CHANGES IN THE INDIAN FAMILY: AN EXAMINATION OF SOME ASSUMPTIONS

A.M. Shah

In the following essay, A. M. Shah examines the assumptions surrounding the changes in the
Indian family, essentially from joint family to elementary, while analysing the beliefs
surrounding the traditional Indian family that remain necessary for us to arrive at a proper
understanding of social change in India. It is only recently that some sociologists have tried to
show that the changes taking place in the Indian family have been characterized not by the
development of the elementary family, but rather the substitution of the traditional family system
by a new form of the joint family. However, even these sociologists fail to check that whether it
is actually correct to describe the traditional family system of India as a joint family system.
Existing popular beliefs concerning the traditional Indian family so far have largely assumed
that: i) traditional India was village India and so joint family was characteristic of village India
itself, ii) urban areas were characterised by elementary family, and iii) urbanization led to the
downfall of the joint family.

This essay however, only refers to the aspect of the household and the past of the Indian
household while examining the beliefs and changes in the traditional Indian family. Household
as such, as Shah examines, should be distinguished from other features of the family. Referring
to the instance of census of households in a town, village or within a particular caste in India
Shah notes that the types of compositions can vary in terms of numbers and kinship patterns
from the simple single-member household to multiple members complex households. A simple
household is then composed of a complete elementary family or a part of it, while a complex
household, also called as the joint household comprises of two or more elementary families in it.
The most primary task for analysing households is then to categorize the types of composition,
which becomes more complex with the addition of relatives. This classification should take into
account all the various members of a household. It is important to keep in mind that the different
types categorized, should however, not be taken as discrete but interrelated in a development
progress, marked by either gradual progression of its members or regression.

While viewing the classification of households as a result of a gradual developmental process, it

is also necessary to take into consideration the significance of the norms or the explicitly stated
rules that direct the formation of households in India. One such important idea is that while
female patrilineal descendants of a male ancestor go to live with their husbands after marriage,
the male patrilineal descendants and their wives live together, with the wife being incorporated
into the husband’s kin-group. It is expected that the wife should stay in the same household even
after the death of her husband. Their unmarried children should also stay with the parents and in
the absence of the mother should stay with their father or his kin members. This is what Shah
identifies as the principle of residential unity of patrikin and their wives. While this principle is
common to most Hindu households, there are differences in the extent to which the
developmental process affects the constitution of the household and the frequency of cases in
which this norm is observed. One of the main factors affecting the developmental process and
the extension of the principle of residential unity of patrikin and their wives is the degree of
Sanskritisation of a caste. The ritually higher castes tend to have a higher chance/ degree of
extension of this principle. Another factor affecting the extension of the principle is the practice
of cross-cousin marriages. However, the developmental progress happens simultaneously, and
while in some households the principle is extended and progression takes place, in other
households the principle witnesses regressive developments. Small and simple households
therefore coexist with complex and large households in a society. Even when a complex
household is partitioned into smaller units, other relationships continue to operate between them.

Studies concerning the Indian family have mainly used two kinds of ancient literature to gain
insight into its past: i) relating to the property aspect of the family, included in the study of the
Hindu law, and ii) relating to family rituals such as the shraddh. The first kind of information
pertains to the Hindu legal text – Mitakshara, which defines a coparcenary as comprising of
males who are entitled by birth to an interest in the joint or coparcenary property. The legal
definition of the family is thus based on the coparcenary, a property-owning group consisting of
all males (their wives and unmarried daughters are not a part of the coparcenary but only have a
right to maintenance). This shows that a) the legal definition of a joint family has nothing to do
with a sociological distinction between elementary and joint family, and b) moreover, the law
does not state that the joint family will have to a joint household. Ancient Hindu texts also relate
the inheritance of property with the person who carries out the shraddh ritual. Here also the
people need not live in a single household. Over time, it was the coincidence of the legal and the
ritual definition of the joint family that came to be accepted as the standard. This is what Shah
identifies as the Indological definition. This material on the Indian family was also used by
Henry Maine in his general theory of the evolution of the family, where he compared and
contrasted the joint family of India with the individual family of the West and considered the
latter as a mark of evolution.

With ritual and legal texts throwing light on the nature of the joint family and not on the
composition of the household, it was only with the colonialism and the beginning of British
administration in India that data on households began to be collected, particularly with the
introduction of the Census for estimating the population. The original schedule of such censuses,
as the one found by Shah on the social history of villages in central Gujarat, revealed that a
census register was prepared for every village, in which the heads of households were listed
according to their caste and religion, with further details on houses, men, women, servants/
slaves, and total number of persons. Shah’s study of the census data on the household
composition in a Gujarat village from 1820 to 1830 showed that i) the average size of the
household was 4.5 and ii) if at all there was any progressive development of the households, it
rarely went beyond the co-residence of two or more married sons during the lifetime of their
parents. This data from the 19th century thus strongly suggests that one cannot analyse changes in
the Indian family by simply assuming that villagers in traditional India always lived in large
households consisting of three or four generations. The higher proportion of population
belonging to the higher and more Sanskritised castes resided in towns whereas the majority of
the people residing in villages consisted of the lower and less Sanskritized castes. If the higher
Sanskritised caste are closer to the norm of the residential unity of patrikin and their wives, then
according to the census data that shows their concentration in towns, it can be said that this
principle was followed more in the towns rather than in villages, thus debunking the popular
belief that villages consisted of more number of joint households than towns.

Censuses till 1871 covered only small parts of the country but collected significant information
of demographic and sociological value. The later censuses covered wider areas but there was a
difference in the kind of information collected, wherein till about 1941, distinction between
house, household and building was not taken into consideration. All of these censuses continued
to show that the average size of the household was rather low, between 4.5 and 5, suggesting that
people in India mostly lived in small and simple households. Census officials however believed
that in pre-British days Indians lived in large households and its disintegration in the 19th century
was a mark of modernization.

Looking at the anthropological and sociological studies on the problem of changes in the family
in India, Shah thus notes that most works have been based on the assumptions that he has
clarified, and for this reason he highlights on the need to have a new framework for the study of
changes in the Indian family. First, normal developmental processes that are relatively gradual in
nature should be distinguished from change. Second, there is no single line of change that can be
predicted for the entire Indian society and one should not assume that there has been a trend from
large and complex households to small and simple ones. Finally, it is also essential to look at the
impact of industrialization and urbanization on the household.