Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T02:27:13.101Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Marriage, Education, and Employment among Tamil Brahman Women in South India, 1891–2010*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2012

C. J. FULLER  and
HARIPRIYA NARASIMHAN
C. J. FULLER
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics and Political Science Email: [email protected]; [email protected]
HARIPRIYA NARASIMHAN
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics and Political Science Email: [email protected]; [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A hundred years ago, pre-puberty marriage for girls was the norm among South Indian Tamil Brahmans, and Brahman girls received little or no education. By the 1940s, child marriage had largely ended and girls’ education was improving gradually. Today, girls’ educational standards more or less match that of boys’, and many Brahman women are also employed outside the home. In relation to marriage and education in particular, the position of women has greatly improved, which is regarded by Tamil Brahmans themselves as a sign of their modern, educated, professional, middle-class status, whereas extreme gender inequality formerly indicated their traditional, high-caste status. This paper examines how female marriage, education, and employment are interrelated and how they have changed among Tamil Brahmans, particularly in the Eighteen-Village Vattima subcaste, which continued child marriage until the 1970s. Among Tamil Brahmans, as both women and men recognize, a real reduction in gender inequality has occurred. Moreover, Brahman men have more readily ceded status to Brahman women than Brahmans together have to non-Brahmans, so that there is a striking contrast today between persisting ideas of caste superiority and diminishing gender inequality.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , January 2013 , pp. 53 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

For useful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, we thank Mukulika Banerjee, Henrike Donner, Johnny Parry, Mytheli Sreenivas, and Sylvia Vatuk, as well as participants at a workshop convened by Peter van der Veer at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen. We also thank the Economic and Social Research Council which has supported our research. Although this paper was written by C. J. Fuller, it has been discussed extensively with Haripriya Narasimhan and it represents our joint views.

References

1 Doniger, Wendy and Smith, Brian K. (trans.), The Laws of Manu (London: Penguin, 1991), p. 115Google Scholar.

2 Mukhopadhyay, Carol C. and Seymour, Susan, ‘Introduction and Theoretical Overview’, in Mukhopadhyay, Carol C. and Seymour, Susan (eds), Women, Education, and Family Structure in India (Boulder, Colorado: Westview, 1994), pp. 3–4, 25Google Scholar.

3 Fuller, C. J. and Narasimhan, Haripriya, ‘From Landlords to Software Engineers: Migration and Urbanization among Tamil Brahmans’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 50 (1) 2008a, pp. 170–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fuller, C. J., ‘The Modern Transformation of an Old Elite: The Case of the Tamil Brahmans’, in Clark-Decès, Isabelle (ed.), A Companion to the Anthropology of India (Oxford: Blackwell, 2011)Google Scholar.

4 Kumar, Nita, The Politics of Gender, Community, and Modernity: Essays on Education in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 131Google Scholar.

5 Sreenivas, Mytheli, Wives, Widows, and Concubines: The Conjugal Family Ideal in Colonial India (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), Chapter 4Google Scholar.

6 Fuller and Narasimhan, ‘From Landlords to Software Engineers’, pp. 177–78.

7 Fuller, C. J. and Narasimhan, Haripriya, ‘Companionate Marriage in India: The Changing Marriage System in a Middle-class Brahman Subcaste’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (n.s.), 14 (4) 2008b, pp. 736–54, especially pp. 736–37, 742–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Kane, P. V., History of Dharmasastra (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1974 [1941]), Vol. 2, p. 445Google Scholar.

9 A very small selection from the sizeable historical literature on these topics, mostly about the colonial period, includes: Chatterjee, Partha, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993), Chapters 6–7Google Scholar; Forbes, Geraldine H., ‘Women and Modernity: The Issue of Child Marriage in India’, Women's Studies International Quarterly, 2 (4) 1979, pp. 407–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Forbes, Geraldine H., Women in Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kumar, The Politics of Gender, Chapters 5–7; Sarkar, Tanika, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion and Cultural Nationalism (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001)Google Scholar; Seth, Sanjay, Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sinha, Mrinalini, Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Chapter 4. For Madras, see: Raman, Sita Anantha, Getting Girls to School: Social Reform in the Tamil Districts, 1870–1930 (Calcutta: Stree, 1996)Google Scholar; Sreenivas, Wives, Widows, and Concubines; Suntharalingam, R., Politics and Nationalist Awakening in South India, 1852–1891 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1974), Chapter 7Google Scholar.

10 Seth, Subject Lessons, p. 142.

11 Seth, Subject Lessons, pp. 135–36; see also Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments, p. 6, Chapters 6–7.

12 Suntharalingam, Politics and Nationalist Awakening, p. 326.

13 Heimsath, Charles H., Indian Nationalism and Hindu Social Reform (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1964), pp. 111–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Pandian, M. S. S., Brahmin and Non-Brahmin: Genealogies of the Tamil Political Present (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007), p. 62Google Scholar.

15 See Sreenivas, Wives, Widows, and Concubines, pp. 69–70, 92–93.

16 Sinha, Specters of Mother India, p. 154.

17 Sinha, Specters of Mother India, pp. 171–72, 181–82.

18 Sreenivas, Wives, Widows, and Concubines, p. 75.

19 M. K. Acharya and M. S. Sesha Ayyangar spoke repeatedly and lengthily against the Bill in September 1929; see Legislative Assembly Debates (Official Report), 4: 240, 262, 887; 5: 1056, 1130, 1284. Acharya was a member of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (see Pandian, Brahmin and Non-Brahmin, p. 92).

20 Sreenivas, Wives, Widows, and Concubines, Chapter 3.

21 Sreenivas, Wives, Widows, and Concubines, p. 77. For radical non-Brahman views on marriage, see Hodges, Sarah, ‘Revolutionary Family Life and the Self Respect Movement in Tamil South India, 1926–49’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 39 (2) 2005, pp. 251–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Sreenivas, Mytheli, ‘Conjugality and Capital: Gender, Families, and Property under Colonial Law in India’, Journal of Asian Studies, 63 (4) 2004, pp. 937–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Newbigin, Eleanor, ‘A Post-colonial Patriarchy? Representing Family in the Indian Nation-state’, Modern Asian Studies, 44 (1) 2010, pp. 121–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Raman, Getting Girls to School, pp. 251–54.

24 On Sister Subbalakshmi, see Felton, Monica, A Child Widow's Story (London: Gollancz, 1966). Forbes, Women in Modern India, pp. 57–60Google Scholar.

25 See Kumar, The Politics of Gender, pp. 148–50; Raman, Getting Girls to School, pp. 107–10.

26 Felton, A Child Widow's Story, pp. 152–64; Forbes, Women in Modern India, pp. 59–60; Sinha, Specters of Mother India, p. 174.

27 Felton, A Child Widow's Story, pp. 131–32.

28 Raman, Getting Girls to School, p. 189.

29 Sinha, Specters of Mother India, p. 152.

30 Census of India 1931, Vol. XIV, Madras, pt. 1, Report, p. 340.

31 Census of India 1911, Vol. XII, Madras, pt. 2, Table XIV, p. 124; Census of India 1921, Vol. XIII, Madras, pt. 2, Table XIV, p. 126; Census of India 1931, Vol. XIV, Madras, pt. 2, Table VII, pp. 98–99. Unlike the clear age cohorts used in the 1931 census, those in the earlier censuses are ambiguous, therefore direct comparison of the figures is impossible.

32 See Sinha, Specters of Mother India, p. 194.

33 Sinha, Specters of Mother India, p. 152.

34 Fuller, C. J., The Renewal of the Priesthood: Modernity and Traditionalism in a South Indian Temple (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2003), p. 73Google Scholar; Gough, E. Kathleen, ‘Brahman Kinship in a Tamil Village’, American Anthropologist, 58 (5) 1956, pp. 826–53, especially p. 841CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Research was carried out among Eighteen-Village Vattima Brahmans in Tippirajapuram from September 2005 to March 2006, in the United States in September 2006, and in Chennai and other Indian cities (and in Tippirajapuram again) from January to April 2007, in August 2007, from January to March 2008, and March to April 2010. Most of the research was undertaken by Haripriya Narasimhan, accompanied by Fuller some of the time.

36 In the Indian education system, children usually start school when they are five years old. Primary school has five grades—first to fifth standards—and secondary school, five more—sixth to tenth standards. Pupils successfully completing the final grade are awarded the Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC). Two more years of study—now the eleventh and twelfth standards (otherwise known as the Pre-University Certificate [PUC] course or the Intermediate course)—are required before entering college or university to study for a Bachelor's degree.

37 ‘Veranda schools’ were known as ‘pyal schools’ in Anglo-Indian administrative terminology (see Raman, Getting Girls to School, p. ix).

38 Fuller and Narasimhan, ‘Companionate Marriage in India’, pp. 738–40. In this paper, all informants’ names are pseudonyms.

39 See Raman, Getting Girls to School, p. 253.

40 Fuller and Narasimhan, ‘Companionate Marriage in India’, pp. 745–46.

41 Caplan, Patricia, Class and Gender in India: Women and Their Organizations in a South Indian City (London: Tavistock, 1985), p. 85Google Scholar.

42 Srinivas, M. N., ‘The Changing Position of Indian Women’, Man (n.s.), 12 (2) 1977, pp. 221–38, especially p. 234CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Fuller, C. J. and Narasimhan, Haripriya, ‘Engineering Colleges, “Exposure” and Information Technology Professionals in Tamil Nadu’, Economic and Political Weekly, 41 (3) 2006, pp. 258–62Google Scholar.

44 Carol C. Mukhopadhyay, ‘Family Structure and Indian Women's Participation in Science and Engineering’, in Mukhopadhyay and Seymour (eds), Women, Education, and Family Structure in India, pp. 114–16.

45 A 2009 report from NASSCOM, the Indian IT businesses’ association, surveys the position of women in the IT and Business Process Outsourcing sector, noting their rising proportion in the professional workforce, including its technical sections, as well as the obstacles facing them, especially in promotion to senior posts. See ‘NASSCOM-Mercer Gender Inclusivity Report’, accessed from ‘Diversity and Inclusivity Initiative’: <http://www.nasscom.in/Nasscom/templates/LandingPage.aspx?id=52752>, [accessed 17 December 2010].

46 See Mukhopadhyay and Seymour (eds), Women, Education, and Family Structure in India, pp. 118–20.

47 Upadhya, Carol and Vasavi, A. R., ‘Outposts of the Global Information Economy: Work and Workers in India's Outsourcing Industry’, in Upadhya, Carol and Vasavi, A. R. (eds), In an Outpost of the Global Economy: Work and Workers in India's Information Technology Industry (New Delhi: Routledge, 2008), pp. 34–35Google Scholar.

48 C. J. Fuller and Haripriya Narasimhan, ‘Empowerment and Constraint: Women, Work and the Family in Chennai's Software Industry,’ in Upadhya and Vasavi (eds), In an Outpost of the Global Economy, pp. 208–09.

49 See Kumar, The Politics of Gender, pp. 140–41.

50 Narasimhan, Haripriya, ‘Adjusting Distances: Menstrual Pollution among Tamil Brahmans’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 45 (2) 2011, pp. 243–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Fuller and Narasimhan, ‘Companionate Marriage in India’, pp. 746–47.

52 Béteille, André, ‘The Social Character of the Indian Middle Class’, in Ahmad, Imtiaz and Reifeld, Helmut (eds), Middle Class Values in India and Western Europe (New Delhi: Social Science Press, 2003), p. 82Google Scholar.