries were based upon the legal, social and economic activity of the male. As the wife has assumed greater power, many of the old patterns have become strained. Both husbands and wives face difficulty in agreeing on their new roles which in many cases leads to divorce.

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Family in India has remained a vital institution and a foremost primary group because it is the sheet-anchor of the patriarchal authority on the one hand, and a protector and defender of individual member’s (including woman) right to property, on the other.

Despite several wide-ranging changes in Indian society, because of synthesis between collectivism and individualism, the Hindu family continues to be joint, partly structurally and mainly functionally; and it has not disintegrated into individual families like the western countries.

Several studies on family have revealed that industrialisation, urbanisation, education and migration have not necessarily resulted into nuclearisation of family in India. A nuclear family in India is not simply a conjugal family.

A real change in family must refer to changed pattern of kinship relations, obliga­tions of members towards each other, individualisation, etc. In other words, not only change is seen in the composition or structure of family, but also its functions must change. The word ‘family’ is used in several different ways. A.M. Shah (1988) outlines at least four interrelated social situations of family life in India.

These are as follows:

1. The body of persons who live in one house or under one head, including parents, children, servants, etc.,

2. The group consisting of parents and their children whether living together or not,

3. In wide sense, all those who are nearly related by blood and affinity, and

4. Those descended or claiming descent from a common ancestor – a house, kindred, lineage.

Generally, a family consists of a man, his wife and their children. This is known as an elementary family. Such a family could be an independent unit; it could also be a part of a joint or extended family, without necessarily residing together.

An elementary family includes members of two generations – that of ego and his offspring. Such a family may share property in common with other such units of the ego’s brothers’ families. According to Shah, an elementary family could be both a complete one and an incomplete one. A complete elementary family consists of husband, wife and their unmarried children. In an incomplete family some and not all persons are found.

Joint Family in India:

There has been a lot of debate about nature of joint family in India. What is a joint family? The definition given by Iravati Karve (1953) can be taken as a starting point for analysing changes in family in India. Karve writes: “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.” Karve’s definition of joint family refers to an ideal situation of family life in terms of its corporate character.

In any case, in structural terms, joint family implies living together of members of two or more elementary families both lineally and laterally. When a joint family consists of grandparents, parents and grandsons and daughters, it is called a lineal joint family. When married brothers along with their wives and offspring live together, it is known as lateral joint family. Besides patrilineal joint family, there is also matrilineal joint family.

Structural and Functional Aspects of Family:

I.P. Desai (1988) asks the question: What is happening to the family in Mahuva? Mahuva is a small town in Gujarat which Desai studied in early sixties. Desai, based on the data collected from Mahuva, examines the question of joint-ness in terms of religion, occupational relations, property, education, urbanisation, kinship obligations and household composition.

According to Desai, jointness is a process, a part of household cycle. A family becomes joint from its nuclear position when one or more sons get married and live with the parents or when parents continue to stay with their married sons. When married sons establish their independent households and live with their unmarried children, they become nuclear families. This is only a structural dimension of family.

Desai outlines structure of family as follows:

1. Husband and wife

2. Uni-member households

3. Husband, wife and married sons without children and other unmarried children

4. The above group with other relatives who do not add to gener­ation depth

5. Three generation groups of lineal descendants

6. Four or more than four generations of lineal descendants

In this classification emphasis is on the understanding of structure or composition of households based on generation and lineage combination. House is the unit of the above classification. There may be several reasons for change in the structure of family.

According to Desai, there are two types of reasons:

(1) Natural, and

(2) Circumstantial.

Joint-ness itself could be a cause for a change in family. For example, married brothers or parents and married children staying together separate due to ongoing quarrels in the family. Married and unmarried brothers or parents and unmarried children staying together separate due to unmarried brother’s or son’s marriage.

Brothers separate after parent’s death. Separation also takes place because of unwieldy size of the parental family or due to shortage of space in the household. The circum­stantial reasons for separation are due to contingent situations in man’s life.

(1) Men staying with relatives such as the maternal uncle later on establish one’s own household;

(2) Other relatives staying with the head, die or go away; and

(3) Head of the family goes away alone for business purposes.

Besides the structural aspects of family, Desai also examines the types of jointness based on degree, intensity, and orientation in regard to functions and obligations, which people perform for each other through living separately and at times at different places.

Desai finds the following five types of degrees of jointness:

1. Households with zero degree of jointness.

2. Households of low degree of jointness (joint by way of the fulfillment of mutual obligations).

3. Households with high degree of jointness (jointness by way of common ownership of property).

4. Households with higher degree of jointness (marginally joint families).

5. Households of highest degree of jointness (traditional joint families).

Desai concludes that today family is structurally nuclear and functionally joint based on the fact that 61 per cent are nuclear and 39 per cent are joint in Mahuva with varying degrees as indicated above. Of the 423 respondents in Desai’s study, only 5 per cent are not joint at all. There are 27 per cent families with low degree of jointness, 17 per cent with high degree, 30 per cent with higher and 21 per cent with highest degree.

Desai also reports that 220 respon­dents believe in jointness unconditionally, 24 have faith in nuclearity unconditionally, 51 believe in jointness conditionally and 58 express their faith in nuclear family with certain conditions. It is undoubtedly clear that people have belief in joint family system, though it is another thing that they are constrained to live apart from their parents and brothers and other kin due to structural conditions on which they do not have any control.

Family is an interactional unit with diverse and dynamic intra-family relationships based on age, sex, kinship status, education, occupational status, place of work, office or power, status of in-laws, etc. One cannot understand such a complex situation by looking at family from a legalistic point of view. An extended joint family is a miniature world, and as such it reflects the ethos of wider social system of which it is a constituent unit.

Besides the diverse and dynamic relationships within the family, family composition, basic norms of deference and etiquette, authority of the head of the family and rights and duties of members, performance of common and particular tasks, etc., are some other points to be noted in the functioning of family in India.

There are also regional variations in proportions of joint families. Higher education does not weaken joint family system and since higher education is found more among the upper and upper-middle castes, joint family is more among them than the lower caste and class people. In functional terms, jointness is nothing but a structure of obligations among the closest kinsmen.

Industrialisation and Family Change:

It has been hypothesised that industrialisation would tend to change the structure of family to a particular type more suited to its functioning in a given society. Further, it is said that in an industrial­ising society where there are different types of family, certain types of family would facilitate industrialisation more than certain others.

It has been opined that many Indians are now living in isolated conjugal families and that many more young couples are desiring to do so for the new industrial economy allows ambitious young men to remain independently of their relatives.

It is also said that a fast moving industrial economy cannot develop within a society whose hardened social barriers force every son to follow his father’s occupation. But this is not true as there is no occupational homoge­neity among the members of a caste. Even members of a family pursue different occupations.

Today, certainly, emphasis is mainly on income and status and one derives it by doing a particular economic activity. People have been migrating in large numbers to cities, they are becoming urbanised in outlook and individualistic in their orientation.

Richard D. Lambert (1963), based on his study of some factory workers in Poona, concludes that factory does not produce fragmented families. The workers just by living away from their kin do not change themselves into nuclear families. The average size of the family among the factory workers was found to be 5.2 members whereas it was 4.5 for Poona.

It was noted that the workers had a heavy pressure of dependents and mainly due to the fact that they were the main earners with regular cash income. Lambert also observes that even where spouses are employed, the familial pattern does not follow the western pattern.

Thus, the joint family is not functionally adaptive only to an agricultural society; it is equally functional to an industrial society. The change is towards greater ‘jointness’. Is the joint family breaking down? It is now clearly viewed that there is no linear transformation of joint family into a nuclear family under the impact of industrialisation, urbanisation, education and migration.

There are points as given below worth consideration based on the findings of some studies:

1. Large joint families are more prevalent in urban than rural areas and vary in prevalence with region and caste.

2. Nuclear households are prevalent in villages as well as in cities. Such rural-urban distinctions might have been common in the past.

4. Nuclear families in both villages and cities may grow into joint households and decline with separations and deaths into nuclear families again.

Thus, jointness has become complex and multi-dimensional. Today, joint family is a social structure comprising of a network of social relations among persons related in specific ways. It is viewed as a system of mutual obligations and appropriate norms of behaviour for each relative. The presence or absence of joint residence, joint property, particular group of kin is relevant only as a part of the total structure of obligations. The presence of any particular feature does not mean prevalence of joint family, and its absence does not mean otherwise.

It is difficult to find joint families on a considerable scale in terms of commonality of residence, property, worship, etc., as it is incompatible with modern urban living and large-scale migration of people from villages to towns and cities. Milton Singer (1972), in his study of families of industri­alists, has found that move to the city has not destroyed large family households. The move into industry has been accompanied by a carryover and adaptation of traditional joint family principles into the sphere of industrial organisation.

The companies studied by Singer are family firms. He is of the view that Indian joint families have adopted the principles and practices of household management to industrial organisation. Singer writes: “The relationship of the manager of a joint family to the coparceners and other family members is analogous to the relationship of the managing director of a company to its board of directors and stock­holders.”

We may conclude by stating that there is no positive relationship between nuclear family and industrialisation. Family as an institution has been increasingly adaptive and has proved itself quite effective to meet the requirements of modern industry and urban life.

In many cases joint family has proved quite useful in terms of trustworthy manpower, capital and mutual aid and cooper­ation. The future of the joint family in India depends upon the congruities between macro-structural changes and their effects on the institution and practices at the local level.

The way conflicts, strains and stresses and bickering’s are resolved in the family will determine family’s future. The young people have their own ideas and expectations, and the way they find expression in the family will also determine future of joint family.

Joint family has trans­formed itself from time to time, but it has survived generally with changed adaptive capabilities. This process of change in the family is far greater reality than asking the questions whether joint family in India is disintegrating or what future joint family can see for itself in the face of rapid macro-structural and ideological changes. The future family will also decide the patterns of kinship structure and relations and adherence to rules of marriage.

Related Articles:

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My Father’s Fate, and India’s

By Kapil Komireddi

My father died in April of last year. He was seventy-three years old, almost the same age as the Indian Republic, and his death came after a harrowing struggle with cancer. Before the abrupt decline that took away his speech and movement, when he still possessed the strength to walk and read the papers and console his relations and friends, he would occasionally say to me, “We will pull through.” He was not speaking about his illness—he had, I felt, reconciled himself to its unfair yet ineluctable outcome—but about India. I disagreed with him. Under Narendra Modi , the country had been transformed. Hindu beliefs were now granted an almost sacred status, and examples made of Muslims who offended them. Some Muslims had been lynched by mobs on the suspicion of eating beef; others had been mauled for dating Hindu women. A handful were savaged for no apparent reason. Much of this had been abetted, if not outright encouraged, by the state.

During Modi’s first term in office, from 2014 to 2019, the proliferation of these Hindu lynch mobs was accompanied by the meticulous subversion of institutions. The armed forces, which had previously been insulated from politics, were exploited by Modi and his party for political gain. Silhouettes of soldiers went up on campaign posters, and universities were instructed to celebrate the anniversary of a heavily publicized military raid into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, in 2016, as “Surgical Strike Day.” India’s Election Commission, which oversaw largely free and fair elections for the better part of six decades, was increasingly assailed as Modi’s marionette. When Modi introduced anonymized donations to political parties, via the sale of electoral bonds, in 2017, the commission denounced the change as “retrograde” and demanded transparency or an immediate reversal. Then, without explanation, it performed a volte-face and endorsed such contributions as “a step in the right direction.” (That same year, the commission delayed an election in Gujarat, Modi’s home state, to the Prime Minister’s advantage, prompting one of its own former chiefs to say it had created grounds for suspicion about its conduct.)

In 2018, four of the Supreme Court’s most senior justices issued a direct warning to citizens that the judiciary was ignoring its own rules and mishandling sensitive cases: “Unless this institution is preserved,” one of them said, in a press conference, “democracy will not survive in this country.” Months later, Modi’s government, which was spending lavishly in the lead-up to the general election, began harrying the country’s central bank to help lower the government’s budget deficit and fund its welfare programs. When the bank resisted, Modi stacked its board with yes-men. The governor of the bank resigned, and his successor transferred the cash. India’s most revered cultural, research, scientific, and educational institutions were packed with ideologues who seemed to owe their fealty to the Modi government. The press, which had been among the world’s most vibrant, now largely functions as the Prime Minister’s bullhorn. A number of journalists critical of the Modi government have been arrested, killed, or fired by proprietors anxious to propitiate the Prime Minister. Modi has successfully politicized, co-opted, or undermined virtually every organ essential to the fair functioning of Indian democracy.

This “New India,” as Modi’s supporters call it, is a major exhibit in the tragic twenty-first-century story of global democratic backsliding. In 2021, Freedom House, a pro-democracy think tank, downgraded India in its annual report from “free” to “partially free.” Sweden’s V-Dem Institute has branded India an “electoral autocracy.” These developments can inspire despair. But, as my father warned me, that despair risks obscuring the many ways ordinary Indians are striving to reclaim the Republic. “If you can bring yourself to look beyond the regime,” he told me, in 2021, “you will see a people fighting with all their strength to preserve their dignity and realize the promise of democracy.”

According to statistics that I reviewed from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, since 2019 there have been more than forty thousand peaceful protests, small and big, across India. In February of this year, roads connecting Delhi to the neighboring states of Haryana and Punjab were blockaded with slabs of concrete and barbed wire to stop protesting farmers from entering the capital city. Having forced the government to withdraw a trio of contentious laws on agriculture three years ago, the farmers were now demanding a minimum price for their crops. The government took extraordinary measures to foil them. Paramilitary forces patrolled Delhi’s borders, and police fired tear gas and rubber bullets. On February 21st, a young farmworker was killed. Not long after, I spoke to Harinder Singh Lakhowal, one of the leaders of the movement, by telephone. Modi, he suggested, was paying tribute to the virtues of democracy in speeches while crushing its practitioners at home. If this continues, he said, “We will go back to our villages and work against the government in the elections.”

India is now at the end of a national election—the eighteenth since it held its first, in 1951. There are more than twenty-five hundred political parties and nearly a billion eligible voters in the contest, which has been staggered into seven phases that began in mid-April and will conclude on June 1st. More than fifteen million personnel have been drafted to oversee the voting process. Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (B.J.P.) are hoping to win a historic third straight term. At the start of the campaign, Modi promised to grow his parliamentary majority by more than a hundred seats. But low voter turnout in the early rounds of polling suggests a depleted enthusiasm for the Prime Minister and his efforts to recast India as a Hindu-first state. Though another win looks almost certain, it may not be the resounding triumph that Modi prophesied. And if Modi receives a blow, either in the form of a defeat or a diminished margin of victory, he will owe it to the civic revival incubated by his own reign.

In early April, I flew to Varanasi, a B.J.P. stronghold and the holiest city in Hinduism, to scatter a portion of my father’s ashes. Modi has been the city’s representative in Parliament since 2014. One evening, on the Dashashwamedh Ghat, one of the oldest of all the steps leading down to the banks of the Ganges, I met a twenty-nine-year-old man named Ajit Kumar Singh. He was bony and bearded, with a thick streak of vermillion imprinted on his forehead. A large crowd was forming around us for the evening’s Ganga Aarti, a luminously choreographed ritual tribute to the Hindus’ most sacred river. The sound of conch shells suffused the air. Not far from us, on another ghat, dozens of human bodies were being reduced to ash. To be cremated in Varanasi is to become emancipated from the cycle of life and death. “People come here to die,” Singh said.

Singh had cast his first vote, in 2014, for Modi. During that campaign, Modi had vowed to fight corruption and tax evasion by repatriating billions of rupees that had been stashed in the vaults of Swiss banks by generations of politicians and their cronies. (That promise fell by the wayside, and anti-corruption investigations increasingly targeted political opponents.) What he delivered instead was an overnight abolition of high-denomination currency notes, instantly invalidating eighty-six per cent of all the currency in circulation inside the country. Large parts of the economy were devastated. Singh’s father lost his small business, and Singh had to stop his studies and find work as a salesman and driver to help support his family. “Everyone I know was struggling,” he told me. Modi had promised to create twenty million jobs a year. By the end of his first term, the country’s unemployment record was reported to be the worst in nearly half a century.

Still, in 2019, Singh, “as a Hindu,” again voted for Modi. (I heard versions of this sentiment in other places, too—that Modi’s emphasis on Hindu pride made other concerns secondary.) But now he was done. “All that has happened in the past five years is ‘Hindu-Muslim,’ ‘Hindu-Muslim,’ ” Singh said. “How is this going to fill my stomach? How will this get me a job?” During the past six months, I met voters in Maharashtra, Delhi, Telangana, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and Kerala who shared similar stories of hardship. Since 2014, India, often paraded as the world’s fastest-growing economy, has indeed grown richer. But the prosperity hasn’t trickled down. The combined wealth of the two hundred Indians on Forbes’s World Billionaires List is almost a trillion dollars. Nearly three hundred million Indians, meanwhile, survive on less than $1.90 a day. The New India, according to a recent report by the World Inequality Lab, is “more unequal than the British Raj headed by the colonialist forces.” Unemployment is so rampant that, a couple of years ago, when Indian Railways advertised thirty-five thousand new positions, more than ten million people applied. Worse, according to a study by the International Labour Organization, India’s youth account for eighty-three per cent of the country’s unemployed. (The Indian government disputes the report’s findings.)

What makes this election unusual is the plain contempt for the cheap consolations of Modi’s Hindu nationalism, even among those who once constituted the core of his support. “When Modi first asked for our vote in 2014, I thought, He is just like us,” Neelima Devi, a washerwoman in Allahabad, told me. (Allahabad, like many other places in New India, now has a new, Hindu name: Prayagraj.) Modi’s muscular Hindu identity is encased in a stirring biography. In a country rigidly segmented by caste and class, he is a self-made man who has risen from the bottom rungs of society—he was born into a poor family from a marginalized caste—to the pinnacle of political power through hard work, perseverance, and sheer force of will. Devi said, “It has taken me ten years to see that we were duped. Modi is not our savior. He is a punishment for our sins in some past life.” The pandemic was a turning point for her. “There was no hospital, no food, nothing,” she said. “For as far as my eyes could see, there were burning bodies.” (The World Health Organization has estimated that more than 4.7 million people in India died of COVID —almost ten times more than the number reported by the Indian government.) She went on, “Now when I look at Modi or B.J.P. people my blood boils. I feel ashamed for keeping my mouth shut all these years. They told us, ‘Muslims are your enemies,’ but I have not seen any Muslim hurt me or my family. They say, ‘Modi is building grand temples.’ Can we eat the temples? They say, ‘We are proud to be Hindu because of Modi.’ Will this pride feed and clothe us?”

In the run-up to this election, a survey conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (C.S.D.S.), a research institution in Delhi, found that seventy-nine per cent of Indians across nineteen states and union territories believe that their country belongs to “citizens of all religions equally.” An overwhelming majority—eight of every ten polled—affirmed their support for India’s religious pluralism. These attitudes suggest that Modi’s repudiation of a secular national identity, which was fostered by the Republic’s founders, may actually have reinforced its importance in the minds of a great many Indians. Modi’s personal popularity must not be underestimated—his approval rating, currently at seventy-four per cent, according to Morning Consult, is higher than that of any other world leader in its roster. His excesses have shattered trust built up between communities and standardized noxious attitudes that may take a generation to repair. But we can already see a gradual reëmbrace of the flawed yet real interfaith fellowship of old India. If Modi’s first term was defined by institutional subversion, his second term has been colored by spectacular protests against his strongman rule.

In early August, 2019, two months into Modi’s second term, he revoked the constitutional autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir, then India’s sole Muslim-majority state, and brought it under what amounted to martial law. In December, his party pushed the Citizenship (Amendment) Act through Parliament. The C.A.A. called for granting express citizenship to members of Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Parsi, and Sikh communities fleeing persecution in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Muslims were explicitly excluded from the legislation, and their omission was apparently justified on the ground that, as members of religious majorities in the countries named in the bill, they could not reasonably be assumed to be victims of religious persecution. The C.A.A. did not, on its own, empower the government to revoke the citizenship of Indian Muslims. It did, however, name religion, for the first time since the modern Indian state’s advent, in 1947, as a determinant of citizenship.

Modi did not stop at the C.A.A. His government also proposed the creation of a pan-Indian National Register of Citizens (N.R.C.), which would require all Indian residents to produce documents proving an ancestral connection to the country. Those who failed to satisfy this condition would face detention and deportation. In practice, Hindus unable to furnish adequate proof of their link to India could invoke the C.A.A. to claim citizenship; its provisions would function as a safety net for them. Muslims, excluded from the C.A.A.’s scope, could be rendered stateless if they did not conjure valid documentation. Together, the C.A.A. and N.R.C. in effect guarantee Indian citizenship to Pakistani or Bangladeshi Hindus living illegally in India, while forcing Muslims born and raised in India to wage protracted legal battles to prove that they belong in the country.

Within hours of the C.A.A.’s passage, protests erupted in India’s northeast, before spreading to Delhi, where Modi, accustomed to getting his way and unprepared for the reaction, responded with brutal force. The government activated a colonial-era law to ban gatherings of more than four people, and suspended the Internet. The police stormed Jamia Millia Islamia, one of India’s most distinguished universities—founded by Muslim luminaries with the support of Mahatma Gandhi—and bloodied hundreds of students. The protests only intensified. As petitions opposing the law piled up in the Supreme Court, Muslim women in the south Delhi neighborhood of Shaheen Bagh pitched a tent on a stretch of road and staged a sit-in. Within days, Shaheen Bagh emerged as the lodestar of the unfolding agitation against the C.A.A., drawing onlookers, activists, and reporters. Dozens of protest sites sprang up across India.

One evening in January, 2020, I made my way to Shaheen Bagh. A police officer stopped my taxi and asked me where I was headed. When I told him, he said, “All the enemies of the nation have gathered there.” As I got closer, the roads were barricaded. I abandoned the car and got on the metro. People riding the train maintained a conscious distance from each other, appearing to be lost in thought, but once out of the station, a spiritedness reëntered those who moments before had seemed afraid to make eye contact. On Masjid Road, a hectic street leading up to Shaheen Bagh, a man in a skullcap pulled out an Indian flag from a polythene bag, wore it as a scarf around his neck, and, waving his arms energetically at strangers, loudly recited these lines from a patriotic poem by Muhammad Iqbal:

[Ancient] Greece, Egypt, and Rome have all vanished from this world, but our name and identity survive intact . . . We are of India, and India is our homeland.

The protest site was redolent of a busy town fair or a major sporting event. There were concession stands selling fried food and tea, book stalls hawking tracts by India’s founders, men blowing balloons, and little booths where children queued up to have the colors of the Indian flag—saffron, white, and green—painted on the back of their hands and on their cheeks. At the center of it all stood a large tent. Its floodlit walls were plastered with posters of the heroes of India’s freedom movement. There was a small makeshift dais on one end. Next to it, a Muslim man draped in the Indian flag sat holding a copy of the constitution. On the stage, speakers of different faiths were being introduced. Seated on the floor were the elderly women of Shaheen Bagh, wearing thick jumpers to defend themselves against the crisp wind.

I met Asma Khatoon, a ninety-year-old protester who had been there from the beginning. Her cheeks were sunken, and she seemed to be missing teeth, but she spoke with remarkable clarity and precision. Khatoon’s family had made the difficult choice during Partition to remain in India. “They told my parents to go to Pakistan,” she said. “My family said, ‘We are children of this soil, believers in Gandhi. You can kill me, but this is our country. We are staying here.’ ” She was aghast that, after everything she had endured, she was being asked to produce proof of being Indian. “At my age, you want me to prove I am Indian?” she said. “Who is demanding this proof?” Without looking, she pointed at the pictures on the wall: Bhagat Singh (Sikh and atheist), Maulana Azad (Muslim), Jawaharlal Nehru (agnostic), Mahatma Gandhi (Hindu), Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (Dalit and Buddhist). “Do you see a single R.S.S. man there?” she said, referring to the mother ship of Hindu nationalism. “No. For me, everyone is a child, but I will fight to my last breath for my country. It is beneath my dignity to prove anything to the R.S.S.”

The movement grew. And Muslims, maligned as a fifth column ever since the subcontinent was partitioned, were on its front line. In Hyderabad, in south-central India, thousands of ordinary Muslims came together to make a public recital of the preamble to the Indian Constitution: “We, the people of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic. . . . ” Hindus joined the protest sites, too. In Delhi, Hindus, along with people of other faiths, formed a human chain to protect Muslim worshippers during rallies against the C.A.A. In Kolkata, hundreds of Hindu priests raised slogans against the C.A.A. and the N.R.C. In Punjab, Hindus and Sikhs led a joint march with Muslims against the law.

In early February, 2020, I flew to Karnataka, a thousand miles south of Delhi, the only state in southern India—the more peaceable, prosperous, and less populous half of the country—then run by a B.J.P. government. Protests had been raging there for weeks, and the state authorities had reacted with fury. In December, Ramachandra Guha, the most respected liberal historian of modern India, was protesting the C.A.A., when authorities detained him in the middle of a TV interview. At a rally in the center of Bengaluru, Karnataka’s capital, I met Sujatha Gowda, a junior doctor, who had supported Modi until she saw a video of Pehlu Khan, a fifty-five-year-old dairy farmer, being run to the ground and lynched by “cow vigilantes” in Rajasthan, another state governed by the B.J.P. After Khan’s death, in 2017, the state’s Home Minister blamed “both sides.” Gowda said, “I had always avoided the lynching videos, but the Pehlu Khan one came over WhatsApp and got saved on my phone. Just seeing this murder unfold in front of my eyes made me sick . . . it made it clear to me that, as an Indian and especially a Hindu Indian who supported Modi, I am also responsible for his death.” (Gowda showed the video to her parents and they made a pact never to vote for the B.J.P. again.) In some ways, to Gowda, the C.A.A. was even worse. “Murders can be blamed on a few bad apples,” she said. “But what do you do when your own government targets you and says you are not an Indian because you are not of a particular religion?”

A few days after I arrived in Bengaluru, the B.J.P. lost a major statewide election in Delhi to the Aam Aadmi Party, some of whose members had backed the protesters at Shaheen Bagh. The B.J.P. had made Shaheen Bagh and the anti-C.A.A. protests the focus of its campaign. Bigwigs in the Party issued warnings about the dangers awaiting the people of Delhi if they rejected Modi. “They will enter your homes, rape your sisters and daughters, kill them,” Parvesh Sharma, a B.J.P. member of the national parliament, said of Muslim protesters. “Today, you are safe only because Modi is the P.M. of India.” A minister in Modi’s government incited a rally with a macabre chant that culminated in the crowd shouting, “Shoot the traitors.” When the votes were cast and tallied, the B.J.P. took just eight seats in an assembly of seventy members.

The defeat was a humiliation for the B.J.P., a rejection of the sectarian tactics that had previously yielded dramatic dividends. A week and a half later, Kapil Mishra, one of the losing B.J.P. candidates, threatened to clear out the anti-C.A.A. demonstrators blocking the roads in Delhi if the police did not act. “Three days ultimatum to Delhi Police,” he tweeted. Riots erupted that afternoon in northeastern Delhi and spread through the outlying areas of the city. It was the worst violence in decades in the Indian capital—a reprise, on a smaller scale, of the carnage in Gujarat on Modi’s watch in 2002. Fifty-three people were killed. Muslims, who constitute a small minority in Delhi, outnumbered Hindus by more than two to one among the fatalities.

Shaheen Bagh, astonishingly, survived the communitarian inferno. And the women of the area continued with their peaceful protest even as neighborhoods around them went up in flames. Relief came to Modi in the form of the coronavirus. On March 24th, the Prime Minister announced one of the most stringent lockdowns in the world, with a four-hour notice, and the gathering at Shaheen Bagh was dispersed. Slogans that had been scrawled on walls and streets in the area were painted over the next morning.

When India became independent of British rule, many observers questioned whether such a desperately poor and bewilderingly diverse land was suited for democracy. But India’s founders persisted with the conviction that representative government was the best means to elevate and create citizens of a people who had always been subjects of despots and emperors. In 1961, the American editor Norman Cousins asked Nehru to predict the legacy of the liberal democratic state he and his comrades had established in a land riven by every imaginable difference. Nehru replied, “Hopefully, it is 400 million people capable of governing themselves.”

That number is 1.4 billion today, and the effort to homogenize them into obedient subjects of Hindu supremacism, after some early triumphs, has faltered. The end of Shaheen Bagh was followed by the eruption of another mass protest, this time by farmers rallying against a series of laws Modi had pushed through Parliament to reorganize India’s vast agricultural sector. By December, 2020, two hundred and fifty million people had participated in a nationwide strike in support of the farmers—perhaps the largest protest in human history. Legislatures in half a dozen states passed censures of the farm laws. The protest was a marvel of endurance and logistics, lasting for sixteen months, through the biting winter and blazing summer of northern India. Modi, who seldom retreats from a fight, was forced to rescind the legislation.

India’s true misfortune is the absence of an opposition capable of directing the deepening disenchantment with the government into a decisive political dénouement at the polling booth. In 1975, Indira Gandhi, having split the Indian National Congress and reduced it to a family-run enterprise, suspended the constitution and inaugurated a formal dictatorship that lasted for twenty-one months. Her regime, though secular, did not brook the slightest dissent. My own father, who joined the underground resistance at the time, was among the tens of thousands of activists detained without trial. Civil liberties were dissolved, habeas corpus suspended, and the press censored. Newsweek’s overseas correspondent wrote, “In ten years of covering the world from Franco’s Spain to Mao’s China, I have never encountered such stringent and all-encompassing censorship.” In 1977, when democracy was restored and elections called—only after Gandhi’s intelligence officials assured her that reëlection was certain—the opposition, many of whom were freshly freed from prison, united under a banner of democratic solidarity. Socialists joined capitalists, Hindu nationalists collaborated with secularists, and the result was overwhelming: the Congress Party, the invincible colossus that had led India’s freedom movement and become its default party of government, was booted out of office.

Such unity is difficult to achieve today. In July, 2023, dozens of major and minuscule opposition parties formed a coalition called INDIA —Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance. But it quickly became a casualty of disagreements over power sharing. Its prospects, for all the bluster of its leaders, appear bleak. The Congress Party, reduced to irrelevance inside Parliament, continues to operate as the fiefdom of the Gandhi family. Rahul Gandhi, the de-facto head of the Party, is a fifth-generation scion of the fabled Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. He averaged five foreign trips every month during Modi’s first term.

On the morning of April 5, 2023, my father died. He belonged to a generation of Indians who had internalized Nehru’s inclusive nationalism. Nearly killed in the carnage that attended the Partition, he sought throughout his life to defy the many attempts to deform India’s capacious character. During Indira Gandhi’s dictatorial reign, he travelled through towns and villages organizing communities. In the nineties, as India opened up its economy and Hindu nationalists began proliferating in Parliament, he enrolled me at a madrassa, an Islamic seminary, in the hope that the experience of mixing with Muslim children my age might inoculate me against the snare of Hindu-supremacist temptations later in life. Trained as a lawyer, he devoted himself to pro-bono work for men branded enemies of the state.

A sea of mourners attended his funeral. They came uninvited. And it was in them that my father’s optimism about India, which had seemed so misplaced to me for many of the Modi years, truly cohered. A Muslim religious leader, blind and barely able to walk, threw himself on my father’s body and sobbed inconsolably. Then came a finely robed pastor, who whispered thanks in my father’s ear for having volunteered legal work for Christian communities. He read from the Bible. Only then did my father’s body pass to Hindu priests. None of this had been orchestrated. It was India being India.

It could all fall apart, of course. Modi, still revered by millions of Hindus who regard him as the country’s redeemer, may decide to emulate Indira Gandhi and suspend democracy if his hold on power is threatened. Such a regime, far from being inconceivable, would amount to a formalization of what, in many respects, has felt like an unofficial Emergency rule. But the multitudes who defied Modi at the summit of his power are a cause for hope: India will not submit without a fight. A year after my father’s departure, dispersing his ashes in the sacred waters of the Ganges, I came to share his hopefulness about our country. India, I felt, will pull through. ♦

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Layers Unfolded: the Ancient Tapestry of India’s Social Structure

This essay about India’s ancient caste system explores its origins, evolution, and impact on society. It discusses how what began as a practical division of labor transformed into a rigid hierarchical structure, governed by concepts of purity and pollution. The essay examines the role of religion in legitimizing the caste system and the complexities of social mobility within it. It also highlights the enduring legacy of caste-based discrimination in modern India, emphasizing ongoing efforts to address historical injustices and promote social equality. Overall, the essay provides insight into the intricate dynamics of ancient Indian civilization and the lasting effects of its social institutions.

How it works

In the tapestry of ancient Indian civilization, one of the most intricate and enduring patterns is undoubtedly the caste system. Like threads woven through generations, its origins, evolution, and impact create a rich and multifaceted narrative of social organization. Delving into this complex structure reveals not just a hierarchical framework but a reflection of the beliefs, values, and dynamics of ancient Indian society.

At its inception, the caste system emerged as a pragmatic division of labor, with different social groups specializing in various occupations.

The four varnas – Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras – represented distinct roles and responsibilities within society. Yet, what began as a functional arrangement gradually solidified into a rigid hierarchy, where birth determined not just one’s occupation but also one’s worth.

The concept of purity and pollution became central to the caste system, permeating every aspect of social interaction. Brahmins, positioned at the apex, were revered for their purity, while Shudras, relegated to the lowest rung, faced discrimination and marginalization. Interactions between different castes were governed by strict rules, aimed at preserving the purity of higher castes and enforcing the subservience of lower ones.

Within this overarching structure, the jatis added layers of complexity, further subdividing society based on occupation, region, and lineage. These intricate networks of kinship and community provided a sense of belonging and identity within the larger caste categories. Yet, they also reinforced divisions and hierarchies, perpetuating social inequality and limiting mobility.

Religion played a pivotal role in legitimizing and perpetuating the caste system, intertwining social norms with spiritual beliefs. Hindu scriptures, such as the Manusmriti, codified the duties and obligations of each varna, portraying them as ordained by the divine. The performance of one’s caste duties, or dharma, was seen as essential for both worldly success and spiritual liberation, further cementing the social order.

Despite its rigidity, the caste system exhibited elements of fluidity and adaptability. Individuals could, to some extent, change their jatis through marriage, occupation, or religious conversion, albeit within narrow confines. This limited mobility provided a semblance of opportunity but often reinforced existing hierarchies, as upward mobility remained elusive for most.

The legacy of the caste system extends far beyond its dissolution, shaping the contours of modern Indian society and politics. While formal legal abolition has dismantled many overt manifestations of caste-based discrimination, its deep-rooted influence persists, manifesting in subtle forms of prejudice and privilege. Efforts to address caste-based disparities remain ongoing, reflecting the enduring struggle to reconcile historical injustices with contemporary ideals of equality and social justice.

In the tapestry of ancient India, the caste system stands as a testament to the complexity and contradictions of human society. Rooted in pragmatism yet perpetuated through ideology, it served as both a mechanism of social organization and a source of division and oppression. Understanding its nuances allows us to unravel not just the intricacies of ancient Indian civilization but also the enduring legacies of caste and inequality in our own time.

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Layers Unfolded: The Ancient Tapestry of India's Social Structure. (2024, May 28). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/layers-unfolded-the-ancient-tapestry-of-indias-social-structure/

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PapersOwl.com. (2024). Layers Unfolded: The Ancient Tapestry of India's Social Structure . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/layers-unfolded-the-ancient-tapestry-of-indias-social-structure/ [Accessed: 1 Jun. 2024]

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PapersOwl.com. (2024). Layers Unfolded: The Ancient Tapestry of India's Social Structure . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/layers-unfolded-the-ancient-tapestry-of-indias-social-structure/ [Accessed: 1-Jun-2024]

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