Changing Patterns of Family and Kinship in South Asia.

KOROM, FRANK J.

Changing Patterns of Family and Kinship in South Asia. Edited by AsKo PARPOLA and SIRPA TENHUNEN. Studia Orientalia, vol. 84. Helsinki: FINNISH ORIENTAL SOCIETY, 1998. Pp. vii + 314, illustrations (paper).

This volume is based on the proceedings of an international symposium held at the University of Helsinki on May 6, 1998, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of India's independence. The eleven contributions are primarily by Finnish scholars, but there are also essays by Don Handelman, Lina Fruzzetti and Akos Ostor, G. Gopinathan, and Mohan K. Gautam. The monograph lacks an introduction that might frame the essays theoretically, yet there is a certain amount of coherence, in that each essay focuses on the two key themes of the title: family and kinship. The approaches taken range from symbolic or textual studies of mythic themes to ethnographically informed field studies.

The volume opens with Handelman's discussion of Siva and Parvati's dice game, in which he exegetically continues the work he began with David Shulman (1997). Handelman discusses the "metaphysics of gender" in Saiva mythology by analyzing how the divine couple's relationship is formed through the destructive mediation of the game of dice. His central argument, based on an interpretive reading of Skandapurana 1.1.34-35 is that Siva and Parvati "must fall apart in order to have the opportunity to come together as distinctly male and female" (p. I). He argues that the formation of their sexual identities in the myth is "fraught with a metaphysic of ongoing imbalance, of falling apart in order to come together" (p. 9). Yet in constantly failing in a successful relationship due to tension and uncertainty, they are prevented from having a fruitful union. His symbolic reading of the myth seems sound to me, but the brevity of his argument does not convincingly support his conclusion that opposition and conflict are even deeper in human marriage relationships than they are in the marriages of deities.

Virpi Hameen-Anttila looks at Kalidasa's vision of the ideal marriage through an analysis of key themes such as ritual and romance, conflict and harmony, beauty and truth. She concludes by addressing Heesterman's "inner conflict of tradition" (1985) to ask what the fifth-century author may have thought about the tension between action and renunciation. The conclusion is sensible: Kalidasa is too engrossed in the world of the senses to abandon it completely, but he does provide visions of renunciation in his merging of the sensual and the transcendent. Klaus Karttunen provides a brief but critical survey of Greek accounts concerning ancient Indian marriages, while Fruzzetti and Ostor revisit Dumont to ask what his model of hierarchy can lend to future understandings of kinship in South Asia. They soberly suggest that Dumont's theory is still applicable to future studies. Their conclusions do not answer problematic questions stimulated by the French author's influential writings but raise useful issues for furt her reflection. Like Karttunen, their essay is short and necessarily tentative. Nonetheless, the questions they raise--too numerous to list here--concerning the ongoing applicability of Dumont's ideas are welcome.

Heli Uusikyla departs from Hindu India to consider metaphors of conception and kinship among rural Muslim villagers in Bangladesh. The author is in basic agreement with Fruzzetti's and Ostor's (1976) earlier work on the topic, where they pointed out the complementary nature of abstract concepts about maleness and femaleness. Like the metaphors of the vessel and the holder of the vessel and of the seed and soil, linked through the mediation of the "fruit" (i.e., the child in the womb), Uusikyla posits that male is not opposed to female, but rather, "the former encompasses the latter in a hierarchical relationship" (p. 58).

Minna Saavala reviews a century of literature on the Hindu joint family with an eye toward economic development. Beginning with Sir Henry Sumner Maine's (1880) gloomy forecast that the "Joint Undivided Family of the Hindoos" lacked the capability for social development, Saavala moves on to discuss fieldwork undertaken in coastal Andhra Pradesh. The work yielded results contrary to the popular opinion that the joint family is in decline. Against the conventional wisdom that the joint family has led to the stagnancy of the Indian economy and the layman's romantic evocation of a glorious past versus a corrupt present, Saavala suggests that complex households have actually become more common during the twentieth century, even though a greater portion of India's citizens continue to live in nuclear households. The latter point notwithstanding, extended family networks remain central to familial relationships as strategies for coping with modernizing forces, especially among socially mobile urban groups, where econ omic prosperity resulting from better education and, hence, more affluent employment, are fostered through extended family connections.

Sirpa Tenhunen discusses arranged inter-caste marriages in Calcutta to suggest that urban hierarchies are in flux. The people residing in the neighborhood where she worked put their disregard for caste into practice by advocating inter-caste marriages, yet they have not abandoned hierarchical considerations altogether due to the fact that such alliances are still arranged. Her central point is that class is becoming as important as caste when considering arranged marriages in urban India. But she correctly cautions against reducing one category to the other. Rather, caste and class remain separate but interconnected domains that are not confused in the minds of urban Bengalis. Her conclusion that Bengalis have not abandoned hierarchy in being modern or urban seems rather predictable, but her idea that new modes of culturally constructed hierarchies are emerging through marriage arrangements is a welcome addition to the anthropological literature on the social construction of urban identities in India.

Gopinathan's interesting study of Sri Narayana Guru's (18561928) impact on the social and educational advancements of Kerala's citizenry rejects the notion of Westernization or modernization to focus rather on rehumanization. In using this term he means the reformist guru's attempts to instill a renewed sense of humanity into the "dehumanized" communities at the lower end of the social spectrum through propagation of his "one caste, one religion, and one God" ideal (p. 102). Gopinathan points out that the gum's social reforms had an impact on kinship and other relationships as well in his emphasis on equal importance for the man and the woman as partners in marriage. Earlier scholars noted the guru's movement as a process of Sanskritization. Following Jacob's (1995) lead, however, he rejects this understanding in arguing viably that the Eezhava untouchable community (the focus of his study) is not attempting "to gain a positional change in the caste structure to attain the status of Brahmans" (p. 108).

Mohan Gautam's study is the only contribution that deals with tribal society in India. His focus is on the Santal-Munda adivasi community, and his goal is to assess the position of this group after fifty years of independence. Gautam is ably equipped for this task, having carried out more than four decades of research among the Santal-Munda. After charting the history of this group's status, social organization, and kinship patterns during the colonial and post-Independence periods, he concludes that the Santal-Munda have actually strengthened the basis of their social structure, "including the principle of patrilineality, the exogamy of clans, the institution of agnation, the legitimation of the secular head by the sacral head in the villages, the prohibition of adoption and the dislike of the 'house bridegroom' marriage, the exclusion of women in bonga [spirit] worship, land rights, etc." (p. 124). This may be the case, but Gautam paints a suspiciously seamless picture of the Santal-Munda as a "model tribal community" that is perfectly content with the nation's policies toward it. The closing paragraph of his article reads like an uncritical patriotic appeal for tolerance of governmental control. His closing "live and let live" slogan seems to ignore much of the recent tension in eastern India between various ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups.

Antti Pakaslahti provides a detailed study of family-centered treatment of psychological disturbances at the Balaji temple in Rajasthan. Following Neki (1973), Pakaslahti points out that an estimated eighty percent of India's population first consults religious folk healers when it seeks help for mental health problems, Pakaslahti continues by suggesting that this is the preferred form of treatment even when Western methods are available. As a clinical psychiatrist, the author is especially interested in the interface between emic (indigenous) and etic (external) perspectives on mental health, "how a specific theoretical model is applied in clinical practice to make sense of the illness experience, and how therapeutic actions proceed" (p. 130). Throughout, the author pays special attention to the integrative role of the family in the treatment process. Pakaslahti notes that seeking cures at the temple cuts across caste, class, and gender barriers, for people from all walks of Hindu life seek cures there. The author's conclusion is that the family treatment employed at the shrine "aims at a positive transformation of internal experience and outer behavior in the interests of a better family homeostasis" (p. 164). He goes on to suggest that "above all, the treatment effectively and creatively mobilizes healthy family resources and coping strategies" (pp. 164-65).

The closing article by Asko Parpola is a mini-monograph in itself. In it, he provides a far-reaching study of the ideal-wife theme in the Savitri legend. To do this, he draws on Sanskrit, Old Tamil, Harappan, and Mesopotamian sources. Parpola points out that the central motifs of the legend are death and resurrection, themes he sees as important in the ancient Near East, from where he assumes the motifs were imported into South Asia by the people of the Indus Civilization. His contention is that Savitri's role as the ideal wife serves as an important model for the proper behavior of Hindu women even today. It is therefore important to understand her historical background in order to grasp the ideological underpinnings that form the textual patterns upon which contemporary kinship and family structure in India are founded. Parpola is convinced that the legend is securely rooted in the Harappan/Dravidian tradition of the preVedic Indus Valley, and his attempts to trace this conviction are admirable. Of course, the quest for origins is always a speculative and tentative enterprise, but Parpola provides a solid contribution to the literature on this subject by drawing on Indological and anthropological scholarship to ground his discussion in an interdisciplinary fashion.

In sum, the papers included in this volume, while not unified by a common set of theoretical and methodological propositions, provide a rich variety of perspective on the changing nature of family and kinship in South Asia. The volume is a welcome addition to the literature on the dynamics of the family in India, but the virtually exclusive focus on Hindu India hardly does justice to the rest of South Asia. The title of the monograph is thus somewhat misleading. Nonetheless, as a contribution to the study of family and kinship in Hindu India, it is a useful addition to the library of any student or scholar interested in Hindu social structure.

REFERENCES

Fruzzetti, L., and A. Ostor. 1976. "Seed and Earth: A Cultural Analysis of Kinship in a Bengali Town." Contributions to Indian Sociology, n.s., 10(1): 97-131.

Handelman, D., and D. Shulman. 1997. God Inside Out: Siva's Game of Dice. New York: Oxford University Press.

Heesterman, J. C. 1985. The Inner Conflict of Tradition: An Essay on Indian Ritual, Kingship and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Jacob, George. 1995. Religious Life of the Ilavas of Kerala: Change and Continuity. Delhi: Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

Maine, Henry Sumner. 1880. Lectures on the Early History of institutions. London: John Murray.

Neki, J. S. 1973. "Psychiatry in South-east Asia." British Journal of Psychiatry 123: 257.