Philosophical basis of Hindu family

The chief ideal of Hindu family is procreation. The birth of son has been considered to be necessary from the worldly as well as the otherworldly viewpoint.  According to Manu, a man cannot even renounce the world without precreating a son.  In different Vedas, Samhitas and Brahmanas the birth of a son has been declared to be necessary for paying off the debts to the ancestors.  The word ‘Putra’ signifies one who saves a person from the hell of ‘Puta’.  Thus in Hindu social philosophy the birth of a son is absolutely necessary even for religious and spiritual purposes.

An important ideal of a Hindu family is the fulfillment of dharma.  The word ‘Patni’ signifies the woman participating with the man in religious ceremonies. No man was permitted to carry out religious celebration without getting married.  Kalidas has called wife the source of all religious activities.  The Grahasth-Ashram has been called the basis of all other Ashramas

According to Hindu scriptures, of the four aims of Dharma, Artha, Kama, and Mosksha, the fulfillment of dharma and the enjoyment of sex are two important ideals of the household life.  The Hindu scriptures have seen the life from an integral viewpoint.  The enjoyment of sex, therefore, has been given an equal status with the fulfillment of dharma.  According to Vatsyayan, the man attaining the age of 100 years should gather knowledge in childhood, enjoy sex in youth and attain dharma and liberation in the old age.  Thus the ideals of Hindu family are based on a harmony of enjoyment and renunciation.

Traditional joint family

The most striking feature of the joint family is the living of several families in one house.  In this the father, son, son’s wife and children all live together.  According to Sir Henry Maine the Hindu joint family is a group constituted of a known ancestor and adopted sons and relatives related to these sons through marriage.

As long as the one kitchen does not serve the entire group, different families cannot be regarded as a joint family even if they live in one house.  Brahaspati has said that those people who have the same kitchen, their ancestors, gods and Brahmins are worshipped at the same place. The moment the kitchen is separated, the joint family ceases to exist.

In a joint family, the ownership, production and consumption of wealth takes place on a joint basis.  Writing about the joint family, Mellay writes in “Modern India and West” that it is a co-operative institution, similar to a joint stock company, in which there is joint property. The head of the joint family is like a trustee who manages the property of the family with a view to deriving material and spiritual benefit for the members of the family. 

In this ideal type the oldest male is the head of the family. Maine titles him the absolute authority.  The rights and duties in this type of family are laid down to a great extent by the hierarchical order of power and authority. Age and sex are the main ordering principles of family hierarchy. The frequency and the nature of contact/communication between members vary on the basis of sex.

Emphasis on conjugal ties (i.e. between husband and wife) is supposed to weaken the stability of the joint family. The father-son relationship (filial relationship) and the relationship between brothers (fraternal relationship) are more crucial for the joint family system than the husband-wife or conjugal relationship. A married woman, for instance, works in the kitchen with her mother-in-law and sisters-in-law. Younger members are required to show respect to the older members and can hardly question the authority or decision taken by elders even when it directly concerns them.

Changes in the ideals of  Hindu family

• The influence of Western culture in modern times has led to some changes in the ideals of Hindu family. 
• Formerly, man used to aspire for a good number of sons.  But now family planning has become necessary due to economic difficulties. 
• Again, no one believes in the ideas of heaven and hell and the necessity of the birth of a son for the other world.  With the change in the status of women the desire fore son is not appreciably dominant than that for the daughter. 
• The joint family has constantly disintegrated.  Fulfillment of dharma is no more the ideal of Hindu family.  Thus the only two aims of a Hindu household at present are Artha and Kama. Thus at present there is more emphasis on biological and psychological satisfaction through the marital relationship. 
• Love is gradually becoming the basis of marriage. 
• Thus the ideals of Hindu family are gradually coming closer to the family in the west.  And yet due to the nature of Hindu marriage as a religious sacrament, the essential core of the Hindu family is still maintained.

Development cycle

The family in India has also been viewed as a process in terms of a developmental cycle. A cycle denotes a movement, which occurs again and again in a particular pattern. A family cycle denotes that elements of family life take shape in a particular manner and direction. It relates essentially to the process of fission occurring in the residential and compositional aspects of family living. Some studies by Desai , Madan  and Cohn have described the Indian family types as stages in a family cycle.

A nuclear family develops into a joint family after the marriage of a son and coming of a daughter-in-law. After the death of the father, brothers often separate. In some places, like Andhra Pradesh, sons are expected to stay together with the parents till all the children in the family are married. After this they tend to separate. Thus, the process of fission takes places and the joint family is broken into relatively smaller family units. The parents may then choose to live with one of the sons. One important factor is the high bargaining power of the wife. It has been pointed out that nuclear families develop out of joint families where the wife has high bargaining power. This means that in groups where the wife has a right to legal divorce, where bride price is given and where there is economic and social support to a woman from her natal family, there are considerable possibilities for the formation of nuclear households or fission in the ‘one family’.

Those who have studied the family as a process point out that a particular type of composition of a household should be looked at as a stage in the developmental cycle. The presence of nuclear households should not be taken as indicative of change in the institution of joint family. Such families should be viewed as units which will grow up into joint families when the sons grow up and marry.

The concept of the developmental cycle of the family does not apply universally to all groups. For instance, among artisans any kind of joint family living may be more advantageous than among very poor agricultural groups where organisation of labour or pooling of labour offers little advantage. An illustration of this point can be given from the study by Cohn (1955) of the Chamars of Senapur, who are landless labourers. Among then the achievement of a joint family is difficult because of demographic, economic factors as well as due to the role of women and mobility.

Nicholas, on the basis of his study in rural West Bengal, concludes that if a joint family between a father and his married sons divides, a joint family among brothers rarely survives.

Jointness

Family studies in India has been concerned with the question, whether the joint family system is disintegrating, and a new nuclear type of family pattern is emerging. It is very difficult to think of  a dichotomy between the joint and the nuclear family in India. In the present contexts, these typologies are not mutually exclusive. According to Augustine, 1982 to understand the dimensions of changes taking place in Indian family system, the concept of transitionality may be used. This concept, according to Augustine, has two dimensions: retrospective and perspective. The retrospective dimension implies the traditional past of our family and social system, while the perspective one denotes the direction in which change is taking place in our family system. Transitionality is thus an attempt to discern the crux of the emergent forms of the family .

Traditionally, jointness is reflected in the factors of commensality, common, residence, joint ownership of property, cooperaton and sentiment of jointness, ritual bonds like worship of common deity. Most of the studies of joint family use commensality (eating together) as a defining criterion. In some studies the joint family as the residential family group is stressed. Though it is possible to find a joint family having the same  hearth but not sharing the same dwelling or vice versa, by and large commensality and common residence are taken as essential ingredients of jointness. Some acholars have regarded joint ownership of property or coparcenary as the essence of jointness, irrespectives of the type of residence and commensality. In legal terms, this is the most crucial factor used for defining a joint family. Traditonal view of jointness is more influenced by the “book view”.

A joint family is also seen in terms of generations present in it. Some researchers, like I.P. Desai  and T.N. Madan , emphasise that the number of generations present in a family is important for identifying a joint family. A joint family is commonly defined as a three generational family. For instance a man, his married son and his grand children constitute a joint family.

Researchers, like F.G. Bailey, T.N. Madan, have advocated the limitation of the term joint family to a group of relatives who form a property owning group-the coparcenary family. M.S. Gore , for instance, defines a joint family as a group consisting of adult male coparceners and their dependants. The wives and young children of these male members are the dependents.

But, Scholars like I.P. Desai (1964) and K.M. Kapadia (1958) point out that jointness should be looked in functional terms. A functionally joint family lays stress on fulfilment of obligations towards kin. A patrilineal joint family may consist of a number of households headed by males related through the father. They may be located even at distant places and may not even have property in common. But what is common is that they identify themselves as members of a particular ‘family’, cooperate in rituals and ceremonies, render financial and other kinds of help; and they cherish a common family sentiment and abide by the norms of joint living.

The ritual bonds of a joint family are considered to be an important component of jointness. A joint family, thus, is bound together by periodic propitiation of the dead ancestors. The members perform a ‘shraddha’ ceremony. Another ritual bond among joint family members can be a common deity worship. In many parts of South India, each joint family has a tradition of worshipping a particular clan or village deity. M. N. Srinivas has reported that Srinivasa of Tirupathi and Subramany of Palani are two well known Hindi deiteis who have a large number of South Indian families attached to them.

Still another important bond is pollution. Birth and death results in pollution and the group observing pollution consists of the members of the joint family, patrilineal or matrilineal. The bonds created by ancestor worship, family deities and observation of pollution persist even after the joint family has split into separate or smaller residential and commensal units .

From the above discussion of joint family it becomes clear that common kitchen or hearth, common residence, joint rights to property and the fulfilment of obligation towards kin and ritual bonds have been outlined as the main criteria for defining what constitutes jointness. Many scholars have pointed out that of these dimensions, co-residence and commensality, are the immediately identifiable characteristics of a joint family. Such a consideration, they feel, would also accommodate family patterns found in non-Hindu communities like the Muslims, Christians, etc. It would also accommodate families which hardly have anything by way of ancestral or immovable property .

I.P. Desai

I.P. Desai, in his famous work. Some Aspects of Family in Mahuva (1964), points out that in Gujarat ‘a residentially nuclear group is embedded in social, cultural and other non-social environments; which are not the same as those in the societies of the West’. He defines the structure of a family in terms of one’s orientation to action. When action is oriented-towards the husband, wife and children, the family can be categorised as a nuclear unit; and when the action is oriented towards a wider group, it is defined as a joint family. To him, though the nuclear family does exist in India, it is, however, not the prevalent pattern. In his sampling, only 7% of the households considered nuclear family as desirable, while around 60% considered jointness as desirable. Significantly, elements of jointness were found among all religious groups. Their greater degree was available among the business and the agricultural castes. It is important that property was an important factor behind the jointness.

Kapadia

Kapadia also found that though most families are nuclear, they are actually joint in operation. These families maintain their connections through mutual cooperation and rights and obligations other than those of property. To Kapadia, not the common hearth, but mutual ties, obligations and rights, etc., have been the major elements of jointness in the contemporary functionally joint family in India

Ishwaran

In his study of a village in South India, Ishwaran (1982) found that 43.76% nuclear (elementary) families and 56.24% were extended (joint) families. The villagers attach a wealth of meaning to the term ‘jointness’ and in their opinion one either belongs to the joint family or depends upon the extended kin. Infact, the isolated independent elementary family does not exist for them, and indeed its actual existence is largely superficial due to heavy reliance upon the extended kin group. The extended family is the ideal family, reinforced by religious, social, economic and other ideological forces. He concludes that even though the nuclear families are on the increase, perhaps because of the greater geographical and social mobility found in a society being modernized, these families cannot live in isolation without active cooperation and contact with the extended kin.

Pauline Kolenda

By comparing seventy six studies which included family types across villages, caste communities and other population, Pauline Kolenda (1987:78) outlined the pattern of prevalence of joint family in India. She observed that (a) joint family both lineal and collateral was more characteristic of higher twice-born castes and least characteristic among the economically poor and the untouchables, (b) there are regional differences in the proportion of joint families. For instance, the Gangetic plains showed higher incidence of joint families than Central India, i.e., in Madhya Pradesh, showed higher incidence of joint families than Central India, i.e., in Madhya Pradesh, Western Rajasthan, parts of Maharashtra, and (c) there seem to be differences in the customary time of break-up of the joint family in various groups and places in India.

Factors limiting joint family

A host of interrelated factors, economic, educational, legal demographic, have affected the family in India.

Land Reforms

Earlier, the members of the joint family normally lived together due to common ancestral property, which was vast in size. Land reforms imposed ceiling restriction on the landholdings. In many cases, the heads of the family resorted to theoretical partition of the family by dividing the land among the sons in order to avoid the law of the land ceiling. During their lifetime the son live under his tutelage, if he was powerful; otherwise, sons gradually began to live separately during their parents lifetime. This according to Lakshminarayana the theoretical partition hastens formal partition, and sows the seeds for separate living.

Demographic factor

With low life expectancy there is much less chance of three generations existing at the same time.

Economic factors

With no property, contribution to the income of the family is the major asset for this group. Since old people may not have the capacity to work and contribute to the family resources, they are not considered as essential and important persons in the family.

Role of women

Due to the poor financial position of the family, women are required to take up paid employment outside the home. So the traditional division of labour in a joint family where women look after the home and children and men go out to work cannot operate. Women’s economic activities make the continuity of the joint family difficult.

Mobility

Movement of individuals from one place to another, in search of better economic opportunity, also makes joint family living difficult. This meant residential separation from their ancestral home. If they were married, they sometimes took their wives and children (and even one or two relatives) along with them.

Diversification of occupations

Since Independence, opportunities for and diversification of occupations have increased due to industrialisation , and the initiatives of the welfare state. Nuclearisation of the family is considered as the outcome of its impact as the new opportunities demand geographical mobility. With a constitutional commitment to promote equality between the sexes and to integrate women into the development process, a further impetus emerged to draw women into varied kinds of occupations. In families where both the men and women went out to work, role relationships, between members of the family were affected.

Legal Factors

Legislators regarding employment, education, marriage, and property, have affected the family system in many ways. Labour laws passed for the benefit of employees like The Indian Workmen Compensation Act (1923). The Minimum Wages Act 1948, helped to reduce the economic reliance of members on the joint family for economic support. In 1930 the Hindu Gains of Learning Act was passed whereby it was declared that the property acquired by a Hindu out of his education was his personal property though his education was paid for by the joint family. The distinction between self-acquired property and joint family property was drawn. In 1937, during the British rule a law was passed by which a woman acquired a limited right to her husband’s property. She could hold the property of her husband after his death as a limited owner during her life time. But after she died the property devolved to the heirs (usually the sons) of the husband.

With regard to marriage, the Child Marriage Restraint Act was passed in 1929, to curb infant marriages. It prescribed the minimum age (18 and 14 years respectively) at marriage for boys and girls. This act also aimed to give women an opportunity for education.

After Independence the  Hindu Succession Act (1956) was passed which gave a daughter and a son rights to the father’s property. These legislations challenged the inheritance patterns that prevailed in joint families prior to the passing of this act and the dependent position of women within the family.

Urbanisation

The process of urbanization has also affected the pattern of family life in India. It denotes the movement of people from rural to urban areas and a shift from agricultural to non-agricultural occupations. It also implies the adoption of an urban way of life. Urban life reflects increased density of population, heterogeneity of population, diversification and increased specialisation of occupation, complex division of labour. It also includes increased availability of educational and health facilities. Limited availability of living space, impersonality and anonymity also characterize urban life.

Partly as a result of population pressure on land, there has been a continuous influx of people into cities seeking education, jobs, medical care etc. What impact does migration to cities have on the families in villages? Residential separation due to mobility of members from one place to another affects the size and composition of the family. A man may take his wife and children along with him to establish a nuclear family in the city. There have been many studies which show that migration to cities from villages and small towns has contributed to the rapid disintegration of large size family units. These observations have been mainly based on census data, which show a high percentage of nuclear families in cities. In the city, with problems of finding accommodation and limited space available for living, it becomes difficult for an average urbanite to maintain and support a large family.

Modernisation

Both industrialisation and urbanization are considered as the major contributing factors toward modernisation. In fact, modernisation as a social-psychological attribute can be in operation independent of industrialisation and urbanization.

With the passage of time, through exposures to the forces of modernisation, the family structure underwent multiple changes almost leading to an endless variety of it. There are instances too, where the family structure has become simpler due to its impact. There are also contrary instances indicating consequent complexity in the family structure.

The other factors which have been held responsible for encouraging smaller units are:

1) Opportunities for higher education

2) Heightened ambitions

3) Increased occupational mobility

4) Growing sense of inviduality (i.e., thinking in terms of individual needs and ambitious rather than in terms of kinship needs and larger familial requirements).

Factors of continuity of Joint Family

Sociologists while trying to measure the changes taking place in family life observe that urbanization and industrialization have, in fact, served to strengthen some aspects of joint family system. Here we will discuss three important studies to illustrate our point.

Urbanization

K.M. Kapadia (1972), for instance, has drawn our attention to the fact that families, which have migrated to cities, still retain their bonds with their joint family in the village or town. Even after they residentially separate themselves from a joint and from a nuclear family, they do not function as an isolated or completely independent unit in the city. These families retain their kinship orientation and joint family ethic. This is evident from the physical presence of relatives at the time of certain events like birth, marriage, death, illness and so on.

The joint family ethic is very much evident in the performance of certain role obligations. These may include physical and financial assistance to kin members. A family in the city has the duty to give shelter and sustenance to all subsequent immigrants from the rural family, mostly young men in pursuit of education and work or relations seeking medical treatment in urban centres. So it can happen that in the course of time, a kind of joint family is formed in the city, which is linked to the family in the village by close family ties, by a system of mutual rights, duties and obligations and also by the undivided family property.

industrialisation

Again the thesis that the joint family is dysfunctional to the process of industrialisation has been challenged by those who point out that some of the successful industrial establishments in the country are managed by the individuals who strictly live by joint family rules. They maintain co residence, common hearth, contribute and share economic resources. In his study, The Indian Joint Family in Modern Industry. Milton Singer (1968) points out that the joint family continues to be the norm among industrial entrepreneurs, despite changes in their material conditions of living. He observes that changes have taken place, within three generations, in residential, occupational and educational spheres. Social mobility has increased and ritual observations have been reduced in number and/or in importance. However, these alterations, he points out, have not transformed the joint family into isolated nuclear families. On the contrary, a modified joint family organisation has emerged in the urban industrial setting where even members from the ancestral home or village move into the urban setting. Thus, according to Singer, the industrial centre has simply become a new area for the working of the joint family system.

Kolenda in her study Regional Differences in Family Structure in India observes that industrialisation serves to strengthen the joint family because an economic base has been provided to support it or because more hands are needed in a renewed family enterprise or because kin can help one another in the striving for upward mobility.

No doubt the joint family that functions today in urban settings is different in many ways from the joint family, which functioned, in pre-independent and non-industrial India. For instance , Many of the co residential, commensal joint families in urban areas remain joint because it is the norm or due to some advantages, or because of shortage of accommodation. Yet, there may be considerable separation in the management of household expenses on entertainment, education of children etc.

Adapted joint family

Even in urban areas some studies, points out that joint family in India breaking down and undergoing a process of Nuclearisation , While another group is of the opinion that joint family ethnic and the kinship orientation still exist even after the residential separation.

Scholars point out that industrial urbanization has not brought disintegration in the joint family structure. Milton Singer (1968) studies the structure of the joint family among the Industrialists of Madras City. He finds that joint family system has not been a blockade for entrepreneurship development. Rather, it has facilitated and adopted to the industrialisation. Orensten, in his study on the Recent History of Extended Family in India analyses the census data from 1811 to 1951. He finds that the joint and the large families in India are not disappearing by the processes of industrialisation and urbanization. However, the prevalence of the joint family structure has not been of uniform one across society. Ramakrishna Mukherjee finds that (a) the joint family is over-represented in the trade and the commerce sector of national economy and in the high and middle grade occupations; (b) nuclear family is over-represented in the rural rather than in the urban areas. Based on his study on the family structure in West Bengal, he concludes that the central tendency in the Indian society is to pursue the joint family organisation. Joint family sentiments widely prevail over Nuclearisation of family units in spite of residential separation, etc.

Emerging Patterns

• In urban areas both male and female members of the family may go for gainful employment outside the home.
• In some families the parents of the husband may live his wife and children. While in some others, members of the wife’s family may be living with the couple and their children.
• Aged parents, who formerly used to look towards their eldest son or sons for support in old age, are now adjusting themselves to the new demands of family life by making economic provisions for their old age. Even within a city parents and married sons may reside separately.
• Another trend in family life in India is that girls are prepared to support their parent or parents in old age.
• Women’s and feminist research since the 1970s has focussed on the relations in the family and the household in moving beyond its forms and structures. The research on dynamic, unequal and negotiated relations in the family has questioned the family as a homogenous category for all its members, especially in the spheres of property, work, development, reproduction and violence.
• Mass media as a form of popular culture plays a significant role in creating and representing images of the ideal and the real household and of family relations, emotions and processes. An analysis of the media images of the contemporary Indian family in transition is called for.
• Globalisation, rapid increase in the volume of national and international migration, unprecedented changes in transport, telephony, and mass communication, particularly through audio-visual media and information and communication technology: all these and more have brought about complex ways of adaptations by social institutions, especially of family, kinship and marriage.  While India is apparently embracing the western cultural traits with open arms, it is simultaneously going through a process of returning to the cultural, including ritual, roots.
• The family is assuming global, national, cosmopolitan, western, and modern forms in some quarters, while retaining some of the conventional forms in others.
• Couples cross the endogamous caste and religious boundaries in finding marriage partners and forming families. The competing values posed by these marriages, and consequent discrete families with little overlapping kin ties, influence in complex ways the family ethic and the everyday practice of family life.  
• The growing individualism questions the legitimacy of the age old hierarchic authority. However this system of transformation has minimized the importance of mutual respect, love and affection among the family members belonging to various generations. Penetration of consumerist culture has aggravated the situation further. In a situation of generation gap, many of the aged feel frustrated, dejected and neglected in society.
• Since the emotional bondage has been weakened; many young members feel a sense of identity crisis in the family. The lack of emotional support in the family many times leads the youth to the path of alcoholism and drug addiction.