The Contemporary Indian Family: Transitions and Diversity 9781138056107, 9781003057796

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
List of contributors
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 New faces of the Indian family in the 21st century: some explorations
2 Family studies in India: historical development, debates, and future directions
3 Media, technology and family: the changing dynamics of interaction
4 A slum and a desert: structural violence perspective on the survival of families experiencing poverty
5 Families in conflict zones: the case of Central India
6 Women, family and the everyday struggle facing conflicts: a case of Kashmir
7 Making sense: familial journeys towards acceptance of gay and lesbian family members in India
8 Deaf families: understanding issues of two generations
9 Families of the future: some reflections
Index

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THE CONTEMPORARY INDIAN FAMILY Edited by B. Devi Prasad, Srilatha Juvva and Mahima Nayar

THE CONTEMPORARY INDIAN FAMILY TRANSITIONS AND DIVERSITY Edited by B. Devi Prasad, Srilatha Juvva and Mahima Nayar

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The Contemporary Indian Family

This book analyses the dynamics of the development of family structure in India over the past few decades. It captures the diversities and challenges of contemporary families and provides a culture and region-specifc overview of how families adapt and change generationally. The book explores the paradigms of understanding family life in India through illustrations which trace patterns of family formations in the context of large-scale social, economic and media-driven changes. Besides discussing the ongoing debates on the sociology of family, the chapters in this volume also look at diverse families experiencing poverty, confict and displacement and demystifes families with members having a disability or non-normative sexual orientation. The book will be useful to students and researchers of various disciplines, such as sociology, social work, family studies, women’s studies and anthropology. B. Devi Prasad is a former professor, Centre for Equity and Justice for Children and Families, School of Social Work (SSW), Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Srilatha Juvva is a professor, Centre for Equity and Justice for Children and Families, School of Social Work, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Mahima Nayar is a psychiatric social worker and an independent researcher working in the areas of disability, mental health, women, children and families.

The Contemporary Indian Family Transitions and Diversity Edited by B. Devi Prasad, Srilatha Juvva and Mahima Nayar

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, B. Devi Prasad, Srilatha Juvva and Mahima Nayar; individual chapters, the contributors The right of B. Devi Prasad, Srilatha Juvva and Mahima Nayar to be identifed as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-05610-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-05779-6 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

We dedicate this book to All our immediate and extended families

Contents

List of contributors Preface Acknowledgements Introduction

ix xiii xv 1

MAHIMA NAYAR AND SRILATHA JUVVA

1

New faces of the Indian family in the 21st century: some explorations

23

TULSI PATEL

2

Family studies in India: historical development, debates, and future directions

42

B. DEVI PRASAD

3

Media, technology and family: the changing dynamics of interaction

75

TARA NAIR

4

A slum and a desert: structural violence perspective on the survival of families experiencing poverty

93

RUCHI SINHA AND PEKHAM BASU

5

Families in confict zones: the case of Central India

114

ILINA SEN

6

Women, family and the everyday struggle facing conficts: a case of Kashmir FARRUKH FAHEEM

129

viii

7

Contents

Making sense: familial journeys towards acceptance of gay and lesbian family members in India

144

KETKI RANADE, CHAYANIKA SHAH AND SANGEETA CHATTERJI

8

Deaf families: understanding issues of two generations

167

SANDHYA LIMAYE

9

Families of the future: some refections

186

B. DEVI PRASAD AND SRILATHA JUVVA

Index

207

Contributors

Pekham Basu is a faculty member in the School of Social Work, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, India. In the course of her two decades of work in the feld, Pekham has worked on violence against women and children, social entrepreneurship, Grant-in-Aid, corporate social responsibility and issues pertaining to quarry and mineworkers and their families. Sangeeta Chatterji is a postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and has a PhD in social work. Her primary research interests are the dimensions, risk factors and prevention of violence between intimate partners and within the family; the evaluation of interventions designed to prevent violence against women; and the factors associated with the perpetration of intimate-partner violence. B. Devi Prasad is a former professor and chair at the Centre for Equity and Justice for Children and Families, School of Social Work, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, India. He formerly served as Director at Centre for Social Studies (CSS), Surat, Gujarat. Before that, he was a professor at Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, India. At TISS, he coordinated the International Family Studies course offered by the Global Consortium for International Family Studies (GCIFS) during the period 2013–2017. His main research interests are families, children, gender, social policy and the development sector, and he has carried out major research projects and published in these areas. His main interests include the methodologies of qualitative and quantitative research and, more specifcally, content analysis. Farrukh Faheem is presently working as an assistant professor at the Institute of Kashmir Studies (IKS), University of Kashmir, Srinagar, India. Before that, he worked as an assistant professor at Centre for Community Organisation and Development Practice, School of Social Work, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India. His research focuses on understanding the protest movement and mobilisations in Kashmir. He is also interested

x

Contributors in understanding politics of identity and exclusion among the marginalised. His most recent essay, titled “Interrogating the Ordinary: Everyday Politics and the Struggle for Azadi in Kashmir,” was published in 2018 in an edited volume by University of Pennsylvania Press.

Srilatha Juvva is a professor, School of Social Work, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India. Her areas of expertise include mental health, disability, disaster mental health and therapeutic interventions, and has directed research projects in these areas. She, along with other colleagues, initiated the frst postgraduate Disability Social Work programme in the country. She has contributed to book chapters and peer-reviewed journals, including coediting Spirituality, Culture and Development: Implications for Social Work (2016, Lexington), and Field Instruction in Social Work Education: The Indian Experience (2020, Routledge). She cares about fostering living with dignity and full potential. She is a recipient of the Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship. Sandhya Limaye is an associate professor at the Center for Disability Studies and Action, School of Social Work, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India. She has experience working with different types of disabled people across the life span and works with them at the individual family intervention level. Her major research interests include inclusive education, identity and disability, and disability studies, and she has published articles based on her research on issues related to disability. She runs a feld action project called iCBR, for the overall rehabilitation of poor disabled people and works in the areas of education, health, livelihood, advocacy, capacity building and networking in the Mumbai slum area. She is a former Rockefeller, Fulbright, and Erasmus Mundus fellow. Tara Nair is a professor at the Gujarat Institute of Development Research (GIDR), Ahmedabad. Her research concerns mainly issues on policy and institutional development in the areas of media; small and microfnance; livelihoods; and women and development. Some of her recent publications include an edited volume on Microfnance in India: Approaches, Outcomes, Challenges (2015, Routledge India), and two coauthored reports with Ajay Tankha – Microfnance India: State of the Sector Report (2013, Sage Publications) and Inclusive Finance India 2014 Report (2015, Oxford University Press). Mahima Nayar is a trained psychiatric social worker and an independent researcher working in the areas of disability, mental health, women, children and families. She has worked as an assistant professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India. She has worked extensively with survivors of traffcking (women and children), women facing domestic violence, survivors of sexual assault and people with psychosocial

Contributors

xi

disabilities and their families. She has been a research consultant for several national level organisations. She has published widely and is also the author of the book Against All Odds: Psychosocial Distress and Healing among Women (2018, Sage Yoda Press). Tulsi Patel is a retired professor of sociology, Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi and presently the S K Dey chair professor, Institute of Social Sciences, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi researching on local governance. She is a scholar in the felds of kinship and marriage, family, gender and medical sociology, especially the anthropology of reproduction. Her major publications include The Family in India: Structure and Practice (2005, Sage) and two edited volumes – Sex Selective Abortion in India (2007, Sage), edited by her, and Indian Society: Past and Present- Essays in the honour of AM Shah (2011, Orient BlackSwan), coedited with BS Baviskar. Ketki Ranade is a faculty member and chair at the Center for Health and Mental Health, School of Social Work, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, India. She is the author of Growing Up Gay: A Critical Psychosocial Perspective (2018, Springer) and has been conducting research and training in the area of queer affrmative counselling practice. Ketki is a member of LABIA: a queer feminist LBT collective. Ilina Sen is a professor of women’s studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, India. Before that, she was a professor of women’s studies at the Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya (International Hindi University), Wardha, India. She has been active in the women’s and other rights-based movements in India for over three decades. Her primary research interests are gender issues, sustainable development, peace and governance. Her major publications include A Space within the Struggle (1990) and Sukhvasin: The Migrant Woman of Chhattishgarh (1995). Her book Inside Chhattisgarh: A Political Memoir (2014) was published by Penguin Books. Chayanika Shah is a queer feminist activist. She has worked and written extensively on issues of the politics of population control and reproductive technologies, communalism, feminist studies of science and sexuality and sexual rights. She has been an active member of two autonomous voluntary collectives in Mumbai: Forum Against Oppression of Women and LABIA – a queer feminist LBT collective. She coauthored the book No Outlaws in the Gender Galaxy (2014, Zubaan). Besides organising women’s and queer people, she is engaged with various movements for the rights of the marginalised in the city of Bombay.

xii

Contributors

Ruchi Sinha is a faculty member in the School of Social Work, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, India. She has over two decades of experience in working with issues of violence, criminal justice policy, social work in criminal justice system, traffcking, child rights, child protection and juvenile justice. She is engaged with issues around sexual exploitation, abuse and their impact on children. Currently, she is studying the impact of development on families.

Preface

The principal framework which formed the basis of this volume is the historical analysis of family change that is more culture-specifc and regionspecifc and that does not subscribe to any linear model of change process. In this volume, the diverse family forms are captured and treated not as dysfunctional social units but as family variations which are part of a wider normative continuum. These two points of view formed the main thrust of the book. Tamara Hareven,1 a family historian, did not agree with the universal and linear interpretation of change proposed by structural-functional theorists such as Talcott Parsons, W. J. Goode and others. According to her, instead of a unilateral change model of family transition such as “industrialisaion-urbanisation impacting traditional extended families to become nuclear families,” a more culture-specifc and region-specifc model is valid in understanding family change. She argued that though the major forces affecting families in societies across cultures appear similar and universal on the surface, they are dissimilar at deeper levels and in their outcomes. In fact, she2 pointed out that grand social changes, mediated through local cultures, produce different outcomes in different regions. The phenomenon of family change is not an exception to this. Therefore, families belonging to different cultural contexts interacted differently with processes of industrialisation and other social changes to produce signifcantly different outcomes. Hence, the grand theories explaining change from a universal and linear stance were refuted and a more culture-specifc and region-specifc explanations were put forward. Such scholars as I. P. Desai, A. M. Shah, Tulsi Patel, M. Singer and A. A. Khatri, to mention a few, have argued that the Western model of family transition cannot be applied to the Indian context. There is a need to weld such interpretations together to frame a different scenario of understanding family transitions. An attempt is made in this volume to bring these points of view together. Furthermore, acceptance of family diversity – that is, variations in family forms – has become a norm in recent times: in the United States by the 1980s and in India by the early 2000s. This acceptance signifes a departure

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Preface

from the quest for uniformity in family structure and behaviour as a progressive characteristic manifesting in the form of nuclear family. Rather, it denotes the rejection of such blanket concepts as a universal type of family or normative family in favour of more diverse and complex family forms and behaviours. Several historical changes contributed to this acceptance of diversity in family forms. Most prominent among them are the following: 1 2 3

Greater individualisation of family systems making individual’s rights and autonomy the central axes of the families. The impact of major social and cultural processes such as economic changes, information and communication technologies, democratic and human rights perspectives. A complex interaction of these two sets of factors.

The complexity is amplifed by the infuence of the state and other structures that gave rise to diversity and plurality of families. We add a caveat here: diversity in family forms does not indicate any movement towards a more modern and progressive state of family form. The present volume has been woven around these arguments with a primary focus on the impact of these changes on family structure and relationships. The chapters in the volume are compiled such that they keep in view those students and teachers keen to have an update of current debates in family studies and a snapshot of variations in families resulting from different social phenomenon such as poverty, confict and displacement, sexual orientation and disability, to mention a few. We hope that our compilation will be useful. B. Devi Prasad Srilatha Juvva Mahima Nayar Tata Institute of Social Sciences Mumbai - 400088 October 2019

Notes 1 Hareven, T. K. (1988). Historical analysis of the family. In M. B. Sussman and S. K. Steinmetz (Eds.), Handbook of marriage and the family (pp. 37–57). New York, NY: Plenum Press. 2 Hareven, T. K. (2001). The impact of family history and the life course on social history. In R. Wall, T. K. Hareven, and J. Ehmer (Eds.), Family history revisited: Comparative perspectives (pp. 21–39). Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Press.

Acknowledgements

The Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, India, and the Global Consortium for International Family Studies (GCIFS) held a conference titled Changing World – Changing Families: Diversity and Synergy during 4–6 January 2015. The Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), New Delhi, India sponsored the conference. Subsequently, a special issue of the Indian Journal of Social Work (IJSW) was published in 2016 consisting of some papers presented at the conference and a few invited ones. This book is the fnal outcome of select papers from both the categories. We thank the TISS and the GCIFS for hosting the conference and the ICSSR for providing funding for it. We also thank the editor of IJSW for giving permission to include the published papers in the present volume. Our thanks are also due to Child Trends, 7315 Wisconsin Ave, Ste 1200W, Bethesda, MD, 20814, US, for permitting us to use data from one of their World Family Map Reports. We further express our thanks to all those who read drafts of some chapters and gave their feedback. The entire editorial team thanks the contributors to this volume for their patience and their cooperation in making changes to their manuscripts whenever we requested them and for joining us in our endeavour to enrich the understanding of families. Last but not the least, our thanks are due to our students from the Centre for Equity and Justice for Children and Families and the International Family Studies programme – interactions with whom while teaching the courses on family helped us in testing our ideas to understand the processes and diversity of the families in general and Indian families in particular. The students’ contributions, though invisible, are signifcant in leading us to the idea of creating this volume. Our heartfelt gratitude goes to Shoma Choudhury, the commissioning manager, and to Shloka Chauhan, the editorial assistant, both from Routledge India, for the faith that they have had in us throughout the journey in making this volume a reality. We also thank our immediate and extended families and our intentional families for their support throughout this journey.

Introduction Mahima Nayar and Srilatha Juvva

Family is not an institution, but an ideological, symbolic construct that has a history and a politics. – Stacey (1993, p. 545)

Family is an important construct to study historically, especially in India, because it provides many of the facilities, support, and care that are often provided for by the state in several countries. It is also an important unit of society because of the role that it plays in generating human capital resources and the power that is vested in it to infuence individual, household, and community behaviour (Sriram, 1993). It is therefore a basic unit of study in most social sciences disciplines, such as sociology, psychology, economics, anthropology, social psychiatry, social work, and human development (Sonawat, 2001). Although there are debates on whether the family as an institution is on the decline in contemporary society, Aries (1962) argued that the idea of family (as distinct from reality) is stronger today than ever before stands true in the present context. According to him, for a long time, the bonds with the larger community did not allow for a withdrawal into the family. With the emergence of a new code of manners,1 which elaborated childhood and emphasised the respect for a “private life” of families consisting of parents and children, there were modifcations in family life.2 These occurred in conjunction with changes in the relationship between family and community (Risseeuw and Palriwala, 1996, p. 23). In sociology, the contemporary debates about family change have been studied through the lens of periods, particularly modernity, late or high modernity, and post-modernity. Modernity is characterised by postEnlightenment industrialised societies with capitalist economic systems and belief in rational progress. High modernity is characterised by the late-20th-century and early-21st-century industrialised societies in the grip of global capitalism with widespread surveillance and control of citizens. Postmodern societies, on the other hand, are characterised by uncertainty and destabilisation. Within these frameworks, modernity is characterised by the nuclear family with a clear and gendered division of labour, and

2

Mahima Nayar and Srilatha Juvva

post-modernity is associated with a fuid set of arrangements, characterised by diversity in terms of patterns of partnering and parenting. The ways that modernity and post-modernity play out in a cultural context are diverse, and this is what makes families across the globe distinct and unique. They juxtapose how families are organised and function. In modern India, the position of the family has been central and critical in ways that are different from other (notably Western) societies in practice as well as in social science and law (Kannabiran, 2006, p. 4427). Such diverse perspectives are therefore themselves suitable to view families from multiple vantage points.

Family structure and dynamics: change and continuity According to Bharat and Desai (1995), the systematic study of the family started around the 1940s, the works of M. N. Srinivas and M. N. Banerjee appearing to be the earliest published materials. Family research in India has, by and large, been a study of family patterns (Bharat, 1994) rather than of family dynamics (Uberoi, 1998), and its course can be chartered through a number of distinct phases, each phase being dominated by specifc themes and questions (Oommen, 1991). He opined that the frst phase of family studies pertains to indological orientation, where the normative picture of families (p. 21) were presented from a male-dominant perspective, where the focus was on family as described in Hindu texts. The second phase of empirical approach was infuenced by positivism and focused on demographics either through a historical analysis or anthropological studies (p. 22), wherein the beginnings of the changing role of women and their entry into the workforce could be found. The third phase of family studies includes the women’s studies perspective commensurate with the academic recognition of women’s studies as a discipline, and the focus was on the gendered understanding of families and gender-specifc problems, along with academic genderism (p. 25) and its consequences. Family studies in India are viewed within the institutional framework of a particular society. In each society, families vary in the extent to which they accept norms, depending on the family interaction pattern and external forces. The Indian census defnes a household as a group of people normally living together and taking food from a common kitchen. The household members might or might not be related to one another (Gulati, 1995). Family may be broadly defned as a unit of two or more people united by marriage, blood, adoption, or consensual union, in general consulting a single household, interacting and communicating with each other (Unit for Family Studies, 1994). Kolenda (1987) reviewed the various studies on structures of families in India. She classifed the families into several types of family structures: single-member households (one person in one household), nuclear pairs (only married couple), nuclear families (a married couple with or without children), and forms of nuclear families (a broken nuclear family is a fragment of a former nuclear family, such as a widow with unmarried

Introduction

3

children living together, and a supplemented nuclear family a nuclear family plus one or more unmarried/separated/widowed relatives of the parents, other than married children). Other forms included collaterally extended families (two or more married couples among whom there is a sibling bond, normally brothers plus their unmarried children) and supplemented collateral joint families (a collateral joint family with unmarried, divorced, or widowed relatives; typically, such supplemented relatives are the widowed mother or widowed father or an unmarried sibling). Lineal extended families (two couples between whom there is a lineal link, usually between parents and married son or married daughter), supplemented lineal joint families (a lineal joint family plus unmarried, divorced, or widowed relatives who do not belong to either of the lineally linked nuclear unmarried brother), lineal collateral joint families (three or more couples linked lineally or collaterally – typically, parents and their married sons plus the unmarried children of the couple), supplemented lineal collateral joint families (a lineal collateral joint family plus unmarried, widowed, or separated relatives who belong to none of the nuclear families lineally and collaterally linked), and one unclassifed category were some of the other forms of families classifed by her (cited from Sonawat, 2001, p. 179). Family has been understood and defned in a variety of ways. One of the ways of understanding the family is by looking at it as a group related by kinship, residence, or close emotional attachments, which displays four systemic features: intimate interdependence, selective boundary maintenance, the ability to adapt to change and maintain their identity over time, and the performance of the family tasks listed next (Mattessich and Hill, 1987). The tasks performed by families include physical maintenance, socialisation and education, control over social and sexual behaviour, the maintenance of family morale and of motivation to perform roles inside and outside the family, the acquisition of mature family members by the formation of sexual partnerships, the acquisition of new family members through procreation or adoption, and sending off juvenile members of the family once they are mature (ibid). Most of the earlier work on family in India was concerned with the debate related to whether the Indian family was joint or nuclear (Kolenda, 1968). Different defnitions of family structure used by different social science researchers have complicated the debate related to joint and nuclear family systems. Karve (1953, p. 10) defnes the 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. (cited in D’Cruz and Bharat, 2001) D’Cruz and Bharat (2001) prefer looking at joint family as a group of adult male coparceners and their dependents.

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Mahima Nayar and Srilatha Juvva

The impact of industrialisation, urbanisation, education, and occupational differentiation on the structure of family has been examined in detail. Some of the reasons given for the weakening of the joint family system included rural-to-urban migration and advances in agricultural technology. Early census data indicated the higher incidence of the nuclear family in the past as well, which was because family systems across the world moved in the direction of conjugal patterns because there was a lack of ft between the extended family and industrialisation (Goode, 1963). It was demonstrated that the ideal joint family never existed, given that such family forms were restricted to upper castes, wealthier people, while the poor people opted for nuclear ones (Shah, 1968, 1996; Kapadia, 1956; Kolenda, 1968; Madan, 1965). Nimkoff (1959) has found that in India the joint system is traditionally most common among the elite, the higher castes, and those who own property. Movement from joint to nuclear family does not mean that there is complete breakdown in ties; Singer (1968) explained that families living in nuclear household continued to maintain numerous joint family obligations. A comprehensive and relatively recent review of family studies in India concludes that while the joint family system is transforming because of the effects of industrialisation, urbanisation, land division, migration, mobility, and the increasing education and employment of women, it is changing not into a conjugal nuclear system but rather into an adaptive extended family (D’Cruz and Bharat, 2001). Kapadia (1958, 1959) also presented evidence that the small nuclear family was not socially isolated from kin; the joint family provided enduring and signifcant sources of sociability; it helped in economic and other crises and provided refuge and advice. Another school of thought outlined that with improved modes of communication, “a modifed extended family” came into existence. Herein, the family members may be physically distant, but the bilateral extended kin provided material aid, advice, and services both in everyday life and special occasions (cited from Roy, 2000). Even this shift infuences the way families are understood.

Reviewing the understanding of “family” We can see that the dominant defnition and image of a family as a group comprising a married heterosexual couple and their minor children living together under one roof is being questioned (Reiss, 1965; Shah, 1973). This is being replaced by images of families in different circumstances, with different structures and different kinds of family members. Many of the families have existed for a long time but have never been considered the “norm” or have not been represented adequately as the hegemonic idea of the family that has been researched and presented. Bourdieu (1996, p. 19) argues that what we consider as reality is fction constructed largely by the vocabulary provided to us by the social world to describe it. Family as an objective social category has been formulated through a matrix of countless representations

Introduction

5

and actions (e.g. marriages), which ultimately lead to an arbitrary social construct becoming of the natural and universal (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 21). Each epoch in history then comes up with its own way of defning and understanding the family. The ideal number of members in a family, family structure and functions, marriage, and childrearing practices have all been perceived differently at different points of time in history. Practices which were considered important at one point of time have altered signifcantly in the current era. For example, when child marriage was frst banned by the British in 1929, the age of marriage for girls was as low as 14 years, and for boys, it was 18 years; this was raised after some time. Now the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act states that a girl in India cannot marry before the age of 18, and a boy before 21. This implies that a new conjugal unit would be older now as compared to the past, and this is one of the many changes that the Indian family has undergone. The understanding and composition of the Indian family has been altered in various ways to adapt to the requirements of society. The basic defnition of the family as a unit of two or more people united by adoption or consensual union (Unit for Family Studies, 1994) has undergone considerable changes to accommodate changing trends in the family. This can be seen in the defnition given by Ahuja (1997, cited in Sriram and Dave, 2009, p. 146): “a group of people of both sexes, related by marriage, blood or adoption performing roles based on age, sex, relationship and socially distinguished as making up a single household, or sub households.” The aspect of roles and sub-households reveal newer dimensions of families. Many of these shifts have occurred because of the rapid socioeconomic and technological changes that have generated adaptive transitions in the family, which in turn got refected in modifed socialisation practices (Sinha, 2003, cited in Sriram and Dave, 2009). Global culture has been brought into homes and communities via television and the promotion of satellite channels even in remote areas. In addition, many middle-class homes have access to computers and information technology (IT). This has had a dramatic impact on family culture and social interaction patterns (Sriram and Dave, 2009, p. 147). In spite of these changes, the family life in India continues to be governed by two main macro factors: a strong religious and philosophical orientation which transcends the functioning of various systems and a strict adherence to social stratifcation that is based on close interactions of caste/class and occupational systems (ibid.). The discussion about roles highlights the issues related to power in the family. According to Sriram and Dave (2009), the changes in the family have been both positive and negative. Some of the positive changes include the availability of more resources for many families, increased freedom to realise one’s aspirations, and more opportunities for women and children. There has been a reordering of power to a certain extent, with greater recognition and assertion of rights by different members in the family – especially women and children (Giddens, 2006). However, women’s location within

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Mahima Nayar and Srilatha Juvva

the family continues to be contested vis-à-vis their male counterparts. Research shows that although there are favourable changes for women in public spheres, there is still a high resistance to changes in private domains (Raju, 2005). The existing inequalities in the contemporary system are one of the reasons for the emergence of newer forms of family. Multiple forms of the family have been observed by Shah (2005), and they include joint, nuclear, and alternate family forms. Bharat (1994, cited in D’Cruz and Bharat, 2001) reports that such families (alternate) are now a reality in the Indian system. These kinds of families become apparent as a result of the personal circumstances (e.g. death of a partner or divorce) or arise out of situations such as migration (cited in D’Cruz and Bharat, 2001). Such alternate patterns of the family, however, are seen mostly in the urban areas and metropolitan cities. Single-parent, female-headed, or nuclear families supported by the relatives of the spouses (Niranjan, Nair, and Roy, 2005) are only parts of these patterns that are taking root in India. Changes in family relationships and values are witnessed in India and other South Asian countries, which are prompted by the changes driven by national and international policies (John, 2015, pp. 74–75). To illustrate, agrarian economies required joint families both in structure and in function, and the state supported them through its welfare policies and schemes. However, with times changing, the state has modifed its policies to become more inclusive. For example, same-sex families, adoptive families, and transnational families are embraced in our society, through forward-thinking legislations and policies, such as adoption laws and citizenship policies. Others and are described in detail in the section on family forms later on in this chapter. Citizenship policies reveal another form of family: those of non-territorial citizenship, the experience of “pravasi” (emigrant) as Indian citizen nurtured by the Indian state and how it reconfgures the idea of family (Kannabiran, 2006, p. 4431). Pattanaik (2007) states that India has been the leading remittance receiving country in the world, and this shows the ties that emigrants have with their families and that money to support them is being sent to the country. The support of family members continues from a distance. Remittances are important as a medium of care, support, and responsibility for vulnerable members of the family. This kind of subtle and often-muted negotiation around remittances has the potential for changing gender relationships and marital, family, and migration experiences. Along with the transnational family, a new form of transnational family money is emerging with its own range of valuations vis-à-vis physical care and support (Singh, 2006, p. 393). According to Deshmukh-Ranadive (2008), the new economic era’s policy packages, such as stabilisation and the state-run structural adjustment programmes, introduced dynamics between members within families, and between families by altering how resources are allocated and spent. They lead to further changes in how families organise themselves and function. This can also be seen in the way demographic trends in India depict the changing family structures. The age at which one can get married has increased; in 2005–2006 (NFHS-3), 47.4 percent of women ages 20–24 years were

Introduction

7

married before age 18, which has reduced to 26.8 percent in 2015–2016 (NFHS-4). Similarly, 32 percent of men ages 25–29 years were married before age 21 in 2005–2006 (NFHS 3), which has reduced to 20.3 percent in 2015–2016 (NFHS-4). With an increase in the educational status of women and the provision of more information regarding birth control, the total fertility rate has declined from 2.7 percent to 2.2 percent in the country (International Institute for Population Sciences [IIPS], 2015–2016). The change that the sex ratio at birth has undergone in the Indian context is encouraging. It is reported that the sex ratio at birth has moved from 923 girls per 1,000 boys to 931 girls per 1,000 boys in the four years between 2015/2016 and 2018/2019 (Pandit, 2019). This has gained from the various schemes and programmes related to girls in the country over the past several decades. Another major change that has been observed is in the marriage dissolution patterns. Figures from Census 2011 (Offce of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India, 2011) reveal that 13.6 lakh individuals are divorced, equivalent to 0.24 percent of the married population and 0.11 percent of the total population. It was also found that the population that is separated is almost triple the divorced population. Jacob and Chattopadhyay (2016) examined data from Census 2011 (Offce of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India, 2011) and found that marriage dissolution rates are higher in India’s south and northeast regions compared to the northern regions. This fnding overlaps with the regional variation in female autonomy found previously by Dyson and Moore (1983). It indicates diversity in the family structure according to region and the status of women in the family. This also implies that certain regions of the country might be more open to different family structures than others are. Therefore, in many of the regions, the non-normative family forms, such as same-sex families, are gradually gaining visibility (Vanita, 2005). Although there is a greater acceptance of family confgurations such as single parents, cohabiting parents, and same-sex families in the Indian context, they are still seen as non-normative and culturally distinct choices. Some of these families, which have existed for a long time, have been gaining acceptance to some extent as a family form only recently. Aasaavari, Mohapatra, and Sharma (2016) in their research explore the “family of choice” of the Hijras. They capture the non-normative construction of family-like space and kin relations among hijras who organise themselves into families. In their work, they have revealed how intimacy exists in families of choice as it does in birth families. We also fnd today families wherein a man and his two wives and all their children mutually consent to live together under the same roof. On the basis of the clinical experience of the authors, they found that these families have created a mutually agreeable pattern of living and functioning that seemingly does not disturb the children. Our clinical practice shows that even though there may be some disturbance in family interactions, they are often masked as a “problem with one particular member,” which Bhatti (R. S. Bhatti, personal communication, May 1997) called culturally divergent families.

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Family forms: a multidisciplinary approach Historically, Indian families are in fact diverse in terms of family organisation, types of families, and other dimensions, such as caste, kinship, ethnicity, religion, and geographic location, to mention a few. Above all, an important institution which came to have an effect on the nature, function, and position of families is the state, through its social, political, economic, and ideological interventions, thus transforming the family’s private nature into a public space (Donzelot, 1979). In the Indian context, many variations in family forms have come out of circumstances like the death of a partner, infertility, male migration, and women’s participation in work (Bharat, 1994). As observed by Dommaraju (2015), single-parent families, female-headed households, dual earner or career families, childless families, and adoptive families are the most commonly observed family variations in India. He reports that there has been some research on these variations of the “normal” family, especially in the area of single-person households, but there is a great need to study the different kinds of families that exist today. Family patterns that refect experimentation with lifestyles or seeking alternatives to existing patterns have been restricted in India (Sonawat, 2001). This could be true, given that many forms of families were not recognised by the state and society. Bourdieu (1996, p. 25) rightly saw family as a social artefact, “a well-founded illusion,” produced and reproduced through the guarantee that it receives from the state. For example, earlier, men and women living in cohabitation and same-sex partners were all variations in families which had to stay hidden. With the introduction of new laws and modifcations in existing ones, variations in families is now getting recognition in India. The impact of the state has been important in defning families, as can be seen in India with the recent Section 377 judgment,3 which may have opened the door for different and new forms of families to exist legitimately. The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005 also helped in redefning the “normal” family unit. Several judgments were passed related to right of women to be in live-in relationships, referring to the defnition of family given under this act. Children born in livein relationships have also been given the right to inheritance and property (Tulsa & Ors v. Durghatiya & Ors, 20084). In one such judgment (Indra Sarma v. V.K.V. Sarma, 20135), the Supreme Court of Indian has illustrated fve categories where the concept of live-in relationships can be considered and proved in the court of law: 1 2 3

Domestic relationship between an adult male and an adult female, both unmarried. Domestic relationship between a married man and an adult unmarried woman, entered knowingly. Domestic relationship between an adult unmarried man and a married woman, entered knowingly. Such a relationship can lead to a conviction under Indian Penal Code for the crime of adultery.6

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Domestic relationship between an unmarried adult female and a married male, entered unknowingly. Domestic relationship between same-sex partners (gay or lesbian).

The court stated that a live-in relationship will fall within the expression “relationship in the nature of marriage” under Section 2(f) of the Protection of Women From Domestic Violence Act 2005 and provided certain guidelines to get an insight into such relationships. Judgments such as these have expanded the scope of the family and have given variations of family forms to “exist” and “persist.” In the light of this, it is important to understand families as social constructs affected by the intersection of the social, economic, cultural, and governmental forces mediated by caste-, kinship-, and region-related factors because they still play a stronger role in the Indian context (John, 2015; Dube, 2000). In addition, the role played by media and information technology also features highly in this analysis. Therefore, it becomes important to study families by examining their relationship with their context rather than as isolated structures (Bharat, 1991a). There is an imperative need to study families in their context and in their entirety, using a multidisciplinary and eclectic approach (Bharat, 1991b, pp. 550–551). The dynamic contexts and the functioning of systems in this context create a complexity, and we need a frame that captures this complexity. Kannabiran (2006) argues for the need to map family studies by using a multidisciplinary approach that draws from “a multi-layered practice of sociology – sociology of social movements, historical sociology, sociology of work, sociology of law, sociology of representation/media studies” (p. 4427). She emphasises the need for drawing on multiple disciplines to better synthesise knowledge and practice with regard to multiple perspectives from which families can be viewed. She laments that the “absence of the use of multiple paradigms and multidisciplinary protocols has undermined the possibilities for a universally nuanced understanding of the family in India” (p. 4432). This need for drawing on multiple disciplines has been highlighted by others, such as Sonawat (2001); Kashyap (2004); Ribbens, McCarthy, and Edwards (2011); and Sooryamoorthy (2012).

Intersectional perspective on families An intersectional perspective can throw light on how macro forces like government laws and policies, media, and technology are impacting families. There have always been families of different kinds, but their roles and forms are mediated by region, religion, class, caste, gender, and disability. In this scenario, it is preferable to understand families in the manner that they are transforming in their structures and functions by using a contemporary political discourse on families. The intersections between structural changes at the macro level and how these are impacting families and each member within the families become critical lenses to adopt while discoursing about families.

10 Mahima Nayar and Srilatha Juvva Intersectionality refers to the active interaction of various relations of inequality, such as race, class, sexuality, gender, and age, within and across all institutions in society (Anderson, 2005). All families must manage individual intersectionality, because each member has been socially assigned multiple identities (e.g., gender, race, age, and nationality). Families as institutions are also located in intersections of structural relations of inequality within and across all other institutions (economic, governmental, religious, and civic) at all levels, from local to transnational (McCall, 2005). Any perspective is intersectional if it takes into account multiple relations of inequality as the norm, sees them as processes that shape each other, and considers how they interactively defne the identities and experiences – and thus analytic standpoints – of individuals and groups (for reviews, see Choo and Ferree, 2010; Davis, 2008; Hancock, 2007; McCall, 2005). The intersectional perspective focuses on family life as a process. This implies taking into account the entire lives of its members: a study of discrete domestic structures, an investigation of the nuclear family’s relations with the wider kinship group, a study of the family as a separate domestic unit, and an examination of the family’s interaction with the worlds of religion, work, education, correctional, and welfare institutions and with processes such as migration, industrialisation, and urbanisation (Hareven, 1991). According to White (2005, p. 5), “family, marriage, mate selection and other family relationships are inherently more complex and symbolic.” He says that single-concept theories, though simple, “fail to assist in explaining a great deal of phenomena” (p. 5). White (2005) exhorts us to use an approach that captures multiple frameworks that impinge on each other and the context, in order to understand families. Families and their contexts are quite complex, and they cannot be understood by using only one framework or perspective. Hence, intersectionality is a suitable approach to studying families. We submit that intersectionality allows us to use a recursive lens in explaining the complexity of families and the dynamic changes they undergo. Intersectional analysis, along with the analysis of family’s relationship with macro factors, is important because in combination they change the dynamics within families. McDowell and Fang (2007) observed that dynamics within families, and those between families and broader social systems, are reciprocally infuential. According to them, relationships between family members are deeply infuenced by social discourses and material realities associated with the social locations of each member and the family as a whole. Likewise, power dynamics within families and the role that families play in the transmission of cultural and social knowledge continually infuence broader social structures (ibid., p. 555). Intersectionality as a theoretical framework seeks to examine how various biological, social, and cultural categories such as gender, race, class, caste, physical abilities, sexual orientation, and other axes of identity interact on multiple and often at simultaneous levels, contributing to systematic social

Introduction

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inequalities7 – in this case, the emergence of different forms of families in terms of their structure and dynamics. Another framework that we adopt is that family change is more culturespecifc and region-specifc and that it does not follow any linear model of change process. It also captures and treats diverse family forms not as dysfunctional or deviant social units but as family variations which are part of a wider normative range (Hareven, 1988). According to Hareven (1977), the earlier theories of family change coming out of the “modernisation” theory have been rejected by students of family. She stated that families did not “modernise” automatically in response to sweeping changes in the larger society. Rural families who migrated into urban areas and working-class families already in the cities held onto their traditions, protected their members from drastic dislocations, and prevented family breakdown. Nonetheless, families did act as agents of change, socialising and preparing their members for new ways of life and facilitating their adaptation to industrial work and to living in large complex urban communities. On the basis of the experiences of one of the authors of this book, when rural families migrate to an urban setting, they preserve their family and cultural practices despite the transitioning to another place. Their ways of functioning are guided rigidly by the mores and folkways of the rural culture that they originally come from. The next generation that has been reared in the urban culture tends to be more open and accepting of that culture and less attached to the mores and folkways of their rural origin. Hence, there is a dilution of the rigid practices of the rural culture in the subsequent generations, one that results in the assimilation of the local culture – namely the urban culture. A similar trend is also seen among immigrant families, where children born and raised in another country tend to be infuenced by both the country of origin of their parents and the country in which they are brought up. Acculturation alters how families adapt themselves to the local culture and develop mechanisms to not only survive but also thrive in other cultures. Further, with changes in the social, cultural, economic, and political environment, the structures and functions of families change, and new forms of families emerge. The idea of the family as a monolithic institution has become obsolete and has been replaced with the idea of what Rapoport (1989) calls the diversity model. This approach looks at families transitioning into new family forms in terms of alternative lifestyles, pluralism, and diversity (Cheal, 1993). The fact that no single-family form predominates as a normative model does not indicate, however, as some observers have claimed (Popenoe, 1993), that “the family” is disappearing. A more defensible position is that although families are constantly changing and adapting to meet the current and emerging demands of a dynamic society, the universality of family as a nurturing space continues (Coontz, 1997). Contemporary Indian families continue to provide this nurturing space in diverse ways. The changes that affected the West a couple of decades ago are now affecting

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Asian contexts. However, while their manifestations in Asian contexts differ in the connectedness of family relationships, the basic nurturing aspects of Asian families have remained more or less constant, at least for young children, and have continued to be the bedrock for cultural inputs through socialisation processes.

Reconstructing families Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2004) put forward an interesting explanation to understand how the concept and structure of families have changed and how this change may be interpreted. According to them, the forces of modernity which impacted societies and families can be divided into two stages: the frst and second stages of modernity. Whereas the forces of the frst stage established certain foundations, boundaries, and models of the family, “which were at once cultural, social, political, class-related, legal, and biological” (p. 501), the second stage has in fact introduced changes in families, which are not simply changes but rather metachanges. By metachanges, they meant that the changes were not within given structures and models but that the structures and models themselves underwent change. For instance, the changes propelled by communications media such as television and telephones in society and families two decades ago are different in nature compared to the changes currently accelerated by the Internet, social media, and mobile phones. In other words, the forces of change – that is, the communications media themselves – have undergone change in their structures and models. They (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2004) argue further that forces such as education, technology, the labour market, and legislation resulted in the reframing and redefning of the structure and foundational bases of family relationships to include new forms of assigned or created kinship systems. As a result of these transitions, families are now moving towards a postmodern phase of diverse and complex families, which are related either by blood or by choice. In the contemporary context, families are constructed and maintained predominantly through intentionally created social support networks instead of biological ties. Individuals are forming “families of choice” to whom they turn for emotional, fnancial, and physical assistance (Stacey, 2011). Current communication technologies such as the Internet, email, WhatsApp, and satellite linkups are facilitating these relationships over space and time. For example, transnational Indian families today are more connected through the use of technology than were families of the previous century. With advancing technology, video calls allow for visual proximity in many ways that could not have been possible without technology. Further, intentional families also connect via these media, and thus, job transfers do not limit relationships and kinship. Older adults tend to use mobile phones to maintain social relationships that bolster their support systems, to connect with family (Nasir, Hassan, and Jomhari, 2008),

Introduction

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and to call people during emergencies (Zainal, Razak, and Ahmad, 2013). The research of a scholar from TISS in 2018 supported the fnding that older adults use mobile phones and apps to connect with family and friends (I. Ali, personal communication, October 10, 2018). Stacey (1993) comments on the “structural fragility” of the modern family – the unity of which depends on the voluntary commitment of its members, which can be weakened, redefned, broken, or abandoned as the member’s interests change. Households and families in India are being transformed by the processes of economic liberalisation, structural changes, and changes in social spheres (Ganguly-Scrase, 2003). One such change is the expansion and creation of new economic opportunities for all adults. These opportunities have meant that many more young people are economically independent and less reliant on parents for housing and other needs (Derné, Sharma, and Sethi, 2014). However, they may depend on old parents for assistance in childcare, especially in contexts where childcare is unavailable or too expensive. In some families, outsourcing childcare is not acceptable by the older generation, so old parents undertake this role. This, along with the trend of young people moving to urban areas in search of new opportunities, is reshaping living arrangements (Taylor and Bain, 2005). Other changes, such as the proliferation of mass media (such as cable TV), have exposed wider society to “different possible lives,” in Appadurai’s (1996, cited from Dommaraju, 2015, p. 1240) words, and have affected people’s attitudes and behaviours (Jensen and Oster, 2009). These changes in attitudes and behaviours include those related to family and living arrangements. The exposure to different possible lifestyles has given rise to variations in family forms. Although these forms of families in their extreme variations are not present in the Indian context, one sees growing debates about and acceptance of these forms in urban contexts and among certain groups such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) groups and hijra communities. Further, the growing diversity of family forms is manifested in structure (single parent or single person) and choice (same-sex or hijra families) or for other reasons, such as for example, adoptive or foster families, military families, families of the displaced, and families with people with a disability (Erera, 2002). Our contention is that family diversity through multiple forms has always existed in Indian family systems in terms of caste, class, religion, and region, though we have come to acknowledge some of these only in recent times. An attempt is made in this volume to present snapshots of some of the variant families and the issues that they face in the globalising world. These are families which are surviving confict, poverty and poor work conditions, social ostracism, and disability. The frst three chapters trace the sociohistorical views and forces that impact families. The remaining chapters capture different family scenarios, where families form the centre stage for contesting major forces, such as confict, poverty, disability, and sexual identity. A more detailed chapter-wise exposition follows.

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Contemporary families Most theories related to families identify with the traditional family structure, premised on the idea that traditional family structures – typically defned as families with a biological father and mother – are intrinsically more effective, offering youth an advantage (Amato, 2005; Popenoe, 1993; Wilcox and Lerman, 2014). Here the chapters present different kinds of families. The frst three chapters trace the understanding of family in India in its past and present. Thus, they critically look at the family historically and in its current avatar and explore how families were touched on by media and information technologies. Tulsi Patel in her chapter “New faces of the Indian family in the 21st century: some explorations” revisits the important discourses in family studies in India, including the joint vs nuclear and family vs household debates. While emphasising the continuing “jointness” of the Indian family, she highlights the emerging complexities within Indian families because of diverse infuences. She traces new trends in family living because of migration, newer ways of negotiating moralities by the young in middle-class families, and the impact of new-age social media and communications on the family relationships. The role of governmentality in exercising greater control of the state over family space is critically looked at. She concludes by stating that although gender disparity and violence in the family prevail, the family still holds an important place as a support institution to its members. Devi Prasad’s chapter, “Family studies in India,” covers the historical development, debates, and future directions related to research on families. This chapter provides an overarching view, focusing on the conceptual dimensions in understanding families, family change, and the related structural realities of families in India and elsewhere. A specifc contribution of this chapter is to map the journey of the discipline of family studies in India and the US by using a critical and comparative perspective. Finally, the author makes a strong argument about studying families not from a Western lens but from a lens that is sensitive to the sociocultural contexts of the region where the families under study are located. One of the major transformations that have occurred in the everyday lives of individuals and families is the impact of media and technology. Its omnipresence within the family setup is one of new realities that we have to acknowledge and deal with. Tara Nair examines the infuence of both the old media and the new-age media on families. The impact of and representation of the family by different types of media as they evolved forms the underlying theme of her chapter, “Media, Technology and family: exploring the dynamics of interactions.” As mentioned earlier, the nature of the impact of the media, such as the television and telephone, compared to the changes brought out by its new-age forms, such as the Internet and mobile phone technologies, are captured meticulously in her analysis. At a time

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when there are not many studies exploring the dimension of infuence of information and communications technology on family and other social institutions, we consider this chapter a trailblazing effort in this area. The remaining chapters in this volume view the family through the family members’ experiences in the context of different forms of families. The experiences of family members as they navigate the contested and mediated spaces are narrated. The context is related largely to state forces, poverty, and alternate expressions of ability and sexuality. Some factors which have impacted the family extensively include migration and poverty. Some factors that have led to migration (within and outside region or country) include a lack of capital assets, the poor development of agriculture, prospects of the diversifcation of occupations, better educational opportunities for children, changes in forest laws, upcoming new industries, or the closure of industries (Sriram and Dave, 2009). According to Ramu (1998, cited from Sriram and Dave, 2009, p. 153), unemployment and underemployment which are closely linked to levels of poverty are also impacting the family. There is an increase in the dependent members of the family (the elderly, children, and women) who may be neglected, deprived, or abused. The opportunities for employment that are away from home also affect family life (Giddens, 2006). Migration inside the country and migration outside the country require different kinds of adaptations, which impact on the roles and relationships of its members, family ties, and living arrangements (Sooryamoorthy, 2012). In “A slum and a desert: structural violence perspective on the survival of families experiencing poverty,” Ruchi Sinha and Pekham Basu draw on two research investigations conducted on workers in informal sectors. The authors have looked at the families of waste pickers on a dumping ground and women working in the mining sector, to understand the impact of poverty and the resultant experience of structural violence. The analysis sheds light on how relations within families are impacted at different levels as a result of poverty. It brings out how structural violence affects the allocation of family roles and resources. It looks at the impact of the market forces and the withdrawal of the state from its welfare functions because of the structural adjustment programmes, resulting in increased poverty and vulnerability. The chapter presents an understanding of the poverty of families in an urban area and in a rural area and the way that powerlessness and deprivation have affected families. Apart from its withdrawal from welfare activities, the state can become coercive in dealing with situations of insurgency and extremism, leading to circumstances which may turn out to be detrimental to families. Ilina Sen in her chapter, “Families in confict zones,” brings out how conficts between state and non-state actors have divided the state of Chhattisgarh. In this chapter, she examined how the confict with the state has impinged on families at different levels, such as physical security, education, the health of children, and the livelihood and nutrition status of people. She meticulously captures the loss of Indigenous culture, knowledge, and established modes

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of social security and how these changes affected the elderly, women, and children, who are the most vulnerable in families. The rising conficts have also increased the levels of violence against women and children. While the framework of discussion is not restricted to a particular location, the experiential focus is on the state of Chhattisgarh. Farrukh Faheem in his ethnographic narrative, titled “Women, family and the everyday struggle facing conficts: a case of Kashmir,” traces the trajectories of Kashmiri women whose sons or husbands have disappeared, by capturing their frst-person in-depth accounts to understand how their changed roles have impacted their social relations and familial obligations. On the basis of his feld experience of working with the victims of state violence in Kashmir, Faheem shows how as political contestations increased, the conventional lines of difference between the domestic realm of the family and the public domain of politics vanished. Ketki Ranade, Chayanika Shah, and Sangeeta Chatterjee in their chapter, “Making sense: familial journeys towards acceptance of gay and lesbian family members in India,” look at the journey of lesbian people and gay people when they disclosed their sexual orientation to members of their family and the issues around the acceptance of the their sexual orientation by their family members. The fndings are based on a qualitative study of sample participants with same-sex sexual orientation from families which include their parents and/or their siblings. Through this chapter, the authors explore the whole gamut of responses of the family, trying to make sense of their child’s/sibling’s sexual orientation. Families with people with a disability often are challenged in their ways of functioning, the roles taken on by their members, and the issues they face with regard to acceptance within the larger community. Sandhya Limaye, in her chapter “Deaf families: understanding issues of two generations,” looks into the experiences of being a deaf parent and growing up as a deaf person with deaf parents. The chapter focuses on how two generations of deaf family members deal with diverse issues related to stigma and with communication in their everyday lives. Through this chapter, she reveals the intergenerational dilemmas faced by deaf families and how generations of deaf family members deal with their personal and social lives and the broader issues in the changing world around them. In the chapter “Families of the future: some refections,” beginning from the forms of families that were covered in the present volume, Devi Prasad and Srilatha Juvva attempted to foresee what families will look like in the distant future, say 30 years from now. Taking into account the rural factor and other forces which have an effect on families and the pace at which some of the demographics in India such as mean age at marriage, household size and types, divorce, and marriage dissolution rates have been changing, the future forms of families with possible changes in their structure and dynamics were envisioned. Brief narratives of the families, such as elementary, extended, transnational, childfree, and live-in families were given,

Introduction

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followed by refections on needed future interventions to keep pace with the changes. The chapters by Limaye and Ranade and colleagues bring out how the presence of disability or sexual orientation infuence families, and the impact of the state and its policies on families has been graphically portrayed in the chapters written by Sen, Faheem, and Sinha and Basu. They depict how confict, death, disappearance, and poverty have an infuence on family structures and functions and force families to reorganise themselves. In a way, the chapters focus only on a few family forms which are visible in the contemporary world. There is dearth of research on many other forms of families that exist today, but they are not refected in this volume. Such forms include migrant families, military families, families of those who live physically apart for extended periods of time (also known as living apart together [LAT] families), and so on.

Conclusion The embeddedness of family in “unchanging” cultural norms and values can gloss over varied changing experiences and possibilities. Multiple family ideologies then become a powerful base of the reinvention and reclaiming of traditions which never were or never had the dominance now claimed, both in academic perceptions and in popular perceptions (Chanock, 1982, cited from Risseeuw and Palriwala, 1996). An attempt is made in this volume to trace the historical changes in the family and then explore the impact of global changes on the family in different contexts, by presenting the changing family structure and functions through the lens of individual intersectionalities, such as sexual orientation, disability, ill-health due to work conditions, and role changes because of confict with the state. The uniqueness of these chapters lies in their refecting the interplay of major forces on the families at the centre stage, where the individual resonates with the impact of these forces. This volume presents some of the facets of Indian family by capturing the outcomes of this interplay but leaves many unexplored. There is a need to go deeper into understanding the current Indian family and how it is adapting to social change. In the postmodern era, where dissimilar and nontraditional family forms are being accepted among some sections of our society, it is important for professional social workers, social scientists, and family advocates to explore and understand the structure, intra-familial relationships, and values of these family formations. Such knowledge will be useful not only for understanding family change but also for informing practice, theory, research, and policy.

Acknowledgements The authors gratefully acknowledge the valuable feedback given by Prof B. Devi Prasad on several drafts of this chapter.

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Notes 1 Scholars have referred to this as the etiquette governing bourgeoise life at the end of the 18th century (Hutton, 2004). 2 Ariès believed that the evidence drawn from European paintings and texts of the time revealed that children seemed to be viewed as miniature adults. They had no special clothing, food, social space, or time which amounted to a childhood culture. It was only in the 17th and 18th centuries that the demarcation between the adult world and the world of childhood slowly began to be drawn. This demarcation again led to changes in family structure and dynamics. 3 The Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), introduced in 1861 during the British rule in India, prohibits sexual acts referred to as “unnatural offences.” It stipulates that non-consensual carnal intercourse with any minor woman or with minors and acts of bestiality are punishable. In a historic judgment on 6 September 2018, the Supreme Court decriminalised Section 377 and permitted gay sex among consenting adults. The provisions will, however, remain applicable in cases of non-consensual sexual intercourse in these instances. 4 Tulsa v. Durghatiya, Appl (civil). No. 648 of 2002; Decided on 15–1–2008 (SC): 2008 (4) SCALE 520 [Arijit Pasayat and P.Sathasivam]. 5 Indra Sarma v. V. K. V. Sarma, Crl. App. No. 2009 of 2013; Decided on 26–11–2013 (SC): 2013 (14) SCALE 448 [K. S. Radhakrishnan and Pinaki Chandra Ghose, J. J.]. 6 This category has become defunct as of September 2018 because the Supreme Court has done away with Section 497 of the IPC. See https://economictimes. indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/sc-verdict-on-adultery-welcomed-bylawyers-activists/articleshow/65977845.cms?from=mdr [Date of Access: 28 September 2019]. 7 Kimberley Crenshaw frst advocated the theory of intersectionality in 1989, though the concept can be traced back to the 19th century (see Crenshaw, 1989). Crenshaw used “intersectionality” as a metaphor to explain how race oppression and gender oppression interacted in Black women’s lives. The applicability of the concept in the Indian context had been a subject of controversy (John, 2015). We wish to clarify that in this context, while we consider how the intersections of the aforementioned biological and social categories have reproduced diverse family forms in question, we carefully took into account the cultural, economic, and regional variations of these categories so that insights into the intersectional out comes will be closer to the Indian context.

References Aasaavari, A., Mohapatra, S., and Sharma, A. (2016). Families they choose: Examining the “Hijra” family and relations. The Indian Journal of Social Work (Special Issue on Family Transitions and Emerging Forms), 77(4), 459–478. Amato, P. R. (2005). The impact of family formation: Change on the cognitive, social, and emotional well-being of the next generation. Future Child, 15(2), 75–96. Anderson, M. (2005). Thinking about women: A quarter-century’s view. Gender and Society, 19(4), 337–355. Aries, P. (1962). Centuries of childhood: A social history of family life. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Beck, U., and Beck-Gernsheim, E. (2004). Families in a runaway world. In J. Scott, J. Treas, and M. Richards (Eds.), The Blackwell companion to the sociology of families (pp. 499–514). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

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Bharat, S. (1991a). Research on family structure and problems: Review, implication and suggestions. In Unit for Family Studies (Ed.), Research on families with problems in India: Issues and implications (Vol. I, pp. 33–67). Mumbai: Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Bharat, S. (1991b). Research on families with problems in India: Utility, limitations and future directions. In Unit for Family Studies (Ed.), Research on families with problems in India: Issues and implications (Vol. II, pp. 545–560). Mumbai: Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Bharat, S. (1994). Alternate family patterns and policies. In Unit for Family Studies (Ed.), Enhancing the role of the family as an agency for social and economic development (pp. 72–76). Bombay: Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Bharat, S., and Desai, M. (1995). Indian bibliographies on the family. Mumbai: Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Bourdieu, P. (1996). On the family as a realized category. Theory, Culture and Society, 13(3), 19–26. Cheal, D. (1993). Unity and difference in postmodern families. Journal of Family Issues, 14(1), 5–19. Choo, H. Y., and Ferree, M. M. (2010). Practicing intersectionality in sociological research: A critical analysis of inclusions, interactions and institutions in the study of inequalities. Sociological Theory, 28(2), 147–167. Coontz, S. (1997). The way we really are: Coming to terms with America’s changing families. New York, NY: Basic Books. Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), Article 8, 139–167. Retrieved from http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8 [Date of Access: 28 September 2019]. Davis, K. (2008). Intersectionality as buzzword: A sociology of science perspective on what makes a feminist theory successful. Feminist Theory, 9(1), 67–85. D’Cruz, P., and Bharat, S. (2001). Beyond joint and nuclear: The Indian family revisited. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 32(2), 167–194. Derné, S., Sharma, M., and Sethi, N. (2014). Structural changes rather than the infuence of media: People’s encounter with economic liberalization in India. In N. Mathur (Ed.), Consumer culture, modernity and identity (pp. 145–167). New Delhi: Sage Publications. Deshmukh-Ranadive, J. (2008). Introduction. In J. Deshmukh-Ranadive (Ed.), Democracy in the family: Insights from India (pp. 1–24). New Delhi: Sage Publications. Dommaraju, P. (2015). One-person households in India. Demographic Research, 32(45), 1239–1266. Donzelot, J. (1979). The policing of families. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. Dube, L. (2000). Doing kinship and gender: An autobiographical account. Economic and Political Weekly, 35(46), 4037–4047. Dyson, T., and Moore, M. (1983). On kinship structure, female autonomy, and demographic behavior in India. Population and Development Review, 9(1), 35–60. doi:10.2307/1972894 [Date of Access: 10 October 2019]. Erera, P. I. (2002). Family diversity: Continuity and change in the contemporary family. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

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Ganguly-Scrase, R. (2003). Paradoxes of globalization, liberalization, and gender equality: The worldviews of the lower middle class in West Bengal, India. Gender and Society, 17(4), 544−566. Giddens, A. (2006). Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Goode, W. J. (1963). World revolution and family patterns. New York, NY: The Free Press of Glencoe. Gulati, L. (1995). Women and family in India: Continuity and change. Indian Journal of Social Work, 56(2), 133–154. Hancock, A. (2007). When multiplication doesn’t equal quick addition: Examining intersectionality as a research paradigm. Perspectives on Politics, 5(1), 63–79. Hareven, T. K. (1977). Family time and historical time. Daedalus, 106(2), 57–70. Hareven, T. K. (1988). Historical analysis of the family. In M. B. Sussman and S. K. Steinmetz (Eds.), Handbook of marriage and the family (pp. 37–57). New York, NY: Plenum Press. Hareven, T. K. (1991). The history of the family and the complexity of social change. The American Historical Review, 96(1), 95–124. Hutton, P. (2004). Phillipe Aries and the politics of French cultural history. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. Indra Sarma v. V. K. V. Sarma, Crl. App. No. 2009 of 2013; Decided on 26–11–2013 (SC): 2013 (14) SCALE 448 [K. S. Radhakrishnan and Pinaki Chandra Ghose, J. J.]. International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS). (2015–2016). India fact sheet: National family health survey – 4. Mumbai: Author. Retrieved from http://rchiips. org/nfhs/pdf/NFHS4/India.pdf [Date of Access: 28 September 2019]. Jacob, S., and Chattopadhyay, S. (2016). Marriage dissolution in India: Evidence from census 2011. Economic and Political Weekly, 51(33), 25–27. Jensen, R., and Oster, E. (2009). The power of TV: Cable television and women’s status in India. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 124(3), 1057−1094. John, M. E. (2015). Intersectionality: Rejection or critical dialogue? Economic and Political Weekly, L50(33), 72–76. Kannabiran, K. (2006). Three-dimensional family: Remapping a multidisciplinary approach to family studies. Economic and Political Weekly, 41(42), 4427–4433. Kapadia, K. M. (1956). Rural family patterns. Sociological Bulletin, 5(2), 111–126. Kapadia, K. M. (1958). Marriages and family in India. Bombay: Oxford University Press. Kapadia, K. M. (1959). The family in transition. Sociological Bulletin, 8(2), 68–99. Karve, I. (1953). Kinship organisation in India. Poona: Deccan College. Kashyap, L. (2004). The impact of modernization on Indian families: The counselling challenge. International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling, 26(4), 341–359. doi:10.1007/s10447-004-0169-7 [Date of Access: 10 October 2019]. Kolenda, P. (1968). Region, caste, and family structure: A comparative study of the Indian joint family. In M. Singer and B. S. Cohn (Eds.), Structure and change in Indian society (pp. 339–398). Chicago, IL: Aldine. Kolenda, P. (1987). Regional differences in family structure in India. Jaipur: Rawat Publications. Madan, T. N. (1965). Family and kinship: A study of the pandits of rural Kashmir. Bombay: Asia Publishing House. Mattessich, P., and Hill, R. (1987). Life cycle and family development. In M. B. Sussman and S. K. Steinmetz (Eds.), Handbook of marriage and the family (pp. 437– 469). New York, NY: Plenum Press.

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McCall, L. (2005). The complexity of intersectionality. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 30(3), 1771–1800. McDowell, T., and Fang, S. R. S. (2007). Feminist informed critical multiculturalism: Considerations for family research. Journal of Family Issues, 28(4), 549–566. Nasir, M. H. N. M., Hassan, H., and Jomhari, N. (2008). The use of mobile phones by elderly: A study in Malaysia perspectives. Journal of Social Sciences, 4(2), 123–127. Nimkoff, N. M. (1959). Some problems concerning research on the changing family in India. Sociological Bulletin, 8(2), 32–38. Niranjan, S., Nair, S., and Roy, T. K. (2005). A socio-demographic analysis of the size and structure of the family in India. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 36(4), 623–651. Offce of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India. (2011). Retrieved from www.censusindia.gov.in/2011-Common/CensusData2011.html [Date of Access: 28 September 2019]. Oommen, Т. K. (1991). Family research in India: Issues and priorities. In Unit for Family Studies (Ed.), Research on families with problems in India: Issues and implications (Vol. II, pp. 19–30). Mumbai: Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Pandit, A. (2019, June 23). In 4 years, sex ratio at birth has risen from 923 to 931 per 1000. The Times of India. Retrieved from https://timesofndia.indiatimes. com/india/in-4-years-sex-ratio-at-birth-has-risen-from-923-to-931-per-1000/ articleshow/69909853.cms [Date of Access: 28 September 2019]. Pattanaik, S. (2007). Gulf NRIs and their remittances to India: The saga of overlooked great expectations. Journal of International and Area Studies, 14(1), 31–53. Popenoe, D. (1993). American family decline, 1960–1990: A review and appraisal. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 55(3), 527–555. Raju, S. (2005). Engendering the andro-centric discipline of geography and claiming a place: Revisiting the (un) familiar. In S. Raju and K. Lahiri-Dutt (Eds.), Doing gender doing geography: Emerging research in India (pp. 12–44). New Delhi: Routledge. Rapoport, R. (1989). Ideologies about family forms: Towards diversity. In K. Boh, M. Bak, C. Clason, M. Pankratova, J. Qvortrup, G. Sgritta, and K. Waerness (Eds.), Changing patterns of European family life (pp. 53–69). New York, NY: Routledge. Reiss, I. L. (1965). The universality of the family: A conceptual analysis. Journal of Marriage and Family, 27(40), 443–453. Ribbens McCarthy, J., and Edwards, R. (2011). Key concepts in family studies. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications. Risseeuw, C., and Palriwala, R. (1996). Introduction: Shifting circles of support. In R. Palriwala and C. Risseeuw (Eds.), Shifting circles of support: Contextualizing gender and kinship in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (pp. 15–20). New Delhi: Sage Publications. Roy, P. K. (2000). Introduction. In P. K. Roy (Ed.), Indian family: Change and persistence (pp. 1–16). New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House. Shah, A. M. (1968). Changes in the Indian family. Economic and Political Weekly, 3(1-2), 127–135. Shah, A. M. (1973). The household dimension of family in India: A feld study in a Gujarat village and a review of other studies. Delhi: Orient Longman.

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Shah, A. M. (1996). Is the joint household disintegrating? Economic and Political Weekly, 31(9), 537–542. Shah, A. M. (2005). Family studies in India: Retrospect and prospect. Economic and Political Weekly, 40(1), 19−22. Singer, M. (1968). The Indian joint family in modern industry. In M. Singer and B. S. Cohn (Eds.), Structure and change in Indian society (pp. 423–452). Chicago, IL: Aldine. Singh, S. (2006). Towards a sociology of money and family in the Indian diaspora. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 40(3), 375–398. Sonawat, R. (2001). Understanding families in India: A refection of societal changes. Psicologia: Teoria e Pesquisa, 17(2), 177–186. Sooryamoorthy, R. (2012). The Indian family: Needs for a revisit. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 43(1), 1–9. Sriram, R. (1993). Family studies in India: Appraisal and new directions. In T. S. Saraswathi and B. Kaur (Eds.), Human development and family studies in India: An agenda for research and policy (pp. 122–128). New Delhi: Sage Publications. Sriram, R., and Dave, P. (2009). Families in India: A macro perspective. The Indian Journal of Social Work (Special Issue: Training Family Counsellors in Contemporary India), 70(2), 145–190. Stacey, J. (1993). Good riddance to “The Family”: A response to David Popenoe. Journal of Marriage and Family, 55(3), 545–547. Stacey, J. (2011). Unhitched: Love, marriage, and family values from West Hollywood to Western China. New York, NY: New York University Press. Taylor, P., and Bain, P. (2005). “India calling to the far away towns”: The call central labour process and globalization. Work, Employment & Society, 19(2), 261−282. Uberoi, P. (1998). Introduction. In P. Uberoi (Ed.), Family, kinship and marriage in India (pp. 5–54). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Unit for Family Studies. (1994). Concept and conceptual frameworks for understanding family. In Unit for Family Studies (Ed.), Enhancing the role of the family as an agency for social and economic development (pp. 16–41). Bombay: Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Vanita, R. (2005). Love’s rite: Same-sex marriage in India and the West. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. White, J. M. (2005). Advancing family theories. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Wilcox, B., and Lerman, R. I. (2014). For richer, for poorer: How family structures economic success in America. Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies. Retrieved from https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/ resources/for-richer-or-poorer-hep-2014.pdf [Date of Access: 28 September 2019]. Zainal, A., Razak, F. H. A., and Ahmad, N. A. (2013). Older people and the use of mobile phones: An interview study. In 2013 International Conference on Advanced Computer Science Applications and Technologies (ACSAT) (pp. 390– 395). Malaysia: IEEE.

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New faces of the Indian family in the 21st century Some explorations1 Tulsi Patel

Family: the concept During the 1980s, when the researcher was doing feldwork in rural Rajasthan, she regularly came across reports of migrant family members being reported as residents of families. Parents accepted, albeit grudgingly, the division of households among married male siblings. For example, an adult son working in Mumbai (erstwhile Bombay) and not separated yet from the family was perceived as a “resident member.” The man who was employed by a migrant baniya (trader) family from the same village frequently sent money to his family through money orders. His success in Mumbai was noted by several people in and around his house. The reporting of a migrant family member as a coresident is not an isolated instance. The complexities in the notion of a family became evident to the researcher when triangulating household and family data. Although most of us live in families most of the time, this case lends itself to the impression that the sociology of the family is a soft subject or that it is too intimate and private to be brought up to the level of sociological analysis. Uberoi (2003) thinks that intrusion into the private sphere of the family limits its critical study, where the nation’s most cherished cultural values are nurtured and reproduced (2003, pp. 1–2). The common connotation of the term “family” across the world is that of a married couple and their unmarried children living together. In India, the term “family” has multiple meanings and varies according to the context in which the word is used. The sociological defnition of the family states that a family comprises a group of three or four generations of male descendants, their wives, and their children living together under one roof. Also, they pool resources and share a common purse, eat from a common kitchen, hold property in common and under the authority of the senior most male, and participate in family worship. The legal defnition of the family in India is derived largely from Hindu law. Shah (1973) and Shah and Patel (2011, pp. 45–47) point out that the family is defned in relation to the coparcener following the Mitakshara school of law applicable to most parts of India barring the East, which follows the Dayabhaga school of law. The defnition

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of coparceners varies across both the schools. Not all joint family members are coparceners, nor are all coparceners obliged to reside in the joint family. The ideological amalgam between scriptural and other views was further complicated by the British legal reinterpretation of liturgical concepts. M. N. Srinivas in his Foreword to Shah’s book writes, The hereditary literati had their own traditions, attitudes, biases, and interests which infuenced their comment and interpretation. As if this was not suffciently complicated, during the British rule certain ideas and myths regarding the Indian family organisation obtained wide currency through the British law courts and judges, and the new class of lawyers. (Shah, 1973, p. VII) Indological studies have considered the large joint family as the dominant family form in India. But in contrast to this book view, the feld view has consistently shown the customary family form varying from that of the legal and scriptural normative family. The Hindu North Indian upper-caste ideal of the family was assumed, somewhat erroneously, as the Hindu Indian family, notwithstanding the fairly early studies among non-Hindu South Indian communities by Kapadia (1958); Dube (1969); and Puthenkalam (1977). Kapadia’s (1958) study deals with marriage and family among both Hindus and Muslims, and Dube’s (1969) Matriliny and Islam: Religion and Society in the Laccadives and Puthenkalam’s (1977) Family and marriage in Kerala: With special reference to matrilineal castes deal with colonial legal implications on matrilineal castes in Kerala. These dharamshastra legalities continue to have deep-seated implications for family relations and succession even today. It was only in 2005 that the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act 2005 governed by Mitakshara law began to include daughters as coparceners in their own right in the same manner as sons and enjoy similar rights and liabilities. They remain coparceners even if they are non-resident in the family and do not constitute a joint family. It would be worthwhile to study the legal, social, and emotional consequences of this amendment recently made in the inheritance law.

Process dimension of the family: the household The kinship composition of households shows that each family goes through phases of progression and regression, making it a small, simple, and/or large and complex household over time (see Shah, 1973, 2014 for further explanation). For example, a nuclear family with parents and their unmarried children can turn into a joint family with their son’s marriage. Similarly, following the principle of patrilocality, households can become joint families when a daughter leaves her parental household upon marriage; sometimes the daughter – that is, the new bride, may come in as an additional member

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to the existing joint family of married brothers and their wives. Kolenda (1987) found that in 26 studies of families undertaken in India, one study described a household comprising a widow, her married son, his wife, and their children as joint depleted, while another study described the family as extended nuclear. The household is thus a simpler heuristic device to enter the study of family form and composition. Contrary to the popular perception of the large, lineal, and collateral joint family in India, Shah (1998) has shown that the dominant family size has been small, with an average of 4.9 members for over a century. Around 78 percent of the 1981 Census households have been small and medium with one to three or four to six people. Nonetheless, the remaining 22 percent joint households comprise nearly half the Indian population. The household dimension of the family is useful for understanding both the principles of family organisation and the current changes that it is experiencing. It enables the study of the family as distinct from the household. That is, the family per se is distinct from the form and structure of the household, which is one aspect of the family: “The typology of households of different types is not the aim but an aid to understanding people’s behaviour in the family. The typology refects the norms of household formation and the degrees of their observance” (Shah and Patel, 2011, pp. 48–49). Although their personal laws may differ from the Hindu family laws, this pattern of household formation is found more or less among other patrivirilocal religious communities in India – as noted, for example, in Vatuk’s (2008) study among Muslims. Also, the separation of married brothers from a joint household into nuclear families, especially after the death of parents, has been a common practice in India. For example, the separation of the Kauravas and the Pandavas as depicted in the ancient epic Mahabharat showed that flial loyalties were stronger than fraternal ties. Despite the feld data showing small households, two images of the family vis-à-vis popular perceptions of the term “family” and the defnition are given by sociology and other cognate social sciences, wherein family has emerged as an important variable. For example, demographic studies have erroneously correlated high fertility rates with joint families and lower fertility rates with nuclear families (Patel, 1994/2006). Further, against robust historical evidence, it has been inferred that modernisation has led to the breakdown of the tradition of joint families in India. Contrary to historical evidence, a similar inference was drawn for the English family as well. Laslett (1972) found that the English family had historically not been a large one. Parsons predicted that industrial society would reduce the kin group and the nuclear family would emerge. This has not been the case with family in India. Both nuclear and joint family households exist in India. As mentioned in this chapter, coresidence of more than one married couple is found both in rural and urban India. For example, grandparents are happy to play parental roles while the parents are away at work. Family members make up for the near absence of public childcare institutions for the increasing

26 Tulsi Patel female labour force participation in India. The family and close kin provide support for the care of infants, children, the sick, and the elderly even while hired personnel services and private care are provided in urban day-care centres and preschools. The psychology of “jointness” in a family (Desai, 1964) continues to hold despite separate households being established by its members. With the birth of sons (and now daughters too), self-earned property (that an individual is entitled to hold under the modern income tax law) also turns into joint family property. Households in India have always had other kin and non-kin members residing with them – for example, a distant relative of one of the spouses who may stay in the household for a few months and/or years for studies/employment because they may have no other kin in town. Yet the bias towards a kinship-oriented understanding of the family has continued to dominate sociological and cognate sciences. The kin-based understanding of the family in Western society has been a norm in family studies. However, in the most recent quarter-century, different forms of elective rather than biological families are emerging, which Simpson (1994) calls the unclear (not nuclear) family. For example, a mother with a child from a former husband living with her present husband as a nuclear family is unclear.

Joint living: familism and individualism Despite increases in life expectancy, the emphasis on joint living was until the 2000s on the decline, especially in urban middle-class India with many single-person households. This trend was also visible among the masses in urban India and rural India. The latter is likely to be partially a continuity of the past; lower-caste families separated into nuclear ones earlier than others. The large joint family in India has been relatively more prevalent among highly Sanskritised castes. “The Sanskritisation of social life in general and of customs of marriage in particular, and use of joint-household organisation for upward economic and social mobility,” is facilitated through joint living. The household is a “structure of consciousness” frst and a group of people with shared functions next (for Nepalese society, see Gray, 1995). The demise of the joint family was shown to be a myth. While changes in residential arrangements took place with urbanisation, familism continued as a value. For instance, Sharma (1986) and Vatuk (1972) in their studies in Himachal Pradesh (Shimla) and Uttar Pradesh (Meerut) respectively found close-knit family relations between rural households and urban households. They pragmatically constituted two different households – urban and rural – with urban family as a buffer – with an aim towards the education, economic, and social mobility of members of the joint family as a unit. Singer’s (1968) principle of the structural adaptation of the family among industrialists in Madras (now Chennai) as a way of managing change with continuity may hold even today.

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Family studies: interests and approaches An attempt is made in this section to trace the fuctuating interest in family as an institution per se. The family has entered in social science studies by way of interests in various aspects and dimensions related to it. Family sociology, Morgan comments, “was certainly not sexy and might have been more than a little politically suspect” (cited in Uberoi, 1993, p. 3). Cognate social sciences engage with it in different ways. The feminist movement’s infuence on sociology and the developments in Marxism, structuralism, and psychoanalysis rescued the study of the family from the functionalist perspective. The radical perspective came up during the early period of the second wave of the feminist movement, along with the psychoanalytical one (Laing and Cooper, 1964). The politics of family privacy, especially the family/market dichotomy is traceable to Aristotle’s distinction between polis and oikos (Rose, 1987). He argues how the public/private binary (the family here being private) was naturalised as a value for morality and to justify value choices rather than for justice. In anthropology, the kinship and marriage dimension of the family was favoured over the existential messiness of family life. Fortes (1958) held that the domestic group is the workshop for reproduction of social capital and human capital. As the domestic dimension of a descent group, empirical studies treated the family as a unitary whole in cooperation and/or confict with others in the tribe/village that privileged the male view. Feminists (Rosaldo and Lamphere, 1974; Weiner, 1988, among others) critiqued the male view for muting women and glossing over their voices and active participation. Feminist critiques of the Indian family are substantial in arenas such as marriage, dowry, inheritance, domestic violence, reproduction, and so on. Women were signifcant as bearers of babies for the family. The beejkshetra (Dube, 1986) symbolism in India and seed soil in Turkey (Delaney, 1991) for women as secondary to reproduction and the male as producer of the seed challenged the unitary image of the family and steered a view of gendered inequality permeating society and the family. Blaming women for their inability to produce a male heir, despite contrary scientifc evidence, is still present in many parts of India. Dube (1986) points out the contrasting view among many matrilineal communities in India (also Nongbri, 1993). The “othering” of women is uniform neither across varying status roles nor over the lifecycle (Patel, 2005). As an ancestress for her progeny and companion to her ageing spouse, she assumes different capabilities and controls in the family than as a young bride. Motherhood and womanliness are cherished family values (Nandy, 1980). Restraint on displaying the conjugal bond over the mother–son bond and the parent–child bond (more broadly) and both of these over the patrilineal for strengthening the patrivirilocal bond takes the study of family life into the realm of family values and ideas. Restricting oneself from expressing conjugal love and love for one’s toddlers but being overtly indulgent towards one’s siblings’ children (Patel,

28 Tulsi Patel 1994/2006), strengthens the principle of patrilineality (see, Das, 1976 for Punjabis and Trawick, 1996 for Tamilians). Such complex modulation of behaviour in the family is strikingly different from the biologically constructed American family with two sets of expressive bonds: conjugal and flial (Schneider, 1968/1980). A similar complexity among the elite families in Delhi is reported by Bhandari (2019).

Family: a cooperative and/or conficting institution Inequality in the Indian family is exploitative and oppressive in nature and for its women in particular: Feminist studies of the family have brought the inside out, as it were, of the family. This scholarship has exposed the unwelcome facts of the practice of the internal and the everyday life of the family. Also, the structural inequality, exploitation and violence that occur in the family have been taken up on board. . . . This way, the masculinist organisation of the family provides fne illustrations of gender disparities and discrimination at the household level. There has been a shift from women’s studies to gender studies and to gender relations (see Palriwala, 1994; Dube, 1997). . . . The fve volumes published in the series on Women and the Household in Asia (1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, & 1992) have studied several aspects of the household and family structures (Andrea and Kelles-Vitanen, 1987). This series edited by Leela Dube incorporates patriarchy, kinship, work, education and socialisation, property, reproduction, and such other dimensions of the household and are analysed from the gender (largely women’s) perspective. (Patel, 2005, p. 16) The burden of care falls largely on the women of the family. They are responsible for caring for the children, the elderly, and the sick and disabled. Additionally, while educated women are seen as more empowered, they take on the additional burden of dealing with formal institutions like education, hospitals, and so on. These tasks were men’s responsibility and continue to be so among the illiterate groups. The plight of single mothers, often heads of households and only one in four of whom are remarried, is a deviation from the “normative” serious pathology of the family. NGOs and social workers are more familiar with the serious adversities that women face in such family contexts. According to Census 2011, 8 percent of Indians are 60 years and above, and of these, 70 percent are women. Over 80 percent of the widowed in India are women, and they face varying forms of rejection by the family. Widows of Banaras are infamous in this regard (Chen, 1998). But there are numerous widows elsewhere in pitiable conditions. I found several such cases – women without sons or with toddler sons – in my feld study in several districts

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of Bundlekhand in the early 2000s, where being exploited while married is preferred to being without a husband. Some were thrown out by their conjugal families and had nowhere to go; consequently, they were deprived of even minimal dignity. The widows in Banaras are mostly from parts of Eastern India where the Dayabhaga law of inheritance entitles widows to only a share of property. But the maltreatment of widows elsewhere is not explainable by the absence of the Dayabhaga law of succession. Although widowhood is a loss of status for women because marriage in India is near universal, not all widows face such rejection. Wadley (1995) shows how widows with conjugal family property do fnd more support in their brothers who protect these women’s fnancial interests and social obligations even while living elsewhere. Widows may move to their natal homes – for example, a couple of the Charan widows (Patel, 1994/2006) did in Rajasthan. Both were childless, but their maintenance was secured by their natal kin. A famous Hanuman2 temple in Salasar village near Jaipur in Rajasthan came up at a site near the village when Mohan Dasji, the brother of a young widow, moved to Salasar to help his sister tide over the diffculties of raising small children; the widow remarried and later renounced her marriage in devotion to Hanuman, the monkey god. The temple is popular for bestowing wealth onto its devotees. But such cases are buried by the sheer magnitude of numbers who are not as lucky and/or propertied upon widowhood. Accepting divorced daughters who are increasingly returning to parents’ homes is more common among the urban middle class, though the overarching ideal for a married daughter is to be in her conjugal home. So is the remarriage of divorced and widowed daughters among the educated, urban middle class. On one hand, the less-educated lower-class and backward-class communities, who traditionally accepted divorced daughters and arranged remarriage of those widowed, are emulating upper-caste norms in such matters and avoiding remarriages. On the other hand, some in the national press (Hindustan Times) reported on matchmaking fairs organised for the elderly, initially in Gujarat, indicating the possibility of a different family formation. The brother–sister bond is weaker than that of fraternal unity and of conjugality, yet it is the next in order of proximity for ritual, affective care and support matters. It is worth exploring how the brother–sister bond works in times of family crises. Married and unmarried sisters support family members in times of illnesses, educational, and other such matters. Many nephews and nieces join households of their parent’s siblings if they migrate out from parental household to another town for study or medical reasons. Male agnates in nuclear households come together to support each other to tide over hospitalisation and for household chores, fnancial contributions, and running errands. They are required to even take turns in shifts as attendants in hospitals, critical for all in-door patients in public and to some extent even private hospitals in India, while another adult, usually female, takes over the schooling and cooking at home. Such an arrangement

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means moving out of one’s home, often dependants – children and/or the elderly move into another household of the family for the interim or the caretaking family member moves into the house (for elaboration, see Shah and Patel, 2011, p. 50). Family networks, even when its members live in different households, are crucial in matters of government dealings, contracts, and businesses (most large businesses being family business houses). Familism suffers from the danger of being amoral and detrimental to economic development in the absence of large organisations, as argued by Banfeld (1958) in his study of the Montegrano peasants in Southern Italy. Unlike the hand-to-mouth existence of strictly parent–child nuclear family ethos beyond which no common organisation could exist, the joint family in India escapes those Montegranese limitations that prevented economic development. The Indian family deals with the state; private and cooperative enterprises; and ethnic, caste, and class differences simultaneously at different levels. Cooperation and confict coexist rather than suspicion and distrust alone. The shrinking welfare state contributes to the sustenance of familism in India. Family support is much wider and not only limited to the earlier-listed areas. Close kin are supportive to push and promote each other through social networks in jobs and other related matters in life, marriage matchmaking being another. Political families in India are famous for supporting its members in the democratic political arena. Marriage alliances are strategically carved while keeping such social and cultural capital in mind to enhance economic and symbolic capital of the family as a whole. Analysing the political leaders’ families in India, French (2011) found that two-thirds of the members of parliament under 40 years and 70 percent of female politicians are heritage political leaders: they have already had a family member as an elected political leader. Family and kin support with second-generation political careers at all levels of political leadership is commonly seen as obligatory, except it is only recently being criticised as “dynastic politics” in India. Politics apart, family support is also clearly seen in the media and Bollywood (see Priyanka Chopra’s statements quoted in press and electronic media for having made it through grit and struggle on her own3). She had no family there to push her, but she openly states how she likes to support her cousin Mannara Chopra in Bollywood as she knows the pains of struggling all alone to make it big in life. This is true for many young Bollywood stars who are the second generation in Bollywood. Though incipient, this trend is visible in felds such as sports and medical practice, not to mention small businesses and large businesses. In fact, most of the prominent businesses in India are run by a family – for example, Birla, Ambani, and Adani. Grandparents leaving the family home to join their married children rather than migrant children coming home to meet them is a new trend in family living. Family support has, in recent times, overcome the Hindu upper-caste norm of parents not living in a married daughter’s household, in and outside India. But they do so usually to look after the young children while she can

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go to work or even study. This may be done in accordance with norms of residence for daughters-in-law as well. Parents shuttle between households of married children as and when required. More often, those with more than one son (increasingly becoming rare as fertility is declining [2.4 children per couple at the end of reproductive age in 2011 Census] since the 1980s) take turns to stay with married sons and their families in different households. While the huge middle class is commonly portrayed as the driving force of the Indian economy managing international companies, including migrating abroad as skilled and software techies, there is an increasing casualisation of such jobs. Although earning hefty salaries, the young population remitting foreign currency revenues and representing the demographic dividend, do not have job security. Family is the fall-back option for many who are laid off and/or in between jobs if they do not wish to wipe out their savings or pay back outstanding equated monthly instalments (EMIs) on loans to keep afoat. A much higher dependence on family, that needs to be studied, is the rising casualisation of labour even in formal organisations. Similarly, with the rise in life expectancy, the family deals with the care of its elderly ever more. Lower fertility has turned the family more towards a lineal form than a lateral one (having fewer sons makes the lineage less laterally spread out – that is, one son, one grandson, one great grandson, and so on). With a greater number of children migrating (which amounts to parents left behind, sons forming new households that are nuclear family households) for education and jobs, the lineal/vertical family is turning into a horizontal household. An elderly couple may have living children, who often live elsewhere in the country and/or abroad. While they may send remittances, they feel deprived of family’s younger members’ company, personal and emotional care. The middle-class elderly with good fnancial standing are also vulnerable in non-economic terms. Vera-Sanso (1999) describes another vulnerability showing how daughters-in-law dominate their elderly mothers-in-law in Chennai slums, contrary to the reverse stereotype of this relationship. Bhandari (2019) describes the vulnerabilities and anxieties of young and middle-aged women in elite families, and their secret monetary investments from household savings, while they spend on expensive luxury items to keep up family status and build bonds of marital trust on interactions of mistrust. On the other hand, in South India, Saavala (2010) looks at urban middle-class moralities through the negotiations across generations in Hyderabad homes. While being in college and trying to be modern, the young circumvent some of the traditional gender norms, especially mobility out of home in their everyday struggles over belonging and prestige. Although demographic events bring about changes in the household development phases, migration from lineally slim families affects it in newer ways. The diffculties worsen when accompanied by the ill-health of the elderly in such households. Anecdotal evidence of mothers-in-laws being circumspect with daughters-in-law among the middle class in cities is on the rise, more out of fear for misusing dowry laws, a trend that has yet to

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be studied. Yet Golandaj, Goli, and Das (2013), on the basis of the Human Development Survey (2004–2006) data from 41,450 households in India, fnd that despite socioeconomic and demographic changes, the role expectations of family members among elderly women have changed little. Of the elderly 78–82 percent expect to live with sons compared to 6 percent living with and only 3 percent hoping to live with daughters. But women in the 15–24 age group are less likely than the older ones to coreside with sons in old age. Similarly, see Yeh and colleagues (2013, cited in Zhong and Li, 2017) on flial piety in contemporary Chinese societies in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Demographic studies on living arrangements fall under the broader issue of family and household. Having emerged from consequences of fertility rather than its causes, such studies implicate the family and changes therein (see Palloni, 2001 for more on well-being and living arrangements). Palloni cites research showing mixed evidence on the direction of intergenerational transfers impacting coresidence. Chinese parents in urban areas strategising intergenerational contracts in order to secure old age care as the obedience aspect of flial piety is on the decline. They invest in housing for children at “one soup distance,” implying a bowl of soup is warm enough when taken from one house to another (Zhong and Li, 2017) However, living arrangements studies in demography may lend themselves to further analysis of norms and values and of emotions and affect in the family when undertaken by other social sciences. Intimate relationships in families have long-term infuences on the children in future. Phillips and colleagues (2013) in their study in the US found those having a warm relationship with one or both parents in childhood were less fearful of intimacy as adults.

Family dynamics in the 21st century A decade or so before the end of the 20th century, Indian society experienced several sudden changes, such as numerous private television channels (over 400 today), new digital communication and medical technologies, a travel industry, and the liberalisation of the economy in 1991, which made inroads into millions of homes. A new culture industry oriented to consumption, exhibition, and affect pushed itself into the market and into the family. A growing educated and English-speaking Indian middle class caught global business attention in the free world economy. Gradually, ideas of austerity and restraint often prevalent during the erstwhile socialist-oriented Indian economy became passé. Multinational corporations set up shop, and many in the middle class earned salaries they had not imagined earlier that matched well with the world level standards of consumption. Travel and migration, especially by the young, for education, jobs, and holidays, found a steep rise compared with the pre-1991 family in India. Today, millions of Indians abroad continue their family ties with the family in India. Indian media and flms infuence their rites and rituals and perpetuate Indian family values. Uberoi’s (1998) analysis of the flm Dilwale

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Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (DDLJ) illustrates how the diaspora comes home. Films like DDLJ and Hum Aapke Hain Kaun (HAHK) are called model marriage videos for Indians abroad. Digital, audio, and imaging technology has enabled more-frequent communication among households and family members. Senior citizens learn to operate mobile phones and apps and use email and social networking sites to keep in touch with migrant children and grandchildren. The overcrowded Indian trains are especially run during school and college vacations and festivals for migrants to reach their family members and vice versa. The value of the jointness of the family has not died out, notwithstanding the fact that non-family holiday sites are gaining in popularity, along with individual centric technology – for example, computers and audiovisual gadgets. Family bond has rather transformed itself through faster travel and communication in comparison with dependence on letter mail and unhelpful trunk call bookings to keep in touch with the family. The volume of lone female migration has also risen compared to the past, when female migration was mostly short distance and linked to marriage. India has been urbanising at a fairly rapid pace for over a decade and a half. According to the Census of India 2011, the level of urbanisation has increased from 27.8 percent in 2001 to 31.16 percent in 2011. The proportion of rural population has declined from 72 percent to over 68 percent during the same period. Migration has variable impacts on the family – its demographic and kinship composition, economy, and rituals. But the patrivirilocal4 principle continues to hold even today. All newly married brides continue to enter the husband’s parental house to start their married life. Many of them together or males alone migrate from their home to work. The left-behind wives may join their husbands at a later time. The migrant members keep returning to their patrilocal homes at different intervals. There is a rise in temporary and circulatory migration in mines, plantations, and industry, especially among the poor in India. Couples with and/or without small children migrate for construction work. They may leave school-going children with other family members in joint households. Srivastava and Sasikumar (2003) show both permanent migration and circulatory migration accompanied by the casualisation of labour. Young couples also continue to adjust, with the parents accepting their traditional ways of thought. Among urban professional and service class households, parents today take a liberal posture towards the young couples to continue living jointly. The young reciprocate through cordial postures, having attained freedom of style and schedules. A fair amount of forbearance across generations of family members is required for joint living. Because it usually works in favour of men against women in the family, it invites feminist critique. Donner (2016) in her study of love and choice in matchmaking among the middle class in Kolkata describes how the family, more than consumption, continues to shape the notion of a modern self in India. Titzmann (2013) uses the term “family-oriented individualism”

34 Tulsi Patel among Gujaratis in Gujarat and those in the UK. Bhandari (2017) fnds the continued presence of the family and its moral framework in premarital relationships among the young modern middle class in urban India. Ponniah (2019) describes how women in Agarwal business families reproduce elite lives over generations. Among the working class in Delhi slums too, Grover (2011) fnds the impact of family/parental support crucial to love and marriage. The Indian family today is clearly a resilient institution. The average household size continues to remain almost consistent with the earlier average. In its 69th round, the National Sample Survey (NSS) (2012) observed that 4.8 people (4.1 for urban) as the average household size for India, and the earlier NSS round in 2004–2005 found nearly similar household sizes of 4.7 in rural and 4.3 members in urban areas. As mentioned earlier, the fgures are infuenced by the increase in households with no married couples in them, especially in urban India. State of Housing in India fgures (Census of India, 2011) show that 11 percent of households in rural and nearly 13 percent in urban India have no married couples in them. Households with one married couple make up 69.63 percent in rural and 71.15 percent in urban areas. Interestingly, households with three married couples are higher in urban areas (2.85 percent) than in rural areas (1.59 percent). A rise in urban India in multiple married couples per household, especially in the category of households with three and four married couples, is found in NSSO-2012 (Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI), 2014). This was not the case a few years ago. In 2008–2009 (MOSPI, 2008), the number of households with three married couples per household was 23 for every 1,000 households in rural areas and 17 in urban areas. Only in the category of four couples per household were there four in rural and three in urban India for every 1,000 households. Urban housing and amenities are among the factors infuencing the rising trend of living together. For example, between the NSS round of 2008–2009 and 2012, the percentage of married couples having a room to themselves has declined from 74.6 percent to 59.4 percent in rural India and 75.6 percent to 57.6 percent in urban India. The rise in the percentage of households in urban areas having three married couples may not be a trend reversal, but it may be related to ecological and planning aspects of housing in India.

Newer kinship and relatedness structures The social embeddedness of the family links it to society in several ways. As it infuences the social life of its members, they in turn infuence the family. Some of the infuences are impacting the family via demographic (fertility, mortality and longevity, migration, marriage, singlehood, divorce, remarriage), social (education, workforce participation outside the home, new social movements), policy and legal (economic liberalisation, development, multinational corporatisation), ecological (displacement, disaster, violence),

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cultural globalisation, and technological (ICT) factors. Gendered, and age/ seniority power and authority dynamics do not operate in family relations uniformly across class and caste divisions in India. Nor does power remain the same over phases of household development. This is an important area for longitudinal and/or life history studies on the family. New forms of family living are surfacing that challenge the erstwhile principles of family formation. The nuclear family is becoming unclear not just in the West (see Simpson, 1994 for more). Many Indian families are consciously planning to enter and/or improve their standing in the middle class by having fewer children while showing daughter aversion alongside son preference. These may be called aspirational families, which technologically tailor the sex and number of children brought into existence, and they are becoming increasingly acceptable as a form of family. With the rising cost of living, steep rise in educational (private, professional and English medium) and other expenditure on children (often of both sexes), greater role of children in choices in marriage partners across caste and community, freedom of virtual networking without parental monitoring, and so on, newer challenges are arising in intra- and inter-household kin ties between generations. Bought wives for men unable to fnd one in their own community through family support against all endogamy and hypergamy norms is another coexisting trend. LGBT alliances are also an arena for exploration in the challenge for the family going for newer structural principles. Empowerment and affrmative policies are aimed at different communities and are often gender-specifc. These operate through the family as an associated institution and have varying intended and unintended results on relationships. While newer forms of family formation and living are to be studied, such families have their own strengths and requirements. Popular literature in the 19th century called for a loving, caring, and companionship model of family. Bose (1997) analyses contemporary Bengali and English discourse on “modern family life,” especially in Bengal. He looks at the family discourse at the cusp of formation of sciences such as nursing, psychology, social work and hygiene; the dynamics of family power regulation; and the obligations and abilities of its members as subjects.5 Although the family’s location is in the category of the domestic, consumption, and care-oriented public institution, it is viewed and regulated as private. The discourse invents the new family and domesticity through the twin processes of nationalism and colonialism. The nuclear family image thus became the cherished, liberated, companion-oriented, intimate, private institution full of love and comfort distinct from the conficts and uncertainties of the outside world. This gave the family its safe haven image. The value of conjugality was promoted. In this rejuvenating space, the normative circumspect behaviour obligations towards the family’s elders began to shift towards the child as the centre of care and development. Even the concept of family itself took shape during this period and had little to match with it in the vernacular languages. Bose (1997) mentions that the Bengali

36 Tulsi Patel term “parivar” derives its meaning from words like “cover,” “embrace,” “companions,” “kinsmen,” and “dependants.” While Bose (1997) evaluates the call for a “new family” discourse, he considers it as though it spoke for society as a whole. Clearly, the public/ private (male/female) separation between the family and the rest of the society applies to the image of an urban middle-class (bhadralok) family and not variegated other forms even in Bengali society. The discourse initiated the value of individualism in the family; it supports the thesis that modern Bengal in the 19th century under the colonial infuence cherished individualism as an ideal of the nuclear family. The trope of the modern self resonates with the few studies on middle-class moralities regarding love and choice in marriage and family, as mentioned earlier.

Family dynamics and governmentality Governmentality is a new kind of understanding of power other than the top-down one of the state. It is a complex form of power which includes a range of techniques of disciplinary institutions, such as schools and hospitals that produce certain knowledge and discourses. The discourses are internalised by people and infuence the behaviour of a target population., Foucault (Burchell, Gordon, and Miller, 1991) describes governmentality as an art of power which is conducive to more-effcient forms of social control that enable individuals (without brutal force) to regulate/modify their behaviour. Indirect, gentle, and artful infuence on people’s personal and familial behaviour is a form of state power over family dynamics, its structure, and its content. Social life is known for the unintended consequences of its actions. Some examples family dynamics in India will be shown later on. The family and the state also have been in interaction with each other through and/or beside community, caste, and religion for several centuries. For example, attempts at regulating taxation, defence, family, and community have been regulated even before British colonialism in India. The colonial period, since the 19th century, added the social reform agenda to the family by the intrusion of a macro political authority in matters of community and family. Rose (1987) argues that ideas on the public/private divide served the market and governments more than families (also see, Donzelot, 1979 on public intervention). Mayo’s (1927) polemical disgust with family hygiene in Bengal illustrates that knowledge and discourse were conduits for external intervention into the “private family.” A few examples of the colonial social reforms in matters concerning the family in India are property, inheritance, marriage, age of consent, infanticide, sati, and so on. The Child Marriage Restraint Act, the Hindu Marriage Act, the Hindu Succession Act and its 2005 amendment, and so on implicate the family in complex ways (see several contributions in Uberoi, 1996, and in Parashar and Dhanda, 2008). The Family Planning Programme and its excesses are well known (IEC [information, education, communication]

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discourse has been aimed at modifying family size by curtailing fertility). The adoption of new reproductive technology has eliminated female foetuses. The state that made family planning efforts for several decades before fertility rates began to decline is having to track pregnancies and conduct institutional deliveries by nine lakh ASHA and other frontline local health workers (Patel, 2007; Bhatia, 2007). Patel (2010) analyses the instrumentality of the family, though this is not new. The family is designing itself with greater precision through new technology. The amendment to the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act of 1994 has yet to bear results as people, against the law, secretly justify son preference as family balancing. But as a result, many are unable to fnd wives in their caste and region and are having to buy wives from other parts of the country (Kaur, 2010). The specifcations in the 73rd Constitutional Amendment for female representatives with less than three children in local governance (not for those in higher bodies) and the pending bills on the surrogacy industry are some other examples of the governmentality effects that call for a study of the “family” today. While the kin-based family defnition seems narrow for studying this complexity, the challenge of the newer, (il)legal discourses begs for new attention. Recent studies of affect in its varying aspects are attracting scholarship where the infuence of the family is re-emerging. Similarly, sociodemographic studies continue to provide peeks into the living arrangements, well-being, and care dimensions of the family. The family is the microcosm where wider social realities of wealth inequality, consumerism, alternative cultures, and imagined futures operate. Some of these beg for more research.

Conclusion We have seen 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. The latter may not be an exclusive kinship group. The values held by people regarding the family enable us to understand how the sentiment of jointness is not contingent on joint living. A processual approach to family studies opens up the encounters and experiences that the family undergoes over time under varying political, economic, social, and emotional conditions. As a support institution for its members, there is no alternative to the family. Yet gender disparity and violence in the patriarchal family prevails. Newer intergenerational relations present themselves at the family level. It serves as a private institution for the market and the state supporting both of these. The challenges that it encounters are creating newer forms of family, with increasing volumes and sociodemographic migration and cultures of relatedness, including LGBT and live-in forms of the family and notions of modern selfhood through love, sexuality, and choice. Infuences from governmentality and modernity pose still-unknown

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possibilities of intriguing family forms and relationships that are likely to unfold in the future.

Acknowledgements I am thankful to B. Devi Prasad and his team at the GCIFS for their comments during the conference that I have benefted from. I am also thankful to the anonymous reviewers of the chapter for their comments and suggestions. I found the help of A. M. Shah, Anuja Agarwal, Ruby Bhardwaj, and Poonam Bhandari’s most precious. The lapses are of course solely mine.

Notes 1 An earlier version of this chapter was published in the special issue of The Indian Journal of Social Work (2016) as “Family transitions and emerging forms,” 77(4), 367–386. 2 Hanuman is one of the central fgures in the Hindu epic Ramayana and is an ardent devotee of Rama, the main character of Ramayana. 3 Support system: Priyanka Chopra to support lil’ sis Mannara in B-Town, www. dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2851086/Protective-PriyankaChopra-praises-cousin-Mannara-makes-debut-Zid.html [Date of Access: 14 February 2020]. 4 The wife moves to live with her husband or with his parental kin. 5 This resonates with Donzelot (1979) on policing of families in 17th-century Europe.

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Trawick, M. (1996). Notes on love in a Tamil family. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Uberoi, P. (Ed.). (1993). Family, marriage and kinship in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Uberoi, P. (Ed.). (1996). Social reform, sexuality and the state. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Uberoi, P. (1998). The diaspora comes home: Disciplining desire in DDLJ. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 32(2), 305–336. Uberoi, P. (2003). The family in India: Beyond the nuclear versus joint debate. In V. Das (Ed.), The Oxford India companion to sociology and social anthropology (pp. 1061–1103). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Vatuk, S. (1972). Kinship and urbanisation: White collar workers in North India. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Vatuk, S. (2008). Divorce at the wife’s initiative in Muslim personal law: What are the options and what are their implications for women’s welfare? In A. Parashar and A. Dhanda (Eds.), Redefning family law in India (pp. 200–235). New Delhi: Routledge. Vera-Sanso, P. (1999). Dominant daughters-in-law and submissive mothers-in-law? Cooperation and confict in South India. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 5(4), 577–593. Wadley, S. S. (1995). No longer a wife: Widows in rural North India. In L. Harlan and P. B. Courtright (Eds.), From the margins of Hindu marriage: Essays on gender, religion and culture (pp. 92–118). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Weiner, A. (1988). Women of value, men of renown: New perspectives in Trobriand exchange. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Zhong, X., and Li, B. (2017). New intergenerational contracts in the making? The experience of urban China. Journal of Asian Public Policy, 10(2), 167–182. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/17516234.2017.1290864 [Date of Access: 16 October 2019].

2

Family studies in India Historical development, debates, and future directions B. Devi Prasad

Introduction We received our concepts of family predominantly from the Western family scholars and retained them in our classrooms by following mostly their textbooks. Even if a student comes from rural Rajasthan or Andhra Pradesh with an entirely different conception of families and their structure, they will need to unlearn these conceptions of families to learn about the images of nuclear family taught in the classroom. The extended or other forms of families and their images are relegated to the background for the time being only to be brought back again when they go back to be challenged by realities in the feld. Occasionally, one may watch portrayals of extended families in movies or in other contexts either as relics or romantic representations of rural life. The reason for this divide between teaching and feld realities was not that relevant knowledge and concepts were unavailable but that the social scientists using Western conceptualisations were not paying attention to them. They taught what they learnt about families through a Western lens and read only the related work. In the following pages, I shall attempt to show how the culturally insensitive Western interpretations of Indian families and families of similar regional contexts have not only led to the misinterpretation of their structures but also to the devaluation of their values and practices. The aims of the chapter will be the following: 1 2 3

To briefy defne family studies and critically review major debates pertaining to Indian families including their linkages with changes in their value orientations. To understand the differences in the study of families and other developments through a comparative review of family studies in India and the US. To conclude with critical refections and suggestions.

This chapter is divided into fve sections. Section 1 deals with the meaning and scope of family studies as an emerging discipline both in the West and in India. Section 2 provides a critical analysis of two major debates

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pertaining to family studies in India. Section 3 maps the broad developments and trends in family studies in the West and in India, to compare the developmental shifts that the discipline has gone through in the Indian context. Section 4 contains a critique of and refections on the arguments presented thus far. Finally, Section 5 covers suggestions for future research on families. In this chapter, I made a conscious choice of using “families” instead of “family” wherever it is appropriate. To my mind, “family” is not a monolithic unit but rather something that exists in diverse forms, such as extended, nuclear, step, single parent, or same sex, each with its own boundaries and attributes as a family form (Bernardes, 2002; Ribbens McCarthy and Edwards, 2011). Also, I have chosen to use “family studies” as the term for the discipline especially in the Indian context because of its wider usage. 1 History of family studies: establishing an identity and fnding a name If we consider that the study of families comprises an inquiry into family’s internal dynamics and relations with the external environment, then it can be traced to the West in the early 1920s. From this point of view, Burgess’s article The Family as a Unity of Interacting Personalities (1926) can be seen as one of the earliest works on family as a social group. In 1927, Groves published the frst family-focused college textbook: Social Problems of the Family. In 1938, Burgess and his colleagues cofounded the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR), a professional organisation in the US which played an important role in shaping the feld. The following year, NCFR launched a journal titled Marriage and Family Living, now titled Journal of Marriage and Family. However, the research perspective throughout was that of a white male with a predominant focus on concerns about the functioning of the heterosexual urban middle-class or upper-middle-class white family (Broderick, 1988; see also Zinn, 2000). By the early 1980s, the discipline was offered as a choice of study in around 50 universities in the US. At about the same time, Kingsley Davis (cited in Task Force on the Development of a Family Discipline, 1987) suggested that family studies as a discipline can be classifed under the category of secondary disciplines. According to him, secondary disciplines such as political science or family studies, though they rely on primary disciplines such as sociology or economics for their explanations, can also provide independent theoretical explanations on their own. Burr and Leigh (1983) argued that family studies can be treated as a discipline in its own right and suggested “famology” as a name for the discipline. In 1984, the NCFR appointed a task force to identify a name for the discipline. Davis (cited in Task Force, 1987) coined the term “family science,” but it did not gain much usage among academic circles. In fact, in a survey conducted by NCFR, “family studies” came out as the most preferred term, followed by “family science” (Burr and Leigh, 1983; Bailey and Gentry, 2013). Finally, after a period of initial usage, the term “family

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science” (Smart, 2009) later came to be seen as having positivist connotations because of the presence of the word “science” in it. In contrast, “family studies” was seen as more neutral in the light of the increasing use of qualitative research methodologies later used in the discipline. Gradually, the label “family studies” came into wider usage. Currently, courses offered under this discipline use either of these labels for their programmes. In this chapter, I shall use the term “family studies” to refer to the discipline. Defnition of family studies Family studies is an interdisciplinary feld for studying families which draws its theoretical frameworks from sociology, social anthropology, economics, education, psychology, biology, demography, and legal studies, to mention a few. Hollinger (2002) defned it as a domain of inquiry that is interdisciplinary in nature yet conceptually unique. The task force (1987) report looked at it as a feld of study where the primary goals are the discovery, verifcation, and application of knowledge about the family. A careful scrutiny of what has been published and debated under the subject leads us to defne family studies as an interdisciplinary feld with a focus on the scientifc study of families and households in relation to their structure, processes, relationships with other areas of social systems (such as law and family policy), and application of the knowledge thus produced for the better functioning of families (Ribbens McCarthy and Edwards, 2011). In view of constraints of space, I did not include in this chapter the reviews covering interventions, such as counselling and therapy and the impact of law, policies, and programmes on families which in themselves constitute a vast area. Moreover, the task I have taken up will be better served if I focus on studies relating to family structure and processes. About the Indian context Family studies as a discipline is not yet popular in India. Moreover, the feld appears to be scattered between disciplines such as sociology, social anthropology, home science, social work, and human ecology. Even though the feld has passed through several important stages of disciplinary growth and a number of robust reviews delineating the trends of the feld have been written (Patel, 2005; Uberoi, 2014), I have not come across a review which made an effort to ft the research on Indian families into the disciplinary framework of family studies. For instance, a few reviews used the term “family studies” in their titles (Kannabiran, 2006; Konantambigi and Saraswathi, 1996; Oommen, 1991; Rajalakshmi, 1993; Shah, 2005). In addition, Shah (2005) covered, under the title family studies, a discussion on concepts of family and household, family relationships, and family change, whereas Rajalakshmi (1993) provided a review of studies on family under the term. Konantambigi and Saraswathi (1996) focused on the theoretical

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and methodological concerns of the feld in India and the West in a comparative perspective. Kannabiran (2006) identifed family studies as “a multilayered practice of sociology . . . to evolve a more nuanced understanding of the family” (p. 4427). However, none of them tried to defne the term as such. In this chapter, an attempt is made to trace the emergence of the family feld by using a comparative perspective of the Indian context and the Western context, aiming to understand the differences between them. In India, family studies as a subject is offered mostly under the discipline of home science. The M. S. University of Baroda, Vadodara; the Babasaheb Bhimarao Ambedkar University, Lucknow; and the Maharana Pratap University of Agriculture and Technology, Udaipur, are some of the institutions which offer this course under Human development and family studies. The Unit for Family Studies established in 1984 at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, brought out important publications on family (Bharat and Desai, 1995; Unit for Family Studies, 1991) and undertook research and policy advocacy. In 2013, the Global Consortium for International Family Studies1 (constituting of University of Nebraska–Lincoln; University of New Castle, Australia; and Tata Institute of Social Sciences [TISS]), Mumbai, launched a one-year online master’s degree in international family studies. Evidently, there is still time for all these strands to merge into a unifed academic discipline under the name of family studies. 2 Major themes and trends in the study of families in India As a student of Indian families, I was drawn to the major debates about family change due to industrialisation, urbanisation, and resultant modernisation. It may neither be possible nor necessary for me to discuss all of them in detail due to the limitation of space. Therefore, I shall cover only two important but interlinked debates: on nuclear vs joint family, including associations between these types of families, and on the nature of value orientations in Indian families – that is, familism2 vs individualism3 and their implications. 1 The debate on nuclear vs joint family/household There has been a substantial and prolonged debate on whether the joint or extended family in India was giving way to the nuclear or conjugal family as a result of industrialisation and urbanisation. Curtain to this debate was raised by E. A. Gait, the then census commissioner of India, in his report on the 1911 Census. In this report, he argued that in view of the substantial increase in the proportion of nuclear families and the smaller mean household size, it could be held that the joint family was disintegrating, though the pace of transition was at a slow rate. This view continued in all the Census reports till 1951 (J. C. Caldwell, Reddy, and P. Caldwell, 1984). The major debate that followed during the period of 1950s–1970s engaged the

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sociologists and social anthropologists in India in unravelling the myth of the disintegration of the joint family. A majority of the census offcials from time to time and both Indian and Western scholars (Kaldate, 1961; Nimkoff, 1959; Ross, 1961; Goode, 1963) upheld the views expressed by Gait. It was thought that the Western liberalism and individualism acquired by the educated Indian elite percolated down to create ideologies and tendencies towards the formation of nuclear families in urban areas and, though to a lesser extent, rural areas. Another group of scholars – I. P. Desai, A. M. Shah, M. S. Gore, P. Kolenda, I. Karve (1953), P. Uberoi, and T. Patel, to name a few – led a debate countering these arguments. A careful examination of this discourse highlights three interlinked issues: 1 2 3

Equating the elementary family form in India with the Western model of a conjugal family. Use or rather misuse of the Western model of “ft between nuclear family and industrial society” to explain family transition in India and in other South Asian countries. Absence of a distinction between the concepts – family and household – leading to the confusion in explaining the direction of family change in the Indian context and in other South Asian contexts.

Equating the elementary family form in India with the Western model of a conjugal family Much has been written on this aspect. A glance at the writings of Bailey (1960); J. C. Caldwell and colleagues (1984); D’Cruz and Bharat (2001); Desai (1981a, 1981b); Goode (1964); Gore (1968a); Gupta (1994); Kapadia (1958); Nimkoff and Gore (1959); Orenstein (1961); Patel (2005); Shah (1996, 1998, 1973); Uberoi (2003), to mention a few, help us capture the major points of this debate. Let us frst begin with the West, especially Europe and the United States. What is the nature of the nuclear family in these societies? The structural isolation of the family and high individualisation of its members are depicted as its major characteristics. Consider Parsons’s (1959) argument that middle-class American urban family is characterised by the structural isolation of the individual conjugal family. Thus, in the West, the transition from agricultural society to predominantly industrial society during the past two centuries was accompanied by a transition from extended family with its emphasis on kinship relations to a largely small, independent nuclear family revolving mainly around the wife and husband and their offspring.4 It was argued that with the shift of labour from family to factory, the functions of family narrowed down to reproduction, socialisation, and affectional relations. It got transformed predominantly into a “husband as provider, wife as homemaker” type of family (Ogburn and Nimkoff, 1955; Parsons and Bales, 1955; Goode, 1963). It was further pointed out

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that the American nuclear family in its process of adaptation to a modern industrial society increasingly became independent of its extended kin networks as residential mobility and distances hindered the maintenance of an intimate relationship between family and other kin (Christensen, 1975; Goode, 1964, p. 52; Nimkoff, 1959, p. 419). Further, the changes in the character of family life following the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II (Farber, 1966, chap. 3) were also seen as responsible for this transition towards relative independence from kinship contacts. Although it cannot be argued that there are no bonds between members of nuclear family and other consanguineous relatives, the relationships were certainly weaker than those of other societies, such as those in South Asia, the Middle East and South Africa (Goode, 1964). Thus, greater structural isolation of the individual conjugal family from other consanguineous relatives with obligations and interactions concentrated within the nuclear family (Robins and Tomanec, 1966) has emerged as an important characteristic of the family in the West. Similar trajectories were documented in Europe as well (Goody, 1983). These changes in the Western nuclear family structure have simultaneously brought out changes in the attitudes of members in the family leading to greater individuation and autonomy. For example, Zaretsky (1976) proposed that with the introduction of industrialisation, labour moved out of family, thus creating a new space for personal life in which an individual’s self could be valued for itself. Similarly, romantic love, a ubiquitous permissible feeling and an expected prelude to marriage so characteristic of American courtship, is one of the manifestations of the expression of individualism in the context of family. However, in societies which are less individualistic, romantic love was seen as a destabilising emotion for family stability and kin network and therefore was strongly de-emphasised (Goode, 1959, p. 40). Beck (1986) argued that men and women started thinking “I am I” more than earlier times because of the impact of historical changes in sexuality, law, and education propelling the dynamic of individualism in the Western family. Similarly, the rising age of marriage and low fertility freed more time for women in the family. Released from their traditional and ascribed roles, these adults in contemporary society more and more search for a life of their own. Increasingly, life can be fulflled with the non-presence of other as there is no space left for the other (Beck, 1986). The levels of individualism in the contemporary Western society reached such an extent that individuals were singled out in pools of self-love (Luna, 2016). To my mind, some of the self-presentations promoted by Facebook, Instagram, and other social media are manifestations of this self-love, with the selfe as its ultimate expression (Mehdizadeh, 2010; Buffardi and Campbell, 2008). Although Indian society is exhibiting these symptoms, they are still limited to certain sections. Notwithstanding these individualistic trends observed in certain urban and cultural contexts in India, which I shall discuss later under “familism

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and individualism,” the model of the Western nuclear family failed to capture the nature of family in the Indian context for a number of reasons. One of the major reasons is that although Indian families became structurally nuclear, they remained connected with extended kin networks. There has been substantial evidence in support of this explanation. I mention here a few such studies (Beteille, 1964; J. C. Caldwell et al., 1984; Desai, 1964; Gore, 1968b; Khatri, 1975; Orenstein, 1961; Ross, 1961; Singer, 1968). Desai (1981b, p. 114) explained that the concept of jointness is more relational than residential. According to him, in the Indian context, the family is not merely a residential group of a household. Instead, it is a system of relationships, rights, and duties and the norms that the members try to live up to. Using the Western model of “ft between nuclear family and industrial society” to explain family transition in India According to this theory, the typical nuclear (conjugal) family is a functional adaptation to the requirements of modern industrial and urban society, where the family changed from extended to nuclear to ft the family to the demands of these major forces. Both Parsons (1959) and Goode (1963) proposed this ft theory and have written extensively about how the Western family transformed into a nuclear family structure in response to the needs of the modern industrial society. This hypothesis was posited to explain family change in India. Supporters of this view argued that the decline in the family size, increase in the number of elementary or nuclear families, and their greater independence from the extended kin and community gave credence to the fact that joint families were breaking down into nuclear families with the advent of industrialisation and modernisation. A number of studies supporting and opposing this hypothesis were undertaken during the 1950s and into the 1970s (Kaldate, 1961; Orenstein, 1961). While there is no disagreement about the fact that families in India underwent changes as a result of industrialisation and urbanisation, though at a slow pace, how families in India or for that matter countries such as China and Japan changed is not similar to the trajectory of changes that the Western families had gone through because of industrialisation. Hareven (cited in Xu and Xia, 2014, p. 33) commented that in the context of cross-cultural comparisons, the phenomena of social change that appeared similar on the surface between regions or societies need not necessarily be the same underneath. To her, grand social changes are mediated through local cultures, and social changes mediated though local cultures produce different outcomes in different regions. Therefore, the traits of families coming from these cultural contexts interacting with the processes of industrialisation tend to produce signifcantly different outcomes.

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On the basis of this assumption, I argue the following: 1 2 3

The relationships in Indian families have a different orientation from those of Western families. The extended family adapted itself to the industrial context and continued in modifed forms. The nuclear and extended divide in the Indian context is more fuid as they are seen as stages in a development process.

First, the foundation of the Western family structure is the institution of marriage and the principle of individualism and independence. In Asian societies where extended families are prevalent, individuals see themselves and their roles in society only in relation to the family and community to which they think they belong. These extended relationships are predominantly kinship and caste based. While it cannot be said that the conjugal relationship is less important, it is given less preference compared to paternal and fraternal relationships in the family. It is for this reason that a joint family cannot be seen as a conglomeration of nuclear families (Desai, 1981a). Evidence showed that although the families were staying apart, their behaviours indicated the value frameworks of joint family living (Desai, 1964; Gupta, 1994; KJS, 1986; Supriya and Mala, 2012; Uma, 1986). These studies cover upper-caste (though this holds true for other castes as well), Hindu, undivided joint family settings. They capture scenarios of family members (including daughters-in-law) pooling incomes, of their taking care of dependents, and their owning assets jointly. For example, Gore’s (1962) study indicated that from the point of view of a majority of the male respondents, flial bond was still preferred over conjugal bond in the Indian society. Collectivistic societies are less prone to nurture interpersonal dependency in a marital relationship since the location of feelings of affection and intimacy is spread throughout family relationships with parents, siblings, and extended kin (Dion and Dion, 1993). However, not much scholarly attention was paid during the recent decades to understanding how these arrangements and relationships, including gender dynamics, have changed or continued in the Indian context. Another example is the relationship of migrant families with their families back at home. A series of other studies explored these relational dimensions of the migrant families (Beteille, 1964; Kapadia, 1958; Mines, 1976; Ross, 1961; Vatuk, 1972) and documented their reciprocal relations with their natal families or families of orientation and the importance given to the continuation of kinship network. In a sense, the nuclear/branch family is embedded in the extended family in several ways, though the jointness may vary depending on distance, conficts in relationships (e.g. daughter-in-law and mother-in-law conficts or conficts among brothers’ wives or among brothers themselves), economic status achieved by the branch family, and other structural realities.5

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The recent exodus of around 1.2 million migrant workers from Indian cities to villages due to the proclamation of the national lockdown on 24 March 2020 in connection with the covid-19 pandemic is a glaring example of where their stem families are located. As the public transport shutdown, the migrant families chose to walk hundreds of kilometers bracing all diffculties to get back to their family homes (Bhargava, 2020). Second, Singer’s (1968) study challenged the argument that joint or extended family cannot coexist with the phenomenon of industrialisation. His study of 19 industrialists of Madras showed that these business families lived as joint families, which continued over generations in the urban context. In fact, many other studies (Gore, 1968b; Uma, 1986) showed that families involved in occupations like farming or business were likely to follow joint or extended family systems. I briefy mention here the debates that occurred in China on the adaptive changes in their family structure and values following industrialisation. Some scholars (Desai, 1975; Laslett, 1972, pp. 5–6) have drawn parallels between India, China, and Japan on how families from these cultural contexts negotiated the forces of industrialisation and the similarities between the adaptations. At one point, the household size in mainland China became the focus of intense sociological analysis, where it was argued that industrialisation and modernisation led to the nuclearisation of the Chinese extended family (Hu, 2004; Wang, 2007) – hence, the increase in number of small families and the decline in the size of larger households. In an interesting analysis, Xu and Xia (2014) disagreed with this thesis and argued that the declining household size in the census data could be explained by the emergent changes in the hukou6 (a Chinese residency registration system which fxes a person’s rural or urban residence and their household ownership in either of these locations) due to economic liberalisation in the country leading to one family owning multiple apartments, the impact of the one-child family policy,7 and the extensive migration of the rural population to urban areas, leaving families behind in the village communes. Third, on the fuidity of family structure in these societies, Fei (1982) argued that in China the structural transition from nuclear to extended is rather fuid and dynamic. Thus, a Chinese family may begin and end with an extended family. Even if the couple lives in a separate apartment, there will be continued interdependencies and reciprocal obligations. Xu and Xia (2014) termed such families “two-headed families”: a new living arrangement that emerged in China to meet the demands of industrialisation and urbanisation. This is similar to Khatri’s (1975) description of the interesting adaptations of joint family to urban living. According to Khatri, the preference for nuclear households, propelled by better educational and employment opportunities but coupled with commensality (sharing) and mutual support of jointness, gave rise to a new family form called adaptive extended family. In this family system, nuclear households are interdependent, and the maintenance of inter-household relationships is based on rights and obligations. Therefore, at any given point in time, it may be diffcult to

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differentiate the family form between joint and nuclear since they are in a development process in the sense that a nuclear household is embedded in a future joint household (Desai, 1981b, p. 113), with the boundaries remaining fuid (See Shah, 2014a, pp. 3, 482). Distinction between the concepts: family and household This brings us to the next debate regarding the need to recognise the distinction between the concepts of family and household and to understand these as different analytical categories. Although this distinction is well accepted in contemporary research, I mention it here to show how a lack of such an understanding led to supporting the disintegration of the joint family thesis. The concept of family in India is more relational and subjective than residential (Desai, 1981a; Shah, 1973, 2014b; Bailey, 1960; Gore, 1968a). Its group membership is based mainly on consanguine and affnal relationships. A household, on the other hand, is a coresidential socioeconomic unit regardless of kinship ties. It can have non-family members such as servants who are not members of that family. In this sense, families can come under the concept of households, but not all households can be termed as families. This conceptual difference between the kinship-oriented family and residence-oriented household as two analytical categories had been subjected to detailed discussion during the 1970s and the 1980s (Desai, 1981a, 1964; Lobo, 2005; Orenstein, 1961; Patel, 2005; Shah, 1998, 1973; Uberoi, 2014).8 One of the conceptual faws that some scholars committed was drawing inference about the type of family (nuclear or extended) from the size of a household. After considering census data of different states on these dimensions, Orenstein (1961) pointed this out as a methodological faw to draw inferences about the type of family – that is, whether it is extended or nuclear – from the observed changes in household size. This understanding was useful for the researchers because they could draw reliable inferences by observing associations between household size and other demographic variables, such as caste, region, and occupation (Shah, 1998, 1973). Uberoi (2003, pp. 282–283) provided an excellent summary of the research conducted on the changing household composition in India and the fuid nature of the boundaries of joint, nuclear, and single-person households. Now, a look at the concept of household size will be instructive in the light of debates about the disintegration of joint family into nuclear families based on the inference drawn from the changes in the household size. As can be seen from Table 2.1, the average household size showed an increase from 4.98 people in 1951 to 5.3 people in 2001 and to 4.9 people in 2011, which is approximately equal to the 1951 household size. That the household size did not vary much challenges the theory that industrialisation and urbanisation led to the formation of nuclear households resulting from the disintegration of the joint family. In fact, it had been shown that the joint and nuclear household percentages increased over the time, and as Kolenda (1987) had further pointed

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Table 2.1 The mean household size in India by census year Census year

1911

1951

1961

1971

1981

1991

2001

2011

Mean household size

4.9

4.98

5.08

5.46

5.55

5.51

5.3

4.98

Source: Shah (1996: Table 4.1); Census of India, 2011, www.censusindia.gov.in.

Table 2.2 Percentage of households with three married couples, by state Northern states

Percent

Southern states

Percent

Uttar Pradesh Rajasthan Haryana Punjab Bihar

5.86 5.56 5.09 4.33 4.14

Tamil Nadu Andhra Pradesh Odisha Kerala Karnataka

1.0 1.1 1.5 2.3 2.7

Source: Census 2011; Series-H. Tables on Houses, Household amenities & Assets. Retrieved from censusindia.gov.in/Tables_Published/H-Series/houselist_main.html [Date of Access: 10 October 2019].

out, there appear to be signifcant regional differences in the prevalence of joint households. According to Kolenda’s (1987) observations, the presence of joint households is thick along the contiguous northern states such as Bihar, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, whereas their presence is thin in the southern parts of India. This phenomenon can be observed even in the latest census: Census 2011. If we assume that a household with “three” married couples approximates the form of a joint/extended household, this phenomenon can be observed by looking at the regional percentages of households against the national percentage of 3.21 of the total number of households (see Table 2.2). 2 Familism vs individualism The discussion around nuclear vs joint families in India also refects a debate about shifting family values from familism to individualism. Familism is defned as an ideology where the needs of the family take precedence over the needs of individual family members. Although there has been a broad trend towards individualism all over the world due to industrialisation, urbanisation, and democratisation, there is a difference of opinion about how this change took place and the consequences that followed (J. C. Caldwell et al., 1984; Greenfeld, 1966; Uberoi, 2003). By and large, in most of the Indian family situations, individualism was seen as a negative infuence from the West, and pursuing personal interest was viewed as selfsh. According to Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2004, p. 503), individualisation is a process whereby people are released from pregiven ties, social relations,

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and belief systems. More specifcally, they referred to institutional individualisation, where educational systems, property and inheritance laws, the labour market, and most of the state policies became “engines” of individualisation. In other words, these systems tend to address individuals as units rather than family as a unit and therefore act as engines of individualisation. When did individualism as a value begin to impact families in India? If industrialisation, small families, population expansion, and Westernisation are seen as markers of the spirit of individualism and the decline of familism, Orenstein (1961) traced it to the middle of the 19th century (when the coal and jute industries began to develop rapidly) and the beginning of the 20th century, as evidenced by the community studies conducted in India. He mentioned one of the interesting but lesser-known legislations called the Hindu Gains of Learning Act, 1930 (Act No. XXX of 1930), passed by the British to unleash the spirit of individualism in Indian joint families. According to the Act, a member of a Hindu undivided family holds the rights to all property acquired by them9 through their learning, be it education, art, or craft, even though the learning had been supported by the joint funds of their family or by any member of the family. The legislation in fact did not impact the conduct of many of the members of the joint families, especially those whose family occupations were farming or business. However, it constitutes an interesting example of institutional individualisation. The origin of individualism in the Western context can be traced to the beginnings of capitalism (Zaretsky, 1976). With the advent of industrialisation, the home and the workplace became two distinct spheres of activity, thus creating a new space for family members to engage with the individual’s self – the “I” – and value it for itself. The kinship ties, though continued, became weaker because of some non-rational and sentimental factors (Farber, 1966, p. 17), leaving the nuclear family as structurally independent of kinship and community support networks (Boulding, 1973; Kagitcibasi, 1994). Another common explanation is the association of the East with familism and the West with individualism. These differences are rooted in the religious teachings which dominated these regions. Thus, it was observed (Glick, 1979 and Dumont, 1981 cited in Goody, 1983, p. 23) that whereas Christianity gave birth to modern individualism, the collective notions of kinship and the family and the emphasis on intergroup relations are the result of religious faiths such as Islam in the Middle Eastern regions. Likewise, collectivism displayed in the Southeast Asian countries, a major attribute of familism, can be seen as the articulation of Eastern religious traditions such as Confucianism, Taoism, and Hinduism, to mention a few. These diverse cognitive orientations or worldviews are the result of the internalisation of the cultural scripts embedded in literature, education, and other values which affect people’s ways of viewing the world. I shall take this argument a step further by shifting my discussion to the implications of these distinguishing features to family and kinship relations

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in different regions of the world and how the basic distinction between collectivist/familism and individualist/individualism orientations impacts the extended or nuclear family forms and forms of marriage. I shall present here the results of a study – World Family Map Project, 2013 (Child Trends, 2013) – which was based on a study sample of 45 countries. The sample was selected from 200 countries in the world, representing a majority of the world’s population, with a regional representation of high-, middle-, and low-income countries. The fndings are shown in Figure 2.1. As indicated in Figure 2.1, extended families – that is, parent(s) plus kin from outside the nuclear family – appear to be common in Asia, the Middle East, South America, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Similarly, adults are most likely to be married in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa and less likely to be married in the Americas – with Europe and Oceania falling in between. Although two-parent families are becoming less common in many parts of the world, the likelihood of children living in two-parent families in Asia and the Middle East is higher and is somewhat less in the Americas, Europe, Oceania, and sub-Saharan Africa. The results further show that children are more likely to live with one or no parent in the Americas, Europe, Oceania, and sub-Saharan Africa than in other regions. It can be seen that cohabitation is found to be more common among couples in Europe, North

Pr esence of Marriage popularity

AS

ME

SSA

Cohabitation

X

X

1-Parent 2-Parent

X

X

Rest S.A X X

Extended family Non-marital child bearing Trust in family (Approx percentage of adults (18+)

X

X

87

97

Rest X

EU X

OC X

X

X

X

X

60-90

83

S.A

85

AMC X N C/S

N X

X S

67-90

Figure 2.1 World family patterns and marriage trends Source: Summary of the report of Child Trends. (2013). World family map 2013: Mapping family change and child wellbeing outcomes. Bethesda, MD: Author. Retrieved from worldfamilymap.org/2013/. Notes: AS = Asia; ME = Middle East; SA = South Africa; SSA = sub-Saharan Africa; EU = Europe; OC = Oceania; AMC = Americas (N = North; S = South); C/S = Central and South America. • = more likely ↑ = higher likelihood X = less likely

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America, Oceania, and – especially – South America. Understandably, wherever marriage popularity showed a decline, a higher incidence of cohabitation and non-marital childbearing were reported. The extended family type went with the two-parent family form – with the exception of South Africa, probably because of its more Westernised outlook compared to the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. Interestingly, when asked about their trust in family, respondents from Asia, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa reported higher percentages of trust than did the other three regions. However, in most of these societies, families are still seen as the places where some of the individual’s emotional and social support needs are met. Thus, it is evident that the family value orientations are connected to a great extent with the cultural values of each region. 3 Comparison of trends in family studies in the West and in India In this section, as mentioned earlier, I shall make an effort to briefy trace the developmental shifts that the discipline of family studies has gone through in India and in the West, especially US, starting from the early 1920s, in order to examine the differences in shifts and in the relationship between family structures and family value orientations in both contexts. Even a cursory glance at some of the early publications in the US on family reveals certain noticeable trends. Most are scholarly reviews based on the published research in the Journal of Marriage and Family and other sources (Broderick, 1988; Doherty, Boss, LaRossa, Schumm, and Steinmez, 1993; White, 2010, 2013). Similarly, a number of scholars attempted to chronicle the trends in research on families in India. Some useful reviews have been made by D’Cruz and Bharat (2001); Desai (1975, 1981b); Konantambigi and Saraswathi (1996); Patel (2005); Shah (2005, 2014b); and Uberoi (2003). On the basis of these writings, I attempted to trace the evolution of the feld in both contexts: (See Table 2.3). It is an attempt to understand the broad trends in the discipline through listing historical events in a comparative context. No attempt is involved here to provide an exhaustive mapping of the discipline’s growth regarding the two regions. History and development of family studies in the West Although there were attempts to capture the history of family in the West (Adams, 1986, pp. 9–12); Christensen’s (1964) attempt at dividing the history of family into four stages was found to be useful for the present purpose. However, the interpretations I made in the course of comparisons are not fnal, and I am aware that there is scope for the reader to disagree with the interpretations. Even the periodisation of the history may appear to be an oversimplifcation. The main purpose is to get an idea of lag in the understanding about the family in the two historical and cultural contexts.

56 B. Devi Prasad The following are the four stages used by Christensen (1964): 1

2

3

Pre-research comprising studies conducted before the 1850s, during which philosophical speculations about family dominated with little relation to empirical fndings. It is during this time that the women’s suffrage movement began at Seneca Falls in 1848. The second stage encompassed the latter half of 19th century, which was based predominantly on the book view and focused primarily on showing how the Western models of family evolved compared to the non-Western, native family forms. Most family scholarship was based on theories put forward by white Western male writers. Classic examples are Westermarck’s The History of Human Marriage (1891/1925) and Engels’s The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884/2010). Engels himself drew most of his ideas from L. H. Morgan’s work. As far back as the early 18th century, the presence of the romantic love complex is ubiquitous in American society, as revealed by a content analysis of colonial magazines of the period 1794–1825 (Lantz, Schmitt, and Herman, 1973). To my mind, the 1920s symbolised the threshold of transition to individualism in the West, graphically captured by Edith Wharton (1920) in her novel The Age of Innocence, whose protagonist Newland Archer struggled with making a choice between individual freedom and his commitment to old values such as duty and honour to one’s family. The third stage encompassed the frst part of 20th century, which witnessed a number of infuential works analysing the most crucial dimensions of sex, marriage, and family. Some examples are the studies of Havelock Ellis (1936) and Alfred Kinsey (Kinsey, Pomeroy, and Martin, 1948) on human sexual behaviour. The systematic study of two-parent family as a social group also began during this period (Adams, 1986, p. 8). Broderick (1988) did a review of 800 scholarly articles on family published before 1930s, on the basis of which he remarked that family scholarship was alive and prospering during this period. Burgess’s (1926) article, The Family as a Unity of Interacting Personalities, signifed this beginning. In fact, the conceptual foundation for family studies was laid during this period. The sources for data were mostly life histories, personal documents (Ex. Woodhouse, 1930; Thomas and Znaniecki, 1918; Ellis, 1936) and case records of workers working with families. By this time, an organisation for the sociological discipline and a journal to publish research were already in place. However, the interior of the middle-class family remained relatively inaccessible to research due to moral restrictions, despite Bertrand Russell’s (1929/2009) call for a new moral order at that time. Emphasis on individualism during this period, however, was not as strong (Doherty et al., 1993). During this stage, though the focus shifted from book view to feld view, the male

Family studies in India

4

57

perspective that focused on the white middle-class heterosexual nuclear family remained (Emery and Lloyd, 2001). This period also witnessed the beginning of studies of sexuality and their infuence on family research. Beginning in 1940s, it can be identifed by four landmarks (Adams, 1988). The frst was Freud’s (1938) view of human sexuality with its theory of psychosexual stages, followed by Kinsey’s research on sexual behaviour. The third was Masters and Johnson’s (1966) physiological research on human sexual response and Ira Reiss’s (1986) sociological analysis, Journey into Sexuality, which can be considered the fourth landmark study on sexuality. The fourth stage encompassed in the 1950s, which was seen as a decade of stability with low divorce, high marriage, and low birth rates (Popenoe, 1993; Doherty, 2008). It is after the 1950s that attempts were made at building theory through empirical testing. Thus, the 1960s were called the decade of conceptual frameworks (Adams, 1988). Also, beginning in the late 1960s, American society saw a revival of individualistic values ( Peterson, 1995).

The decade of the 1970s refected several interesting trends. A wealth of cross-cultural material on different forms of families was gathered by researchers to understand the diverse cultural forms of the family in around the world (Blood, 1972; Goode, 1963). This has broadened the awareness of the Western family scholars, which led to the recognition of the existence of other minority culture families. Even though the 1960–1980s witnessed feminist movements and ethnic minority perspectives impacting family studies, few systematic studies of black families (e.g. Frazier, 1932 and his other studies) fgured on the horizon of Western social sciences till this period, and if fgured, they were distorted or disvalued (Billingsley, 1970; Bryant and Coleman, 1988). With the ascendance of individualism, questions and concerns about the declining importance and authority of families in individuals’ lives also fgured prominently during the 1970s and 1980s. Equating men with the public sphere and women with the private sphere was prevalent. The engagement of feminism with family studies began questioning the glorifed class-specifc family form of the 1950s as a benchmark. Thus, what functionalists saw as structural differentiation, feminists identifed as the core of family politics and exploitation (Zinn, 2000, p. 45). Firestone (1970, p. 72) unmasked the idealised version of nuclear family and family relationships. To her, the nature of the bond shared by women and children with men in the family is no more than shared oppression. Bernard (1972) in her classic work on marriage argued that there were two marriages in every (heterosexual) marital union – his and hers – and that his was always better than hers. Although the 1970s witnessed high divorce rates, they declined in the 1980s. It is during this period that research on cohabitation, gay and lesbian families, and step-families gained visibility. Formal theory construction,

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use of quantitative methodological approaches, and multivariate statistical techniques dominated the discipline (Doherty et al., 1993). The other dominant trends of the 2000s included the emergence of new family forms, such as complex families and same-sex families, and the impact of digital media on individuals (O’Keeffe, Clarke-Pearson, and Council on Communications and Media, 2011) (see Table 2.3). History and development of family studies in India The journey of studies on family in India had been rather slow and protracted through its stages. It traversed from the indological orientation to a joint vs nuclear family debate to the use of census data to understand changing family structures (Mandelbaum, 1948; Shah, 2014b, pp. 147–167), followed by the changing functions and roles of individuals and the effects of industrialisation and urbanisation on these aspects. While starting from the early 1940s, the debate over the question of disintegration of the joint family into nuclear households spanned over a period of three decades till it tapered off in the 1980s and shifted to the study of alternate forms of families, such as single parent, adoptive parents, and so on. In the initial stages, the Indian family was studied more as a property-holding, ritual-performing unit only. The focus was more on kinship norms and household structure than on family as a social or economic construct (Khatri, 1961). Two important sociological journals – Sociological Bulletin (1952) and Contributions to Indian Sociology (1957) – were launched during the 1950s. Comparatively, two of the important journals the American Sociological Review and The Journal of Marriage and Family (frst edition) were published in 1936 and 1938 respectively. In the 1930s, the West had begun publishing articles that were based on empirical data. Family studies in the Indian context suffered from unequal scholarly attention, which focused mostly on dimensions such as family structure, size, and composition rather than on the social and psychological interactions within the families (Uberoi, 2003). In terms of geographical representation, studies were mostly from North India and West India, with less representation from South India, such as matrilineal Nayar’s tarwad (Gough, 1961; Saradamoni, 1999) and patrilineal Nambudri’s illam and Northeast Indian family forms. As a result, a skewed picture of family from a Hindu, upper-caste, malecentric point of view got refected in a majority of the studies. This was the scenario till approximately the 1970s. During the period of the 1950s to the 1970s, the major debate that engaged sociologists and social anthropologists in India was about unravelling the myth of the disintegration of the joint family and the conceptual shift from kinship-oriented family to residence-oriented households. It was argued that the Indian family retained its jointness, though the members were not living jointly and that the concept of nuclear family from the West was not appropriate to capture the complexity of Indian family forms. Also,

India

• Predominantly indological in orientation with Sanskrit and liturgical texts as sources. • Researcher’s stance – book view. • Study of family, mostly joint family, as a property-holding and ritual-performing unit. • Hindu upper-caste male-centric view.

• Continued dependence on indological sources. • Studies confned mostly to West India and North India. • Colonial construction of laws, including marriage and family laws. • Strong infuence of Henry Maine’s indological sources based work on family research (Uberoi, 2014). • Book view stance continued.

• Although only a few, most studies on kinship and family (Hill, 1958). • Regional overrepresentation in the studies continued. • Heavy reliance on census data with a focus on family structure and size. • Joint vs nuclear family debate became the dominant discourse and subject for research. • 1950s: two important journals started publishing articles on family.

Period

Pre-1920s (before 1919)

1920s–1930s (1920–1939)

1940s–1950s (1940–1959)

(Continued)

• Discourse on origins and evolution of marriage and family. • Predominantly – book view. • Stance of a moral reformer in studying families (Adams and Steinmetz, 1993). • White Western middle-class male-centric view. • Women’s suffrage movement began at Seneca Falls (1848). • 1930s: family scholarship was alive and prospering (Broderick, 1988). • Focus on the psychosocial interior of family life. • Unit of study: two-parent, heterosexual white middle-class nuclear family. • Infuence of psychoanalytic theories began. • Shift from book view to feld view. • Research using survey method and secondary data usage took hold. • 1930s: two important journals began publishing family research. • 1950s: systematic theory building began (Christensen, 1964). • Father as provider, mother as caregiver model with division of public/private spheres of family life projected as a universal construct. • The 1950s frequently mentioned as a period of marital and family stability (Doherty, 2008). • Classic studies on human sexual behaviour published.

The West

Table 2.3 A comparative view of the emergence of family studies in India and the West

Family studies in India 59

• 1960s: shift from book review to feld review (Patel, 2005; Shah, 2014b). • Overwhelming interest on family next to caste (Dube, 1974). • Heavy reliance on census data continued, with survey research gaining ground, which focused on family size, structure, regional variations, etc., resulting from industrialisation. • Continued debate on joint vs nuclear family. • Infuence of Western conceptual frameworks to study families. • Northeast India followed by South India remained underrepresented. • Underrepresentation of dalit and tribal family studies. • Joint vs nuclear family debate continued but shifted towards study of other family forms (D’Cruz and Bharat, 2001). • 1975–1985: the International Women’s Decade. • 1980s: women’s studies centres introduced by the University Grants Commission (Uberoi, 1994). • 1994: International Year of Family. • A mix of use of quantitative and qualitative methodologies. • Minority and lower-caste families were researched. • Study of sexuality and sexual relations remained unexplored. • Emphasis shifted from structure to processes within family (Uberoi, 2003). • Less attention to studies on South Indian family forms such as matrilineal Nayar’s tarwad and patrilineal Nambudri’s illam. • Changed and open discourses on sexuality with the entry of the HIV/AIDS agenda. • Some attention paid to diverse family forms, such as displaced, same-sex, and live-in relationships. • Internet and digital media added a multiplier effect to individualism.

1960s–1970s (1960–1979)

Source: Prepared by the author.

2000 and after

1980–90s (1980–1999)

India

Period

Table 2.3 (Continued)

• 1980s: decade of policy debates (Adams, 1988). • Ethnic minority perspectives. • 1984: disciplinary boundaries of family feld were established (Burr and Leigh, 1983; Task Force, 1987). • Shift towards more qualitative methodologies. • 1990s: theoretical frameworks became more visible in articles (White and Klein, 2002; Boss, Doherty, LaRossa, Schumm, and Steinmetz, 1993). • 1994: International Year of Family. • 2000: family complexity emerged as a major topic for study (Furstenberg, 2014). • Increasing attention on family stability as an area of research. • Growing research attention paid to increasing separation between marriage and parenthood. • Research focus on relationship between family structure and child well-being (Brown, 2010). • Impact of digital media on families and individuals (O’Keeffe et al., 2011).

• 1960s: systematic theory building and development of conceptual frameworks (Adams, 1986, p. 9). • 1970s: feminism started engaging with family studies (Zinn, 2000). • Underrepresentation and distorted presentation of studies on black families (Billingsley, 1970). • 1970s: decade of theoretical models. • Focus on cross-cultural and diverse family forms. • Extensive use of multivariate statistical analysis. • 1970s: most importantly, concerns regarding the declining importance of family began to surface strongly.

The West

60 B. Devi Prasad

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61

around the mid 1950s, the family feld experienced a shift from book view to feld view as sociologists and social anthropologists began studying families in the feld rather than studying them by relying on legal and liturgical texts (Shah, 1988). However, this shift was sharply demonstrated during the 1960s with the beginning of a range of studies conducted using empirical feld data collected through a theoretical lens to understand family relations (see Shah, 2014b, pp. 147–150). Despite the shift to feld view, the overall focus of these studies remained on the upper-caste Hindu middle class with an overwhelming representation of studies from West India (Maharashtra and Gujarat) and less from South India and little from Northeast India. Excepting a few (Cohn, 1961), dalit and tribal families are clearly underrepresented in systematic studies. In the 1980s and the 1990s, in addition to survey, census, and other secondary data sources, the use of mixed methods utilising content analysis and ethnographic and genealogical approaches to study families became popular (Konantambigi and Saraswathi, 1996, p. 72). The declaration of International Year of Family in 1994 brought back debates on family in a policy context (Uberoi, 1996). Although the study of sexual relations still remained unexplored, some of the sensitive explorations of Indian marriage and family relationships were carried out during this period (Trawick, 1996; Kakar, 1989). Another topic that received considerable attention was the changing roles of working women in dual earner families (Ramu, 1987; Shukla, 1987; Bharat, 1995; Vijayalakshmi and Devi Prasad, 1999). Bharat’s (1996) Family measurement in India has contributed to the documentation of methodological developments in the feld. Another thoughtful publication of this period was the Indian bibliographies on the family (Bharat and Desai, 1995). The year 2000 and after is characterised by a renewed interest in families. During this period, the focus of Indian family studies shifted from structure to process, paying greater attention to relationships, dynamics, and ideologies in the family space (Uberoi, 2003). The study of these components was particularly useful in understanding the family relations in the Indian context (Patel, 2016, pp. 373–376). A major part of this shift in focus could be attributed to the emergence of the women’s movement, the women’s studies discipline, the International Women’s Decade (1975–1985), and a much greater infuence from the West. Besides these, the availability of research funding and impact of industrialisation and globalisation processes on families have contributed heavily to this shift. Women, children, girls, and the elderly – in that order – received focus, besides the topics on violence and abuse (including dowry-related violence), to which these groups were subjected in families. However, subject areas such as sexuality (with the exception of Ghurye, 1938; Trawick, 1996; Kakar, 1989) and study of alternative family forms, such as live-in relationships and gay/lesbian families, remained relatively unexplored. But the entry of the HIV/AIDS agenda brought radical changes in the discourses relating to sexuality and sexual

62 B. Devi Prasad morality in the Indian context. Other forms of families which received considerable attention included one-child families (Pradhan and Sekher, 2014), migrant/transnational families, and families torn by war and confict. More specifcally, during the 2010s, studies on different family forms such as cohabitation, single parents, same-sex couples, and sexual abuse were undertaken. Although commercial and transnational surrogacy received research attention during this period, the impact on family relations and the rights of surrogate mothers was not covered much (Saravanan, 2010; Rao, 2012). The infuence of digital media and technology on the family is coming up as a major area of interest for study (Nair, 2016). Now, what shifts and markers can be ascertained from the historical event listing attempted in Table 2.3? In summary, more than four decades of lag occur between certain recognisable milestones in the West and in India, such as the position taken by the researcher, the type of family studied, family orientation, and the sources of information used and methodologies (quantitative, qualitative, or mixed) applied. Studies with a focus on family interactions came into vogue in the 1920s in the West, whereas such a focus emerged in Indian studies only around the beginning of the 21st century. Even studies on sexuality and sexual relations challenging the traditional mores began in the West approximately during the early 19th century, whereas in the Indian context, these aspects from the same point of view remained unexplored till the beginning of the 20th century. To my mind, the joint vs nuclear family debate signifes the resistance of Indian scholars to the act of imposition of the Western lens to understand Indian family structure and relationships. This was evident, for instance, even in the case of China, where the scholars resisted such imposition. Feminism started engaging with family studies both in the West and in India more or less during the 1970s and 1980s. The main driver of feminism is individualism, with an emphasis on individual rights, which brought to focus in India the unequal power relations between the sexes in the family, including its value frameworks. The phenomenon of individualism was acknowledged in social science literature in the West around the early 19th century, whereas such focus emerged in the Indian context around the beginning of the 21st century. Although individualism crept into Western thinking only during the early 1920s and questioning marriage and family institutions by social scientists began in the West as early as the 1960s and 1970s, some of the most radical works were published much before that, during 1930s (Russell, 1929/2009; Kinsey et al., 1948; Ellis, 1936). These are some of the noticeable markers in the trends of family research between the two regions. 4 Where does individualism take the family? Where do we stand in the light of the discussions covering family structure vs value orientations and a comparison of the historical shifts in understanding families in the two cultural contexts?

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In short, the increasing value orientation towards individualisation, Western culture, and Western values during the past few decades in India have infuenced the academic disciplines, especially the social sciences, so much that autonomy, independence and stark individualism were projected as politically correct stances, and joint living and familism, if at all, were looked upon as less favourable and as negative family values. Most of the 20th century sociological literature eulogised nuclear family and demonised extended family form and its respective attributes. In fact, eulogising nuclear family values is seen as the norm of the day, and studies on families in a way became a one-sided story, discouraging a balanced view of the conditions and forms of families. In the Eurocentric academic debates where individualism and its associated attributes such as nuclear family are unilaterally debated and celebrated as progressive and evolved systems of the enlightened West, the family and cultural systems of other, non-Western societies have been looked at only through their (the Western) lens (Said, 1979), thereby resulting in a distorted view of family systems in the world. Thus, joint or extended family studied with an individualistic perspective was construed as oppressive, non-egalitarian, hierarchical, and anti-woman. There has been a scenario where the elementary family was projected as a better institution for women in terms of their freedoms and choices compared to extended family systems. While it is true to some extent under certain circumstances and contexts, the same is true of even the nuclear family. Beck (1986) argued that the Western nuclear family was built on the premises of industrialisation, which itself was built on the feudal remains of preindustrial societies. It is based on the concept of the division of male and female roles and the commercialisation of labour. Therefore, the foundation of nuclear family itself is built on unequal terms of work and gender and was created on an exploitative footing that was based on gender inequality. In fact, there have been “pro-family” voices (Elshtain, 1981; Popenoe, 1988), but they turn out to be simple opposites of the gender equity and individualism positions (a sort of antifeminist and pro-family rhetoric) rather than examining the family from a region-specifc, culturally relevant stance. However, beginning from mid 20th century, there were voices pointing out the negative side of the major shift that took over post-1950s Western family – the nuclear, heterosexual two-parent family living away from extended kin, under highly individualistic, self-celebrating autonomous spaces, which Beck (1986) so vividly captures in describing the “I am I” phenomenon of the postmodern society or modernity. When Doherty (2008); Eisenberg (1998); and Etzioni (1977) asked whether family was becoming obsolete, it was aimed at this genre of family. In a panel discussion on the changing American family, Doherty (2008) pointed out that the key attributes of contemporary American family – high individualism, high divorce rate, family instability resulting in shorter durations of parenting associated with the father’s absence – were seen as harming the healthy development of children. Cherlin’s (2009, p. 5) observations that “Americans have more partners and [that] children see many parents in their life time”

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capture the merry-go-round property of the American family scenario. Trevor Noah’s (2016) Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood is a moving description of such a family situation. The panel emphasised that family stability – that is, long-term intact couple relationship and father involvement – was important for a child’s development and growth and that American society needs a culture shift to know what it takes to form a lasting union (Doherty, 2008). When Etzioni (1977) and Eisenberg (1998), with a gap of two decades in between, asked the same question – Is the family obsolete? – they were in fact referring to the American/Western nuclear family. Both articles addressed children’s well-being and growth as the central axis for comparison. The major concerns mentioned in the two works were similar: nonmarital cohabitation, separation, rising divorce rates, a high incidence of premarital sex, and a high percentage of single parenthood with a majority of them being women. Etzioni (1977) pointed out that the trouble was with high levels of individualisation. In his words, If any person seeks to maximize his or her own happiness and freedom without considering the consequences to others and to a relationship, the result can be highly detrimental to all those involved and to the family as an institution. People must learn to balance the personal rewards of “doing one’s own thing” against the hurt it might entail to others. No relationship, no institution, family or society can survive otherwise. (p. 8) 5 Conclusions and suggestions In this chapter, an attempt was made to highlight the implications of using Western concepts to understand Indian families and to examine the interrelationships between changing concepts of families, debates around individualism vs familism, and their connection to family systems in different regions of the world. An effort was also made to trace the footprints of these in the broad map of the historical development of the family studies discipline, followed by a critical view of the current position of family study. On the basis of this effort, observations were made that highlight the need to cover the following areas: 1 2 3 4

Teaching family and related concepts in the classroom in an open and inclusive manner. Studies with a focus on family interactions and interpersonal relationships. Studies on household size, family structure, and the new faces of families. Individual and comparative studies about the impact of social and economic processes on families.

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First, on the basis of their life experiences, a majority of students come to the classroom with certain received notions about family, its structure, and intergenerational relationships. Instead of teaching them a notion of normative family, be it nuclear or otherwise, it would be helpful to create opportunities in the classroom for students to open up to each other and understand the diversity of family structures and values that they bring with their backgrounds. One of the methods of helping students develop this understanding is using techniques to teach through experiential learning (Hendrix and Brown, 1980). We used a similar exercise to teach family concepts in the classroom based on students’ experiences (Devi Prasad and Nagchoudhuri, 2017) and built on this understanding to help students learn about the diverse forms of families and their value frameworks. Second, in the contemporary information age, a sociological analysis of interpersonal relationships will be an important contribution to understand the interactional dynamics of changing families (Gore, 1962, 1968a; Khatri, 1961). Further, other questions should be asked: How are relationships in families – between father and son, mother and son, husband and wife, and sister and brother – negotiated? How do families and extended kin get connected or disconnected in the contexts of migration or the division of properties or other resources? These can yield more valuable sociological information to understand the subjective and relational dimensions of Indian families. Domestic violence, child abuse, and elder abuse and neglect come under this subject area, where some research has already been initiated. Third, studies on important themes such as household size, family structure, and family forms have declined since the 1970s. To revisit the nature of change that Indian families are undergoing, there is an urgent need for another round of such studies (Patel, 2016, p. 375). Similarly, new forms of families covering a diversity of family forms, such as single child families, foster families, adoptive families, same-sex families, families of choice, military families, displaced families, and families with disabled members or those living with mental illness, need to be studied for their specifc attributes and challenges. Knowledge on diverse family forms is the need of the hour because it will inform planning and interventions and therefore should be given greater attention. Most important are studies on Northeast families, dalit, and other tribal groups, which are still scarce and need to be encouraged. Fourth, on the methodological front, it is evident that quantitative methodologies still predominate in family research in both regional contexts. However, qualitative research methods will be useful to study families’ experiences at the micro level. As emphasised by Coontz (2000), the historical method is more suitable to understanding changes in families across cultural contexts. Comparative historical studies and cross-cultural studies have proved immensely useful in widening our understanding of family systems with sensitivity (Blood, 1972). Most importantly, ethnographic studies about family processes, such as inter-household relationships, property

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divisions (Srinivas, 1952), and kinship relations and transactions (see Farber, 1966 for examples), which uncover currently ineffable dimensions would be helpful. Lewis (1995) suggested that for an intensive case study of families as functioning wholes, an anthropological approach to study families can be used to obtain a better understanding of relationship between culture and individuals. Such studies will be invaluable in enhancing our understanding of our families. Using literature, mass media, and other secondary sources is another approach. For example, content analysis – to understand images of families in literature or other mass media – can yield culturally sensitive insights.

Acknowledgements I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers’ comments, which were immensely useful in improving the focus of the chapter. I am also grateful to Prof B. Vijayalakshmi and Prof K. V. Ramana, who went through the drafts of the chapter at its various stages and gave their valuable feedback. I thank my students Apurva Vivek, Bhumika Sahani, Samdrita Das, and Shubha Sharma, who read the chapter and offered their helpful, critical comments. The faws if any in the chapter are solely mine.

Notes 1 UNL online international family studies specialization (2012). Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BJUFBPv8W8&feature=player_detailpage [Date of Access: 8 August 2018]. 2 Familism is defned as an ideology where the needs of the family as a whole take precedence over the needs of any of the family members. 3 According to Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2004), individualism is an outcome of a process whereby people are released from their pregiven ties, social relations, and belief systems to develop spaces of their own with allegiance to themselves or to spaces created and systems created by them. Also, see Peterson, 1995 and Peterson and Steinmetz, 1999 for instructive discussions. 4 During the 1970s, some family historians argued that the Western family was nuclear even during preindustrial times, thus refuting the thesis that the extended family broke down under the impact of industrialisation. They noted, however, that the “modern” nuclear family of the West was characterised by its isolation from extended kin and the transfer of production and other functions to outside institutions. Thus, the modern family is privatised, nuclear, domestic, and child centred, with the conjugal bond forming the crucial basis for family interactions (see Hareven, 1987 for a comprehensive discussion of this perspective). 5 Structural realities refer to the distances or distinct culture acting as serious constraints to continue relations with kin networks. For example, in the case of military families where mostly by compulsion, for reasons such as inaccessibility in terms of communication and transport, some of these families tend to become structurally independent of their kin network over a period of time (Hall, 2008; Knox and Price, 1995). 6 In urban areas, hukou is always used as an identity proof for one to get consumer provisions, housing, resettlement compensation, inheritance of public

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housing leases, and so forth. This complicated registration system led to serious inconsistencies between actual family/household population size and the registered household population size in China. 7 China introduced its new economic policy and the privatization of its economy beginning from 1978, and around the same time (1970), the Chinese government implemented its one-child policy. 8 In these debates, the concept of household was given more space and time, to the neglect of the study of family as a subjective relational space, especially the study of internal dynamics such as changes in dyadic relationships – between father and son, mother and son, and brother and sister – in the context of family change (Uberoi, 2014, p. 284; Shah, 2005). Gore (1962), also emphasised that for a student of social change, focusing on relational aspects of family would be useful to better understand family change. He conducted an interesting study exploring these relations. 9 Only the masculine gender was used in the Act though the legislation refers to both men and women.

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3

Media, technology and family The changing dynamics of interaction1 Tara Nair

The idea of Indian family is clearly contested. Although family has remained a dominant social institution in the subcontinent, it has not been a subject of sustained academic interest since the 1970s (Patel, 2005). At the same time, the term “household” gained visibility and acceptance, especially in the policy discourse of planning and development and in the national data systems like the decennial census enumerations of population or the national surveys relating to employment/unemployment. Some scholars believed that such large-scale empirical disaggregation carried out by demographers and economists helped integrate micro and macro perspectives on the household and the family (Shah, 2005). Uberoi (2004), on the other hand, argues that tracing changes in the forms and composition of “household,” a commensal/ coresident unit of residence,2 may not lead one to appreciate the process of changes in “family” system, because the latter refers to a more complex phenomenon of kinship behaviour and the values and norms associated with it. Further, there is wide diversity among family systems across regions, castes, classes, communities and individual lifecycles, making its analysis highly complex (ibid.). Such conceptual complexity has meant little appreciation of how this important and foundational unit of social organisation shapes and is shaped by changes in the environment as also transformation of other institutions. My attempt in this chapter is to address this gap in the specifc context of interactions between family and the predominant cultural institution of media to the extent that is possible with the help of extant literature. An attempt is made in the chapter to explore the pathways of infuence that link family (the haziness of the concept and its overlapping with the imperfect substitute of “household” notwithstanding) and media in an environment marked by the fast diffusion of the Internet and digital technology, signifcant shifts in the political economy of policy making and the apparent emergence of a “global cultural system” (Appadurai, 2006). I shall focus specifcally on television and digital media in the sections that follow.

Shifting socioeconomics of millennial India Electronic media – radio and television – in India remained the monopoly of the state until the early 1990s, posturing as an important “national”

76 Tara Nair institution symbolising the cultural prowess of the country and relaying messages of unity, national integration and economic development on behalf of the governments at the centre. The reach of this media, however, was limited during the early decades, accessible only in select metropolitan cities and mainly to the elite and the affuent. The 1990s heralded a revolutionary shift in the country’s electronic mediascape, when transnational television programmes began to beam in, starting with CNN’s broadcast of the Gulf War in 1992 and followed by STAR TV’s launch into entertainment broadcasting (Butcher, 2003). Taking advantage of the country’s rudimentary broadcast regulation and liberal economic policies and championed by an emerging domestic media entrepreneurial class, the television broadcast sector grew fast through the ensuing decades, adding more and more channels across genres and regions, exposing the viewers to an increasing volume and variety of programme content, including international content. The material conditions of media production underwent sweeping changes during this period. By the end of the 2000s, there were 196 million television homes in the country, 80 percent of which were connected to either cable or satellite networks. This was indeed a commendable achievement given that the number of cable and satellite homes in India in 1992 was only 0.41 million.3 Globally, the fast diffusion of mobile telephony and rapid rise in Internet use have been instrumental in accelerating the pace of the digitalisation of media, setting the stage for the emergence of an elaborate multimedia system that converges distinct and diverse modes of communication technologies into an integrated network. This has indeed brought about a profound transformation in the media environment and character (Castells, 2010) given that the new interactive communication technologies have rendered dialogic – open-ended, interactive and discursive – engagement with audiences a possibility, thus marking a revolutionary break with the monologic, traditional media, where “voices . . . typically remain on a step removed from the life of the audience . . . relegated to the status of ‘background noise’ ” (Gergen, 2002, pp. 229–230). Unlike in the Western nations, both private television and digital media entered India alongside the wave of neoliberalism that made its defnitive entry around the late 1980s. The structural changes around neoliberal policies have impacted not only the sphere of economic transactions but social, political and cultural domains and relationships too. For one, the social and economic discourse has come to deploy a new language and vocabulary informed by a worldview that denigrates the term “public” as signifying immorality and ineffciency, defnes “liberty” simply as self-interest and freedom from restraint by the state and celebrates individual interests as the only reality that matters. New

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subjectivities have come to be constructed and normalised, drawing on the newly acquired power of terms like “customer,” “consumer,” “choice,” “markets” and “self-interest” and the relationships assumed to underlie them (Massey, 2015). The neoliberal economic, social and cultural order has been accompanied by a distinct phase of globalisation that builds on the communication technology revolution and global fnancialisation processes and renders it possible to circulate messages and symbols as also capital almost real time across spaces. The impact of globalisation on culture and society is still a contested academic debate, though a dominant line of thinking is that “globalization involves the use of a variety of instruments of homogenization (armaments, advertising techniques, language hegemonies, and clothing styles) that are absorbed into local political and cultural economies, only to be repatriated as heterogeneous dialogues” (Appadurai, 2006, p. 596). In other words, global culture is produced through the incessant mutual contest of sameness and difference. The audiovisual media in India have evolved through the two decades since the mid 1990s in close interaction with the ideological and material processes that defne and describe culture and society in such a complex milieu. A marked manifestation of these dynamics is visible in the hegemonic rise of the middle class (extending the class beyond the traditional elites) both as a socioeconomic formation and as a political force, thanks to service-sector-led economic growth, the expansion of urbanisation and higher education, mainly in the private sector. Importantly, who constitutes the middle class is still a matter of debate in India, one that depends on how one defnes its material characteristics. According to Deshpande (2009, [para. 6]), Groups described as “middle class” in the media and in dominant discourse are far from the middle of the economic pyramid and close to its top. Groups that are actually in the middle – a wide band around the median level of living – are too poor to be of interest to the mainstream media, and not poor enough for the occasional “human interest” story on starvation deaths or the like. Thus, what is generally referred to as the middle class in India constitutes a fairly small minority, even though it succeeds in casting a much larger ideological shadow. The Lok Survey conducted in 20144 (Kapur and Vaishnav, 2014) found that a sizeable proportion of respondents across all income groups perceive themselves to be part of the Indian middle class. Thus 47 percent of lower-middle-income respondents (annual income Rs. 36,000 to Rs. 96,000) identifed as middle class, even as half of middle income (Rs. 96,000 to Rs. 180,000) and 54 percent of upper middle income (Rs. 180,000 to Rs. 720,000) respondents did so. Some scholars (e.g. Mooij

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and Lama-Rewal, 2009) argue that middle-classisation, a defning feature of liberalising India has meant two parallel processes: 1

2

Social polarisation as “the upper segments of the middle class become richer, indulge in more lavish consumerism, and isolate themselves in gated communities, while the poor become poorer . . . in relative terms” (p. 83). The homogenisation of aspirations.

The cities have emerged as “strategically critical arenas” where neoliberalism and the attendant processes articulated themselves mainly through the spectacle of consumption (Brenner and Theodore, 2002). Cities have come to bear “the brunt of the new globalisation both in transformative and imaginative terms, with changes in infrastructure, social arrangements and constant expansion” (Sundaram, 2004, p. 64). However, As Kundu (2014) argues, the peculiar pattern of Indian urbanisation – slow and top heavy – has also contributed to the accentuation of inequalities rather than the advancement of inclusion. Entrepreneurial state and local governments in the large Indian cities have begun to follow strong market-driven strategies of urban development emulating Singapore and Shanghai, dispossessing in the process lowincome people and riding over their informal livelihoods (Shatkin, 2011). Has the institution of family been affected by these rather complex processes and material/ideological shifts? Scholars who studied Western capitalist societies have observed certain defnite tendencies that mark family formation within the logic of neoliberalism. For instance, the collection of essays edited by Garrett, Jensen and Voela (2016) delineate some of these tendencies systematically. It is contended by Garrett and colleagues (2016) that the free-market ideology has led to the formation of family in the moulds of “hyper competition” and “neotraditionalism” because it sets out to take full advantage of the unequal entitlements to ensure the best future of its own children. The media for its part has come to constitute a critical cultural space for the neoliberal imagination represented by individual freedom, choice, self-reliance and entrepreneurial subjectivity to fnd expression through family relationships, like between parents and children (Meyer and Milestone, 2016; Dokter, 2016). Such analyses, unfortunately, are missing in the Indian context. My attempt in the ensuing sections is to try to piece together fragments of analyses and insights from research elsewhere to build a critical Indian narrative that positions family and intimate relations within the contemporary mediatised and market-driven times.

Fraying at the margins but staying cool: television and the grand Indian family Despite the challenges on the conceptual front, “family” has been central to the existence and growth of television in India. Until the advent of colour

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broadcasting in India in the 1980s, the medium of television was an exclusive national education project: the relay system of the state to propagate progressive development ideals that it considered critical for embracing modernity. The social educational focus of television started giving way to “socially responsible” entertainment around the early 1980s, when colour television made its entry into the country (Kumar, 2008). Hum Log, the frst family drama5 in a serialised format that started broadcasting in 1984, tried to integrate the national reconstruction ideals of the state in the genre of drama after the development of communications strategy by Miguel Sabido in Mexico in the 1970s.6 The serial celebrated the virtues of (the North Indian) “extended family” as an ideal form of living – “a unifying civilisational ideal” (Uberoi, 2004). As Uberoi (2004) argues, the early sociological writings had valorised patriarchal joint family as the traditional Indian family to the complete neglect of other prevalent kinship practices, especially those in the Dravidian culture and among non-Hindu communities. More importantly, though the serial (and many that followed it through the 1980s) dealt with several issues regarding women’s social status – family planning, early marriage, illiteracy, domestic violence, work participation and economic independence – they were carefully divorced from any discourse on the grossly unequal power relationship between men and women that sustains the edifce of extended families. Similarly, they stayed away from problematising the intergenerational struggle for status, dominance and control, which is constantly at play within families (Kumar, 2008; Mankekar, 1999). The television serials of the 1980s and 1990s were thus important sites for the reproduction of the image of a “national family,” which extols the value of living together and sharing common resources while being staunchly entrenched in patriarchy. By the beginning of the 2000s, the media markets in the country were enlarged and fragmented with multiple regional television channels, multiedition newspapers and magazines, an emerging digital and new media sector and a fedgling FM radio. The regional language broadcasting received a big boost during this period thanks to the spread of regional transmission of Doordarshan – the state broadcasting entity – and, more importantly, due to the launching of a host of private channels. The platter of programme choices became larger, and niche channels with differentiated audiences started emerging across channels. The struggle of channels to tailor their content to suit the mysterious “actual” (yet measurable) audience has been steered by marketing departments and audience rating agencies whose metrics suggest that Indian families typically prefer to watch programmes together. This is said to have driven broadcasters to target entire families while creating programme content across general entertainment channels, especially, for the prime-time evening slots. Interestingly, almost all the major family serials broadcast across channels in the blooming phase of private entertainment television in the country spanning the 2000s had plots where women played the central protagonists. In the feminised programming scheme, they were portrayed as the strong pillars to hold the edifce of the family together

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even when its foundations are weathered by the erosion of traditional family values, the individualist aspirations of the younger generation and their own ambition to be free of the pressures of cultural gatekeeping. The lead female characters are shown as being capable of asserting their views and judgements on other family members and manipulate family-level decisionmaking by combining clever political strategies and feminine charm. Such a characterisation seems to ft the image of the new Indian woman celebrated by the champions of the free market and consumerism: a woman who “balances modernity and tradition” and is able to combine self-indulgence with a focus on family and children (Bijapurkar, 2014). Although several scholars have seen the prime-time dramas as regressive, some others, like Munshi (2010), considered them to carry robust messages for women, especially in rural areas, about the need to be strong and independent. Munshi’s argument resonates well with the fndings of a study done a couple of years earlier by Jensen and Oster (2007).7 Their analysis strongly indicated that the introduction of cable and satellite television in India has been associated with the increased autonomy of women. The women they compared before and after the introduction of television reported lower acceptability for spousal abuse, lower son preference, and lower fertility. Many studies carried out in the 1990s and early 2000s examining the impact of television on social life indicated some degree of rearrangement of situational geographies due to the introduction of electronic media. This rearrangement involved the displacement of individuals from their distinct physical settings dictated by their given social roles and spatial differentiation and relocating them in a media-created informational setting (Meyrowitz, 1985). In an ethnographic study covering two villages in Maharashtra (done in two rounds from 1995/1996 to 2000), Johnson (2001) observed that television had brought structural and psychological changes in social and family relationships. Television has signifcantly contributed to the restructuring of social relationships in the village . . . acts as a catalyst in bringing both men and women of all ages together on a regular basis in close proximity for an extended period of time. This closeness over time has created new types of relationships among people of different ages and genders. . . . Television imparts messages and images to every viewer equally. . . . Children and youth are often as informed and knowledgeable if not more so than adults. The need to watch television among family members initiates a breakdown in the sex-role differentiation of work toward sharing certain responsibilities, so everyone may watch television. (p. 157) Importantly, Johnson’s research did not fnd any drastic restructuring of the gendered nature of social structure and relationships in the study villages. The social locations of men and women were still separated by the

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dictates of the dominant institutional environment of male dominance and gender inequality. These divergent observations suggested that there is no automatic or straightforward impact pathway connecting media exposure and transformation in societal norms and practices in necessarily affrmative ways. External institutional structures that individuals face in their everyday life in a given society are crucial in rooting the cultural meanings that they derive from media messages (Derné, 2005). While analysing the observations from two phases of ethnographic research done in Dehradun (1991 and 2001) among middle-class young male moviegoers, Derné found that most of them enjoyed the celebration of love in flms or television, but they considered it impossible to exercise their own choice in marriage given the structural barriers that they face. Similarly, they tended to reject media portrayals of women’s independence given the institutional structures of male dominance encountered as an everyday reality at home. Much the same way, he argued, the elite and affuent Indians might “embrace new cultural imaginations of gender and family trumpeted in transnational media precisely because globalisation has transformed their structural realities” (p. 44). Despite the sparks of optimism surrounding the possibilities of women’s empowerment that television engenders, the ideal of patriarchal joint families continues to frame the representation of women’s lives and everyday travails in today’s television serials in ways that do not disturb the status quo. Women continue to be portrayed as assertive warriors of justice on the one hand and self-effacing martyrs on the other, ever willing to lay their interests and aspirations at the altar of the family to save the venerable institution from disintegrating. More importantly, the contemporary television family in India has traversed a long distance from the “national family” of the 1990s to be reframed into a neoliberal family, the primary site where individuals collaboratively and independently contend with a pervasive culture of consumption in an effort to assert their identities. As Cullity (2002) found in the case of MTV India, Indian television has been successful in carefully crafting the hybrid image of a middle-class Western-Indian viewer, one who engages with “modernity and the West as an individual and still maintains Indianness,” the essence of which lies in “maintaining integral connections or roots in a larger collectivity” (p. 421). The youth in Johnson’s (2001) study in rural Maharashtra cited earlier has shared these characteristics: rebellious, materialistic and bound to families. We argue in this section that the general entertainment television in India for the most part of its history has kept itself away from analysing and interpreting family as an evolving institution caught in the interstices of larger economic, social and demographic changes. The same has been the experience with niche channels, targeting specifc audience segments like youth even as they have dealt with the peculiar social lives of the young generation and helped them negotiate the complex issues of identity and agency. As a result, the media continues to portray a typical Indian family as one which is desperately Indian in that it deploys all possible means to keep its extended

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Changing notion of the media and its import for social ties: the era of digital media The advent of digital communication technology and its increased convergence with traditional media has brought forth revolutionary changes in media consumption experience by enabling individuals to consume social and other media at times and spaces that suit their convenience and on devices of their choices – be it mobile phones, computers or any other personal digital assistants. As for India, the growth in the number of mobile phone subscribers and Internet users has been phenomenal since the early 2000s. As per the Mobile Economy India 2016 report (GSMA, 2016), India has the second highest number of unique mobile subscribers – 616 million – and has also emerged as the second largest smart phone market globally. Half of all Indians have mobile phones. In a sample survey conducted in 2014 by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in select Indian cities, it was found that 72 percent of the students (74 percent of boys and 68 percent of girls) in the 12–18 age group own smart phones (TCS, 2015). Estimates by Internet World Stats for 2016 put the country in the second position (after China) in terms of Internet users, at 462 million.8 However, the proportion of population with access to Internet in the country then was just 18 percent. The number of users has grown subsequently to 462 million, and the population coverage has grown to 23 percent by December 2017. As per the TCS Survey (2015), a large majority of smart phone–owning youth in India were engaged in social networking through Facebook (89 percent), followed by Google+ (64.4 percent) and Twitter (43.7 percent). The gender differential in social networking access is noteworthy – 86 percent of boys reported as having access to such sites compared to 77 percent of girls. Social media is seen by youth mainly as a means to stay connected with family as also to gather knowledge about news and current affairs. The report also observes that, overall, of the the Indian Internet users, 56 percent and 51 percent, respectively, were using WhatsApp and Facebook everyday by September 2015. The country had emerged by then as the second largest base for Facebook, with over 125 million users.9 Even with such an impressive growth of digital technology, there still exist curious paradoxes. Importantly, the paradox of the high presence of and yet low access to the Internet is peculiar to India given the disparity between its demographic size, rural and urban divide and development of structuralinstitutional resources. This has also led to a lopsided distribution of digital resources – or digital divide – which has appended a serious additional dimension to the many inequities already present in the social and economic spheres.

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There are not many systematic studies available in India that interrogate the working of widely prevalent new and social media in the private and public spheres. Discrete reports in the popular media conjectures about how social media affects family relationships by quoting mental health experts and counsellors. Some of the reports refer to instances of “absent presence” even during times when family members are expected to be together and communicating, excessive gadget obsession among individuals and the rising incidence of infdelity (Ramkumar, 2015). The paradox of individuals being gripped by the “fear of missing out” despite their intense involvement in virtual socialisation has also been discussed in the popular media (IndoAsian News Service, 2015). Given the nascent status of research on the social working of new media in India, it is perhaps important to scan the considerable scholarship on the interface between new media and social change relating to other cultural contexts, especially of Western industrialised societies to derive meaningful insights. Even in such contexts, where new media reach has been nearly saturated, the research fndings on its effects on social institutions and relationships have been mixed and inconclusive. This ambiguity emanates largely from the fact that unlike the monologic television or flm, digital media is more versatile in that users not only are engaged in making meanings of the messages of the medium but are active producers of messages and constantly in dialogue with the medium. As regards the digital media’s interface with family, some researchers argued that instead of focusing on the technology per se, attention must be devoted to exploring the density of the pre-existing relational environment in which such technologies are introduced. Studying the impact of the Internet on connectivity between people, Haythornthwaite (2002) found that family ties were likely to be disrupted if Internet replaces face-to-face communication (as among family members). However, her analysis also demonstrated that the density of social ties between communicators is a critical determinant of how the new media impacts social relations. According to her, where ties are strong, communicators will adapt their use of media to support the greater range of expression important to their relationship, and use multiple means of communication to support their tie. They will be more ready to adopt new media that suit or complement their communication needs, more able to infuence each other to use and adapt it, but also more able to infuence each other to resist a change when it does not suit their mutually agreed patterns of communication. On the other hand, weakly tied pairs will be more passive in their use and adoption of new media. (p. 397) She called this phenomenon – of “more strongly tied pairs making use of more of the available media” – media multiplexity (Haythornthwaite,

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2005). The presence of media multiplexity suggests that families with strong ties among members can successfully leverage the new media revolution to counter its possible disintegrative impact. There are other studies that emphasise the characteristics of the technology as exerting absolute power over the relational environment. They argue that new communication media tend to dilute cross-generational or vertical communication between the young and old, as the former start investing their attention on nurturing horizontal networks of peer communication (Livingstone, 2009). According to Gergen (2002), the shift in favour of horizontal communication networks exemplifes the potential inherent in modern communication technologies to erase the physical presence of individuals by an absent presence, thus disconnecting meaning from the material context and eroding depth of vertical relationships. Cell phones are one technology that “possesses capabilities to extend outward into the social and material world,” thus “impeding the cultural drift” created by absent presence implicit in other technologies of communication. It has also been argued that deep and more committed communication forms have become redundant in a converged media and communication world, where formerly separate modalities of mediated communication – the Internet, telecommunications, portable computer, personal digital assistants (PDAs), broadcasting, wireless and infrared technologies and digital audio and video – have come together. It is in the new personalised “digital habitats,” constituted by social networks, instant messages, video and online games, blogs, and video-sharing sites, that the youth work, play, interact, express themselves and connect with the wide world outside. As natives of this superlatively mediated world, they share a pervasive culture that transcends spatial and linguistic divides. Premised on a deterministic logic of technology, these studies have tried to argue that the pervasive presence of new media has given birth to “a new generation of young people” with distinct skills, learning aptitudes and social preferences (Mesch, 2009). They value their independence and individuality and are capable of subverting parental oversight and censoring with their intimate understanding of the technology.

Disappearance of the intimate: media and the “moral panic” The apparent power of the new media to create personal habitats of intense communication away from the regulatory gaze of authoritative social institutions has also raised considerable “moral panic”10 among scholars. It is feared that as these digital habitats increasingly replace real and intimate social spaces, the foundations of a healthy and orderly society might disintegrate. There are two clear perspectives as to how new media mediate interpersonal communication in social spheres. Katz and Aspden (1997) were among the earliest to conduct a systematic analysis of the effects of Internet use on the social contacts of individuals. The study did not fnd any signifcant association between Internet use and social ties, prompting

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the researchers to conclude that it neither affects the social involvement of users nor makes them feel lonelier than non-users. However, a much debated experimental study using longitudinal data published by Kraut and others (1998, p. 107) countered this fnding and argued that “greater use of the Internet was associated with declines in participants’ communication with family members in the household, declines in the size of their social circle, and increases in their depression and loneliness.” Nie and Erbringin (as cited in Franzen, 2009) found empirical evidence for the privatisation of leisure and individualisation of transactions among regular Internet users. Franzen’s own analysis of Internet users in Switzerland, however, refuted the hypothesis of Internet reducing social interaction. The anxieties about the imminent obliteration of the intimate, face-to-face human interactions by the “robotic moment” continue to bother observers a great social transformation being unleashed on post-industrial societies. Turkle (2011) has expressed such anxieties most eloquently: These days being connected depends not on our distance from each other but from available communications technology. Most of the time, we carry that technology with us. In fact, being alone can start to seem like a pre-condition for being together because it is easier to communicate if you can focus, without interruption, on your screen. In this new regime, a train station (like an airport, a cafe or a park) is no longer a communal space but a place of social collection: people come together but do not speak to each other. Each is tethered to a mobile device and to the people and places to which that device serves as a portal. (p. 155) She asserts that that the cacophony of online culture would tempt children into “narcissistic ways of relating to the world” (p. 179) and that the “ties we form through the Internet are not, in the end, the ties that bind. But they are the ties that preoccupy” (p. 280). Interestingly, many studies by public health researchers have reinforced the fear that social media interferes with and undermines real friendships, creates distance between individuals and makes them lonelier. They warn about the rise of newer risks to families arising from individuals’ over engagement with the Internet and social networking activities. Studies in this genre explored the risks associated with phenomena like “Facebook depression” among young adults (O’Keeffe, Clarke-Pearson, and Council on Communications and Media, 2011) or online peer aggression/harassment exacerbating instability and depression in teenagers, leading even to “cyberbullicides,” or suicides of those affected by cyber bullying11 (Luxton, June, and Fairall, 2012; Hinduja and Patchin, 2010). In the early 2000s, several reports appeared in Western media of the cult of suicides spreading menacingly in Japan. Internet chat rooms were blamed to be the sites where suicide

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pacts were made among consenting individuals (Harding, 2004; Samuels, 2007). Predictions that envisage a spell of doom befalling human relations as a result of increased exposure to new media have also been countered by research studies. It is argued that such fears do not seem to recognise the intimate interconnections between communication and sociocultural change. “Because culture is mediated and enacted through communication, cultures themselves – that is, our historically produced systems of beliefs and codes – become fundamentally transformed” (Castells, 2010, p. 357). And such transformation would be more radical in an era dominated by digital technology. Arguing along the same lines, Adolf and Deicke (2015) connect Internet proliferation to increased individualisation. What is perhaps more important to notice, according to them, is that the network architecture of the Internet also offers new possibilities for users to reintegrate into society and maintain social relations through communication. This phenomenon of convergence of individualisation and network mode of mediated communication is what they called networked individuality. The possibility offered by digital technologies to retain one’s individuality while remaining connected in the social world can have distinct implications for social relationships. In Madianou and Miller’s (2012) study of how Filipino mothers settled in the UK and their children back home communicate transnationally in a “poly-media” environment, they aver that intense communication between mothers and children with the help of new communication technologies, especially mobile phones, signifcantly transform the experience of accentuated separation for both parties. They found that the availability of affordable technologies that ensure instant connectivity is a strong determinant of the decision of these mothers to migrate. At the same time, the study also showed that the possibility of perpetual connectedness in a poly-media communicative environment also results in frequent ruptures and conficts in mother–child relationships.

Towards interpreting media–family interactions Given the vastly diverse perspectives and value prescriptions around the social impact of new media, where would one anchor the discussion on their impact on an increasingly contested societal institution like family? In India and in many other Asian societies, not only is family a foundational institution of society, but also “its position has been central and critical in ways that mark it apart from other (notably Western) societies” (Kannabiran, 2006, p. 4427). Much of the anxieties about new media’s “negative” or undesirable impact emanate from a typical representation of family as an ideal cohesive unit coordinated by an authority structure dominated by the husband and father (Glendon, 1975), which, paradoxically, nurtures relationships with strong coping mechanisms (Sonawat, 2001). It is important to rupture this frame to make way for a more realistically dynamic

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understanding of family as a contested institution of intimate social interactions, shaped historically by material conditions as also by culturally defned relationships like kinship that defnes obligations, rights and boundaries of interaction among members of society. As Kannabiran (2006) argues, in India, there is relatively little material that looks at . . . the family as a material institution that demonstrates the playing out of contestation for material assets, privileges and rights in adversarial relationships, or even more interestingly in affective relationships that turn adversarial on account of aspirations to economic control/control over bodies. (p. 4430) One way to understand how changing communication technologies interact with the institution of family is by locating the latter within the changing relational base of societies. As argued by some, the relations that characterised the small worlds of craft and industrial societies have been fragmented as post-industrial modernity has created opportunities for the rise of libertarian individualism (Bauman, 2000, 2011; Beck, Bonss, and Lau, 2003). The rise in the share of single-member households in Western societies is perhaps an important aspect of individualisation. Such households constitute about one-fourth of all in the US (Castells, 2010). In India, though they still form a small proportion of all normal households, their share has increased between the census years of 2001 and 2011 from 3.9 percent to 4.1 percent (Dommaraju, 2015, pp. 1246–1247). Further, since 1991, while households continued to increase at a greater pace, there has been a decline in the mean household size in India, refecting the deepening of the demographic transition process associated with fertility decline. There has also been a rise in nuclear families relative to multigenerational families (Nayak and Behera, 2014). Post-industrial modernity is fraught with contradictions. On the one hand, there is a movement towards detraditionalisation and individualisation wherein the traditional norms that have hitherto defned and shaped people’s lives are undermined to pave the way for the emergence of liberated individuals. On the other hand, there has been an increasing fear of the risks and uncertainties that underpin the transition towards a new social order, which promises greater freedom from the shackles of traditions. In the micro social site of family, this contradiction is played out in the form of moral panic about a generation turning indifferent towards intimate family ties. Interestingly, the moral panic about new media and its potential to disturb the apparently cohesive traditional Indian family has an explicit gender dimension. Media has reported instances from the states of Gujarat, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, where village panchayats, caste councils or khap panchayats have banned girls and other young women from using

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mobile phones as a necessary measure to “save” them from “going astray” and getting into marital relationships of their choice.12 In a news story published in February 2016, a village leader in Gujarat is quoted as having stated, “Let them study, get married, then they can get their own phones. Until then, they can use their fathers’ phones at home, if necessary.”13 In a recent study among villages in Dahod-Panchmahal districts in Gujarat, Joshi and Dand (2019) narrated several instances of families either banning or severely restricting mobile use by girls and other young unmarried women for fear of them spoiling family honour. As one of the participants in the study reported, “When women talk, they all want to know who was at the other end of the phone” (p. 6). There are obvious challenges in current times to the imagination of family as a monolithic institution, a benign space where activities of production, reproduction, nurturance and socialisation are converged in non-overlapping and non-hierarchical ways. Changes in a variety of factors in the demographic, psychological, social and economic spheres have made it possible for individuals to engage in these activities independently of the institution of family. However, family continues to be a dominant institution in India across regions, communities and classes “through which the individual acquires his capabilities and orientation as a member of society” (Beteillé, 1993, pp. 440– 441). The Indian family has also demonstrated its ability to adapt to social and economic impulses over time, such adaptability having been manifestly refected in demographic changes like nuclearisation, the rising age at which people get married and the voluntary limitation of family size. These changes, as Beteillé (1993) points out, are likely to be accompanied by “more subtle changes in the relations between spouses, between parents and children, and between siblings” (p. 441). Developments in media and technology appear to have further mediated and modifed such transformations in personal and intra-family interactions. The larger question is whether new media and communication forms tend to destabilise family ties by widening the gap between generations, as feared by some, or whether they help reconfgure the family space in ways that could be transformative and empowering.

Notes 1 An earlier version of this chapter was published in the special issue of The Indian Journal of Social Work (2016) as “Family transitions and emerging forms,” 77(4), 387–406. 2 The Census of India defnes “household” as a group of people who normally live together and take their meals from a common kitchen unless the exigencies of work prevent any of them from doing so. The people in a household may be related or unrelated or a mix of both. See Concepts and Defnitions. Retrieved from http://censusindia.gov.in/Data_Products/Data_Highlights/Data_Highlights_ link/concepts_def_hh.pdf [Date of Access: 7 September 2019]. 3 Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (2018). Annual report 2017–18. Retrieved from https://mib.gov.in/sites/default/fles/Annual%20Report_201718%20%28English%29.pdf [Date of Access: 14 February 2020].

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4 This is the second round of a multiyear panel study sponsored by the Lok Foundation and carried out by the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI), the University of Pennsylvania and the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace. The surveys aim to unpack the sociopolitical reconfgurations taking place across India over several years. 5 The genre that revolves around family relationships and conficts between family members. 6 The Sabido methodology is a theoretical model for stimulating positive change in social attitudes and behaviors through commercial television and radio programming. Sabido pioneered the use of telenovelas to address social issues during the 1970s, when he was vice president for research at the Mexican television network, Televisa. Over the next decade, he produced six social content serial dramas in Mexico and during the time when many of his telenovelas were on the air, Mexico underwent a 34 percent decline in its population growth rate. As a result, in May 1986, the United Nations Population Prize was presented to Mexico as the foremost population success story in the world. Since the 1980s, the Sabido methodology has been used to motivate changes in attitudes and behaviors on a wide range of issues, including child slavery, women’s status, environmental protection, and HIV/AIDS. (see Barker, 2007) 7 They used a three-year panel dataset (2001 to 2003), covering women in fve Indian states. 8 Internet live stats. Retrieved from www.internetlivestats.com [Date of Access: 14 October 2019]. 9 See Half of online Indians use Facebook, WhatsApp daily: Report. livemint, 7 October 2015. Retrieved from www.livemint.com/Industry/ vU55FbKdlz9vIfkxUb0EoL/Facebook-tops-networking-WhatsApp-in-messageapps-in-India.html [Date of Access: 29 February 2016]. 10 Stanley Cohen defned moral panic in his seminal paper Folk Devils and Moral Panics that appeared in 1972 thus: A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defned as a threat to societal values and interests. . . . Sometimes the object of the panic is quite novel and at other times it is something which has been in existence long enough, but suddenly appears in the limelight. Sometimes the panic passes over and is forgotten, except in folklore and collective memory; at other times it has more serious and long-lasting repercussions and might produce such changes as those in legal and social policy or even in the way the society conceives itself.(as cited in Hunt, 1997) 11 Cyber bullying typically refers to intentional, targeted and repeated threatening, harassment, humiliation or embarrassment of a child or adolescent by another child or teen by means of cellular phones or Internet technologies such as email, texting, social networking sites, or instant messaging. Cyber harassment and cyber stalking typically refer to the same actions when they involve adults (Luxton et al., 2012). 12 Bihar Panchayat bans jeans, mobiles for girls. The Hindu, 19 December 2014; Aligarh: Panchayat bans mobile phones for girls under 18. Hindustan Times, 20 February 2016; Gujarat village bans mobile phone for school girls. The Indian Express (Ahmedabad), 22 February 2016. 13 India: Banning women from owning mobile phones. (2016, February 26). Retrieved from www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/02/india-banning-womenowning-mobile-phones-160226120014162.html [Date of Access: 7 September 2019].

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References Adolf, M., and Deicke, D. (2015). New modes of integration: Individuality and sociality in digital networks. First Monday, 20(1). Retrieved from http://frstmonday. org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/5495 [Date of Access: 14 October 2019]. Appadurai, A. (2006). Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. In M. G. Durham and D. M. Kellner (Eds.), Media and cultural studies: Keyworks (pp. 584–603). Malden, MA; Oxford; Victoria: Blackwell Publishing. Barker, K. (2007, July 1). Sex, soap and social change: The sabido methodology. Aidslink, 104. Retrieved from www.populationmedia.org/2007/08/09/sex-soapsocial-change-the-sabido-methodology/ [Date of Access: 7 September 2019]. Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid modernity. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Interscience. Bauman, Z. (2011). Culture in a liquid modern world. Cambridge: Polity Press. Beck, U., Bonss, W., and Lau, C. (2003). The theory of refexive modernization: Problematic, hypotheses and research programme. Theory, Culture & Society, 20(2), 1–33. Beteillé, A. (1993). The family and the reproduction of inequality. In P. Uberoi (Ed.), Family, kinship and marriage in India (pp. 435–451). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Bijapurkar, R. (2014). A never-before world: Tracking the evolution of consumer India. Gurgaon, Haryana, India: Penguin India. Brenner, N., and Theodore, N. (2002). Cities and the geographies of “actually existing neo-liberalism.” Antipode, 34(3), 349–379. Butcher, M. (2003). Transnational television, cultural identity and change: When STAR came to India. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Castells, M. (2010). The rise of network society. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Cullity, J. (2002). The global “desi”: Cultural nationalism on MTV India. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 26(40), 408–425. Derné, S. (2005). The (limited) effect of cultural globalization in India: Implications for culture theory. Poetics, 33, 33–47. Deshpande, S. (2009, October). The moral meanings of majorities. Seminar, 602. Retrieved from www.india-seminar.com/2009/602/602_satish_deshpande.htm [Date of Access: 12 October 2019]. Dokter, A. (2016). Bathing babies in the blogosphere: Gendered labour and entrepreneurial motherhood in cyberspace. In R. Garrett, T. Jensen, and A. Voela (Eds.), We need to talk about family: Essays on neoliberalism, the family and popular culture (pp. 199–223). New Castle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Dommaraju, P. (2015). One-person households in India. Demographic Research, 32, Article 45, 1239–1266. Retrieved from www.demographic-research.org/Volumes/ Vol32/45/ doi:10.4054/DemRes.2015.32.45 [Date of Access: 14 February 2020]. Franzen, A. (2009). Social capital and the new communication technologies. In J. E. Katz (Ed.), Machines that become us: The social context of personal communication technology (pp. 105–116). Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Garrett, R., Jensen, T., and Voela, A. (2016). Introduction: “The fantasies are fraying”: Neoliberalism and the collapse of a progressive politics of the family. In R. Garrett, T. Jensen, and A. Voela (Eds.), We need to talk about family: Essays on neoliberalism, the family and popular culture (pp. VIII-XXVII). New Castle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Gergen, K. J. (2002). The challenge of absent presence. In J. E. Katz and M. Aakhus (Eds.), Perpetual contact: Mobile communication, private talk, public performance (pp. 227–241). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Glendon, M. A. (1975). Power and authority in the family: New legal patterns as refections of changing ideologies. The American Journal of Comparative Law, 23(1), 1–33. GSMA. (2016). The mobile economy-India 2016. London: Author. Retrieved from www.gsma.com/mobileeconomy/india/ [Date of Access: 14 October 2019]. Harding, A. (2004, December 7). Japan’s internet suicide clubs. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/4071805.stm [Date of Access: 14 October 2019]. Haythornthwaite, C. (2002). Strong, weak, and latent ties and the impact of new media. The Information Society, 18, 385–401. Haythornthwaite, C. (2005). Social networks and internet connectivity effects. Information, Communication and Society, 8(2), 125–147. Hinduja, S., and Patchin, J. W. (2010). Cyberbullying and suicide. Cyberbullying Research Summary. Retrieved from www.cyberbullying.org/cyberbullying_and_ suicide_research_fact_sheet.pdf [Date of Access: 14 October 2019]. Hunt, A. (1997). “Moral panic” and moral language in the media. The British Journal of Sociology, 48(4), 629–648. Indo-Asian News Service. (2015, February 4). Beware social media addiction can cause FOMO. Retrieved from https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/life-style/ beware-social-media-addiction-can-cause-fomo [Date of Access: 14 October 2019]. Jensen, R., and Oster, E. (2007). The power of TV: Cable television and women’s status in India. NBER Working Paper 13305, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Johnson, K. (2001). Media and social change: The modernizing infuences of television in modern India. Media, Culture & Society, 23, 147–169. Joshi, P., and Dand, S. (2019). Mobile phones, subversion, control and violence: Experiences from rural Gujarat. Unpublished monograph, Area Networking for Development Initiatives (ANANDI), Ahmedabad. Kannabiran, K. (2006). Three-dimensional family: Remapping a multidisciplinary approach to family studies. Economic and Political Weekly, 41(42), 4427–4433. Kapur, D., and Vaishnav, M. (2014, December 14). Being middle class in India. The Hindu. Retrieved from www.thehindu.com [Date of Access: 7 September 2019]. Katz, J. E., and Aspden, P. (1997). A nation of strangers? Communications of the ACM, 40(12), 81–86. Kraut, R., Patterson, M., Lundmark, V., Kiesler, S., Mukopadhyay, T., and Scherlis, W. (1998). Internet paradox a social technology that reduces social involvement and psychological well-being? American Psychologist, 53(9), 1017–1031. Kumar, S. (2008). Innovation, imitation and hybridity in Indian television. In G. R. Edgerton and B. G. Rose (Eds.), Thinking outside the box: A contemporary television genre reader (pp. 314–335). Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky. Kundu, A. (2014). Exclusionary growth, poverty and India’s emerging urban structure. Social Change, 44(4), 541–566. Livingstone, S. (2009). Children and the internet: Great expectations, challenging realities. Cambridge: Polity Press. Luxton, D. D., June, J. D., and Fairall, J. M. (2012). Social media and suicide: A public health perspective. American Journal of Public Health, 102(Supplement 2), S195–S200. Madianou, M., and Miller, D. (2012). Migration and new media: Transnational families and polymedia. New York, NY: Routledge.

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Mankekar, P. (1999). Screening culture, viewing politics: An ethnography of television, womanhood, and nation in postcolonial India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Massey, D. (2015). Vocabularies of the economy. In S. Hall, D. Massey, and M. Rustin (Eds.), After neoliberalism? The Kilburn manifesto (A soundings collection) (pp. 24–36). London: Lawrence and Wishart. Mesch, G. S. (2009). The internet and youth culture. The Hedgehog Review, (Spring), 50–60. Meyer, A., and Milestone, K. (2016). The lonely cloud: Intensive parenting and social media in neoliberal times. In R. Garrett, T. Jensen, and A. Voela (Eds.), We need to talk about family: Essays on neoliberalism, the family and popular culture (pp. 177–198). New Castle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Meyrowitz, J. (1985). No sense of place: The impact of electronic media on social behavior. New York, NY; Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mooij, J., and Lama-Rewal, S. T. (2009). Class in metropolitan India: The rise of the middle classes. In J. Ruet and S. T. Lama-Rewal (Eds.), Governing India’s metropolises: Case studies of four cities. New Delhi: Routledge. Munshi, S. (2010). Prime time soap operas on Indian television. New Delhi: Routledge. Nayak, D. K., and Behera, R. N. (2014). Changing household size in India: An interstate comparison. Transactions, 36(1), 1–18. O’Keeffe, G. S., Clarke-Pearson, K., and Council on Communications and Media. (2011). Clinical report: The impact of social media on children, adolescents, and families. Retrieved from http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/127/4/800 [Date of Access: 12 October 2019]. Patel, T. (2005). Introduction. In T. Patel (Ed.), Family in India: Structure and practice (pp. 19–50). New Delhi: Sage Publications. Ramkumar, P. (2015, October 20). Social media affecting relationships: Experts. The Times of India (Coimbatore). Samuels, D. (2007, May). Let’s die together: Why is anonymous group suicide so popular in Japan? The Atlantic. Retrieved from www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ archive/2007/05/let-s-die-together/305776/ [Date of Access: 12 October 2019]. Shah, A. M. (2005). Family studies: Retrospect and prospect. Economic and Political Weekly, 40(1), 19–22. Shatkin, G. (2011). Coping with actually existing urbanisms: The real politics of planning in the global era. Planning Theory, 10(1), 79–87. Sonawat, R. (2001). Understanding families in India: A refection of societal changes. Psicologia: Teoria e Pesquisa, 17(2), 177–186. Sundaram, R. (2004). Uncanny networks: Pirate, urban and new globalisation. Economic and Political Weekly, 39(1), 64–71. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). (2015). TCS GenY survey 2014–15. Retrieved from www.tcs.com/content/dam/tcs/pdf/discover-tcs/about-us/events/TCS-GenYSurvey-2014-15.pdf [Date of Access: 14 October 2019]. Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other? New York, NY: Basic Books. Uberoi, P. (2004). The family in India. In V. Das (Ed.), Handbook of Indian sociology (pp. 275–307). New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

4

A slum and a desert Structural violence perspective on the survival of families experiencing poverty Ruchi Sinha and Pekham Basu Poverty is the worst form of violence. – Mahatma Gandhi1

Poverty: not an accident of nature Family and poverty are concepts which are victims of a quotidian perception and the datum belief. Both concepts are used daily but are limited to the perspective of the researcher. Poverty as a concept is extensively debated in the disciplines of political economy, development studies, economics and political science, whereas families have been deliberated on by sociology, anthropology, and psychology. Since most interpretations based on the disciplinary inclinations have missed out on elucidating the voices of the people experiencing poverty and living in poverty-stricken families, it is diffcult to defne these two terms universally. Poverty is predominantly synonymous with measurements and mere survival, linked to an individual’s experience of poverty, devoid of any textured analysis of the resultant lack of dignity accorded to populations forced into poverty. As a result, many early studies of families and poverty focus largely on individual-pathological dimensions; a few look at cultural context; and even fewer are structural in their approach. The individual-pathological view promotes an understanding that the absence/lack of conducive family environment needs interventions by the state through civil partners, law and social policy to provide family-like care. In fact, this limited understanding of families has led to a dominant view that when families break down or experience crisis, it can be holistically explained by the limited causal explanations and addressed by technocentric interventions which are largely discriminatory, stigmatising and punitive. As Farmer (2013, p. 16) explained, Understanding poverty as “structured evil,” and understanding how it is perpetuated, is not the same as fghting it. But if we believe that knowledge can inform practice – if we believe in pragmatic solidarity as the best confrmation of theory – then it is best to have intellectual accompaniment.

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The intellectual accompaniment here is that of structural violence, which explains how families experiencing poverty are impacted structurally, the effect of which leads to further vulnerabilities. Anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes aptly states that Structural violence erases the history and consciousness of the social origins of poverty, sickness, hunger, and premature death, so that they are simply taken for granted and naturalised so that no one is held accountable except, perhaps, the poor themselves. (Scheper- Hughes, 2004, p. 14) Structural violence helps explain the hidden agenda of neoliberal systems which advocate for dismantling government welfare systems despite evidence that socioeconomic disparities increase when the economy is ruled by the market – namely free trade and private property rights. Here the state’s role is to create conditions for proftable markets and withdraw support to welfare activities. Neoliberal policies begin with structural adjustment programmes supported by international bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank. The frst principle of structural adjustment the world over has been shifting welfare activities to the private sector because the latter is said to be more effcient and effective. It is evident that with the roll back of governments welfare functions, poverty has increased substantially, which is being manifested as destitution, homelessness and child poverty the world over. To sum up, in the words of Stephen Metcalf (2017), neoliberalism shapes the ideal of society as a kind of universal market (and not, for example, a polis, a civil sphere or a kind of family) and of human beings as proft-and-loss calculators (and not bearers of grace, or of inalienable rights and duties). (Metcalf, para. 4) It is this reduction of human beings that is today built into the government system and structures that has deepened the poverty of millions. Ruth Lister (2004, p. 36) stated that “the phenomenon of poverty has to be understood both as a painful reality experienced by millions of human beings and as a construction of competing conceptualizations, defnitions and measures.” This chapter2 is one such attempt in elucidating experiences of families in poverty in urban and rural contexts,3 a reality which remains largely invisible because the structural violence that perpetuates poverty cannot be seen or identifed easily. Baba Nagar, an undeclared slum abutting the biggest dumping ground in Asia, is located in the M/E ward of Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, in a cluster of slums collectively called Shivaji Nagar. It was established in 1974, for project-affected persons (PAPs) from the main city. The entire area has both declared (legal) and undeclared (illegal) slums. It is now said to be the largest slum area in Asia.

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The urban poverty of Baba Nagar is contextualised with Jodhpur district, west Rajasthan, where extensive sandstone mining takes place. Here people live in hamlets on the periphery of human-made craters (up to 300 feet in depth) that are largely open-pit mines or quarries. The rural areas are being taken over by the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor for ease of doing business that will subsequently add to the revenue. Thus, now the hamlets are a space caught in the cusp of a growing urban centre amid a rural setting where its main livelihood option is mining, a 2,000-year-old profession. Before one delves into the impact of poverty on families, it is imperative to contextualise both poverty and families beyond as mere concepts. As concepts, poverty and family both are viewed as being measurable, structured and rigid. The conceptual rigidity enhances their alignment with the neoliberal environment and fails in capturing their everyday experience of people in poverty. The neoliberal economy has increased socioeconomic inequality, increased employment insecurities and emphasised austerity measures, which has led to the withdrawal of state support. This everyday experience of people in poverty is what structural violence highlights. Poverty, inequality, social marginality and the domination of resources all produce unneeded suffering and death. These structured patterns are products of socioeconomic arrangements, created by people and sanctioned by normative beliefs and practices of culture. In fact, the “normalcy of poverty and structure of families” ensures the violence is so normalised that the root of the problem is forgotten and the cycle of suffering continues unabated. This chapter in no uncertain terms argues that it is imperative to explore the social, economic, political and cultural realities of families in poverty as it gives adequate space for including people’s own understandings of poverty and family. The structural violence gaze highlights the hardships experienced by families in poverty in the neoliberal coercive regime.

Contextualising poverty through urban and rural experiences Paul Farmer (2013, p. 20) states that Poverty is not some accident of nature but the result of historically given and economically driven forces. Human beings constitute the social world, and we will always shape it. Understanding poverty and inequality requires multiple disciplines: economics, ethics, law, sociology, anthropology, epidemiology, and so forth. Most of all, it requires listening to those most affected by poverty, which is to say the poor and otherwise marginalised. In this chapter, we attempt to listen to the voices of the families experiencing poverty by highlighting their experiences. It reveals that the changes in

96 Ruchi Sinha and Pekham Basu structure and functions of family occur due to strains and stressors as well as changes in the related subsystems within which families exist. The economic reality of families is one such structure that is discussed in the chapter. To understand the impact of poverty on families, we begin with a brief overview of poverty as the concept developed and changed over the years. The dominant understanding of poverty is “the lack of suffcient money or material possessions for a life of moderate comfort,” or it is understood as a scarcity or a defciency. This elucidates Rowntree’s 1901 defnition of poverty based on the physiological approach, where if the total earning of the family did not provide them with a minimum nutrition level, then they were said to be in primary poverty. In the 1970s, the basic human needs approach was popularised, and it looked at both income and consumption to ensure that minimum quantities (which were specifed) of basic needs like food, clothing, shelter, water and sanitation are met. This approach does not factor in structural context and thus fails to pinpoint the larger forces responsible for poverty (Chowdhury and Mukhopadhay, 2014). This continues even today and is also refected in the feld, where there isn’t much disparity between those above the poverty line and those below. In Baba Nagar, of the 200 respondents, about 38 percent earn about INR 61–80 on a daily basis; about INR 2,400 monthly. Of the 21 women-headed household, 42 percent fall in the income group of INR 41–60 and below, which works out to be about INR 1,800 as monthly income. The income, however, is not steady, and the daily earnings of dumping waste pickers depends on several factors, such as season, duration of collection, type and quantity of waste and its value (Sinha, 2012). The families living abutting the mines of Jodhpur are largely widow-headed households. It emerged from the study of 78 widows that the mineworkers were all daily wage labourers who earn around INR 100, and because they were able to work for 20 days a month on an average, the earning of about 15.1 percent was between INR 1,500 and INR 2,000, while 12.8 percent earned INR 500 to INR 1,000 every month. By working in a hazardous occupation like mining, many of the men start falling ill in their 20s, get diagnosed with silicosis (an occupational disease) and pass away by age 40 (Basu, 2017). This elucidates the well-known fact that the proft-driven mandate of the informal sector thrives on economic exploitation. As a result, safety regulations for both waste pickers and mineworkers are absent and fouted with impunity. Thus, often working in such conditions while one sees the direct impact, the hidden impact which mostly affects the poor informal workers remain embedded in structures created ostensibly for development but are actually for exploitation. The low income compromises the quality of life of workers in both rural and urban areas. People of Baba Nagar live in unsanitary conditions, belowstandard housing and cramped conditions, in an environment characterised by pollution by toxic elements emanating from the garbage dump near the area. The socioeconomic, demographic and environmental realities of the

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people living in Baba Nagar gives an overview of the state of deprivation in which people reside. The people here lack access to basic public and civic amenities (electricity, cooking fuel, safe drinking water, public toilets, sanitation, education facilities, etc.) on the grounds of not being recognised by the local authorities (criminalisation of poverty). Further, inaccessibility of government schemes and amenities makes people dependent on the open market for food items, which results in low nutritional intake, thereby further accentuating the lack of well-being in the community. Studies by a few scholars, such as Gulati’s (1981) contextualised poverty highlighted the experiences of working women trying to overcome poverty and destitution. Dube (1998) captured the history of deprivation and powerlessness experienced by an untouchable family over fve decades. Beck (1994) pointed the political dimensions of the life of the poor. Dreze’s work (1990) on widows is considered to be an exemplary account on poverty and deprivation because it supports government data, with profles and personal insights of widows to bring out their understanding of Indian society. Jan Breman (2007) is known to have put a human face to the suffering and life of the poor. A nuanced understanding of poverty is important because it helps understand people’s relationships, attempts to live, decision-making and realities that extracts poverty from the economic realm and juxtaposes it with the sociopolitical and sociocultural realities of the heterogeneous people in poverty. Kumar (2012, p. 73) puts it succinctly when he says, A comprehensive study of the poor and of poverty cannot be complete without reference to the social structure in which both the phenomenon of poverty and the poor are located. There is a need to study both the structural conditions as well as the everyday life of the poor. The infuence of structural factors on the fate of the poor will always exist, but many amongst the poor, through their everyday knowledge and practices, make signal differences to their own lives and manage to escape the trap of poverty. The studies just mentioned and many more led to the social development approach of understanding poverty. It recognises the role of denying opportunities for living a tolerable life. It includes experience of exclusion by people. All of these, along with elements of vulnerability, inequality and human rights, were encompassed in the capability approach proposed by Amartya Sen in 1981 (Sen, 1981). This approach encompasses the structural factors and thus is accepted as a holistic approach to understanding poverty and deprivation. In 1983, Robert Chambers defned the participatory poverty approach, where he argued “that statistics on income, consumption, health-care and education do not represent all the micro and macro level of social aspects of poverty” (cited in Chowdhury and Mukhopadhaya, 2014, p. 271), so he emphasised civil, economic, social, cultural and political freedom. In 1997, the UNDP human poverty approach moved beyond material

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necessities to the denial of opportunities that led to illiteracy; malnutrition; poor health; and a lack of access to goods and services, sanitation or even drinking water (Chowdhury and Mukhopadhaya, 2014, pp. 270–271). This is true about the urban and rural milieu, where marginalised religions and castes are “the violence of injustice and inequity – ‘embedded in ubiquitous social structures’ [and] normalized by stable institutions and regular experience” (Winter and Leighton, 2001, p. 99). By “structures,” we mean social relations and economic, political, legal, religious or cultural arrangements that shape how individuals and groups interact in a social system. These include broad-scale cultural and political-economic structures such as caste, patriarchy, slavery, apartheid, colonialism and neoliberalism, as well as poverty and discrimination by race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and migrant/refugee status. These structures are violent because they result in avoidable deaths, illness and injury and because they reproduce violence by marginalising people and communities, constraining their capabilities and agency, assaulting their dignity and sustaining inequalities (Rylko-Bauer and Farmer, 2016) – as seen among the rag pickers in Baba Nagar and the mineworkers in Jodhpur. In Baba Nagar, a large proportion (74.5 percent) of the workers are Muslims and the rest (25.5 percent) are Hindus. With 55.5 percent of the people working as waste pickers, it is obvious that most of these people have no access to the job market and depend on the dumping ground. The rest of the people work as badla workers (casual labour), zari workers, drivers, mechanics, BMC contract workers, street hawkers, dhaba worker and so on. These jobs reveal a multitude of livelihood options within the informal sector. Thus, people here are involved in economic activities, which are unpredictable and have low incomes. The mineworkers of Jodhpur, on the other hand, are predominantly Hindus who belong to the lowest social strata: 73 percent scheduled castes (SCs) and 14.1 percent scheduled tribes. They seem to be predominantly from the Meghwal community, followed by other SCs, and a few are Bheels, a scheduled tribe (ST). About 87 percent of the widows belonged to SCs and STs, while 9 percent belong to the general category. This clearly elucidates how reduced employment opportunities for individuals and communities increasingly excludes them from central processes of production and circulation, which in turn has exacerbated livelihood insecurity, resulting in a whole host of negative consequences. Being denied opportunities and having a lack of access to them then led to the social exclusion approach, around 2007, where social exclusion is an indicator and includes human rights, social participation, social integration, political participation, freedom of expression, the rule of law and discrimination on the basis of gender, race, religion, caste, age, migrant status or where people live, among others (Chowdhury and Mukhopadhaya, 2014). Thus, to “address the multidimensionality of the concept” and to explain the suffering of the families experiencing poverty, the statement from Chowdhury and Mukhopadhay’s defnition – “the inability or less ability to

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participate in society, economically, socially, culturally and politically” (as suggested by Hunzai, 2010, p. 2) – is apt. This is evident in the context of rural poverty where the mineworkers belonging to the lower castes are economically vulnerable. Even though 33 lakh people are engaged in mining, they politically have no voice and their agenda is not represented anywhere. Apart from the varying defnitions, geographically every region has its own indicators of poverty. On the basis of those indicators is the poverty line decided. Many analysts have challenged the conventional estimates by using tools and standards such as the poverty line. The main issue is the lack of utility of the poverty line as a meaningful measure of poverty. Critics argue that the poverty line misrepresents the actual extent of poverty because it fails to unravel the question that how hunger and calorifc undernourishment, unemployment and rural and urban distress have increased over the past decade in absolute terms, across the world, despite poverty going down. In India, there have been debates and discussions to defne poverty, yet ambiguity about its meaning remains. According to a poverty report published in 2015 for CNN (Katyal, 2015, para. 7), in 2014, a report by the Indian government Planning Commission estimated that 363 million Indians, making up 29.5% of the total population, were living below the poverty line in 2011–12. The report, by the Rangarajan Expert Group, also estimates that the India poverty ratio fell from 38.2% to 29.5% between 2009–10 and 2011–12, lifting 91.6 million individuals out of poverty. According to a Pew Research Centre report, . . . while people were able to move up the social ladder from poor to low income during the last decade, the actual number of people in the middle class (living on $10–20 a day) barely budged from 1% in 2001 to 3% in 2011. Most developing countries set poverty lines far below those of advanced country levels. Living on double the Indian Planning Commission poverty line of $2.40 per day would still mean not meeting nutritional and other needs at developed economy levels. Many poor people “lifted out of poverty” are still living at levels closer to $2.40 than $10 per day. The Pew report estimates that at the proposed Rangarajan poverty line, food consumption alone would take up 57% of a rural family’s budget and 47% of an urban family’s budget. Thus, between the debates of absolute and relative poverty, it’s evident that poverty is a reality for a large population, where the context is defned by the state because the state policies control the economic processes of the nation. The neoliberal reforms in India began at the end of the 1980s. It was the beginning of a clear shift in advocating private sector expansion in health, education and (other) “social services” and the denial of state responsibility in these areas even for the “needy/poor” groups with the levying of user fees. Thus, the possibility and probability of simultaneous market and family “failures” were also marginal in the neoliberal agenda. The

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gradual but defnite withdrawal of the state and its ad hoc treatment of the social sector are refected in the declining trends in social sector expenditure (Palriwala and Neetha, 2009). The myth of a growing global economy based on neoliberal philosophy promotes the idea that the central feature of development is resource management, so it is concerned primarily with generating profts by producing goods and services for sale in the market. Upon closer scrutiny, for which there is evidence, this setup shows a defnite prescription for poverty. A major objective of ownership is to use what one owns and controls in a continuous process of further accumulation on one end and concentration of property at the other (Braverman, 1994). Meeting the needs of people is not a direct objective of ownership and production. The powerful dynamics of proft, acquisitiveness, accumulation and concentration has resulted in gradual elimination from markets of many small owner producers who failed in competition and whose property was absorbed by the winners. This centralised control of resources prevents any emergence of associations such as unions, strong family supports and small associations and even reduces the power of national governments, who in turn fail to provide any social protection. Thus, the economic arrangements perpetuate poverty in the name of development, destroy support systems and infict unprecedented violence across populations. Poverty has further expanded in the neoliberal economic mechanisms (Houtart, 2010). It has enhanced the hardships of families, which in turn negatively impacts the personal and interpersonal spaces of people. When scrutinised through the structural violence lens, the impact of poverty will familiarise readers with the impact of institutionalised inequities (institutionalised violence) on families in poverty. For instance, 55 percent of the heads of household in Baba Nagar are illiterate. The reasons for not attending school ranged from low income, parents’ illiteracy, frequent migration, need of child at home for work, absence of a school and social discrimination. The education of head of the household and the spouse seems to have a correlation with the education of the child. The migratory status of most of these people is responsible for the absence of proper documents, which acts as an impediment for admitting their children to school, and as a result, the only option left is to send their children to the madrasas. Similarly, the literacy level for both men and women are low in the mining areas: 79.5 percent of the men and 97.4 percent of the women are illiterate. As a result, the children of rag pickers and mineworkers are illiterate as well. Most of the children suffer from malnutrition since the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme has not been able to cover all the children in both urban and rural sites of the study. It is evident from the narratives that the mothers had no access to prenatal care and barely had anything nutritious to eat. In Jodhpur, this is heightened by lack of irrigated land in a drought-prone area. Increasingly as land goes towards mining, people grow

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less and less food and are not able to afford to buy food from the market since their wages are woefully low. The deprivation in rural areas are similar, and poverty cuts across the government stipulated poverty lines as well. A large majority of the widows are characterised as BPL families by the state. Basic facilities like water, electricity and toilet facilities have still not reached many. The lack of any social security or access to Employee State Insurance Scheme (ESIS) (because mineworkers are excluded from the scheme) means that families cope with crises by selling off their only assets and are thus being pushed further away from resources. In this way, poverty is not only a lack of adequate income but a state of deprivation spanning the social, economic and political contexts of people, which forces them to eat inadequate and poor-quality food, to live in congested dwellings and to use smoky fuels, all of which make their condition worse. Thus, poverty accelerates death for people who have fallen sick from any disease. Evidently the hardships and dilemmas faced by the families already living with limited and inadequate resources forces them to cope by refraining from buying even essentials such as food, education and so on. Both studies revealed that women already overburdened with domestic chores deal with the occupational stress, which exerts constant pressure, which increases the vulnerability of women to ill-health. Women are the silent sufferers who often end up shouldering the burden of systemic violence, and thus, they suffer more from poverty, malnutrition and disease. In Jodhpur, compelled by poverty due to an ailing husband and a growing family, 47.5 percent of the women started working even before they reached 20 years, and 42.3 percent receive less than INR 150 as daily wage, which is paid by cash. Thus, along with the burden of caring for an ailing husband, their daily life is strewn with hardships as they try to balance between work inside the house and outside as well. Workers in rural and urban contexts earn about INR 1,000 to 2,400 monthly if they work every day. This is lesser than the daily wages mandated by the state. It is thus evident that poverty is the result of multiple structures and hence is not attributable to personal agency, which aims to individualise poverty and distance itself from the societal arrangements which reproduce and sustain poverty. The World Health Organization (1995) acknowledged that poverty is the world’s greatest killer: “Poverty wields its destructive infuence at every stage of human life, from the moment of conception to the grave” (p. 1). Hence, the entire family is enmeshed in this, and everyone, from a newborn to the aged, is impacted. Both the sites, be it Baba Nagar or Jodhpur, are high-poverty areas where poverty arises from the lack of basic human capabilities: access to healthcare, education and adequate nutrition. Thus, the families are pushed into absolute poverty by social exclusion (caste, religion etc.), having no access to general or governance information, having no assets ownership, having low nutritional intake, having no access to basic sanitary conditions and having no means to access education, health and other employment opportunities to improve one’s life chances.

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The survival of families in the slum and the desert The slum is not an easy space to adjust to for poverty-stricken migrant families. While it gives anonymity in terms of caste and social structures, it also forces them to live among strangers in proximity and forge new friendships and relationships in order to survive through the harsh realities of urban life. The mining areas have their own struggles given the polluted environment within which they live, the scarcity of water in the desert and the distance from the basic services like healthcare. Thus, the geographical location of the families coupled with poverty puts families under duress and makes their survival challenging. Family is considered to be one of the oldest social institutions, wherein it is assumed one has no choice over the family one is born into. Families across the world and societies come in many shapes and sizes. The omnipresent dominant understanding of the Western family has overlooked diverse understandings of families across societies. The centrality of the family as a human institution is explored by a variety of disciplines: anthropology, sociology, psychology, criminology, family law, politics, history, literature, philosophy, health studies, social work and so on. This diversity is often the source of sharp philosophical, political and legal disputes. A structural violence perspective disputes the singular dominant understanding of families and pursues a multicultural and multidisciplinary perspective. As already stated, “families,” “households” and “domestic units” are terms used interchangeably by different disciplines, theoretical perspectives and approaches, to elucidate a central notion of families. While the term “households” is more common in the disciplines of economics and statistics, “family” as a term aligns to the social institution’s frame which presupposes ideational/ normative and behavioural norms. The census of India (Government of India, 2001) defnes “ household” thus: a group of persons who normally live together and take their meals from a common kitchen unless the exigencies of work prevent any of them from doing so. Persons in a household may be related or unrelated or a mix of both. However, if a group of unrelated persons live in a census house but do not take their meals from the common kitchen, then they are not constituent of a common household. . . . There may be one member households, two member households or multi-member households. . . . It includes scheduled castes & scheduled tribes households, institutional households and houseless households. (para. 1) This head count defnition emphasises the norms of families on the basis of the number of members, place of residence and the activity of cooking and having meals together. It acknowledges a difference in the numbers but overlooks the social dimension of the unit. Thus, as per the census, the

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families of waste pickers in Baba Nagar are largely nuclear followed by supplementary (nuclear family with a relative or non-relative). A large percentage (about 62 percent) of the people have a nuclear family, with family size varying from three to six members. About 22.5 percent of the respondents had more than seven members, which included their supplementary and joint family members as well. The urban waste picker’s family’s composition differs substantially from the rural mineworkers. The families of mineworkers are usually largely joint families. Often three generations of widowed women live together: the widowed mother-in-law, who is now aged, her son or sons and their families. They may live in independent units in the same compound, and the widowed daughter-in-law and her children will live with the widowed mother-in-law in her unit. The family size of widows has fve to 12 members, with the number of children per family varying from four to 11.4 However, these numbers do not tell us much about the context and experiences of families. Broadly, the structure-functionalist approach to families has dominated its understanding, wherein they are seen as a subunit of society where family roles interact with other roles in society. Its emphasis on order and patterns led to the pre-supposition of largely one type of family system – namely the patriarchal, monogamous joint to nuclear settings whose function was solely to regulate norms and values as per social expectations. Thus, family functions include socialisation, procreation, economic cooperation, social support and so on. The critique of this approach led to the growth of family studies as a discipline and to the realisation of other family systems. It is here that the importance of family studies pioneered by Oscar Lewis (1966) for understanding the complexity of poverty and its impact on families gets highlighted. Lewis emphasised the subjective views of the people concerned, what insights were provided by the descriptions of their daily lives and how these views reveal the complexity of their existence. He acknowledged that such a detailed understanding of families has been in use by social workers, sociologists, psychologists and others with the drawback of focusing only on families in trouble, depression and so on. His work has drawn attention to qualitative work over quantitative studies. His seminal work critiques the approaches of studies which have focused on the livelihoods of households as a unit of production and consumption – in short, the livelihood perspective in the feld of development practice/studies. Thus, his work rejects the limited frame of families as a unit of economy or work and underscoring the need for a holistic understanding in the context of culture and social structure which interact in complex and still-unexplored ways to determine outcomes. Many authors have elucidated the importance of understanding how characteristics of the family are determined by political, demographic, economic, ecological and cultural factors (Amoateng, 2007). Thus, families in this chapter align to a holistic perception rather than a parochial outlook. Both the studies reveal that it is hard to make generalisations about families

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in poverty, because families are so diverse. It also brought out how ideological frames led to a homogeneous perception of families, but in reality, families were different, distinct and heterogeneous in their responses to so many sociocultural realities within and across different social geographies. When explored, it is evident that family structure gets impacted due to poverty in many ways. One dominant change documented by many scholars is an increase in the number of single-parent households, with a larger share being of women-headed households. Echoing what Gulati highlighted, the experiences of the women in trying to overcome poverty and destitution are telling. In Baba Nagar, 10.5 percent of household heads were women, and the remaining 89.5 percent are male. Of the 21 families that were headed by women three are widows, and the rest had been deserted. Most women do not openly admit that they have been deserted, and the reality is couched in the following words: ghar ka kharchapani hum chalatehain (we run the expenses of the house). In Baba Nagar, there is tacit acceptance of the fact that when husbands are unable to support their families, they desert women or out of desperation take to drinking, thereby increasing the burden twofold. In such circumstances, the women take over the burden of earning as well. So, women enter the workforce due to poverty, inadequate male support in terms of desertion, widowhood, low male income, unemployment and neglect or the male spouse’s alcoholism. As a result, they face the double burden of stress at home and exploitation at the workplace. This “feminisation of poverty” visible in women-headed households like in the slum and the desert also reveals hidden poverty here that “results from unequal distribution of both income and consumption within families,” as seen earlier, when the husband earns but does not support the family (Lister, 2004). Thus, here poverty leads to women-headed households as the family breaks down when the men become alcohol-dependent or abandon their familial responsibilities. In a patriarchal society, dominated by social customs, in mines within the women-headed households, it is the son, brother-in-law or brother who are often the authoritarian fgures since the women are widows. They make all the major decisions. The process begins even when the husband is alive but ailing. A participant narrated that much against her wish, her underage daughter was married off because her husband was ill and her brother believed that the marriage of one of her daughters should be done with. Hence, gender, a social structure that causes violence, coupled with poverty, reduces the role of the mother and establishes cyclical violence since child marriage continues. Some of the widows have held back their monetary relief amount (they were paid a monetary relief of 3 lakh rupees as silicosis widows) and refused to give to the family, so that the son respects her. But there are exceptions. One of the widows, 65 years old, shares that the mantle of being the man in the house is on her now. Her son is bedridden after a mining accident, while her daughter-in-law and her 13-year-old grandson all work in the mines to sustain the family. They may seem to be dysfunctional

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families, but when village after village has women-headed households, this family type is then considered to be the norm. Both the studies clearly reveal that women-headed households suffer more from poverty, malnutrition and disease because of their lower incomes. Lower incomes also mean narrower choices and more chances of being excluded from many opportunities through social or cultural traditions. Thus, it is evident that social exclusion is heightened by poverty. This trend is also visible in national data. According to the 2014 baseline survey,5 the widow-headed households and women-headed households make up about 6.9 percent and 10.9 percent of households, respectively, across India. Maharashtra and Rajasthan though not high as states like Kerala or Uttarakhand, are close to the national average for women-headed households at 7.5 percent and 9 percent respectively. The widow-headed households at 6.6 percent for Rajasthan is almost the same as the national average, whereas the fgure for Maharashtra at 3.3 percent reveals a much more robust life expectancy is for men. Besides the evident impact of poverty on family composition it is also apparent that personal relationships within families are strained due to poverty because of the two contesting demands of the need to participate in the labour market on one side and demand for caring responsibilities on the other. It was seen that most of the families in Baba Nagar and Jodhpur believed that in a subtle way, socialisation processes work to shape the consciousness and mind sets of “individuals” according to the structures and dynamics of the powerful in a society, which are driven by economic clout. Thus, a society which is stratifed by wealth, occupation social-prestige, religion, caste and other dynamics subtly yet surely forces individuals to play unwitting roles in reproducing a hierarchically structured force out of correspondingly structured social strata. So whereas some social customs were done away with (reduced purdah requirements), some became more oppressive in the desperate attempts to retain the identity of families (child marriage), and others in some instances were conveniently reshaped/realigned to suit economic demands (child marriage during funerals and kinship ties during rituals). Whereas families in Baba Nagar stated that some changes reinforced their customs, some paradoxically became liberating. As one widow from Baba Nagar shared, though I face a lot of hardships. This hardship also gives me freedom. . . . I don’t stay in purdah, I can work . . . run my own house and even travel alone. Another woman added that work is the most important change. . . . In the village, we had purdah, I could not move around without the burka, women were not allowed to go to market, and here I take my children to school, doctor, etc. . . . I also took part in a dharna and got arrested, my husband was angry, but it was a scary new experience.

106 Ruchi Sinha and Pekham Basu This shows that the anonymity of the city and the pressing needs of daily living to a great extent have countered some of the patriarchal controls that these women were under. The women continue to suffer discrimination in the workplace and in their homes but have some respite from the oppressive customs of the marital home in the village. The dynamics, however, are overturned when it comes to resource allocation and access to services at home. Women, it emerged, ate only after serving the husband (or the adult male members in the family) and children, and the portions for the next day are kept aside. The leftover of this is mostly the frst full meal of the women for the day. On average, most women have black tea with bread, khari (dry puffed bread) or bhakari (chapatti made of rice or jowar four). It is evident that women actually rarely have proper meals. At work, while men carry dabba (meal boxes), most women carry kharis or at times nothing. To kill hunger, they tend to cultivate the habit of smoking bidis or chewing pan. The younger women shared smoking two or three bidis a day, whereas the older women tend to have over six bidis a day. This habit, besides killing hunger, also helped the waste picking women marginally suppress the stench of the dumping ground. This pattern of food intake shows why women are more anaemic than men are. Another observable trend was the increased habit of chewing tobacco and smoking for the older women, which is an indication of discrimination of older women at home when it comes to the allocation of resources as basic as food. As a result, women face more health problems, which ironically is not because of their “being of the weaker sex” but because of unfair patriarchal norms enforced through culture. The impact of nutrition on their own health is understood as kamzori (weakness) and pet ke time takleef zyada hoti hai (during pregnancy, one experiences more diffculties). What emerged further was that this discrimination further extends to access to health services as well. Most women tended to avoid the formal health sector mostly due to the cost of prescribed medicines, but the same does not hold true for the male members of the family, who are rushed to the doctor for most ailments. Malnutrition and ill-health among women point towards the complex relations within families, which are due to their inferior position, and yet they are not recognised as victims of the violence of poverty and patriarchy. Banovcinova, Levicka and Veres (2014, p. 149) write that Families living in poverty can have a restricted access to sources on both levels – in the access to material sources (cost of living, food expenses, cognitively stimulating toys for children, books, etc.) but also to immaterial sources (for instance in the area of education, in the access to information, in possibilities of development of one’s experiences and skills etc.). This is seen in the families in the slum and desert, where even the basic needs of the children cannot be met. They suffer from tuberculosis and malnutrition; they cannot avail themselves of education and books; and toys are a luxury. Hence, in rural mining area, education is not a priority; child labour is rampant; and child marriage is a survival strategy. The strategy here serves

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two purposes: to deal with the increasing cost of social customs, such as marriages, and to save on mounting funeral costs, which can run into the millions and pushes the family to indebtedness. Thus, it is a common practice to have a wedding during a funeral, wherein little girls and boys are married during the funeral of a grandparent or a parent. The strategy here serves two purposes: to deal with the increasing cost of social customs, such as marriages, and to save on mounting funeral costs, which can run into several thousands of rupees and push the family into indebtedness. The legal age of marriage for girls is 18 years in India, but many are married even before they attain puberty. Usually the girl is sent to her marital family once she attains puberty, but sometimes if the natal family is too poor or the marital family needs someone for household work, the child bride is sent earlier. Out of 78 women, 27 girls in the age group of 11 to 15 years were married; similarly, 15 boys in the age group of 16 to 20 years were married. The groom was legally underage since 37.2 percent were married when they were between 16 and 20 years, even though the legal age of marriage for boys in India is 21 years. In this adolescent age group, the difference in gender for age at marriage is not signifcant, even though the burden of marriage is borne by the women – be it housework, earning, abuse by marital family and childbearing, as is observed later. However, the difference is stark for the below-10 age group: 11 boys below the age of ten were married off, while double that number –23 – of girls were married off who were below the age of 10. A plausible reason for this could be found in the narratives where many women testifed how many of them were married when the elder sister was getting married. This elucidates that the girl, because of poverty, continues to be seen as a burden, and parents symbolically unload the burden by marrying them off at the earliest possible opportunity. What one can conclude from these responses that although the traditional hierarchy (such as caste) seems to be weakening in the city, it is replaced by the economic and social hierarchies of the city, which ensures that the division remains to suit the needs of the powerful. The same changes were refected in the decision-making patterns. Almost everyone stated that in the village a lot of issues such as marriage, birth and death were community issues, whereas in the city, they were personal problems. Thus, the decisionmaking power was now with the head of the household, and whenever the woman was in charge, she made the decision, which according to everyone, especially the women, was not possible in the village. Thus, it is clear that poverty not only impacts family structure but also impacts family norms. At one end, we saw that women were claiming spaces as “free” when they are allowed to venture out of their houses. The fact that the freedom is aligned with economic compulsions and with a realignment of customs reveals the inherent structural violence. Although control on women is relaxed to fulfl household’s chores, the same is not applicable to girls. Girls are being married early due to safety issues in the urban context and to avoid the high costs of marriages in the rural context. Thus, the mean age of marriage of women (when they were girls) was 13 and for their daughters now is 14, in Baba Nagar. There are other social customs that push the family

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into abject poverty and cause child labour. For instance, a Meghwal widow is not allowed to work for a living for the frst year of her widowhood. Thus, to sustain her young family, she is compelled to send her children to work – for sustenance and to repay existing debts. The family is caught in a vicious cycle of trying to live in the community and abide by all social norms in fear of ostracism, thus sacrifcing the childhood of the children. Every member of the family works, in whatever ways their health permits. So often from the ailing grandmother to a child of 10, everyone breaks stones in the mining area and earns in cash or kind. Thus, poverty causes child labour as well. The parents are not paid proper wages as informal labourers. The neoliberal contribution of an increasing rise in informal labour has led to structural violence where the rights of the worker are violated, where there is no implementation of law to safeguard children from hazardous labour and where the labourers have no recourse to the law. Their rights as workers are not safeguarded, nor is the law enforced. With no social security and increasing debt due to social customs and occupational diseases, they are further pushed into poverty. To survive, the children join the labour force and help in whatever way they can. The structural violence lens has a social exclusion and human poverty approach in that it relates poverty to deprivation and hence to marginalised populations like black people, SCs/STs and so on. Further, it highlights that the areas of residence of such populations are likely to have fewer business facilities, fnancial institutions, educational institutions and hospitals. Galtung (1969, p. 168) defned violence as the cause of the difference between the potential and the actual, between what could have been and what is. Violence is that which increases the distance between the potential and the actual, and that which impedes the decrease of this distance. Thus, the violence is built into the structure and shows up as unequal power and consequently as unequal life chances, leading to increasing vulnerability to diseases, to the double burden of stress at home and exploitation in the workplace or to child marriages and child labour.

Conclusion: reverently listening to the unheard voices of families in poverty Writing about an exchange with a doctor in Haiti, Farmer (2013, p. 17) writes that the concept of structural violence is inequity that is “nobody’s fault,” that is just “the way things are,” that we live with because we cannot or will not or do not know how to address the conditions that create unequal outcomes for rich and poor. This idea, of an unjust social order that was in itself a form of structured violence, seeped into my consciousness.

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It has seeped into the lives of waste pickers and mineworkers and has impacted their families. The poverty begins with their social identity that deepens their economic crisis. The waste pickers or the mineworkers belong to marginalised castes and minority religious groups. The urban community is a typical case of migration in search of livelihood and improved life. The rural life is that of struggle and oppressed by both economic and social structures. As the government moved away from a mixed economy to neoliberalism, the structures and economic policies perpetuated violence on the communities that worsened their situation. The emphasis on income and incomedriven growth resulted in a large number of workers being forced to seek employment in the informal sector. This means that their rights as workers are not protected, resulting in exploitation, low wages, violations of their occupations and health safeguards, which led to disease and death. Capitalism did not acknowledge welfare, whereas neoliberalism acknowledged it as paid activity. For instance, caste discrimination and the poor quality of teachers keeps children away from the village school. Private schools are expensive, and the education still does not guarantee alternate livelihood opportunities since the quality of education is poor. The government fnds the low attendance as a good pretext to shut down the school. With no alternative and the burden of debt for families, children join the workforce. Similarly, to access healthcare, the daily wage labourer has to let go of their wage to access free hospital service. Government hospitals function within fxed timings, thereby making it inaccessible for the informal workforce. To save their daily wage, they avail themselves of the services of private hospitals. The government only counts the number of users and uses this data to rationalise services and roll back welfare services. These macro issues impact the lives of the poor, change interpersonal relationships and family structures and affect each and every family member – as has been elucidated in both the slum and desert context. We fail to address the inequities, so this structural violence continues. It impacts the 94 percent of the informal workforce across urban and rural situations and impacts across gender and age. The instances in the chapter show the diffculties experienced by families experiencing poverty in urban and rural contexts. It is evident that poverty, apart from the direct impact on individual family members, endangers and disrupts the functioning of the family system as a whole. It impacts family interactions and activities, determines whether the family is able to fulfl its aims, provides its members with material and emotional support and wellbeing and supports their prosperity and development (Walsh, 2003). The struggles of the women especially, whether deserted in the urban space or in the widow-headed families in rural India, reveal the evolving contours of families in poverty. The families are constantly battling impediments like caste, social customs, disease and death, which not only change the life course of the family but also normalises the unthinkable in due course. The “normalisation” of poverty comes from a perception that a large segment of people live in poverty; poverty becomes “normal” or “natural” and is

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therefore considered as belonging only to the context and not, in itself, as the problem (Jones, 2002; Walker and Walker, 2002). Initial focus on poverty was functional and individualistic perceptions of poverty and viewed most emerging from individual or family problems. An explanation is derived from the “normalisation” of poverty in social work practice. Because such a large segment of social work clients live in poverty, poverty becomes “normal” or “natural” and is therefore considered as belonging only to the context and not, in itself, as the problem (KrumerNevo, Weiss-Gal and Monnickendam, 2009). Furthermore, the strengthening of conservative or new right ideologies during the past three decades in different countries led to a shift in policy discourse from structural problems to problems of individuals (Jones and Novak, 1993; Katz, 1989). Both the perspectives of poverty are limited. It is here that a structural violence lens provides an alternative: to view poverty as a structural phenomenon (Rank, 2005) and a violation of human rights (Craig, 2002; Davis and Wainwright, 2005; Dowling, 1999; Lister, 1998; Lyons, 1992). This approach puts poverty in a broader context of exclusion, discrimination and inequality. Instead of focusing on how poverty creates behavioural or emotional pathologies (such as substance abuse or the abuse of children), this approach focuses on the violation of rights connected with the material aspects of poverty (such as the right to housing, education, employment and health) and the relational-symbolic aspects of poverty (such as the right to respect, the right to a voice and the right to full citizenship) (Lister, 2004).

Notes 1 Ghani, E., Iyer, L., and Mishra, S. (2013). Promoting shared prosperity in South Asia. Economic Premise: World Bank, 110, 1–8. Retrieved from http:// siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTPREMNET/Resources/EP110.pdf [Date of Access: 8 August 2016]. 2 This chapter draws on two studies conducted with workers in informal sectors, namely the waste pickers on a dumping ground and women working in a mining sector, to elucidate the impact of poverty and the resultant experience of structural violence. The analysis sheds light on how families are impacted at different levels as a result of poverty. The fndings illustrate that for survival families in poverty not only allocate resources differently but also get access to services differently. Thus, challenges that families in poverty are facing are both external and internal. Both of the doctoral studies had mixed methodologies. Qualitative methods were used to understand individual experiences, feelings, and encounters with structural violence and how they have affected lives, whereas quantitative methods were used to understand the magnitude/extent of violence. The use of both methodologies added rigor to the research and gave rich insights into experiences of structural violence. 3 The experience of poverty through a structural violence lens is presented from the lives of informal sector workers. The urban context is elucidated with a study of waste pickers and other informal sector workers residing in Baba Nagar in Mumbai. The rural context is elucidated through a study on widowed women working in the stone quarries in Jodhpur, Western Rajasthan. 4 Of the 78 widows, 18 widows had four children each, fve widows had nine children each and one widow had 11 children.

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5 Government of India. (2014). Sample registration system baseline survey 2014. Retrieved from http://censusindia.gov.in/vital_statistics/BASELINE%20 TABLES08082016.pdf [Date of Access: 21 October 2019].

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Jones, C. (2002). Social work and society. In R. Adams, L. Dominelli, and M. Payne (Eds.), Social work: Themes, issues and critical debates (2nd ed., pp. 41–49). Basingstoke: Palgrave. Jones, C., and Novak, T. (1993). Social work today. British Journal of Social Work, 23(3), 195–212. Katyal, R. (2015, August 3). India census exposes extent of poverty. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/02/asia/india-poor-census-secc/index.html, CNN [Date of Access: 26 October 2019]. Katz, M. (1989). The undeserving poor: From the war on poverty to the war on welfare. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. Krumer-Nevo, M., Weiss-Gal, I., and Monnickendam, M. (2009). Poverty-aware social work practice: A conceptual framework for social work education. Journal of Social Work Education, 45(2), 225–243. doi:10.5175/JSWE.2009.200600144 [Date of Access: 26 October 2019]. Kumar, M. (2012). Invoking everydayness in poverty studies in India: A note on approach and method. Economic and Political Weekly, XLVI(38), 71–81. Lewis, O. (1966). The culture of poverty. American, 215(4), 19–25. Lister, R. (1998). Citizenship of the margins: Citizenship, social work and social action. European Journal of Social Work, 1(1), 5–18. Lister, R. (2004). Poverty: Key concepts. Cambridge; London: Polity Press. Lyons, K. (1992). An NGO’s response to poverty and powerlessness on a British housing estate: Implications for social work education. International Social Work, 32(2), 243–253. Metcalf, S. (2017, August 18). Neoliberalism: The idea that swallowed the world. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/ neoliberalism-the-idea-that-changed-the-world [Date of Access: 21 October 2019]. Palriwala, R., and Neetha, N. (2009). The care diamond: State social policy and the market. India: Research Report 3. Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. Rank, M. R. (2005). One nation, underprivileged: Why American poverty affects us all. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Rylko-Bauer, B. A., and Farmer, P. (2016). Structural violence, poverty and social suffering. In D. A. Brady and L. M. Burton (Eds.), Oxford handbook of poverty and society (pp. 47–74). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Scheper-Hughes, N. (2004). Dangerous and endangered youth social structures and determinants of violence. Annals New York Academy of Sciences, 1036(1), 13–46. Sen, A. (1981). Poverty and famines: An essay on entitlement and deprivation. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sinha, R. (2012). Violence and health: A study among an unorganised labour group in the solid waste disposal system. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Walker, C., and Walker, A. (2002). Social policy and social work. In L. D. R. Adams (Ed.), Social work: Themes, issues and critical debates (pp. 50–61). Basingstoke: Palgrave. Walsh, P. (2003). Changing families in a changing world: Reconstructing family normality. In F. Walsh (Ed.), Normal family processes: Growing diversity and complexity (3rd ed., pp. 3–26). New York, NY: Guilford.

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Winter, D., and Leighton, D. C. (2001). Structural violence. In R. V. D. J. Christie (Ed.), Peace, confict and violence: Peace psychology in the 21st century. New York, NY: Prentice-Hall. World Health Organization. (1995). World health report 1995. Retrieved from www.who.int/whr/1995/en/whr95_ch1_en.pdf [Date of Access: 26 October 2019].

5

Families in confict zones The case of Central India Ilina Sen

Introduction Family is a primary social institution and for many people an institution of belongingness and security throughout the lifecycle. Although feminist scholarship recognises the essentially patriarchal structure of the family, in many postcolonial societies, the family continues to be a primary source of support for individuals, in the absence of state-based social security systems or opportunities for establishing special interest groups. In situations of confict and stress, the family becomes especially vulnerable. Central India, in particular the quadri-junction between Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Telangana, and Maharashtra, is at the heart of the confict over control of resources today. Located in the heart of India, the forests of Dandakaranya have provided safety to the tribal population on the ground and to the rich mineral resources underneath the soil for centuries. Lack of access and a limited state development agenda prevented an aggressive state initiative, but with the onset of liberalisation in the decade of the 1990s, much has changed. The minerals are now a coveted resource, and the state and private capital are hell-bent on accessing this capital base. The ensuing confict has impacted material, cultural, and survival issues. In a sense, thus, although the confict has a specifc regional focus, it is symptomatic of all similar conficts that have swept away centuries-old structures of family, kinship, and cultural solidarity. Although, we locate our discussion in the Central Indian context, many of the parameters that affect families in times of confict transcend the regional context, with exposures of reality as understood by the local families. There are many parameters across which the family crumbles in times of confict, causing enormous harm to its constituent members, and examples stare us in the face from all across the globe. The habitat may come under daily attack from marauding service members, tanks, and gunfre, making access to the essentials of life hard to come by. This may lead to loss of life and signifcant morbidities, initiating in turn a process of migration and desperate journeys across land, sea, hostile topography, and unwelcoming international borders. The stream of refugees from the Middle East and

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Eastern Europe who are feeing the territorial control of the Islamic State provide a much-publicised example of such disruption. The sorrows of the Rohingiyas, unwanted for reasons of religious identity in Myanmar and ethnic identity in Bangladesh, provide a recent example of dispossessed people whose family spaces and habitats have been destroyed because of the ongoing confict in their home state. It cannot be repeated too often that women and children are the ones who suffer most in such migrations. Many lose their innocence and many their lives in these brutal migrations. A discussion on the dysfunctional effect of confict on families can meander across space from Rwanda to Bosnia and across time from the Crusades to the Nazi Holocaust. However, I anchor this discussion in the relatively closed context of Central India’s experiences in the post-liberalisation history of the past 25 years. The districts that made up undivided Bastar1 in Chhattisgarh lie at the centre of the discussion. Bastar in Chhattisgarh is today at the heart of the debate about development and democratic practice in the country. Chhattisgarh was a geographically and culturally distinct region long before it became a state, carved out of Madhya Pradesh in 2000. Within Chhattisgarh, Bastar occupies a distinct space for its cultural and ethnic diversity. Because of its cultural uniqueness, Bastar has been the site of several important anthropological investigations, including the work of Verrier Elwin (Guha, 1999). Although resource rich, Bastar is home to large numbers of people who are among the poorest in the country. Chhattisgarh as a whole has a scheduled tribe population of over 30 percent, and in several of the districts of Bastar division, it is over 70 percent. The area has typically been geographically isolated, and it is home to a large Indigenous (tribal) population who have by and large managed their own lives and the natural resources around them. Many of the tribal communities of Bastar,2 like the many subsets of the Gond tribe, have had strong kinship structures and large stable extended families, with a complex system of mutual assistance and sharing of work and responsibility. However, today Bastar is a heavily confict-ridden and militarised area. The reasons are complex but involve the large mineral reserves of the region and an aggressive agenda of mega-development, which according to the state government is the solution to the poverty and backwardness of the region. This area contains India’s richest mineral and forest resources. The forests of Sal and Teak and the natural reserves of major diversity coexist with major deposits of iron ore, tin, uranium, and diamonds. Since much of this “rich land” was covered by forest and was diffcult to reach in earlier times, there was not much effort to exploit these riches. Hence, there was little challenge to the access of impoverished tribal populations over the rich forested land where the mineral resources lie untouched. With the liberalisation of the economy and increasing industrial and economic development, the hold exercised by the poor people over their resources is increasingly being challenged. The unrest among the population emanating from their dispossession and a militant insurgent movement and a heavily militarised

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state intent on “opening up” the area make up the ingredients of a cocktail that have led to large parts of this indigenous heartland of Chhattisgarh being in fames since 2005. Radical left insurgency appears to have crossed over into south Bastar from the Telangana districts of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh sometime in the early 2000s and was by and large left undisturbed until the birth of the new state (Sahoo, 2019). Once the new state was created, it turned out that the radical left militants (the followers of the Maoist Communist Party of India [CPI]) were located in the deep forests and occupied the same space where the mining concessions were being doled out and where the popular resistance was feeding into the ranks of the insurgents. As a result, the state intensifed its direct militarised response, and at the same time, it sponsored, in 2005, a vigilante militia named Salwa Judum3 (“Purifcation Hunt” in the Gondi language) to crush both dissent and insurgency (Sundar, 2006). The Salwa Judum has in the past 13 years effectively split the Indigenous society into two and ushered in a regime of unbridled violence between 2005 and the present (see Sen, 2014, pp. 275–280).

The raging confict: who pays the price? Offcially described as a spontaneous peoples’ uprising against Maoist violence, Salwa Judum was really a ground-clearing operation to give the mining and industrial interests a free hand over the land and natural resources of the area (Sen, 2006). In the initial years, it has enjoyed the patronage of the state government, sections of right-wing citizens, sections of the Congress Party, the state police, and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). Indian Reserve Battalions of Naga and, more recently, Mizo forces have been brought in to “support” the Salwa Judum. Contrary to the offcial claims about the peaceful nature of the Salwa Judum, there exists suffcient evidence to indicate that it has divided the tribal society, split communities, and led to conditions approaching those of civil war. In the Bijapur and Bhairamgarh areas of Dantewara, the Salwa Judum led to the creation of a cadre of vigilante youth who are trained and armed by the government; they are euphemistically called special police offcers (SPOs). It led to the forced displacement of thousands of people from “sensitive” villages that are suspected of being sympathetic to the Maoists. The displaced were put in relief camps, supposedly under police protection, in the name of security. Conditions in these camps were subhuman (Sundar, 2016). A community with a strong cultural heritage that prided itself on its dignity and self-suffciency was reduced to a group of dependent and aimless people living miserably on dole in concrete hovels, with fading memories of their independent lives and their beautiful homes in the forest. Although human rights groups and the Supreme Court judgment in a public interest litigation (PIL) has found (Sundar, Guha, and Sarma, 2011; Venkatesan, 2011) both the Salwa Judum and the security forces guilty of

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major human rights violations, the state government has continued to militarise the area and reinvent vigilante groups under different nomenclatures to stife dissent and push ahead with the mission to open up the resources of the region for exploitation by large fnancial undertakings. The Salwa Judum and the state forces have ensured that many adivasi villages in the confict area have been forcibly emptied: the population has been moved to roadside “camps”; homes and crops have been burnt; and women have been raped (Manecksha, 2016). A large number of tribal people are also known to have escaped to the bordering districts of Andhra Pradesh to fee the violence of the Salwa Judum and the ongoing confict. Their numbers are not known (Campaign for Peace & Justice in Chhattisgarh, 2008), but there exists suffcient documentation about their plight without any of the normal civic entitlements in a state to which they do not belong. The militarisation has affected many aspects of life in Chhattisgarh, including the civil society in the region. Civil society organisations like the Dantewada-based Vanvasi Chetna Ashram had their premises demolished and their work stopped when they tried to resettle abandoned adivasi villages like Nendra, which had been burnt down four times over the course of the confict (Interim report of fact fnding team, 2009). Conficts, internal and external, are also well known to affect access to healthcare and food security and lead to a general breakdown in the social fabric (Yumnam and Dasgupta, 2017). However, there is no doubt that the most severe effect of the confict has been on the adivasi families of the region, whose lives have been completely uprooted. The women and children have been particularly affected, as has been the entire way of life and culture of the people. Some of these aspects will be considered next.

Families in the tribal context To begin with, some discussion is needed on the role and structure of the family in the context of tribal society in South Chhattisgarh. Many individual tribes have their unique customs regarding the institution of the family that do not conform to those of Caucasian or even mainstream Indian norms. Apart from the necessary emotional or procreative functions, tribal families fulfl an economic function and are the primary units of production, be it in the agricultural sector or in the artisanal sector. They also have their own traditions of socialising future generations, which may not be family based. This is not to suggest that adivasi societies are anarchic in these matters. Rather it is an acknowledgement of the fact that kinship structures sometimes assume greater importance in these contexts. For example, we can refer to Verrier Elwin’s (1948) study of the Muria Ghotul (tribal dormitory), which trains young people who from the time they attain puberty to the time they set up home with their permanent partners sleep in a collective dormitory of the young. The youth undertake a wide range of activities, maintain the physical structure of the ghotul, collect frewood, sing, dance,

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tell stories, and in the process learn about the sexual division of labour prevalent in their society and the traditions, history, and culture of their tribe, apart from the rudiments of sexual activity, which become a formation for their future conjugal lives with (mandatorily) non-ghotul partners. Scholars who have worked among the Toda of the Nilgiris recognise that among this tribe, the household, which is an economic and productive unit, is used synonymously with the family. Traditionally, the Todas practised polyandry, with two or more brothers married to the same woman, and the paternity of any child was offcially ascribed to the brother who frst staked a ritual claim to it unless another brother put up a counterclaim (Damodaran, 2009). At any given time, the paternity claim applied to all the children of a woman in a polyandrous relationship, regardless of actual biological paternity. Although these forms of the family have become rare with the penetration of “civilising” external infuences, we can see that this concept of the family was totally devoid of any idea of exclusive control over a woman’s sexuality, which forms a central building block of the family in most mainstream contexts. From Chhattisgarh itself, we have evidence of at least eight forms of marriage contracts among the Dhruv Gonds of the southern districts of the state, which highlights the necessity of enabling men and women to come together to carry on their mandated functions in the agricultural economy (Sen, 2014). Marriage partnerships within the clan are strictly taboo, but otherwise, a wide range of marriage arrangements exist that have implications for wedding rituals as well as the social relationships resulting from it. The wedding location may be at the bride’s place with all arrangements done by the bride’s family (barhbihav, or regular wedding) or at the groom’s place (sagaibihav, or ritual wedding), or the arrangements may be between the two households according to convenience (laginbihav, or wedding of convenience). Paithubihav (irregular wedding) is a practice of marriage at will, when a girl already engaged visits the home of her partner-to-be for Nawa khai (the harvest feast) and thereafter decides to stay there. In such cases, the groom or his family has to give mandatory gifts to the devgudi (shrine of the village deity) and relatives. An adaptation of this is the urhariabihav (elopement leading to a wedding), in which the bride and the groom take off on their own to a location other than their villages, after a prearranged meeting at a weekly market. Although marriages are normally patrilineal and patrilocal, families without sons have an option of “importing” a son-in-law to take care of their property under the lamsena or gharjiya (importing a son into the family) system, in which case the new family is patrilineal but matrilocal. Another arrangement, relatively uncommon now, is the bhowjichurhi (marriage to a sister-in-law), in which a brother-in-law can marry his sister-in-law upon the death of his brother by ritually gifting her glass bangles. The harras (wedding of compulsion) marriage, fairly rare now and much misunderstood by “civilised” society, is a way of handling premarital

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pregnancy in the community. Once such a pregnancy has been discovered, usually by a family member, the matter is taken to the local chapter of the samajikmahasabha (social council) that effectively translates as a group of elders, the siyans (village patriarchs). All parties are expected to be present. In the event that the male partner of the girl is otherwise eligible to be her marital partner (i.e. he is not from the same clan as the girl), he is requested to marry her. In the event that he is ineligible or unwilling to marry the girl, other interested and eligible men are invited to offer marriage. In this way, out of a number of offers of marriage, the girl is asked to choose one whom she considers most suitable, and the community asks for a contribution and feast from the prospective groom, and the matter is settled in this way. This marriage is legalised again by an offering of neng (gift) to the gods and the elders. In the late 1990s, Sen (2014) met several couples living peacefully in the Gattasilli area north of Kanker, who had come together through harras marriages. The liberality of traditional Gond society, in which there is an attempt to deal practically with youth sexuality, in which a man accepts paternity for a child biologically his own, must be appreciated here, although the “modern” codifcation of traditional Gond law discourages these diverse arrangements. What is interesting is that the type of family resulting from these diverse practices through which a relationship can be legitimised also tends to be different. For example, married partners in a paithu or uraria marriage have been seen to have a much closer conjugal relationship than the relatively institutionalised relations of couples who came together through the more formal marriages like the bar bihav. Sen (2014) has also commented on the spirit of collectivity in Gond villages. Everyone actively participated in celebrating weddings in any family. It was common practice for the wedding marhwa (wedding site, where a temporary pavilion is built) to be in one home, the food to be cooked and the wedding feast served in another, and the guests put up in yet other homes.

Violence faced by adults: women and men There is a large body of evidence that women bear the brunt of violence in confict situations and that their bodies and sexuality become objects of contention between combatant oppositions. In this context, certain concerns emanate from the nature of militarisation per se. The process of military training is designed to wipe out individual soldiers’ resistance to killing and brutality in the process of “othering” of the enemy and area domination. This is epitomised in the slogan “No mercy, no surrender” of the Naga India Reserve battalion posted in southern Chhattisgarh during the period 2006–2008. Rape and sexual assault on the women of the area that is to be dominated becomes a cynical tool of this enterprise. Aggressive masculinity and sexual violence against women are intricately involved in every aspect

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of war – whether it involves civilian women in areas under occupation or women of the “enemy” population. The use of “irregulars” like the members of Salwa Judum (euphemism for sponsored vigilantes, not subject to even the minimum accountability of the “regular combatants”) adds to the repression of occupied populations. Sexual violence against women is never “collateral damage”4; women are specifcally the targets of this assault. Impunity for systematic or isolated sexual violence in the process of internal security duties is built into our legislative frameworks, like the Armed Forces Special Protection Act (AFSPA), that are in force in large parts of our country. International legal frameworks have only recently begun to recognise this category of crimes against humanity. Some recent cases in International Law, like the Furundija judgment5 of the International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1991, have made landmark decisions in the matter of culpability of perpetrators of sexual crimes against women in situations of internal confict (Chavez, 1996; Coomaraswamy, 1998). These sentiments have also been echoed in many resolutions of the United Nations (UN Security Council, 2000). The experience from internal confict areas in our own country has not been any different. In India, incidents of killing and of rape and other forms of sexual violence against women by men in uniform have been reported from several scenes of internal confict, such as Kashmir, the Central Indian states, and the Northeast. In Kashmir, the Shopian rape and murder case of 2009 (International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir [IPTK], 2009), for which four police offcers were fnally indicted on charges of the rape and murder of two women, is well known. Several other cases are also documented in the report jointly produced by the IPTK and the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) (IPTK, 2009). Manipur was shaken a few years ago by the rape and murder of Thangjam Manorama Devi and the protest of the naked Imas (mothers) before Kangla Fort who dared the Indian army to rape them (Rehman, 2016). Similarly, in the Central Indian states of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, there are several reported cases of sexual violence to which women have been subjected in the process of increasing militarisation in these areas. In Bastar, a sordid chronicle perhaps frst came into public notice with the sexual assault of Bastar anganwadi worker Sonia in 2005 (around the time when the Salwa Judum was beginning its activities) (Committee Against Violence on Women (CAVOW), 2006). The fact-fnding report on violence against women in the course of the Salwa Judum released in 2006 (CAVOW, 2006) also documented that over 20 women were murdered by the security forces and vigilantes at the height of the anti-insurgency operations in 2006–2007, while more than 40 had been raped and sexually abused. Many women had been also reported missing, and many had been tortured and sexually abused in custody. A landmark case in 2011 has been

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that of the school teacher Soni Sori, brutally tortured and violated in the custody of the state, who had stones shoved up her private parts and was acquitted of the charges of being a “Maoist supporter” (Arya, 2016; Jeffrey, Sen, and Singh, 2012). Newspaper reports and background material from south Bastar indicate that women in these areas have been victims of violence on a disturbing scale (including gang rape, custodial rape, mutilation of private parts, murder, and repeated sexual abuse) in villages, police stations, and relief camps during the year and a half of Salwa Judum. Similarly, women are reported to be missing, illegally detained, incarcerated on unsubstantiated charges, or not produced before magistrates. The CAVOW (2006) report reveals that discussions with women in the relief camps revealed that the thousands of villagers who are in these camps were largely forced to abandon their homes, hearths, and felds. Few could bring any of their personal belongings. As a result, most have lost their entire livestock (cattle, pigs, hens, and so on), stocks of grain, and forest produce. There has been a massive dislocation of the population as well as livelihood in the course of the Salwa Judum. The total absence of food and livelihood security in the camps was striking. Many women stated that they wanted to return to their villages. They were distressed by and felt insecure from being separated from their communities as well as at the disruption of their social life. Some villagers of Belnar and Munder ran away from the Baangapal camp, and ever since, the SPOs (special police offcers, an ad hoc recruitment of local youth) have been guarding the camp. Many families had been divided in the process of relocation to the camps, sometimes in the most bizarre ways. The CAVOW report (2006, p. 12) quotes the following testimony: In February we were asked to submit our report to the centre in Konta. From Konta center itself, the Salwa judum people and the CRPF directly brought us here. We came in the clothes we were wearing. We purchased new ones when we got our salaries at the end of the month. I don’t like to stay here but I cannot go back. My mother is still in the village, but I haven’t seen her since February. Here, we are constantly told that we should not go back to the village because of the Maoist threat. Either way we are left without a home. Who will take care of my mother? My son was forced to join as an SPO. He is 17 years old and he had to leave his studies because of this. I was not happy but there is nothing I can do. My whole family has been divided because of this. Since I was brought to the camp I was seen as Judum supporter by the Maoists and since my mother lives in the village she is seen as a Naxal sympathizer by the administration. (Anganwadi worker from Dornapal Camp) In 2015, many villagers narrated tales of beatings, torture, and lootings by the security forces during patrols to the Women Against Sexual Violence

122 Ilina Sen and State Repression (WSS) fact-fnding team. They also related tales of women being chased through felds, having their clothes torn, and being molested (WSS, 2017). Reports of sexual assault during combing operations have continued to pour in from other confict areas in the region. Meena Khalkho’s case in north Chhattisgarh illustrates the fate of a young girl intercepted in the forest while she was letting her cattle graze during a combing operation, who was gang raped and killed.6 This case also highlights the administration’s clumsy coverup operation, in which Meena was dubbed an armed Naxalite cadre at the same time that her family was given cash compensation and her brother offered a job by the state government. Four years later, a judicial enquiry report confrmed that the police version had been fabricated, and it concluded categorically that no encounter took place that morning and that Meena was not a Maoist (WSS, 2012). The latest shocking report of violence against women from early 2016 relates to the infamous Naxalite test that the security forces were forcing women in the villages of the confict area to go through (Sandilya and Divya, 2016). The Maoists are known to discourage pregnancy and childbearing among their female cadres, as these activities supposedly defect their attention from revolutionary action. To ascertain whether village women in confict areas (and the villages themselves) were Maoist supporters or not, the security forces on their fag marches were reported to routinely squeeze women’s breasts for milk. If none or a majority of the women were found to be non-lactating, that was taken as proof of a village’s loyalty to the banned organisation, and the village was dealt with accordingly. If tribal women have been subjected to systemic sexual violence, tribal men have been differently, but no less brutally, targeted by security forces and Salwa Judum vigilantes in Bastar. Men, especially young men, were generally suspected of allegiance to the opposite camp by both the security forces and the Maoists. In the case of the security forces, mostly outsiders to the area, every tribal youth was a potential Naxalite or a member of the dalams (village-level mass organisation sponsored by the Maoists), and for the Maoists, ferce loyalty was demanded of village youth, with summary trials and executions for those deemed unfaithful to the cause. Documentation from the Salwa Judum period attests to a large number of fake encounters, (PUCL et al., 2006) and many adivasis languishing without trial in the jails of Bastar on charges of being threats to national security. Chhattisgarh has the most crowded prisons in the country, with an occupancy rate of 235.5 percent in excess of capacity, as against the national average occupancy rate, which is 114.4 percent. The highest discrepancy in the occupation rate is in the confict-ridden districts of south Bastar (Singh, 2016). The situation has not improved with the “offcial” disbanding of the Salwa judum. In 2012, a village beejpandum (seed distribution) meeting in Sarkeguda was fred on by the CRPF, and a report was put out describing them as Naxalite casualties in an encounter. The agitated villagers reported that this was a traditional village meeting related to the agricultural cycle

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and that of the 12 people killed, three were schoolboys helping the elders with weights, measures, and calculations. A judicial enquiry into the matter continues to this day (Subramanian, 2015).

The price paid by children There have been numerous reports that both the Salwa Judum and the Chhattisgarh police had recruited minors for its armed forces (Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR), 2006). A primary survey evaluated by the Forum for Fact Finding Documentation and Advocacy (FFDA) (Mahapatra, 2007) determined that over 12,000 minors were being used by the Salwa Judum and that the Chhattisgarh government had “offcially recruited 4200 Special Police Offcers (SPOs); many of them being easily identifable as minors.” Apart from this, children’s healthy growth and nutrition took a huge toll in the process of the dislocation and displacement from their villages and relocation to camps in the course of the confict. The CAVOW report (2006) indicated that undernourishment and malnourishment were common features of the residents of both the old camps and the new camps that were visited by the team members working on this report. Almost all children seen at the Baangapal and Dornapal camps showed signs of malnutrition and had typically distended bellies. Parents at Baangapal had sent their school-going children to live in an ashram school several villages away, where they were provided with a midday meal, often their only meal in the day. It was obvious that their economic and nutritional status had deteriorated substantially. In the large Dornapal camp, UNICEF had identifed 78 children suffering from grade 3 and grade 4 malnutrition. The only viable health facility in the area, the clinics run by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), were forced to shut down by an order of the state government in 2013 (Bagchi, 2013b). Children’s schooling has been a major casualty of the violence and confict. As the regular schools in the confict areas were not functioning, the administration of south Bastar opened residential schools for the children of the confict area in hastily assembled prefabricated portable cabins and, in the style of white settlers dealing with aboriginal children in colonised Australia, forced parents to send children to these makeshift schools in the interest of “their own good.” Sub-standard teaching, unsafe living conditions, and the sexual molestation of girls have been reported from many of these schools on numerous occasions (Bagchi, 2013a). There are reports of funds not reaching schools, supplies of food not reaching anganwadis and residential schools, and rampant malnutrition among the children in the care of the state in south Bastar (Bagchi, 2014).

Effects on the family With dislocation; the loss of productive assets and livelihoods; and women, men, and children (individual constituents of families) being subjected to

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sustained and selective abuse, it is easy to imagine the trauma that family and kinship structures have faced in south Chhattisgarh. Disruption of ordinary life, space, and stability; the loss of near and dear ones; the loss of purpose in life for those forced to live in camps, physical and psychological damage to one’s self all disrupt the equilibrium of normal family life. To the credit of the Gond social solidarity, it must be said that larger community support has been always there for broken families. Women who have faced sexual violence from outsiders are by and large supported by their families and communities and not cast away on the grounds of deflement by outsiders, as has often been the case in more “developed” societies like those of South Asian borderlands while the present nation states of India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan were coming into existence. We may recall the plight of the “Biranganas” – women who were gang raped by the Pakistani soldiers and Razakars during the war of Bangladesh liberation – who were abandoned by their “loving” families of origin because their bodies had been violated by “unentitled” men. In south Chhattisgarh, many families have faced total disruption through the loss of parents, the psychological effect of sexual assault on mothers, and the separation of young children from their families on the pretext of providing educational opportunity that is not available at their place of residence, either because of dislocation or withdrawal of services by the government from a territory that they presume to be Maoist dominated. Children’s well-being is often central to the stability of the family as an institution. In south Chhattisgarh, children are growing up today in completely dysfunctional conditions, without the love and care of their families, often in isolated and hostile environments and among people who have no respect for their traditions. The long-term effects of these events in terms of the fragmentation of communities, destruction of normal growth, and emotional bonding can have serious consequences on the future of adivasi social institutions like the family and community.

Indigenous knowledge, material culture, and its destruction The Gond communities and families have had a rich culture of Indigenous knowledge which has been carefully nurtured by family elders and passed on to the next generation. To know what they have lost, we need perhaps to engage in a discussion on what they had. The Gonds of Chhattisgarh have traditionally had a rich heritage of Indigenous material culture as well as movement-led struggles for alternative development. We need to discuss this because s it is related to the Gond community’s food sovereignty. The Indigenous communities of Chhattisgarh have had food sovereignty in ways not fully comprehended by the scientifc community right up to the present time. There was a complex community-based production and distribution system and a great diversity in crops. Uncultivated food resources included many varieties of rice, a wide range of millets and other dry land

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crops, pulses, oilseeds, fruits, edible fowers, tubers, mushrooms, and other gathered foods. Many of these depended on access and proximity to the forests. The role that women have played in maintaining these systems is relatively little understood. In tribal Chhattisgarh, women were the major agricultural workers and also played a major role in the collection, marketing, and processing of the many kinds of uncultivated foods found in Chhattisgarh. They were also the keepers of the seeds. The complex knowledge of seed storage and preservation, including its technical aspects, has been passed on from generation to generation by Gond women. The ongoing confict has rung the death knell of many of these systems, and it is tragic to fnd the independent and food-sovereign families, the proud people who have been carriers of this sophisticated knowledge system for generations, queuing up for meagre rations in relief camps and struggling to fnd poorly paid employment on roadside construction sites. Evidently, family functioning and interactions get disrupted in a confict situation, as this chapter has shown. The family is the nurturing space for children to grow and adults to feel safe and secure. A confict situation divests the family of such roles, and it thus becomes a space of struggle for survival. When people are targeted and killed indiscriminately, young children are left to fend for themselves and lack adequate role models in their lives. They tend not only to emulate what they witness on a daily basis to the tune of becoming numb to the violence around them but also to a great extent internalise the violence. Such an environment perpetuates dysfunctional interactions and relationships in violated families and leads to the development of a culture of violence in the affected communities. Girls are more vulnerable than boys given the rampant and gory experiences of abuse that they are forced to endure in confict situations, and their well-being is deeply affected. As families and communities are shattered and with a decreasing scope to engage with agriculture or with the forest, the transfer of local knowledge about agriculture and seed storage and preservation, which is traditionally passed down orally, is seriously hampered. Confict situations thus impact families in stark and subtle ways.

Conclusion The confict areas of south Bastar in Chhattisgarh provide an illustration of the effect of an ongoing confict on stable family life and family-based production systems. If these were isolated instances, one might be less concerned. Unfortunately, the world today has many similar perfect examples to display. Restoration of peace and a development paradigm based on social justice and equity are essential preconditions for bringing stability to the lives of families, women, and children in south Chhattisgarh. Like most other conficts, the root causes lie in our choice of development paradigms. It might be possible to restore normalcy through a process of dialogue,

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change of gear, and exercise of political will. However, the structure of the family in the tribal society of Bastar has suffered too deep a gash for it to ever be the same again. Some of the destructions, especially of intangible resources like Indigenous knowledge, may be irreversible. Like the famous lost wax art of Bastar, the tribal family and kinship structure of the region is likely to become a throwback to a world we have lost.

Notes 1 The old district of Bastar was broken up after the year 2000 into the new districts of Kanker (north Bastar), Kondagaon, Narayanpur, Jagdalpur (Bastar), Sukma, Dantewada, and Bijapur. For ease of discussion, we shall continue to use “Bastar” to refer to the region we are discussing in this chapter. 2 The major tribes of Bastar are the Dandami Maria, Dhruv, Gond, Muria, Bhathra, Dhurwa, Koya, Halba, Pahariya, and other, smaller tribal groups. 3 Salwa Judum (meaning “Peace March” or “Purifcation Hunt” in Gondi language) was a militia that was mobilised and deployed as part of anti-insurgency operations in Chhattisgarh, India, aimed at countering Naxalite violence in the region. It was launched in 2005 under the leadership of Mahendra Karma, a member of an elite tribal family, and the then sitting MLA from Dantewada (Sen, 2014). 4 Inadvertent causalities and destruction inficted on civilians in the course of military operations. 5 Prosecutor v. Anto Furundija, Case No. IT-95-17/1-T, Judgement (UN, December 10, 1998) Retrieved from www.icty.org/x/cases/furundzija/tjug/en/ fur-tj981210e.pdf [Date of Access: 14 October 2019]. 6 Chhattisgarh fake encounter: “I tell them all . . . my Meena was not Naxal.” Retrieved from https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/chhattisgarhfake-naxal-encounter-jharkhand-meena-khalkho-rape-2922235/ [Date of Access: 14 October 2019].

References Arya, D. (2016, March 22). Soni Sori: India’s fearless tribal activist. BBC News. Retrieved from www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-35811608 [Date of Access: 13 February 2020]. Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR). (2006). The adivasis of Chhattisgarh: Victims of the Naxalite movement and salwa judum campaign. New Delhi: Author. Bagchi, S. (2013a, April 5). Appalling conditions in Chhattisgarh government’s porta cabins. The Hindu (New Delhi). Bagchi, S. (2013b, June 14). Red Cross asked to stop work in Naxal-affected Bijapur. The Hindu (New Delhi). Bagchi, S. (2014, March 6). Funds from sarvashiksha abhiyan are pumped into “schools” in Bastar that do not exist. The Hindu (New Delhi). Campaign for Peace & Justice in Chhattisgarh. (2008, October 19). Statement to the National Human Rights Commission, New Delhi. Retrieved from https:// cpjc.fles.wordpress.com/2008/10/cpjcstatementnhrc.pdf [Date of Access: 10 October 2019]. Chavez, L. (1996, July 16). Preliminary Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of systematic rape, sexual slavery and slavery-like practices during

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periods of armed confict, UN Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1996/26, Geneva. Retrieved from www.awf.or.jp/e4/un-03.html [Date of Access: 10 October 2019]. Committee Against Violence on Women (CAVOW). (2006). Salwa judum and violence against women in Dantewara, Chhattisgarh: Report of a fact fnding by an All India Women’s team. Nagpur: Author. Coomaraswamy, R. (1998, January 26). Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, submitted in accordance with Commission resolution 1997/4, UN Doc.E/CN.4/1998/54. Retrieved from www. awf.or.jp/e4/un-01.html [Date of Access: 10 October 2019]. Damodaran, M. P. (2009, September). Changing family system among the Todas of the Nilgiris: A case study. Paper presented at the National Seminar on “Critical questioning of the changing Indian family in the 21st century”, held at RBVR Reddy Women’s College, Hyderabad. Elwin, V. (1948). The Muria and their ghotul. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Guha, R. (1999). Savaging the civilized: Verrier Elwin, his tribals, and India. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Interim report of fact-fnding team on developments in Chhattisgarh. (2009, June 13). Mainstream, XLVII(26). International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir (IPTK). (2009, July 19). Militarization with impunity: A brief on rape and murder in Shopian, Kashmir. Retrieved from www.kashmirprocess.org/ shopian [Date of Access: 14 October 2019]. Jeffrey, R., Sen, R., and Singh, P. (Eds.). (2012). More than Maoism: Politics, policies and insurgencies in South Asia. New Delhi: Manohar Publications. Mahapatra, S. (2007). Child soldiers in Chhattisgarh: Issues, challenges and FFDA’s response. New Delhi: Forum for Fact fnding Documentation and Advocacy (FFDA). Manecksha, F. (2016). Sexual violence and impunity in Bastar. Economic and Political Weekly, LI(15), 17–19. People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) Chhattisgarh, PUCL, Jharkhand, People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) Delhi, Association for the Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) West Bengal, and Indian Association of People’s Lawyers (IAPL). (2006). When the state makes war on its own people: A report on violation of peoples’ rights during the salwa judum campaign in Dantewara, Chhattisgarh. New Delhi: PUCL National Offce. Retrieved from https://cpjc.fles. wordpress.com/2007/07/salwa_judum.pdf [Date of Access: 14 October 2019]. Rehman, T. (2016). The mothers of Manipur: Twelve women who made history. New Delhi: Zubaan Books. Sahoo, N. (2019). Half a century of India’s Maoist insurgency: An appraisal of state response. ORF Occasional Paper, 198. Retrieved from www.orfonline. org/research/half-a-century-of-indias-maoist-insurgency-an-appraisal-of-stateresponse-51933 [Date of Access: 13 February 2020]. Sandilya, P., and Divya, G. S. (2016, January 19). Adivasi women as the subject of experiment and breast milk as the evidence [Online forum post, Adivasi Resurgence]. Retrieved from www.adivasiresurgence.com/naxalite-test-adivasiwomen-as-the-subject-of-experiment-and-breast-milk-as-the-evidence [Date of Access: 14 October 2019]. Sen, I. (2006, November). Ground clearing with the salwa judum. Himal (South Asia, Khatmandu).

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Sen, I. (2014). Inside Chhattisgarh: A political memoir. New Delhi: Penguin Books. Singh, S. S. (2016, October 27). Chhattisgarh prisons the most crowded in country. The Hindu (Kolkata). Subramanian, M. (2015, September 19). Still far from justice, the victims of a 2012 Chhattisgarh encounter are living under the gun. Scroll.in. Retrieved from https:// scroll.in [Date of Access: 14 October 2019]. Sundar, N. (2006). Bastar, maosim and salwa judum. Economic and Political Weekly, 41(29), 3187–3192. Sundar, N. (2016). The burning forest. New Delhi: Juggernaut. Sundar, N., Guha, R., and Sarma, E. A. S. (2011, July 16). Supreme court on salwa judum. Economic and Political Weekly, XLVI(29), 4. UN Security Council. (2000, October 31). Resolution (S/RES/1325 (2000) Women and peace and security. Retrieved from www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/wps [Date of Access: 14 October 2019]. Venkatesan, J. (2011, July 5). Salwa judum is illegal, says Supreme Court. The Hindu. Retrieved from www.thehindu.com/news/national/Salwa-Judum-is-illegalsays-Supreme-Court/article13639702.ece [Date of Access: 13 February 2020]. Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS). (2012, December). The state and sexual violence: Challenging impunity, demanding justice. Retrieved from https://wssnet.fles.wordpress.com/2013/11/wss_report_10dec2012.pdf [Date of Access: 28 September 2019]. Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS). (2017). GAVAHI: A WSS book on sexual violence in south Chhattisgarh (Hindi). New Delhi: WSS. Yumnam, V., and Dasgupta, R. (2017). Conceptual issues of confict as a social determinant of health: Explorations from Manipur. In D. Nambiar, A. Muralidharan, M. Chatterjee, and G. Sen (Eds.), The social determinants of health in India: Concepts, processes and indicators (pp. 35–50). Singapore: Springer.

6

Women, family and the everyday struggle facing conficts1 A case of Kashmir Farrukh Faheem

Those days (1989–1990) were a time of pride for Kashmiri women. We used to come out of our homes almost every day to participate in protests. We shouted anti-India and pro-independence slogans with excitement. Sometimes, we did not cook at home. Community meals were arranged to set us free from household errands and ensure our involvement in the protests. When a majority of men retreated due to crack downs by [Armed Forces] or went for training [to other side of Kashmir] we carried on the movement. When our men returned and anti-India demonstrations were replaced by armed [rebellion] we changed our strategy. We marched to courts and camps of Indian [Armed Forces] to protest against detentions and negotiate the release of our men. We collected money to arrange bail for the detained. We visited the detainees and provided them food and clothes. (Shekhawat, 2014, p. 81)

Background Like other communities in South Asia, in Kashmir, men are considered primary upholders of the family. Traditionally, Kashmiri women have remained confned within the four walls of their homes attached to a patrilocal household. They remained dependent on the male members of their families. This dependence was so deep rooted that even the personal issues of the women were decided by the oldest male member. Although women have been earning their living in the home-based handicraft industry for a long time and have been contributing to the family’s income, the male members always maintained control over matters related to family income and expenditures (Dabla, Nayak, and Khurshid-Ul-Islam, 2000). However, the early 1990s uprising against the Indian state in Jammu and Kashmir (J & K) had a deep impact on every aspect of Kashmiri society. Massive militarisation, clampdowns on protesting population and long curfews and violence infuenced everyday life in Kashmir. The enhanced presence of Indian Armed Forces and the vulnerability of male members to detention, disappearance and killings undermined and stretched the traditional roles occupied by women in Kashmiri society. Consequently, the stretched roles of women had a deep impact on social relations and familial obligations. In this chapter, I argue that in confict zones, violence often infuences the

130 Farrukh Faheem family organisation and that such infuences are a part of the larger patterns of change witnessed in the sociopolitical order. As political contestations increase, the conventional lines of difference between the domestic realm of the family and the public domain of politics vanish. From this point of view, in this chapter, I shall attempt to capture the tensions between the domestic realm of the family and the public realm of politics and how political contestations enter the domestic domain of the family and produce new contexts or social relations. This chapter is based on the feld experiences of working with the victims of state violence and the families of the victims of enforced disappearances associated with Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) in Kashmir.

Militarisation, women and everyday life in Kashmir Militarisation in Kashmir is synonymous with a state of total war that is not confned to “public” military-militant encounters or extra-legal offensive against Kashmiri [people]; it breaches conventional civil military spatial distinctions and permeates “private” domestic spaces presumed to be beyond the realm of war/militarised confict (Kazi, 2009, p. 139). As fve key elected members of Muslim United Front (MUF)2 offered their resignations to the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly in 1987, the sociopolitical landscape of Kashmir witnessed resurgence in protests and violent skirmishes in the same year. Many young men who lost their lives in these protests became cult fgures in Kashmir. Although women played a signifcant role in these mobilisations, initially their roles were restricted around the domestic spheres of life. Women who watched such mobilisations in the vicinity of their homes would often show their reverence to the struggle by showering fower petals and candies on the marching participants. During the initial phases of the spontaneous mobilisations, women would cook and distribute meals and drinks to the protestors. Such domestic activism played a crucial role in sustaining the struggle. In the later stages of organised Azadi rallies, women openly participated in the marches. Women from diverse backgrounds – teachers, students and housewives – closely identifed with the struggle and were at the forefront of such mobilisations. Family members marching with siblings and other relatives in the rallies became a common sight in series of Azadi rallies in subsequent years (Kazi, 2009, p. 140). Arguably, although armed conficts do infict immense sufferings on women, paradoxically, they also create spaces for them in the public sphere. Armed conficts thus compel women to actively reshape their domestic relationships and political commitments. As massive clampdown especially on the Azadi mobilisations and particularly on men increased, women were constrained to take up roles in the public sphere. Women would often come out of the four walls of their houses protesting against the atrocities committed by Indian Armed Forces and would make attempts to shield men from getting hit by their rifebutts. They would participate in sit-ins outside

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military installations protesting against the arbitrary arrests of their loved ones. In several ways, these instances of activism by women were rooted in the sociocultural values of the society at large. According to one estimate, in 2004, there were around 500,000 to 700,000 Indian soldiers in Kashmir, representing “just under half of or 44 percent of total Indian army strength” with almost one soldier for every ten Kashmiris (Human Rights Watch (HRW), 2006, p. 26). This is equal to approximately 57 soldiers per square mile, making Kashmir the most heavily militarised place in the world (Kazi, 2012). In the backdrop of such a high presence of the army in Kashmir, the sites of violent fghts between the army and armed groups are often the spaces frequented by women and children, the most vulnerable sections of any society. Such spaces have been shifting and shrinking for these groups in past 20 years of confict. The shared spaces like Yarbal (village tank), farmlands, orchards or even shrines frequented by women and children are often sites of confict between the army and armed groups. It shall be futile to reaffrm that the worst sufferers through these episodes are women and children. Since the start of the uprising, 8,000–10,000 people have disappeared, and there are around 1,000 “half-widows” in Kashmir today (Kazi, 2009). The loops of long concertina wire and the olive-green army bunkers that dot the streets of Kashmir organised, ordered and altered the social relations within the Kashmiri society. The delineation of the spaces highlighted through military sign boards as “security zone,” “VIP area” “no-headlight-on zone” or “surveillance zone” refects the physical architecture of the militarised space and the challenges faced by people negotiating through these spaces. As the number of Indian Armed Forces and their encounters with armed groups increased, the countryside Kashmir also witnessed a signifcant change. The shared open spaces were closed up with boundary walls and locked gates. The new practice of constructing boundary walls and gates as a physical barrier around households was intended as a measure to delay the arrival of armed forces and to secure the private space of the home. As the political contestations between the people and the Indian state increase, the private realm of the family and the public domain of the political merged, reconstituting a new social organisation.

Women and family: shifting roles Violence perpetrated by the Indian Armed Forces during what came to be known as a crackdown has been a daily routine in Kashmir. A crackdown can be announced anywhere in Kashmir, without warning. A typical crackdown involves Indian Armed Forces cordoning off a village or a locality in the wee hours of the day. Armed forces make an announcement giving directions to the people from the mosque loudspeakers; they then round up men and boys to identify active participants to the movement. Women are asked to stay back inside their houses while men are paraded

132 Farrukh Faheem in front of an informant for identifcation. The area under a crackdown is surrounded by armed forces, shops are closed and people are made to stand for hours. A group of soldiers then conducts house-to-house searches looking for underground men, arms and ammunitions. At the end of every crackdown, complaints of houses being ransacked, men being beaten up and women being abused by armed forces are quite common (Crossette, 1991). Besides the everyday experience of violence, the incidents of sexual abuse and enforced disappearances at the hands of armed forces have been specifcally reported during such crackdowns (Kazi, 2009). After any violent skirmish between armed forces and armed guerrillas, the fear of crackdowns would make the entire village or locality run for safety. Fearing reprisals from the armed forces, the families often run away to their kinship networks in other, “safer” localities or villages. The notion of “home” as a space that is safe and distant from violent confict “outside” has been threatened by the increasing intrusions into the domestic space of home through military crackdowns, midnight search operations and sieges. Series of military operations like the operation “Tiger,” “Shiva” and the “Catch and Kill” were launched by the Indian state in the aftermath of the 1990s uprising in Kashmir. It was essentially a campaign of “surprise raids” and was designed to “capture and kill suspected militants and terrorise civilian sympathizers.” According to a report by the advocacy group Human Rights Watch, these operations often resulted in the summary execution of detainees and indiscriminate attacks on civilians. There were frequent reports of arson attacks burning houses, shops and entire neighbourhoods during such operations (HRW, 2006, p. 22). As civilian causalities started to mount, one of the indirect consequences of such violence in Kashmir was the increasing role of women in the public sphere. Almost every Kashmiri household has a story about armed forces barging into their houses in the middle of the night and picking up male members of the household. In many women’s experiences, the experience of their sons or husbands being “picked up” in front of their eyes highlights their trauma of being a witness to an injustice and their sense of responsibility towards the victim and to the family. Rubiya from the Bemina locality of Srinagar, whose husband was picked up by armed forces, recalls how armed forces barged into her house at midnight: We were fast asleep and then we heard a knock on the door. Around 1.30 in the night Forces from nearby camp of Rashtriya Rifes barged into our house. They asked me to leave the room and began questioning my husband. They started interrogating and beating up my husband. When I tried to intervene, they pushed me out of the room. I could hear him screaming in pain. They continued to interrogate and beat him up till Fajar Namaz [morning prayers]. In the morning they roughed him up in an armoured vehicle and took him away. We tried to look for him. We went to every military camp and police station but were unable

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to trace him. We even fled a First Information Report. . . . Getting the news that your loved one is dead is a different thing compared to the trauma of waiting for a person who has been disappeared. . . . I was thirty when my husband was picked up. It is just me and my son now. . . . I have spent all my money in tracing him. It is so diffcult to meet family expenses. . . . In Islam one is supposed to wait for certain number of years if ones husband is disappeared. . . . I was asked to remarry, but I do not want to. What if my husband returns? What will I do then? Rubiya’s husband was picked up by the Indian Army on 2 September 1995. Over the past two decades, she has been waiting for her husband’s return. Over the years, thousands of women like Rubiya, while taking on economic burdens of running a household, continue to suffer from the trauma of waiting and the associated uncertainty regarding their conjugal status. Thirty-two-year-old Firdaus, whose husband was disappeared by Indian Armed Forces in the year 2000, runs a small makeshift tea stall on a handcart outside a hospital in the Srinagar. She is one among hundreds of women who are associated with APDP. Her everyday life refects how women in Kashmir have learnt to negotiate the new challenges. Firdaus often faces harassment and the threat of eviction from the police: I knew there would be problems in running a tea stall outside this hospital. But when the conditions at your home are bad and you have to earn a living, one has to prepare oneself to face anything that may come ones way. . . . Three days ago my shop was removed by the police. Initially I thought of calling jiji [Parveena Ahangar, chairperson of APDP]and seeking help from her, but when I realized that these problems would keep recurring in future too, I decided to deal with it on my own . . . you see now here I am back in my shop. The arrest or disappearance of a family member has implications for family functioning as well as family structure. Arrests or disappearances where the victim happens to be a child’s father can have even-deeper implications (Garbarino and Kostelny, 1996). In the context of Kashmir, the prolonged confict has compelled women into taking on nontraditional social and family roles. The vulnerability of men to arrests, enforced disappearances, killings, torture and long incarcerations; the consequent need for women to supplement the family income; and the increased political involvement of children in agitations and stone-pelting incidents are some of the instances that triggered the transitions in family roles and expectations. Narratives of families in Kashmir refect the psychosocial and economic costs of search: “the struggle to survive economically when father or husband is taken away competes for primacy with the search” (Mathur, 2015, p. 70). Families travel long distances in search of their loved ones and seek information

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about them from detention centres, police stations and prisons. Some children whose fathers have been disappeared end up in orphanages when mothers and families can no longer support them (ibid., p. 70). In the case of widows in Kashmir, it has been observed that majority of women shift from their patrilocal households to the paternal family house (Dabla et al., 2000). However, in the case of “half-widows” and their children, several have preferred staying in their patrilocal households, as one of the member of APDP observed: I live with in-laws at their house, with my mother-in-law, sister-in-law and my son. My two sisters and three brothers live far away from here at my paternal home. I am not in touch with them. . . . Things are not very good between us. In the absence of a husband, the nature and extent of support extended by the patrilocal family members determines whether a “half-widow” will be accommodated in the patrilocal house or at her paternal house. Another APDP member substantiates this point: “My parents live in Urdu bazaar but I don’t live with them, my father-in-law was kind enough to provide us with a shelter where I could live with my daughters.” Although many “half-widows” in Kashmir experience kindness and support from relatives and neighbours, they have to live with the constraints of societal norms that surround women without husbands within close-knit communities. As one member of the APDP observes, Whenever people from outside come here for interviews it generates lot of gossip in my neighbourhood. Some of them have even accused me of taking money from them. I don’t give any interviews to people from outside. We can’t trust everybody . . . and I have grown-up daughters. . . . I do not feel comfortable, I have to be bit careful with things. Violent conficts are known to have considerable impacts on the social fabric of the affected communities. From social relations between family members, neighbours and friends to intra-community relations, conficts are known to impact communities signifcantly. Armed conficts deeply affect social interactions and community trust, resulting in the transformation of the social norms around trust and cooperation (Justino, 2012). The loss of a breadwinner due to death or disappearance creates immense gaps in the functioning of the family unit. The loss of “the essential unifying role of the [disappeared] member can cause disruption and disharmony within the family” (Somasundaram, 2007, para.62). The uncertainty involved in the fate of the disappeared family member may push “halfwidows” in a “conspiracy of silence” as further inquiries may lead to more problems for the victim and for his family members (Somasundaram, 2007).

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The “half-widows” often fnd it diffcult to respond to their children’s questions about the absence of a father and the uncertainty around his absence, having consequences on child’s behaviour and overall childrearing practices. As Nighat observes, My husband was picked up by the Indian Army in August, 1992. I had just given birth to a baby boy and was recuperating. . . . Bringing up a boy in the absence of his father is always diffcult. He would ask me questions about his father. Initially I would pacify him by showing his pictures and I would tell him stories about him. . . . When he started going to the school, every day he would see fathers accompanying his school mates. . . . He would seek answers from me. . . . He was so angry. . . . I was worried. . . . So I fnally decided to put a stopper on his curiosities. . . . I lied to him and told him “Your father was a very bad man. . . . He never loved you. . . . He was not a caring father.” In collectivist societies like Kashmir, individuals are embedded within the family and the community and have close and strong bonds with the extended families. The families in Kashmir tend to respond to external crisis as a unit rather than as individual members. As mother of one of the disappeared observes, I have seen the worst. My family was falling apart when my son was disappeared. My younger son Ali was badly affected by his brother’s disappearance. He could not study further and suffered from depression. He would cry and was afraid of going out. Deep inside me, I feel a constant pain . . . a deep pain of being separated from my son. As individuals, women have to cope with the direct and indirect effects of confict in families. They have the capacity to offer commitment to secure their family members in times of violence. They also struggle against all odds to make little income to support their families (Rehn and Sirleaf, 2002). In the context of Kashmir, women have suffered immensely to keep the institution of the family intact. As one member of the APDP observes, Personally, I suffer much but I don’t talk about it to my family. I have many ailments, which I ignore. Once a local doctor told me to visit a hospital in Srinagar for treatment, but I didn’t go; I had no money. I bear it all for the family and with the hope that one day I might be able to see my son. I have not given up on him. And I never will. I will wait for him till I am dead. Women not only have to deal with the absence and loss of the family member in terms of being disappeared, but they also have to compete with multiple commitments at home and outside the home. They are forced to engage

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in all these tasks, along with persistent efforts to fnd their loved ones, the agony and pain of dealing with the grief and the raising of their children.

Families, transitions and collective assertion Besides leading street protests and shielding their loved ones from beatings and arrests, women in Kashmir have also made attempts towards sustained collective action. Parveena Ahanger, mother of a 21-year-old forcibly disappeared Javaid Ahmad Ahanger, is the symbol of Kashmiri women’s assertion and their increasing role in the public sphere. In one of her interviews published in an edited volume, she refects on how her 17-year-old son, a student of class 11, was picked up by armed forces on 18 August 1990 in the middle of the night from his uncle’s house in the Batmaloo locality of Srinagar. Married at the age of 12, Parveena had never been outside her house before her son was taken away by the army (Butalia, 2002). From detention centres to prisons to court rooms, Parveena left no stone unturned in her search for her son. She describes her struggle against the enforced disappearance of her son at the hands of armed forces: They took away my son for no reason. I have been doing all I can to fnd out the truth about him. One former inmate of Badami Bagh [military cantonment] said he had seen Javid there. I secured legal permission to visit Badami Bagh to see my son. I took clothes and food but when I reached there at the appointed time, the military authorities refused to allow me to enter. . . . I want the army offcers responsible for the disappearance of my son to be punished. . . . Although Srinagar High Court has issued warrants against the culprits they have never been produced before the court or prosecuted. . . . The Indian Army offered me 10 lakh rupees not to fle a case against the culprits, but I refused. (Kazi, 2009, p. 102) In her search for her son, Parveena met other women who, like her, were struggling to fnd their relatives disappeared by armed forces. During her visit to police stations, detention centres and court rooms, she would often “bump into women seeking whereabouts of their husbands and children.” As she observes, We would often share our stories of grief and gradually we started to organize ourselves. Initially we would meet at roadsides or outside the gates of the court. Police did not allow us to meet outside the main gate of the court. They even beat us up with lathis couple of times. After this incident, we shifted our gatherings to the compound of a shrine in Batmaloo locality of Srinagar. The shrine was in my locality and was very close to my house that gave some confdence to the women and assured them some safety. Gradually, people from other areas of Kashmir got to know about our gatherings and they started joining us. . . . Like many other

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women I realized that I am not the only one who is suffering in search of her son, there were thousands of others. . . . This realization gave birth to the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) in 1994. Her struggle to trace the whereabouts of her son is a biography of grit and courage. Her individual biography of determination fnds expression in the collective biographies of thousands of women who have been looking for their children over the past 25 years. The APDP was formed to fght against the injustice and seek information on the whereabouts of the disappeared people. The movement emerged out of the private sufferings of individual families and their struggle with the structures of Indian military and justice systems. The APDP has been organising regular sit-in protests on the tenth of every month in a centrally located public park in the city of Srinagar. In its past19years of struggle, the movement has been able to break the isolation of the individually struggling families and has played a key role in collectivising such struggles. The isolated and privatised struggles of the individual families have been brought back into the public sphere. Twenty-nine-year-old Nusrat, whose husband was disappeared on 21 July 2000, is one among the thousands of women affliated with the movement. As a mother of a 12-year-old school-going daughter, Nusrat observes, After my husband was disappeared my parents and my in-laws wanted me to re-marry. I simply refused. I told them that I have done so much for choti (my daughter) how can I leave her. . . . I want to live for her. . . . They stopped being in touch long since. . . . I am a regular to the monthly protests. . . . Even if I am busy with my daily chores, I make it a point that I spare time for the monthly sit-ins. . . . It feels good to be a part of it. . . . You meet so many women. . . . We talk . . . we inquire about each other’s health, domestic problems . . . about kids and life. . . . I want my daughter to be independent. She misses her father a lot and wants to be a lawyer when she grows. Women of the disappeared have unique experiences of loss in which, to paraphrase Boss (1999, p. 6), the status of the loved one as “there” or “not there” continues to remain ambiguous. Thus, thousands of women who live with this ambiguity perceive their husbands or sons to be present when they are physically gone or perceive them to be gone when they are present. In their struggle to seek the whereabouts of their loved ones, many women transform their privately “frozen grief” into public protest. As Rifat Azad from Rajbagh locality of Srinagar, a woman in her mid 30s whose husband became a victim of enforced disappearances in the year 1999 observes, Sitting at home and thinking about my husband, I almost slipped into a depression. For four years after my husband was disappeared, I spent most of the time within the four walls of my house. . . . Had I continued to live in that state for some more days I may not have survived. . . . I

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Married at the age of 18, within one and a half years of her marriage, Rifat’s husband became the victim of enforced disappearance. During the initial years after her husband’s forced disappearance, she had to negotiate her right to property and inheritance with her in-laws. With the support and encouragement of her father and brother, she managed to take up a job. She is the only earning member in her two-member household. She now supports her son’s education and is a regular to APDP sit-in gatherings. The major challenges encountered by the families of the victims of the enforced disappearances revolve around unresolved grief and ambiguous loss. The families of the disappeared take recourse to diverse strategies in responding to ambiguous loss. Besides living with ambiguity about the presence/absence of their loved ones, the families also experience their concrete absence in terms of lack of economic and emotional support.

Battles and struggles in curfewed Kashmir Pitched street battles between young protestors and armed forces, curfews and night raids resulting in the detention of teenage children have been regular phenomena in Kashmir. In recent years in the aftermath of the 2008 and 2010 intifada3 style uprisings, many parts of Kashmir once again witnessed month-long curfews, evoking memories of months of unbroken curfew that Kashmir had witnessed during the 1990s phase of the confict.4 A typical curfew is like a dawn-to-dusk siege by armed forces meant to force people indoors. The curfew completely shifts the everyday life of people in Kashmir. From household supplies, visits to neighbours or relatives to other daily chores, everything shifts to evenings. In Kashmir, women have always played a key role in managing families under the siege. From the domestic activism of organising and sustaining food supply lines, to shielding their children from getting beaten up by the soldiers in the street, to participating in the street protests, women have been able to keep intact and sustain the sociopolitical fabric of the family and the larger community. In the earlier phases of the struggle, announcements from the loudspeakers in the mosques requesting women to come out in protest against the injustices in Kashmir were a norm. However, in the recent mobilisations, women led the protests even when there were no urgent announcements from the mosques. Thousands of protesting women, like Jana Begum, mother of a 22-year-old son who was picked up by armed forces for taking part in the street protests, came out in the 2008 and 2010 uprisings to lead the protests on the street. Like Jana Begum, thousands of Kashmiri women felt strongly about the safety and security of their children, as she observes: “We will demolish every symbol of the state as our sons are being targeted by the

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forces” (Pandit, 2010). Like her, Firdaus Farooq, mother of 14-year-old boy Wamiq Farooq, who was killed in 2010 by a tear gas shell fred by the forces in Srinagar, decided to hit the streets after her son’s killing. In many ways, the struggle of women to protect their families moves beyond the domestic chores into the public sphere. As Firdaus observes, “Why should I not protest? Why should I not pick up a stone? I am doing this in the honour of my martyred son. I am doing this for azadi (freedom) from subjugation and repression.” Women cutting across class and age, wearing colourful dresses, defying curfews, shouting slogans and even leading protests with their children have now been regular occurrences in Kashmir (Biswa, 2010). Movements like APDP have been at the forefront of sustaining the collective assertion of women in Kashmir. In past two decades of its struggle, APDP has brought the “privatised” sufferings of individual families into the public sphere. The families and relatives of the disappeared associated with APDP have been able to form solidarity networks with individuals and other movements struggling for the cause of justice. They have received continuous support from students, academics and other professionals across the globe. Cutting across ethnic and national boundaries, many support groups in solidarity with the APDP now commemorate the International Day on Enforced Disappearances every year on 30 August in Kashmir. Inspired by the movement against enforced disappearance in Philippines, popularly called the Filipino desaparecidos, APDP initiated a campaign to build a monument in the memory of victims of enforced disappearance in Kashmir. In 2004, as APDP began preparations for building a monument similar to that for Filipino desaparecidos, the foundation stone of the monument to be constructed was laid down on a piece of land donated by the locals close to the martyr’s graveyard in the old city of Srinagar. The children from one of the families of the victims of enforced disappearance laid down the foundation stone in front of hundreds of families who had gathered on the occasion. The foundation stone for the monument that read “WE SHALL NEVER FORGET” was soon removed by the police. On 28 March 2004, APDP led a protest march to the United Nations Military Observer Group (UNMOGP) on the state’s clamp down against the move to construct the monument for the disappeared. This march was thwarted by police action. In a personal interview with the author, while recalling the incident, Parveena observed, As we were about to march, the police broke through our lines and started beating us. We were then dragged and taken to the police station, where we were detained for one day. They also fled cases against us. The trauma of the parents and relatives of the disappeared in Kashmir is refected in the uncertainty and long wait. As Parveena refected, We still would want to have a monument because that will give us some solace, since we do not have a grave or remains of our loved ones where

140 Farrukh Faheem we would go and mourn. APDP wants to build a monument and soon, we are going to rebuild it. I also think that we should have an international monument for the disappeared so as to give solace to the families living across the world. In context of enforced disappearances where no one is made accountable for what these families have suffered, where there are no reparations, no apologies; where remorse of course remains an ever-elusive idea, APDP’s struggle has played a signifcant role in articulating the struggles of women and families in the public sphere. By collectivising the individual struggles of the families and women, movements like APDP have brought the feelings and sufferings of such families back into the collective memory of Kashmiris and millions of others who stand in solidarity with them.

The politics of the family Conficts represent transitions in its most bewildering forms as they cast shadows over both the physical and moral underpinnings of the society, which may be weakened or strengthened in the long term, having consequences on the families – women and their locations within the family – and on the community (El-Bushra and Mukarubuga, 1995). Historically, women have not only been a part of underground armies but also played a major role in the execution of collective violence in totalitarian regimes (McKelvey, 2007). In the dominant discourse on war or confict, women have been essentially portrayed as the victims of the violence. The portrayal of women merely as victims overshadows our attempts at capturing the real lives of women and the creative negotiations that they forge for the survival of their families and communities (Manchanda, 2001). The gendered habitus assigns less-violent roles to women, having an impact on nature and extent of their participation in public sphere. Women’s entry into the public sphere constitutes a rupture with the traditional roles taken up by them. Thus, women frequently use their “maternal” location to relate and legitimise their participation in the public sphere. The increased intrusion of armed forces through night raids and crackdowns blurred the notion of home as a space distant from confict. As mobilisations against injustices increased, the apparent distance between the domestic space of home and the confict “outside” vanished over a period of time. Tradition-based obstructions to women’s roles in the public sphere are eliminated by the sheer necessity of taking up roles outside the domestic sphere. Many women thus used positive concepts of femininity and maternity to justify their entry in the public sphere. The previous discussion on the processes of transition witnessed in the roles of women underscore the fact that the mobilisation of women in the

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public sphere was both a catalyst and result of the larger sociopolitical realities of 1990s Kashmir. Like several Palestinian women, women in Kashmir, in the absence of their men, have strategically used the absence and the vulnerability of men to death and disappearance. These vulnerabilities gradually pushed them into the public sphere, taking up roles and responsibilities beyond the domestic realm. In many ways, women’s participation in the public sphere was justifed and viewed as their commitment to their men and the families. Thus, for these women, to borrow Taylor’s (2001) expression, “performing” motherhood has been crucial to their existence. For women like Parveena, the performative role of mothering gave way to the political role of being a mother. This discourse is refected in the emergence of women like Parveena Ahangar in the public sphere as the Iron Lady of Kashmir and as well as beloved jiji (aunt). This simultaneity as mother of a son who became the victim of enforced disappearance, a caring aunt for the larger oppressed Kashmiri community and a woman with strength and resolve can thus be played in the public sphere with equal ease. In many ways, Parveena strategically negotiates and deploys her mothering role into her larger political role, giving authority to her role as a leader in the public sphere. The fact that one of the strongest attempts at collectivising the assertion of women in Kashmir came in the form of the organisation of the parents of the disappeared people refects that in many ways the “politics of family” have defned and shaped the assertion of women in the public sphere.

Notes 1 An earlier version of this chapter was published in the special issue of The Indian Journal of Social Work (2016) on “Family transitions and emerging forms,” 77(4), 491–502. It is based on feld research and interviews conducted between 2012 and 2016 with the members of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir. Except for the APDP chairperson Parveena Ahanger, the author has used pseudonyms for the interviews of the members of APDP cited in the chapter. The author received written consent from Parveena Ahanger to cite her name and to quote from the interviews of members of the organization. 2 Muslim United Front was a conglomerate of different organizations that came into existence on the eve of the 1987 Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir. This group was supported by several Kashmiri youth organizations. The members of these organizations later spearheaded the uprising against the Indian state. Many scholars believe that the rigging of the 1987 elections played a key role in the subsequent mobilization and uprising against the Indian state. For a detailed discussion, see Puri (1993). 3 Derived from the Arabic word intifada, means “shaking off” or “uprising.” It was frst used by Palestinians to describe their struggle against Israeli presence. Kashmiris have used the term to describe their own protests against Indian forces (Subramanian, 2016). 4 In 1991, Kashmir was under an uninterrupted curfew for 190 days (Manchanda, 2001, p. 52).

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References Biswa, S. (2010, August 16). The angry housewives setting Kashmir ablaze. BBC Report. Retrieved from www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-10961577 [Date of Access: 28 September 2019]. Boss, P. (1999). Ambiguous loss: Learning to live with unresolved grief. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Butalia, U. (2002). Speaking peace: Women’s voices from Kashmir. New Delhi: Kali for Women. Crossette, B. (1991, April 7). India moves against the rebels. The New York Times, Section1, p. 3. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/1991/04/07/world/india-movesagainst-kashmir-rebels.html [Date of Access: 28 September 2019]. Dabla, B. A., Nayak, S. K., and Khurshid-Ul-Islam. (2000). Gender discrimination in the Kashmir valley: A survey of Budgam and Baramulla districts. New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House. El-Bushra, J., and Mukarubuga, C. (1995). Women, war and transition. Gender & Development, 3(3), 16–22. doi:10.1080/741921866 [Date of Access: 23 September 2019]. Garbarino, J., and Kostelny, K. (1996). Effects of political violence on Palestinia child’s behavior problems: A risk accumulation model. Child Development, 67(1), 33–45. Human Rights Watch (HRW). (2006). Everyone lives in fear: Patterns of impunity in Jammu and Kashmir. Human Rights Watch Report, 18(11). Retrieved from www.hrw.org/reports/2006/india0906/india0906webwcover.pdf [Date of Access: 23 September 2019]. Justino, P. (2012). Shared societies and armed confict: Costs, inequality and the benefts of peace. IDS Working Paper No. 410. Retrieved from https://ideas.repec. org/p/hic/wpaper/125.html [Date of Access: 28 September 2019]. Kazi, S. (2009). Between democracy and nation: Gender and militarization in Kashmir. New Delhi: Women Unlimited. Kazi, S. (2012). Law, governance and gender in Indian administered Kashmir. Working Paper Series, Centre for Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, CSLG/WP/20. Manchanda, R. (2001). Women, war and peace in South Asia: Beyond victimhood to agency. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Mathur, S. (2015). Human toll of Kashmir confict: Grief and courage in South Asian borderland. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. McKelvey, T. (Ed.). (2007). One of the guys: Women as aggressors and torturers. Emeryville, CA: Seal Press. Pandit, S. (2010, August 8). What is making the ordinary Kashmiri woman so angry that she is out on the street, throwing stones at police and leading the mob? Times of India. Puri, B. (1993). Kashmir towards insurgency. Delhi: Orient Longman. Rehn, E., and Sirleaf, E. J. (2002). Women, war, peace: The independent experts’ assessment on the impact of armed confict on women and women’s role in peace building. New York, NY: UNIFEM. Shekhawat, S. (2014). Gender, confict and peace in Kashmir: Invisible stakeholders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Somasundaram, D. (2007). Collective trauma in Northern Sri Lanka: A qualitative psychosocial-ecological study. International Journal of Mental Health Systems, 1(5). doi: 10.1186/1752-4458-1-5 [Date of Access: 23 September 2019]. Subramanian, N. (2016, September 26). Understanding the Palestinian roots of intifada, and its context in Kashmir. The Indian Express. Retrieved from https:// indianexpress.com/article/explained/jammu-and-kashmir-issue-pakistan-nawazsharif-pm-modi-uri-attack-3049966 [Date of Access: 23 September 2019]. Taylor, D. (2001). Making a spectacle: The mothers of Plazo De Mayo. Journal of the Association for Mothering, 3(2), 97–109. Retrieved from https://jarm.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jarm/article/viewFile/2774/1979 [Date of Access: 23 September 2019].

7

Making sense Familial journeys towards acceptance of gay and lesbian family members in India1 Ketki Ranade, Chayanika Shah and Sangeeta Chatterji

Introduction The Delhi High Court passed an order on 2 July 2009 decriminalising homosexuality. This order was challenged in the Supreme Court by several individuals, right-wing groups and religious organisations. In this context, a group of 19 parents approached the Supreme Court against criminalisation of their gay/lesbian children. Later in December 2013, the Supreme Court turned down the Delhi High Court order and upheld Section 377 (section used to criminalise gay sex) of the Indian Penal Code.2 In this milieu of homonegativity and prejudice from the state, the judiciary and the law enforcement agencies, the efforts of these parents to secure their children’s right to love and their own right to family life, to openly support their children’s sexuality, is noteworthy. These parents also symbolise a group of heterosexual citizens advocating for and supporting the rights of homosexual people. While in the current study, we have interviewed only some and not all of these parents, their recourse to legal advocacy has been one of the impetuses for the present study. The Indian family is characterised by strong emotional bonds that foster both mutual dependence and control. Kinship ties and familial obligations are often central in the construction of selfhood in India (Kakar, 1978). In fact, a signifcant point of entry into adult social life is through marriage, which in the Indian context is not only compulsory but usually arranged (read: endogamous) by elders. This centrality of family in an individual’s life in a society, where there is no social security beyond kinship relations of blood or marriage, makes it imperative to understand how families deal with their loved ones’ contestations with societal norms around heterosexuality. Most research in India with lesbian and gay people has described the family as a signifcant site of violence and a normativising force in the life of these individuals. Families have been identifed as the main infictors of psychological, physical and sexual violence against lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals (Ghosh, Bandyopadhyay, and Biswas, 2011). Lesbian women reported instances of beating, imprisonment and the forcible use of “remedial” treatments like shock therapy by family members (Fernandez

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and Gomathy, 2003). Gay men and lesbian women faced heightened stress due to family pressure for marriage, which often led to forced marriages (Creating Resources for Empowerment and Action [CREA], 2012; Joseph, 2005). Other studies have found that lesbian/gay individuals continued to receive material support from the family but with a marked absence of any acceptance, love or care from their family members (PUCL-K, 2001). A recent study (Shah, Merchant, Mahajan, and Nevatia, 2015) highlights the extent and impact of familial violence on queer people assigned gender female at birth (PAGFB). Out of the 50 respondents in the study, as many as 13 recounted stories of attempted suicide while still living with their natal families. The study further underlines that rigid controls and policing, violence from parents and siblings, forced separation from partners and increased marriage pressure on one or both young people in a relationship led many to fee their homes, either alone or with partners. Most of these studies in India have been conducted with lesbian or gay people, and the voices of their family members have not been documented. There are two possible reasons for this. There are few family members who are supportive of their children’s sexuality and willing to participate in a research on familial responses. Family members who have high degree of homonegativity, prejudice and stigma are unlikely to be willing participants in research on homosexuality. There are few organisations/support groups/ platforms in the country of families of LGBT individuals.3 As a result, family members who may be willing to record their voices/stories may not be easily reachable. Also, for several reasons mentioned earlier, such as the compulsory nature of marriage; familial/kinship control over an individual’s sexuality and its expression; and violence from family members towards non-normative gender and sexuality, fewer lesbian and gay individuals in India may choose to “come out” to their families. As a result, there are no studies in India that have documented familial responses and processes with regard to knowing about their children’s same-sex sexuality. In the North American and European contexts, however, such research does exist. A broad review of literature suggests that “coming out” to family is a distinctive and important developmental task in the formation of gay identity, especially in the North American context (Cass, 1979). In general, “coming out” to family is not easy, since there is considerable amount of antagonism, negativity and even disapproval towards same-sex relationships from parents. The literature suggests that hostility or denial from parents/in-laws may persist even years after initial disclosure, which tends to have an adverse impact on same-sex dyads (LaSala, 2008). Parents experience a wide range of feelings, emotions and attitudes when they discover their child’s same-sex orientation. One of the common initial responses after discovering the child’s sexual orientation has been that of “not knowing one’s child anymore” (Hom, 1994). Another consistent theme in “coming out” literature is that most lesbian/gay people are likely to lose some familial support on “coming out,”

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which can be understood in light of the larger context of marginalisation of same-sex sexual identity (Rostosky et al., 2004). However, research has also demonstrated that with the right kinds of LGBT-affrming resources and support, parents are often able to develop a supportive relationship with their children after disclosure (Savin-Williams and Dube, 1998; Beeler and DiProva, 1999; D’Augelli, Grossman, and Starks, 2005; LaSala, 2007). Parents may even begin to partially accept their child’s homosexual lifestyle if not completely (LaSala, 2008). Goldfried and Goldfried (2001) suggested that parents would have to go through a similar process of “coming out” as their child, which requires their recognising and accepting that their child is gay, as a frst step. Pearlman (2005) has pointed out that the context and current circumstances affect the initial reactions of parents. Research has further shown that the relationship before disclosure has an impact on the post-disclosure relationship between parents and their lesbian or gay children (Peplau and Beals, 2004). Heatherington and Lavner (2008) suggest that positive outcomes could be conceptualised as a set of dynamically interrelated adjustments within and among family members along three dimensions: acceptance or affrmation of the sexual identity by the lesbian/gay individual and parents, emotional well-being of the offspring and family members (at least to pre-disclosure levels) and healthy family environments and interactions (at least as healthy as pre-disclosure). A common limitation pointed out by most of the studies is the underrepresentation of experiences of parents of colour and the failure to account for the diversity among the lesbian and gay community (Conley, 2011; LaSala, 2008). This chapter begins to bridge this gap by studying parents’/siblings’ responses to the children’/siblings’ non-normative sexual orientation in the Indian context, with the following research questions in focus: How do people react upon learning the same-sex sexual orientation of one of their family members? How do they make sense of this information? What helps them accept their gay/lesbian family member? What is the nature of this acceptance?

Methodology The study used a qualitative, exploratory research design. It was carried out over a period of ten months with limited resources and hence was restricted to the city of Mumbai, India. Mumbai has a few organisations and collectives that work on LGBT rights and issues; however, there is not much direct intervention with parents or family members of LGBT individuals. Till we did this study, Gay Bombay was the only group that occasionally held meetings of parents of LGBT individuals; however, most of these meetings are attended by a few parents (mostly mothers) of gay men and mostly by gay men seeking support to “come out” to their parents. Thus, for purposes of data collection, we relied on two main sources: our informal networks and the support group mentioned earlier. The frst two authors are part of LABIA – a queer feminist LBT collective in Mumbai. We contacted our

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study participants mostly through our networks of lesbian and gay people who had “come out” to their families. We also contacted family members through the one support space for parents/families of lesbian and gay children mentioned earlier. Thus, snowball sampling was used in the current study. We tried to seek as much diversity as possible in the background of the respondents in terms of class, caste, religion and age. For the purpose of this study, we included only those individuals who have “come out” as lesbian or gay to their parents or other family members. We fully acknowledge that this is a limited subset of a much more complicated gender/sexuality landscape. A total of 22 research participants from Mumbai were interviewed by using an open-ended in-depth interview guide. Of the 22 participants, there were 16 parents (12 mothers and four fathers), fve siblings (four sisters and one brother) and one aunt.4 On the whole, there were fve male and 17 female respondents.5 The age range for the parents was 45 to 82 years. Most were middle class, with some respondents from upper-class socioeconomic backgrounds. The age range for siblings was 29 to 45 years. There were 17 Hindus (one Dalit and one OBC,6 and others were from dominant castes), two Sikhs, one Christian, one Parsi and one Muslim. The number of years for which family members had known about the sexuality of their lesbian/gay family member ranged from a few months to 25 years. Of the 12 mothers interviewed, fve were widows, one was separated and six were currently married. Among the married women, three had husbands who knew about the child’s sexuality and were supportive, one knew and was not accepting of the child and two mothers had not shared the news with their husbands, because they were concerned about their possible response. The one mother who was separated had also not shared with her ex-husband. The four fathers whom we spoke to were all currently married and were accepting of the child. We spoke to one sister of a gay man who had not come out to his parents and was “out” only to her; she was certain that their parents would not accept him.7 All the interviews were conducted over one session lasting approximately 90 minutes to 120 minutes. Each participant was interviewed by a pair consisting of one interviewer and a notetaker. Also, all the interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed later. Both written consent and audio informed consent were obtained from all participants. Field notes were written up on the same day as the interview. Written consent was sought from all the participants for interviewing as well as for audio-recording. The transcribed material was coded, and the coded text segments were used for data analysis. A thematic analysis of data was carried out.

A note on methodological challenges Limited resources and a lack of structured spaces where families of lesbian/ gay people meet was a major challenge in contacting potential research

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participants. Accessing potential participants through gay and lesbian people presented two main challenges. First, several gay people had migrated from other parts of the country to Mumbai for reasons of employment, access to queer/LGBT social networks and a sense of anonymity that a metro city like Mumbai provides. Thus, even if some of them were “out” to their families, these families were not living in Mumbai and thus could not be included in the study. Second, often, those respondents who were still living with their parents had not come “out” to their family. The trend in our study shows that when children were independent and living on their own, they then felt more ready and safe to “come out” to their family. Among the children of the respondents interviewed in this study, only two were currently living with their family, two were living outside the country and all the rest were living in the same city but on their own and not in their parents’ homes. As we relied on our networks within the LGBT community in Mumbai for data collection, although we sought as much diversity as possible in the backgrounds of the respondents, this was limited by the kind of social networks that we were plugged into. As a result, there were more respondents belonging to middle and upper classes and to dominant castes. Many of them were English speaking and were exposed to other cultures and societies which have been more openly affrming of gay sexuality for a longer time. A few respondents were from the working class or lower middle class, and some were Dalit or belonged to the “other backward castes.” For these respondents, the fnancial independence, independent housing and upward mobility of their child seemed to be aspects that strongly mediated how the sexuality of the child was processed by the family members. In some such instances, the gay individual was the sole provider in the family, and that too seemed to mediate the dynamics related to familial acceptance. Another study with a wider sample to include diversity based on class, caste, religion and gender expressions would be needed to explore the implication of other kinds of marginalisation on familial acceptance. Gender differences in “coming out” as well as responses to the same were noted in the study. All the “coming out” stories indicated that the mother or the sister was the frst person to whom the individual “came out,” and the fathers and brothers were told by the women in the family. However, not all fathers/husbands and brothers of the women interviewed in this study were told, because of the fear of rejection and anticipated negative responses. Many of those who were told reacted unfavourably, and only those who had accepted were interviewed in the current study – hence the smaller number of men in the sample.8

Acceptance: a journey One of the important things we learnt from our respondents was that family members’ acceptance of their child’s or sibling’s same-sex sexuality was not a one-time event. Rather, it is a journey that families make with their lesbian/gay child. Families fgure out their own ways of dealing with what

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often seems like an emotional crisis. They also try to make sense of their family members’ difference and grapple with understanding the “difference” with respect to sexual orientation. Initial responses For most of the parents in the study, the initial reactions consisted of utter shock and disbelief. Some parents experienced denial and withdrawal. A mother spoke of the time when her son “came out”: I was not even very familiar with the idea, I never suspected it. At that time, I could not make out what it was? How? But I knew. . . . Being in the medical profession, I could make out that there is something serious about it, so at that time I felt very bad and I cried, I cried that night. That’s what I remember. (A, female, age 57) Invisibility and silence around sexuality in general and same-sex sexuality in particular seems to be one of the factors that foster both homophobia and homo-ignorance. The majority of the respondents in this study were unfamiliar with the concept of homosexuality and its implications for their child’s life and for their own family life, before the “coming out”/disclosure. Several of these parents frst knew about their child’s sexuality several years ago, when visibility to same-sex sexuality in media or public life, even in a metro city like Mumbai, was rather poor. For siblings, the process seemed to be different. None of the siblings whom we spoke to expressed any despair or shock that was common in the parents’ narrative. Even in their initial response, they focused on how they felt bad about not being told earlier and empathy for their sibling. One sibling talks about being angry at the fact that her sister took so long to disclose to her: So, the part that I didn’t like and it ticked me off a bit was that her friend came and told me. . . . I was thinking, I was ready to have this conversation with you maybe three or four years ago, and obviously you’ve assumed that maybe people won’t understand, and you’ve come through other people. (R, female, age 39) Another sister’s reaction shows her awareness of the pain and isolation that her brother must have gone through. Neither of the two siblings has spoken to their parents about this, because they expected disapproval from them. She spoke of the day that she had found out: I cried quite a lot that night. I worried about what he must have gone through when he was growing up. Would people in the hostel

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Despite their empathic response and being supportive, each of the siblings had to go through a process of learning and knowing more. Gathering information Parents often required time to absorb this new information once their children “came out” to them. Some may have heard the terms “gay” and “lesbian” but did not comprehend its meaning or implication in relation to their children. This led the parents to seek information from multiple sources as they grappled with this new reality. Some of the respondents stated that after the initial shock of knowing about their child’s sexuality, learning about homosexuality through books or the Internet helped them correct some of their misconceptions and address their worries. It also helped them understand what it meant to be gay: it is not attributed to their parenting; it is not abnormal; it is not amenable to change; and their child may face several challenges due to social stigma. there was one very interesting book . . . Indian case studies of homosexuals with names. . . . They read like short stories but they are all real, there is no fction . . . case studies across the spectrum, very well-to-do successful people to very ordinary drivers or those from low level social strata . . . but they all explained about discovery of their sexuality and the kind of problems they faced and I felt a kind of a rapport and empathy on reading that. (T, male, age 70) Some of the respondents chose to talk to counsellors, psychiatrists or even their family doctor after “fnding out” about their child. For some, the motivation was to merely ask an expert to help them make sense of this new challenge in their lives, whereas for others, seeking help from a doctor was an attempt to determine if the child’s sexuality could be changed, reversed and made “normal.” These experts also helped parents address the concerns that they may have surrounding homosexuality and dispelled their fears. As a mother of a gay man explains, I told the doctor (psychiatrist) that W is saying that he is gay and that he is only attracted to boys. Dr X began laughing. . . . And he told me, “Please don’t worry at all. He is absolutely normal.” . . . He told me

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that there are many people like W. . . . Then I went two to three more times to him and he told me a lot of things, gave me some books, then I stood by him [son] very strongly. (C, female, age 63) In another situation, a counsellor reassured the mother of a lesbian woman that her own reaction of not being able to talk to her daughter after knowing about her sexuality was normal. He simultaneously also encouraged her to move towards accepting her daughter: He said, “So what?” (laughs). And then he put me absolutely at ease and he said, “Whatever happens, you can’t break communication lines with her because I mean think of her, she is only 23–24 years old, and if parents don’t talk with her, where will she go if she has a problem? So, don’t do that.” He said that this is very normal and I don’t have to worry. I remember asking him, “If your daughter had done something like this, would you have reacted in the same way?” He said “Yes.” He was very truthful and honest. (B, female, age 58) The professionals that the respondents of this study went to were affrmative of same-sex sexuality. They stated that being gay was not a disorder and hence did not warrant any treatment. They were supportive towards the parents through this crisis and helped them by talking about other gay people who were living a happy and healthy life. This seemed to help parents, who were facing isolation with respect to their child’s same-sex sexuality. Some of the professionals also recommended that the parents neither lose contact with the child nor reject them, as this would cause a larger crisis in their child’s life. Thus, the role of affrmative literature and materials on LGBT issues, affrmative counsellors and health professionals, as well as positive contact with other gay people, seems to be vital in the process of familial acceptance. Depending on where the source of discomfort was for each of the parents, some even looked for answers within their religious beliefs, and some sought comfort in meditation and spiritual practice. For example, a priest helped a mother achieve a balance between her religious beliefs and her love for her daughter. Initially, I found it hard to accept it because even the church forbids it. I am very religious. . . . I went and spoke to a priest and asked him what is written about it in the Bible. . . . He told me that it was OK; it was God’s will. . . . He said, “look at your relationship with your daughter. That is the most important thing, that she is able to share her love and her thoughts with you.” (Q, female, age 58)

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Additionally, participating in support groups with other parents and generally getting a sense of the overall gay “scene” helped most respondents realise that there were many lesbian and gay people out there and that their child was not alone. This often reduced their worries for their child and their own sense of isolation. Before going for the parent’s meet (run by a local group in Mumbai), I was thinking “Oh! My son is the only one who is gay.” Matlab (I mean), only one in the sense, I know one or two may be. But after going there you fnd that there are so many parents with gay children. Who look normal and do everything normal. Matlab, who are normal and everything, and yet they are gay. (D, female, age 54)

Engaging with the gay/lesbian child/sibling or their partner Apart from seeking information from multiple sources, parents described using interpersonal resources – that is, conversations with their child/ sibling as well as their partner/s – to develop further clarity. Research indicates that the quality of family relationships before the disclosure of sexual orientation has an effect on the relationship after the disclosure (Patterson, 2000; cited in Peplau and Beals, 2004). In the absence of cohesion and communication among family members, disclosure itself may be low and so may be acceptance. Respondents in this study also emphasised the primary importance of the quality of the relationship they generally shared with the gay/lesbian individual. Some of the respondents stated that the comfort and acceptance around homosexuality emerged primarily from the meaningful and engaging conversations they had with their child/sibling. Listening to their family member’s journeys towards knowing about themselves and accepting themselves and getting to know their current lives, which included information on partners, friends, social life, parties and support systems, helped them to move towards accepting their child/sibling. As one brother of a lesbian woman said, Even now, I have never ended up doing a lot of research or study, but I have had a lot of conversations with my sister, she and I spend a lot of time talking about a lot of things, because especially I coming from this small town in Western Maharashtra, working in a mainstream kind of profession all these years, meeting very mainstream, I would say, even very conservative people; so talking with her, conversing with her, meeting her friends, going out for parties with her, all of that has immensely expanded my horizon. (N, male, age 28)

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A mother whose lesbian daughter helped her in her process of acceptance expressed the positive impact it had on her: For a long time, I kept it to myself . . . till she only kind of helped. . . . Yes, I read, watched flms but I think my relationship with my daughter, that’s what helped me the most. (Q, female, age 58) One of the main concerns after disclosure for parents was intimate relationships. They would want to know if their child was in a “steady” or committed relationship, the nature of such a relationship and its future. These concerns for their child’s future, stability, loneliness, growing old alone and so on stemmed from family members’ efforts to grapple with the implications of the “coming out” – that is, “now that I know my child is gay, in what ways will my child’s sexuality manifest in their life?” These questions may be a result of a heterosexual family member trying to “make sense” of being gay by making comparisons with heteronormative narratives around marriage and children. A mother of a gay individual described it as the crux of her worries for her son: My worry was only about what will happen to him. Once you get married, you shift your responsibilities on the girl who comes in. . . . And we were in a joint family and he has never done anything on his own. So, I don’t know how he will survive. That keeps nagging me. OK, if he fnds a partner then well and good. But you should fnd, no! (D, female, age 54) Others talked about being happy to know that their child was not alone and could have someone in their life: I just want her to have a dependable person in her life be it a man or a woman. . . . Knowing that she has a right kind of a relationship, it puts me a lot at ease, plus the fact that her (partner’s) parents are also ok with it. (B, female, age 58) As a result, questions about the gay/lesbian person’s relationships often became a signifcant point of conversation with the family members and in turn played an important role in acceptance of the child’s homosexuality. For some parents, seeing that a homosexual relationship can make their child happy has helped them accept it as a “normal” way of life. Knowing that their child is in a relationship and engaging with the child’s partner helped parents deal with some of these concerns and better accept homosexuality: That is how no one ever felt awkward about M coming to this house, living with us and attending family get-togethers. Everything was so

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Respondents described that they engaged in having quality relationships with their child/sibling’s partner, and this bonding both aided acceptance and was also an expression of a parent’s/sibling’s acceptance. Although engagement with partners of the same-sex family member helped the process of understanding or “naturalising” same-sex sexuality, one of the respondents said that familial acceptance was still closely linked with heteronormative relational expectations. Family members were therefore looking for stability, dependability and commitment in the intimate relationships of their lesbian or gay child to feel assured about the future of their child, which in turn aided acceptance. Thus, the trope of “happily married ever after” seemed to play a critical role in familial acceptance. A replication of the familiar institution also possibly gives some sort of assurance and that helps acceptance. Familial responses to non-monogamous/open relationships, casual partnerships that would challenge the basic assumptions of heterosexual marriage or family, remain. Also, whether such relationships would be shared by the gay/lesbian person with their parents and siblings is another matter worth exploring. Non-conformity by parents or siblings in their personal lives At the same time, those who had themselves broken some social norms, especially around the institution of marriage and family that so strongly govern people’s sexual and intimate lives, found it easier to comprehend these new realities. Examples of norm breaking include inter-caste/community marriage, standing up against a violent relationship in one’s life and seeking divorce, being part of a social movement such as a feminist group or knowing about other gay people in one’s family. Because the endogamous heteronormative family is central to Indian society, respondents who confronted the structure are more familiar with the consequences of living

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non-normative lives. Their own struggles may have sensitised respondents to the challenges associated with non-normative partnerships. I feel that we did not fulfl what expectations our parents had from us about our relationships, so why should I expect anything from my children? Our parents also wanted us to marry within our community but we did not do that, so who are we to expect anything? (H, female, age 53) I think we are a broad-minded family. We, being Sikhs, she (respondent’s sister) married a Maharashtrian, I married a Gujarati, my brother married a Parsi and my youngest brother, he married an American woman. It was all inter-caste and interreligious marriages. So, it was ok for us, but if we were in our hometown, and I was married to a Punjabi and my sister was married to a Punjabi and we had our respective in-laws, and their families, I don’t think it would have been okay. (J, female, age 68) One respondent, whose mother and sister both identify as queer, discussed her explicitly feminist upbringing and how she challenged “normativity” on all fronts while growing up. She described participating in rallies and other actions with women’s groups in Mumbai during her years growing up. Hence, the knowledge of her mother’s and sister’s sexuality occurred in the context of many other radical conversations and actions that were happening around her: We’re constantly thinking . . . we are coming from a position where one is not assuming people to be straight. We were ready to accept people as they were, already. We were brought up like that. I was taken as a 12-year-old to parties where men danced in drag. So, it was nothing that one hadn’t seen. (L, female, age 34) While in this case the general questioning of all normative structures and early exposure to lesbian gay lives helped, some respondents identifed other structural factors, such as socioeconomic and caste privilege leading to an English education, exposure to Western materials on LGBT issues, exposure to societies with pro-LGBT laws and exposure to societies in which LGBT issues are discussed openly. Mutual solidarity and empathy in the face of non-normativity All kinds of “breaking norms” entails costs that one has to endure for stepping outside of the normative ways of living. How the child responds to

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the parent in this situation helps the parent to come to terms with their child’s “difference” as well. Three of the mothers interviewed stated that it was their lesbian daughters who stood by them in their times of diffculty while they were dealing with violent relationships with their husbands and in-laws; the stigma of divorce and the lack of support systems; and poverty and deprivation. One of the respondents who decided to seek a divorce from her husband after a long history of domestic violence said about her daughter, then she [my daughter] only gave me money for this house and I came and stayed here. She helped me a lot then and came with me to meet the lawyer also. She gave me the courage. She is very strong that way. (Q, female, age 58) Another mother of a lesbian woman said that among all her children, she was closest to her one daughter because “She shares everything from her heart with me. She tells me about all her friends.” She also spoke of how this daughter confronted her father when he acted violently and took her (mother) to the police station to register a complaint. When asked whether she feels worried about her daughter breaking social norms, this mother said, No, I don’t feel worried. Only that she should plan for her future. For old age; for money, a place to stay, who is going to look after her? That is all I feel, nothing else. (M, female, age 59) Thus, non-conformity and non-normativity in different areas of one’s life and being rooted in ideas of social consciousness and knowledge about oppression and marginalisation seemed to be important dimensions in familial journeys towards acceptance. This is an interesting fnding given that most of our respondents belonged to the middle or upper-middle privileged class. However, for those among them who had a chance to question social structures of class, patriarchy, caste, community and religion, they were able to apply that critical position to heteronormativity as well and develop empathy for their gay/lesbian child or sibling. Conley (2011) similarly found that it was easier for parents who did not subscribe to society’s strict gender norms themselves to accept their homosexual children.

Complexities in the nature of familial acceptance While most of our respondents were accepting of their gay/lesbian family member, the nature of this acceptance varied. In some of the respondents’ narratives, there may be acceptance of the child without necessarily accepting homosexuality. For some parents, accepting their children

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is an extension of their love for them regardless of their sexual orientation. Some family members stated that while they were shocked, worried, clueless or even ashamed about homosexuality, for them, acceptance was about affrming their love for their child as an individual and not so much about the child’s sexuality or homosexuality. Many viewed homosexuality as just one aspect of their child’s life. This led at times to a partial acceptance. One father spoke of his acceptance of his lesbian daughter: whether we believe in it or not, we accept because of our feeling that the child should not feel hurt. . . . We reconciled because anyway most important in relationships is your love, acceptance, consideration and endurance. If you really love somebody you love a person for what he or she is. Not with conditions, if you truly love a person it is unconditional. It is not because you occupy a certain position or have a certain qualifcation. (P, male, age 73) Some parents were aware of the stigma that their children would face from society, and much of their acceptance emanated from a concern for their well-being. They wanted to be a source of support in the crisis that their children were undergoing, and this was irrespective of their attitude towards homosexuality. Another factor that had an impact on parent’s acceptance was that of inevitability. They shared that once they knew that their child was sure about their sexuality and that it could not be changed, acceptance became inevitable for them. Thus, sometimes acceptance was only because they knew that they had no choice. You cannot change what has happened. It is not a disease, which can be cured or anything of that sort. So, accept them as they are and see that they are a good human being frst. (D, female, age 54) In some instances, it seemed like there is a forced kind of acceptance because they do not want to abandon their children. Such contradictions exist at different levels for different family members. One mother of a lesbian daughter demonstrated the complexity of acceptance due to the moral contradictions that she struggled with: I can’t tell you how much they [my daughter and her partner] love each other. So much affection, I swear, I am not lying. . . . But no religion says that two girls should get married. No, I don’t say anything but that doesn’t mean. . . . I don’t say it aloud but I am not happy. (I, female, age 70)

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She can perceive the love and affection and recognises that the relationship is good for her daughter, and yet she cannot come to grips with her daughter’s choice and still feels disturbed by it. Research with mothers of lesbian daughters indicates that acceptance does not mean an either/or decision, but rather, it is a matter of degree. It can mean “resignation in terms of the permanence of a daughter’s sexual orientation or a celebration of a daughter’s happiness and bravery in choosing to live authentically” (Pearlman, 2005, pp. 135–136). Unsurprisingly, parents experienced severe hesitation when talking of their child’s sexual relationships. While they could discuss the reality of their child having a same-sex partner, they often avoided thinking about the two having a sexual relationship. When asked about his daughter’s relationships, one father stated, We do not know. And this we have not even tried to know. We should understand one thing. The personal life is a private life for individuals both for parents and children. (P, male, age 73)

Telling others An area in which most parents report discomfort is disclosure about their child’s sexuality to extended families, friends and colleagues. Some family members accepted their child’s happiness in a same-sex relationship, and some met the partner’s family or other friends, but few actively chose to tell family members and friends about their children’s choices. Even in situations where the parents mentioned having close bonds with their own siblings, they often wanted to keep their gay child’s sexuality private. A lesbian woman’s mother spoke of how bad she feels about not telling her sister, whom she is close to. She does not have a reason to not tell her sister, and yet she is unable to, probably fearing the reaction: I feel really sad. I feel like telling her about it. And as I told you, I was mentally prepared. . . . I had decided to say it to her, then my mother passed away. Of course, I am also looking for the excuse to not go through with it (laughs). Pushing it, because I don’t know how they’ll receive it and how. (B, female, age 58) In this case, there is hesitation even though the mother knew that they may be alright. Most often, it is absolutely not a choice, as this mother of a lesbian daughter said: I can’t tell them directly that she is a lesbian. They will feel offended. I don’t want to see their reaction. I just say I am comfortable she is staying independent alone with her friend because she has to work hard

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and they both are working together. And I want to tell that, I just can’t tell them directly unless it becomes legal and they get married then it’s a different thing. (V, female, age 49) Parents usually judiciously choose whom they will tell and how. Sometimes they chose to protect their own relationships, and other times they were motivated by the fear of the stigma that the lesbian/gay person may face: In a group of people, gay people, same circle or people who understand. . . . We are open to our friends about it – those who understand. And there are some people who use derogatory language for such people and I don’t tell them anything because when they don’t understand, why try to explain anything? . . . It’s not that I am ashamed or embarrassed, but when people don’t understand, better not to speak. (J, female, age 68) One father of a gay man who has been supportive of his son and has also made fnancial contributions to a group of lawyers advocating for the decriminalisation of homosexuality in India said, I do not want to stand on the roof top and tell them that my son is a gay. I am not going to do that, but if the question comes, then I might say that yes, he is a gay. So, if somebody would ask me, I would say it, what is wrong in it. (F, male, age 75) While this father supports the legal battle for decriminalisation of homosexuality, he may not come out in the public domain and advocate for gay rights. There were other parents who came out in the media about their child’s sexuality and expressed open support for their children. Goldfried and Goldfried (2001) concluded that families need a “total reorganisation” of their beliefs, values and expectations. Only then could they make an attempt towards coming out to close friends and extended family. Having reached the stage of positive self-identifcation, parents need to deal with their guilt and internalised homophobia to reach a stage where they can talk about being parents of a lesbian/gay person. This often entails a personal risk and hence was a diffcult step for most of the respondents in this study. However, there were a few respondents who managed to make some sense of their children’s way of being and living. One mother described her process of understanding her daughter’s relationship with her female partner/s in the following manner: In the beginning I used to think that they are different but they are not. You know there is a difference but if you remove that and you don’t

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Some family members do speak up Evidently, the majority of family members in this study were accepting of their child’s sexuality, but the issue of acceptance itself was complex and multilayered. One of the dimensions to this was the public/private divide: many parents were accepting of their children but did not want to talk about it to the media or support groups for LGBT people and their families or activist groups working on LGBT rights. Yet some of our respondents offered to talk to other parents who were making the journey of accepting their children and supporting them, and some joined street action and marches to challenge the stigma and discrimination against sexual minorities in the public domain. One of the respondents came out on national television as a mother of a gay son and talked about her views on homosexuality and legal rights for LGBT people in India. She explained the reason for taking this step: I felt nice. . . . What I feel is if our coming out and talking about it can change a single child’s life and the parents learn from it, then I feel that I have done my part. (D, female, age 54) Another mother of a gay son, who is a public fgure and has been a speaker at a few social events, used the platform to talk about issues confronting the gay community. This was an important step for her to actively come out in support of the cause given the nature of stigma that she would encounter. She explains her resolve: in my key note address, I said that there are a lot of people living different kinds of lives and they are struggling to establish their identity, they are struggling to get the Section 377 repealed. . . . I also said that there are different kinds of people in this society who are making an effort to live different kinds of lives. They also have certain demands and we need to think about those demands as well and we should rationally think about it. (C, female, age 63) One respondent who is the mother of a lesbian daughter talked about speaking out against homophobia in her work context: Maybe fve years back or something I would have still hesitated, but today I talk to people and I convince them that it’s OK. . . . If there is

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a conversation going on in the offce and somebody speaks against it, I will always stand up and look at it differently. If there is a wrong statement made by any of them, I can stand up and say you said something wrong, you can be more open in your thoughts. (Q, female, age 58) In expressing their support for their sibling, some siblings talked about becoming more selective in their own friendships and social relationships, cutting off from people who did not accept homosexuality. I have actually had to stop dating a few men because it’s one of my questions that I fnd out about people, about what their views are. J and M [sister and her girlfriend] are my family, so if I have to meet a guy who’s a little homophobic, it’s like “you’re not gonna ft in because you’ll be the only odd one out.” (R, female, age 39) And a brother spoke of consciously engaging with the issue in all spaces: I feel if there are people that you know and it is something that is not spoken about, then I want to be open and vocal about it, so that people understand that so and so has a sister who is lesbian and he is absolutely fne and he is talking about it. So as to break some norm, open some communication and let other people also not think about it as something that can only be spoken in hushed tones or that cannot be spoken about at all. (N, male, age 28)

Difference between parental and sibling responses Several differences were noted in parental responses as compared to sibling responses to same-sex sexuality. Most siblings were accepting and supportive from the time they found out. They were much more familiar with the concept of homosexuality and the implications of having a gay/lesbian sibling. Unlike the parents who were not sure of their family’s and friends’ levels of acceptance, they were more open about their sibling’s sexuality in their own social circle, and most of them chose friends/partners who were affrmative of same-sex sexuality. They were more likely (as compared to the parents) to reject or terminate friendships and other social relationships if they sensed homophobia in them. Belonging to the same generation, having egalitarian relationships with the sibling, having fewer or no expectations (as compared to the parents) from the sibling and greater exposure to other lesbian and gay individuals possibly helped the siblings to be more open and accepting. Most of the parents, on the other hand, reported bigger challenges, because as parents, they saw themselves as protectors of their children and

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felt anxious about the dangers that their children may face from a prejudiced society. This anxiety was about stigma and discrimination in different areas of life, including the criminalisation of homosexuality under IPC Section 377. This is refected in the petition fled by parents of LGBT people in the Supreme Court in support of repealing Section 377 in 2011. In the petition, the parents argue that the law criminalising homosexuality affects the quality of their family life. They state, [Section 377] impeded the right to peacefully enjoy family life, making entire families vulnerable to the fear of arrest and prosecution of the applicants’ children under Section 377. Section 377 has also been an affront to dignity by tainting the applicant’s children with the mark of illegality and by implication their families. (p. 5, petition by parents of LGBT children9) Parental worries included a lack of stability and security for their children in the absence of marriage, diffculties in fnding partners, loneliness and a lack of support during old age – everything that might come with not following a heterosexual life script. Some mothers were particularly worried about whether their gay sons were capable of taking care of themselves without a partner, while no parents expressed this worry about their lesbian daughters, refecting how normative gender and sexuality roles intersect (women are expected to provide vital support to their husbands with practical skills such as cooking and cleaning). Parental worry for gay sons was also related to fear of HIV infection, which was not such a concern with lesbian women. In addition to their anxieties, parents also had to cope with the disappointment and thwarting of expectations that they had of their children. The most common disappointments related to marriage and grandchildren, and dealing with this loss was also a big challenge for the parents. While most of the parents were grappling with and talking about their anxieties around issues such as future of their gay/lesbian son/daughter in 2011, they had grown up as adults in the decades between the 1950s and the 1980s (the average age of parents was 45 to 82 years) with few alternative references to heteronormativity. This was not the case, however, with the siblings, who had grown up in a different time period and in the context of an urban metropolis. Apart from the consideration of generational culture and a changing social context, it is in the nature of the parent–child dyad to work out issues of attachment, separation and individuation while negotiating identity development – a task/process not characteristic of sibling dyads (Koepke and Denissen, 2012). In this chapter, we have not had the scope to explore specifc interpersonal dynamics and the nature of relationships before and after disclosure between the parents and their gay/lesbian son/ daughter. Overall, we note that the more invested that family members are in the heteronormative family, the more diffcult it is for them to accept their

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family member’s difference. Acceptance of family members’ non-normative sexuality is easier for those who have already challenged the normative family in some way. The extended family, which is usually seen as a source of support in most other matters, in fact becomes a deterrence to accepting one’s own child, due to the anticipated censure and possibly harm to one’s social image. In this study, all our respondents are in some stage of acceptance, and most of them lived in nuclear family settings and did not have to deal with the daily presence of this extended family.

Conclusion Making sense of non-normative sexuality of a family member is a multilayered, dynamic process. It includes gathering new information, opening up to new experiences and assimilating these in older schemas, attitudes and ways of thinking and relating. The respondents in this study were all accepting of their gay/lesbian family member, which was evident in their individual journeys and movement towards greater engagement and acceptance of queer lives. For most parents, the frst reaction was of shock and disbelief. Their movement, however, is indicative of a possibility of change. Understanding how these processes unfold over a period of time and how they intersect with factors such as quality of pre-disclosure relationships, familial bonds, family background, education, class, religion, family life events, parents’/ siblings’ own experiences, availability of gay affrmative materials, helping professionals and support spaces provides a rich picture of the journeys of these family members. Most parents in this study went to doctors and religious heads or other literature to either look for answers or a “cure” for their child. Interestingly, none of the respondents sought out legal advice. Their frst reaching out was to those whom they believed might help to deal with the situation either through fguring a way of understanding or getting rid of the problem itself. This study was initiated in the time when the Delhi High Court judgment reading down Section 377 and thus decriminalising “sexual acts against the order of nature between consenting adults in private” was being challenged in the Supreme Court. The law was a part of the discussion in the media, and yet none of our respondents went to lawyers for help, thus indicating that even if they saw it as wrong, they did not see these sexual choices to be criminal to begin with. They were against Section 377, but they were more interested in their children’s right to make a family of their own. Our respondents’ journeys of acceptance provide insights into the kinds of support and interventions that family members and the lesbian/gay people require to develop mutual empathy and respect. For instance, the availability of affrmative materials about same-sex sexuality in local languages and gay affrmative counselling services, including group processes for families making sense of their family members’ sexuality, are vital resources. Knowing

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about pre-disclosure relationships would help to understand post-disclosure responses. It may also explain how experiences of isolation, alienation and a sense of “difference” that many gay/lesbian children report in their process of growing up (Ranade, 2018) and how it impacts familial relationships of lesbian/gay individuals. These would provide important insights for family interventions. The past few decades of interventions with gay/lesbian people has shown the importance of stories and narratives of supportive family members from the local contexts. Gathering and analysing such voices is also important for others wanting to build conversations with their families. This exploratory study in fact underlines the need for more research in India to truly understand the different ways that families from diverse socioeconomic, geographical, caste and religious backgrounds process and respond to non-normative sexualities, in order to develop a better understanding of what kinds of interventions will work in Indian contexts. Postscript Interviews with parents and siblings for this study were conducted in 2011– 2012. However, a lot has changed in the public, policy and legal discourse vis-à-vis queer lives in the country in these intervening seven years. The Supreme Court of India decriminalising homosexuality by reading down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code in September 2018 and the same court previously validating the rights of transgender people as equal citizens of this country in April 2014 are a few examples of these shifts. A new law on the protection of the rights of transgender people has been recently passed in the Lok Sabha, and several trans-inclusion initiatives in the employment and education sector have taken off in the country. A growing number of gay/ lesbian individuals are coming out to their families and openly living their lives as a couple. Recently, media celebrated marriage between two trans people, and the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court in April 2019 held that the term “bride” in the Hindu Marriage Act would also include a trans woman while hearing a matter of legal registration of marriage between a man and a trans woman. A follow-up study with the same study respondents in Mumbai to understand how they see their children’s lives in today’s times would possibly yield different responses and give a clearer understanding of how societal and legal changes infuence/enable familial acceptance.

Notes 1 An earlier version of this chapter was published in the special issue of The Indian Journal of Social Work (2016) on “Family transitions and emerging forms,” 77(4), 437–458. 2 This study was conducted in 2011–2012 when the 2009 Delhi High Court judgment was appealed in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court had not yet begun its proceedings during the data collection period. Since then, there have been

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many legal developments which we have briefy outlined at the end of the chapter in the Postscript. Authors are aware that in recent times, LGBTQ activists and groups in metro cities of the country have been making efforts to organise family members of gay/ lesbian individuals for support, visibility and advocacy. Gay Bombay, an autonomous collective, has been organising informal meetings for parents of gay men in Mumbai since 1999. We interviewed some parents and family members who were part of these gatherings. In 2017, a new group for parents called Sweekar – The Rainbow Parents – started meeting in Mumbai. This was a close-knit extended family, and the aunt was a crucial part of the nephew’s life. We had two unique respondents: one was a mother who had two sons, both gay, and another was a sibling with a lesbian mother as well as a lesbian sister. OBC stands for “other backward classes,” a term used by the Indian government to classify castes that are socially and educationally disadvantaged. “Acceptance” can mean several things, and the literature suggests that these include talking to the child about their same-sex sexual identity, being supportive, showing affection when the child comes out and advocating for LGBT rights, among others. In this study, we use “acceptance” and “non-acceptance” as terms used by the respondents to talk about their feelings, thoughts and behaviours. In the analysis presented in this chapter, we do complicate this term to discuss levels of acceptance and complexities among these levels. Respondents who were not accepting of their family members’ sexuality were not accessible for inclusion in the study. Thus, only those who have had some level of acceptance have been included in the study. The petition is available at http://orinam.net/377/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ SC_ParentsOfLGBTChildren_WrittenSubmissions.pdf [Date of Access: 14 October 2019].

References Beeler, J., and DiProva, V. (1999). Family adjustment following disclosure of homosexuality by a member: Themes discerned in narrative accounts. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 25(4), 443–459. Cass, V. C. (1979). Homosexual identity formation: A theoretical model. Journal of Homosexuality, 4(3), 219–235. Conley, C. L. (2011). Learning about a child’s gay or lesbian sexual orientation: Parental concerns about societal rejection, loss of loved ones, and child wellbeing. Journal of Homosexuality, 58(8), 1022–1040. Creating Resources for Empowerment and Action [CREA]. (2012). Count me in! Research report on violence against disabled, lesbians Sex- working women in Bangladesh, India and Nepal. New Delhi: CREA Publications. Retrieved from http://web.creaworld.org/fles/cmir.pdf [Date of Access: 2 October 2019]. D’Augelli, A. R., Grossman, A. H., and Starks, M. T. (2005). Parents’ awareness of lesbian, gay, and bisexual youths’ sexual orientation. Journal of Marriage and Family, 67(2), 474–482. Fernandez, B., and Gomathy, N. B. (2003). The nature of violence faced by lesbian women in India. Mumbai: Research Centre on Violence Against Women, Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Retrieved from http://download.tiss.edu/fap/RCIVAW/ RCIVAW_Publications/The_Nature_of_violence_faced_by_Lesbian_women_in_ India.pdf [Date of Access: 2 October 2019]. Ghosh, S., Bandyopadhyay, B. S., and Biswas, R. (2011). Vio-map: Documenting and mapping violence and rights violation taking place in the lives of sexually

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marginalized women to chart out effective advocacy strategies. Kolkata: SAPPHO for Equality. Goldfried, M. R., and Goldfried, P. (2001). The importance of parental support in the lives of gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 57(5), 681–693. Heatherington, L., and Lavner, J. A. (2008). Coming to terms with coming out: Review and recommendations for family systems-focused research. Journal of Family Psychology, 22(3), 329. Hom, A. Y. (1994). Stories from the homefront: Perspectives of Asian American parents with lesbian daughters and gay sons. Amerasia Journal, 20(1), 19–32. Joseph, S. (2005). Social work practice and men who have sex with men. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Kakar, S. (1978). The inner world: A psycho-analytic study of childhood and society in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Koepke, S., and Denissen, J. J. (2012). Dynamics of identity development and separation – individuation in parent – child relationships during adolescence and emerging adulthood: A conceptual integration. Developmental Review, 32(1), 67–88. LaSala, M. C. (2007). Parental infuence, gay youths, and safer sex. Health & Social Work, 32(1), 49–55. Retrieved from www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17432741 [Date of Access: 2 October 2019]. LaSala, M. C. (2008). Gay male couples: The importance of coming out and being out to parents. Journal of Homosexuality, 39(2), 47–71. Pearlman, S. F. (2005). When mothers learn a daughter is a lesbian. Journal of Lesbian Studies, 9(3), 117–137. Peplau, L. A., and Beals, K. P. (2004). The family lives of lesbians and gay men. Handbook of Family Communication, 233–248. PUCL-K. (2001). Human rights violations against sexuality minorities in India: A PUCL-K fact fnding report about Bangalore. Karnataka: People’s Union for Civil Liberties. Ranade, K. (2018). Growing up gay in urban India: A critical psychosocial perspective. Singapore: Springer Nature. Rostosky, S. S., Korfhage, B. A., Duhigg, J. M., Stern, A. J., Bennett, L., and Riggle, E. D. B. (2004). Same-sex couples’ perceptions of family support: A consensual qualitative study. Family Process, 43(1), 43–57. Savin-Williams, R. C., and Dube, E. M. (1998). Parental reactions to their child’s disclosure of a gay/lesbian identity. Family Relations, 47(1), 7–13. Shah, C., Merchant, R., Mahajan, S., and Nevatia, S. (2015). No outlaws in the gender galaxy. New Delhi: Zubaan.

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Deaf families Understanding issues of two generations Sandhya Limaye

Each family exists within its unique social, legal and historical environment, and they can be understood only within the broader context of their environments. Coontz (1997) points out that although each type of family has its own vulnerabilities, they have shown great resilience and creativity in coping with their current social realities. Diverse families are, in a sense, multicultural, because they live both in a traditional world and in a world of differences (Laird, 1993). They not only are a part of the mainstream society but also belong to a distinct culture. Diverse families teach us valuable lessons about family relationships that can apply to all families. They can also teach us about their strengths, capacities, competencies, creativity and resilience (Erera, 2002). Disabled families have been excluded from mainstream family agendas. As a result, studies of disability and parenting have generally involved searching for defcits in parents and/or negative outcomes in their children (Olsen and Clarke, 2003). There is a dearth of research and literature reviews on such families that emphasise their social and environmental context. Such families are concerned about raising their children with disabilities to make them productive members of society like the non-disabled. Both parents with disabilities and their children with disabilities remain more invisible, discriminated against and signifcantly underserved due to continued social discrimination and a lack of disability-appropriate services for themselves and their families (Olsen and Clarke, 2003). Many communities and societies do not view parenting as a fundamental right for individuals with disabilities. For many individuals with disabilities, an attempt to become a parent and form a family of their own is often actively interfered with and overtly discouraged. The fact that people who have a disability are capable and competent to raise children challenges the established assumptions that they are not ft to be parents (Limaye, 2015). Despite obstacles, a vast majority of parents with diverse disabilities continue to provide nurturing, secure and safe environments for their children with disabilities. However, some parents are more vulnerable to dysfunction because of risk factors such as low economic status, a lack of social support, a lack of parenting knowledge and the child’s problematic behaviour.

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These risk factors may seriously impede adequate parenting. For those parents who need information or services, disability-appropriate and accessible resources are nearly nonexistent (Olsen and Clarke, 2003).

Deaf family Parental disability especially deafness remains a curiously hidden phenomenon. In this chapter, I focus on deaf parents and their deaf children as an entity called deaf family and shall make an attempt to understand their experiences as shaped by their impairment (loss of part of their body) and disability (social barrier). Deaf children born to deaf parents are likely to grow up in a social, cultural and linguistic milieu different from deaf children of parents without such an impairment (Padden and Humphries, 1988). It is reported that in the US that 10 percent of deaf people are born to families with one or more deaf parents (Schein, 1989). But Mitchell and Karchmer (2004) are of the view that 4 percent is a safer estimate, with roughly three-quarters of these children coming from families where both parents are deaf, in the US. An estimate of the prevalence of deaf children born to deaf parents (deaf of deaf) is important for advancing linguistic and educational advantages for them. There exist social and cultural differences between families of deaf children born to deaf parents compared to families of children of hearing parents (Mitchell and Karchmer, 2004). In the article “Defantly Deaf” published in the New York Times (28 August 1994), deaf activist Jackie Roth states that deaf children growing up in deaf families have a better understanding of what it means to be deaf (Solomon, 1994). It is not unusual to have third-, fourth-, ffth- or even sixth-generation deaf families. Most deaf people marry other deaf people, and if the deafness is hereditary, it results in multigenerational deaf families. These families are sometimes referred to as deaf dynasties (Berke, 2018). Article 30, paragraph 4 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recognises deaf culture in the following statement: “Persons with disabilities shall be entitled, on an equal basis with others, to recognition and support of their specifc cultural and linguistic identity, including sign languages and deaf culture” (Swaffer, 2015). Views on deafness Deaf people, in the sense of a community or culture, can be seen as a minority group (Nash and Nash, 1981). Members of this group tend to view deafness as a difference in human experience rather than a disability or disease (Ladd, 2003; Lane, Pillard and Hedberg, 2010). “Deaf” refers to an individual with little or no functional hearing and who often uses sign language to communicate. Hard of hearing refers to a mild to moderate hearing loss. Individuals with such an impairment may communicate through sign

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language, spoken language or both. The term “hearing impaired,” used to describe an individual with any degree of hearing loss, is not acceptable to many deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals. They consider the terms “deaf” and “hard of hearing” to be more positive. Although it is true that their hearing is not perfect, they prefer not to be labelled as hearing-impaired people.1 Lentz, Mikos and Smith (1993) presented different views about deaf people. According to them, a medical view on deaf people is associated with doctors who may put pressure on the deaf child’s parents for corrective surgery and not to use sign language, because it will distract the deaf child from developing their auditory and speech skills. The social view welcomes deaf individuals into the hearing world and provides them with accommodations such as interpreters. However, it fails to recognise the unique situation that these deaf children are in and forces them to fnd their own way in a predominantly hearing society. The cultural-linguistic view, on the other hand, recognises deaf people as belonging to a minority group in the world with their own language, social norms and culture. It promotes deaf people’s right to collective space within society to pass on their language and culture to future generations. Jones (2002) stated that deafness has historically been viewed as a physical impairment associated with such disabilities as blindness, cognitive and motor impairments. However, the more recent views on deafness, which consider it a subculture, look at deafness as a trait, not as a disability (Jones, 2002). Particularly in the past few decades, proponents of deafness as a culture have asserted that deafness is not a pathology and therefore does not need to be fxed (Padden and Humphries, 1988). Deaf culture Deaf people, similar to those belonging to a linguistic minority, have a common experience of life, and this manifests itself in deaf culture. Padden and Humphries (1988, p. 4) describe culture as “a set of learned behaviors of a group of people who have their own language, values, rules for behaviors, and traditions.” Thus, the deaf culture is characterised by a set of social beliefs, behaviours, history, art and literary traditions, shared institutions of communities infuenced by deafness and the use of sign language as the main means of communication (Padden and Humphries, 2005). The members of the deaf community take pride in their deaf identity. They apply this defnition to deaf culture when they state that deaf people behave in similar ways, use the similar language and share similar beliefs. The view of deafness as a culture holds that children and adults who cannot hear are isolated from the mainstream because communication with hearing individuals will always be laborious (Padden and Humphries, 1988). For example, Foster’s (1996) study examined the experiences of deaf students in the mainstream and found that their interaction with non-deaf students was severely curtailed

170 Sandhya Limaye due to communication barriers. The study also found that deaf students most of the time tended to socialise with each other rather than with nondeaf students, which is attributed to their shared language and experiences (Foster, 1996). The argument from the deaf culture perspective is that only those who acquired the use of sign language early in life and use signs as their frst source of language communication have an understanding of deaf cultural norms (Padden and Humphries, 1988). This view limits access to the culture for people who want to enter it after childhood, such as people who lost their hearing during adolescence or adulthood or who were raised with their native language as their frst language but who wish to learn sign language later in life. The most typical mode of cultural transmission in this group is from generation to generation (Phinney, 2002). In this sense, deaf parents pass their culture on to their deaf children. In this sense, these children of deaf adults are true inheritors of deaf culture (Leigh, 2009, p. 53). Sign language For those who use sign language as their frst language and see themselves as the constituents of a linguistic minority, sign language signifes group membership and is seen as an expression of their values transmitted across generations (Padden and Humphries, 1988). Therefore, sign language represents a common heritage and thus a cultural identity for them. The use of sign language is so important to the deaf culture that any perceived threat to its use is seen as a danger to the effcacy of deaf culture. For example, the use of a cochlear implant2 recommended to treat deafness has been criticised by members of the deaf culture. In 1991, the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) published a position paper highlighting that cochlear implants steer deaf children and their parents away from the deaf culture altogether. Lane (1992, pp. 226–228) states that children who receive cochlear implants experience a delay in acquiring sign-language skills and in developing an identity of their own as a deaf person. Membership in the deaf community Deaf culture is at the heart of deaf communities everywhere in the world. Each deaf community is a cultural group which shares a sign language and a common heritage. Those who use sign language, especially as their frst language, are viewed as members of a tightly knit ingroup, or deaf culture. Members of deaf communities all around the world therefore identify themselves as members of a cultural and linguistic group. It is a personal choice. A person is a member of the deaf community if they identify themselves as a member of the community and other members accept that person as a part of the community (Baker and Padden, 1978). The consequences of

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communication problems with hearing societies tend to encourage kinship bonding among the deaf people who live in a visual world (Leigh, 2010, p. 43). It does not automatically include all people who are deaf or hard-ofhearing in a deaf community (Padden and Humphries, 1988). Mindess (2006) believed that the individual’s own sense of identity and resultant actions, along with the extent of hearing loss, are important to being a member of the deaf community. It seems that all hearing-impaired individuals do not belong to the deaf community. The deaf community may include hearing family members of deaf people and sign-language interpreters who identify with deaf culture. Children of deaf parents usually have learnt ASL (American Sign Language) as their frst language and are members of the deaf community, even if they have normal hearing (Barnett, 1999). Being involved in the deaf community and having culturally identifed as being deaf has been shown to signifcantly contribute to positive self-esteem in deaf individuals (Jambor and Elliott, 2005). Blume (2010) writes that the deaf community provides support, easy social interaction and security to deaf people. Conversely, deaf individuals who are not a part of a deaf community are forced to conform to the hearing world, resulting in lower self-esteem (Roots, 1999).

The Indian context Although estimates of the population of deaf people in India must be treated with caution, it has been estimated that there are several million hearingimpaired people (between 0.9 and 14 million), and perhaps one of every fve people who are deaf in the world lives in India (Morgan, n.d). The government of India signed the UNCRPD in 2008, and despite good intentions, an absence of services and facilities continues to plague the Indian deaf community even after a decade. There is no reliable data in our country about the number of deaf people using sign language as a mode of communication. According to Ethnologue, the signing population in India was 2,680,000 in 2003 (Gordon, 2005). Indian Sign Language (ISL) is at a rudimentary stage of its development. The deaf communities of India are still struggling to get ISL recognised as a minority language. Although sign language is used by many deaf people in India, it is not used offcially in schools for teaching purposes. Sign language was strongly discouraged in most of the schools, even though students are used to communicating with each other via sign language. Vasishta, Woodward and Wilson (1978) found the Indian sign language has many regional variations. Efforts have been made by deaf communities, NGOs, researchers and other organisations working for deaf people, including All India Federation of Deaf (AIFD) and the National Association of the Deaf (NAD), to encourage the use of ISL.3

172 Sandhya Limaye The Persons with Disability Act 1995 does not mention sign language. However, an earnest step was taken by the government of India to promote sign language through the establishment of the Indian Sign Language Research and Training Center (ISLRTC). The center focuses on research pertaining to ISL, a bilingual approach for education for the deaf and training interpreters. However, currently the issue of the autonomy of the centre has become contentious and has yet to be resolved. The Rehabilitation Council of India, a government body that oversees training programmes for special schools and teachers, offers a 15-day sign-language training for teachers. It seems that less or hardly any attention has been paid to the deaf community and their issues in the Indian context given that there is rarely any documentation pertaining to it.

Profles of consulted deaf families Besides, there is no data on hearing-impaired children born to parents with the same impairment. The dearth of research on deaf families underestimates the importance of such an issue. Deaf families need to share their experiences and understand their struggles so as to create and maintain their own families. I believe that the best source of knowledge about deaf families in the Indian context is deaf families themselves. For this chapter, I have taken indepth interviews of two deaf families by using an interview guide. The main objectives of the study include understanding various issues faced by them, their way of dealing with such a situation and the kind of supports that they need. As for selecting families, I have known one deaf family and I came to know about the second family through the frst one. Such families are rare and diffcult to fnd. The primary sources of data are deaf parents and their deaf children who stay in Thane, Mumbai. To maintain confdentiality, the names of families have been changed. I took the help of a sign-language interpreter for the interviews because I am not fuent in sign-language. Thematic analysis was used, and an effort was made to ascertain implications of the fndings for social work practice. The frst deaf family, namely S, has two generations of deaf members and belongs to the Maharashtrian Brahmin community. Both parents, their two sons and their two daughters-in-law are deaf by birth, whereas all their grandchildren are hearing people. Of the two sons, the eldest and his wife have severe hearing loss, whereas the younger one and his wife, a Belgian national by birth, have profound hearing loss. The parents studied up to secondary level, whereas their sons and daughters-in-law have completed graduation. They use sign language for communication purposes, whereas the eldest son uses sign as well as oral languages. The younger son and his family, who are currently in Germany, use sign language only. The second family, namely K, has two generations of deaf members and also belongs to the Maharashtrian Brahmin community. This family consists

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of the father, age 77; mother, age 76; and two daughters. The elder daughter with hearing impairment is 49, and the younger hearing one is 48. Both parents and the elder daughter have profound hearing loss since birth. The two girls were married, but the elder one was divorced by her Gujarati husband, who himself was a deaf person. The younger daughter married into a Maharashtrian family: her husband is a hearing person, and they have a 25-year-old hearing son. The mother, father and elder daughter studied up to fourth standard and use sign language predominantly. The younger hearing daughter uses sign language with them and oral language with those outside the family. Thus, she acts as a liaison between the two worlds – that is, the deaf and the hearing.

Challenges faced by the families Members of the two families faced both major and minor challenges during their life course. Their families have been an important source of support and nurture by way of deploying their resources through thick and thin. The deaf families have to struggle to create and maintain themselves and to deal with various situations arising due to their deafness.

Stigma Stigma is a part of everyday life for most deaf people. For them, stigma can manifest itself in several ways: discrimination, prejudice and stereotypes, among others (Jones, 2002). While stigma is a label, prejudice is an attitude (Herek and Capitanio, cited in Leigh, 2009). Stigma refers to a discredited attribute that elicits a devalued stereotype (Corrigan, 2004). This can metamorphose into a discredited identity based on society’s stereotypical responses to what they perceive as one’s inadequate attribute (Leigh, 2009, p. 111). There are misconceptions about deaf people and their ways of communication. Many people assume that the entire family is deaf because they use sign language. Another assumption is that they will never learn to use oral language for communication and hence will have a tough time for survival. The daughter with a hearing impairment in family K said, “People think that deafness is an illness and I am fed up of explaining to them that deafness is normal.” If deafness is viewed as a disability, then people who are deaf carry with them the stigma of lacking a typical human characteristic (Jones, 2002). In the face of public stigma, the deaf person can be perceived as disabled and may be derided or devalued by society (Hetu, 1996). Deaf people are aware that they do certain things differently, and other people’s negative responses and attitudes towards them highlight their differences. This attitude may force many deaf people to avoid further contact with people from the hearing community.

174 Sandhya Limaye The son of family S reported about the reaction of the doctor at time of the birth of his child: The doctor told me that he was sorry to inform that my child could be deaf. But for us, there was nothing to be sorry about as we did not mind to have a deaf child. It seems that society feels sorry for them due to the stigma, but they feel comfortable in their deaf world as they may have access to everything in their own way. Leigh (2009, p. 43) said, “For me, being deaf is not audiological, but rather a way of life.” Some consider that deafness does not signify a loss, but a distinctive perspective of the world (Padden and Humphries, 1988; Lane, 1992). The frst generation – that is, the parents in families K and S – accepted their deafness because they were born in a hearing family and because they had access to only limited communication with hearing people due to poor educational quality and poor vocabulary. They kept quiet and ignored the public in order to avoid further discrimination. They became victims of stigma as they became isolated. However, the situation of second-generation children is different. They have role models in their deaf parents and have adequate information to meet their needs, and they challenge the attitude maintained by the frst generation. The deaf parents and their deaf children learnt to identify themselves with other deaf people in order to maintain a sense of community identity and self-worth. A person who is deaf is more likely to be comfortable with their peers who are deaf, because within such peer groups, being identifed as deaf is not detrimental to one’s role within the group (Foster and Brown, cited in Jones, 2002). The parents also feel comfortable to be a part of this world because of the support of their deaf children and their deaf friends. Similarly, the frst generation – that is, the parents – still experiences the prejudices relating to their role as parents. Society strongly believes that these parents cannot be “good” parents and are likely to fail in creating a supportive environment for their children. Both parents of families S and K reported that they faced signifcant impediments while creating and maintaining their families because of the prevailing misconceptions about their parenting abilities. The parents reported that they took the support from their hearing parents as they had no choice but to listen to them. But after the death of their hearing parents, they tried to do their best and, in the process, realised that they had the ability to help their children with hearing impairment. The second generation – that is, the hearing-impaired children – accepted the challenges and took on parenting responsibilities with less apprehension. The son of family S said, My father-in-law was afraid that we may get a deaf child but I told him that it would not be an issue for us as it may be easy for us to

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raise a deaf child. When my daughter was born as a hearing child, my father-in-law was worried about her upbringing but I did not leave my daughter in their care. Now he accepted my parenting abilities. We have a networking of deaf club and it helps us to exchange the information about useful parenting tips. It seems that the second generation of deaf children is well aware of the media and deaf clubs and is effcient at using these means to exchange information. The second generation of deaf children may also have observed their parents’ style of childrearing and other non-disabled parenting styles as the deaf children get opportunities to discuss orally with hearing people for parenting tips. The stigma that society places on deaf people inevitably rubs off onto their hearing children. The hearing children also manage the ensuing stigma if their deaf parents are perceived as objects of pity, scorn or strangeness (Shultz Myers, Meyers, and Marcus, cited in Leigh, 2009, p. 56). Stigma affects not only the individual but the family as a whole, since the family may have to deal with its impact (Leigh, 2009, p. 113). Thus, the hearing children may also face isolation and social exclusion due to labelling. The hearing daughter in family K said, “When I tell hearing people that my family is deaf, they are shocked. They could not believe me.” She further reported that she had experienced social discrimination due to her deaf family background. The insensitive remarks about her family made her feel isolated in the hearing world. Myers, Marcus, and Myers (2010, p. 116) described it as parentifcation. According to them, parentifcation exacerbates attachment wounds when parents are not able to deal with the outside world on the child’s behalf. It is also possible that she may feel more frustrated, marginalised and lonely as a hearing person in a deaf world.

Communication A majority of the people with hearing impairment use sign language to communicate with others. It is a language form in which, instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns, visually transmitted signs are used to convey meaning through a combination of hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, as well as facial expressions to convey a speaker’s thoughts. Both families reported using sign language predominately with each other for communication, whereas one of the sons of family S reported that he uses oral language to communicate with hearing people and to share the information with his family. Communication is not a barrier for deaf people when interacting in the deaf community, because they do not have to depend on an interpreter. This permits great opportunities for social skills and leadership to develop and self-worth to fourish (Cripps, 2000). Frank (2017) found that all deaf participants in his study had full communication access

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at home and that there was no one left out in the family; consequently, they had a close bond and sense of belonging. When all the members get together, the conversation is given undivided attention. Since sign language is a visual language, eye contact is a must. If someone breaks eye contact, the other person will pause, wait for eye contact to be re-established and then repeat the last portion of what they signed. They discuss any issue, including food and politics. It is possible that deaf parents must have experienced diffculties while communicating with hearing people. Similarly, the deaf children from hearing families would have to work hard at communication (Smith, 2008). In the eyes of many hearing people, deaf people appear incomplete because of the lack of auditory connection to spoken language, whereas for deaf people themselves, “deaf” refects a state of being that manifests completeness (Leigh, 2009, p. 15). Given that deafness is regarded by society as a stigma and the assumption that people who cannot hear fnd it diffcult to communicate and integrate with mainstream society, the act of exclusion of the hearing from deaf culture increases the value of having membership in deaf culture (Jones, 2002). Smith (2008), whose family inherited deafness for eight generations, believed that it is easier to be born deaf into a deaf family than it is to be born deaf into a hearing family, because the former can have access to communication. Thus, communication among two generations of people with hearing impairment might help in developing a deeper sense of understanding of diffculties and learning to share important information with their parents and others. Education also plays an important role in developing language, including vocabulary, and fosters communication with hearing people to become aware of their surroundings. Although special schools helped deaf children access education, they did not facilitate their becoming a part of mainstream society.4 Often, people with hearing impairment use writing in a notebook, when hearing people do not understand their unclear speech. Unfortunately, there are questions about the quality of special school education: parents of families S and K strongly believed that they did not learn much by way of the functional skills of communication in their schools. The deaf daughter of family K said, I was transferred to another school for admission in to ffth standard but the school forced me to repeat the frst standard on the grounds of poor vocabulary and limited language. Though I was eligible for promotion to ffth standard as per government rules, the school authorities did not bother to explain the reasons for placing me in the frst standard. I did not have any support and the repetition of class did not help me improve my communication in any manner. So, I was wondering what was the quality of education that special schools offered me?

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According to her, they have rather learnt it by trial and error when they began working with other hearing people. She further believed that due to the deaf club network and workplace, she was able to establish and improve her communication with hearing people. In addition, support from the family is another important context for developing adequate communication skills. Next is the use of technology in facilitating communication for people with hearing impairment. In fact, technology has changed the experience of deafness between the generations. The children of the second generation expressed that they often rely heavily on the use of technology for communication. They reported using facilities such as short message service (SMS), WhatsApp and videophone to contact their friends with hearing impairment as well as hearing people. The frst generation of parents also showed interest in learning to use mobile and computer options even though it was diffcult for them to learn to use technology at their age. All of them strongly believed that there was no need for hearing aids for the purpose of communication. It seems that the hearing aid has a limited function of amplifying the sound and deaf people have to make an effort to understand the speech. In the process, they depend on lip reading by making eye contact and looking at hearing people’s faces and lips. This “staring” sometimes makes hearing people uncomfortable as the act of staring may be perceived by others as rude. Hearing children of a deaf family may realise that they can hear the sound when they grow up, and they then may be pressured to develop adequate communication with hearing people. This is because their deaf parents may have limited connection with hearing society due to their negative experiences from society and problems with communication. Thus, the hearing children may be encouraged by family members and society to act as a link between the two worlds. The hearing daughter of family K believed herself a minority member inside her deaf family and a majority member outside the family because she felt more comfortable with hearing people in social interactions. In the case of a hearing family, the fow of information is open inside and outside the family system and with the larger community. However, the fow of information changes drastically with the addition of a deaf member in the family. Moreover, the fow can be severely restricted if families with deaf and hearing members do not have a mutual communication system (Rienzi, 1990).

Social life Social relations are important for all human beings, including children and people with disabilities. However, in the case of children and people with disabilities, the barriers that the disability imposes on them would make it diffcult for them to maintain normal social relations. This leads to their social isolation. Such diffculty in maintaining social relations is even more

178 Sandhya Limaye pronounced in the case of hearing impairment, because of the gaps in twoway communication that is created from multiple barriers imposed by the impairment. The deaf parents reported that they had not had much of a social life since childhood. They used to attend family functions, but not much communication or interaction used to happen with the hearing members on those occasions. They had experiences about cousins and close relatives who avoided contact with them and did not invite them to important functions or connect with them when they were growing up. It seems that hearing members fnd it diffcult to establish adequate communication with them, and they may have feared the possibility of taking care of the responsibilities of deaf members. The parents had deaf friends who stayed far away, making it diffcult to keep in touch. The fathers had limited social lives in their workplace due to communication problem, whereas mothers spent their time at home by cooking and watching TV. It seems that their social participation has also become limited because of their negative experiences with the hearing world. Thus, the inability of deaf people to communicate with the hearing population leads to their social isolation. This is one of the reasons mentioned for the inability of deaf people to get fully integrated into mainstream society (Lane, 1992; Padden and Humphries, 1988). Often, deaf people are seen as rude, blunt, loud and lacking in social manners. The fact is that no one trains them with regard to etiquette and life skills. It is diffcult for many deaf people to keep their voice low while speaking. Therefore, members of the deaf community tend to socialise only among themselves. Such pronounced differences in perspectives and social norms between members of the majority culture and the deaf community can lead to misunderstandings during social encounters and hence to social isolation. However, because of their deaf children, they enjoyed their social life with their children by playing in gardens, watching movies, eating outside and chatting with each other using sign language. For the second-generation deaf members, who were born into a deaf family, sign language becomes their mother tongue, and the children tend to assume that sign language is for all belonging to deaf community. The deaf son of family S says that Deafness was a natural part of my environment reinforced positively in the early years by my parents and helped me to connect with those people more positively. This confdence helped the younger generation of children to organise social functions themselves and expand their friend’s circle of people with and without hearing impairment and thus created a comfortable communication zone for themselves. They also involved their parents in their social interactions. It appears that the universal need for belonging facilitates identifying

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with social groups and thereby avoids social exclusion (Baumeister, Twenge and Ciarocco, 2003). The younger generations still face barriers such as stigma in the workplace, from professionals who provide services and other discriminations. However, they try to solve these issues with the help of deaf clubs and hearing people such as family members, friends, and well-wishers. This effort helped them to exercise their leadership qualities and life skills. Bat-Chava’s (1993) fndings strongly suggest that self-esteem is associated with having a community of people who share one’s group membership and it serves to protect deaf individuals from attitudes that often devalue them. Thus, it seems that being a member of deaf community helped them contribute signifcantly with confdence and become productive members of society.

Difference in worldviews The worldview of both parents and children with hearing impairment is totally different due to their generation and upbringing given the values, beliefs and the kind of exposure that they have. They learn through their perceptions of the messages conveyed to them by others at different stages of their lives (Mottez, 1990). The workplace is an important space where deaf people develop their worldviews. With regard to families S and K, it was found that fathers of both families had to struggle a lot to secure their employment. They had faced negative attitudes from employers towards them and their deafness. One father said that his view of his ability to secure employment was infuenced by his hearing mother’s negative attitude towards deafness and people who suffer from the impairment. Therefore, he grew up with a negative feeling that higher education and good jobs are not possible for deaf people. It also refected his fear and insecurity towards the life that arises out of his deafness. Thus, it can be said that the negative portrayal of the abilities and potentials of deaf people impacted their ability to seek opportunities, experiment and learn. It appears that deaf parents do not have the same level of skills to be independent as do hearing parents, and it may limit the ability of deaf parents to learn. Thus, it leaves deaf parents disempowered, which affected their children. The same fears were passed on to the secondgeneration children, who had to struggle to convince their deaf parents that it is not all that hard. Son of family S says that My parents do not have exposure to the changing world. It is possible for us the younger generation to explore opportunities. But it is diffcult for our parents to keep trust on us due to their earlier experiences. You cannot simply ignore the confict arising out of fear and uncertainty. The children are lucky to meet successful deaf adults as role models and get support from deaf clubs that motivated them to explore opportunities.

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However, this journey was not easy for them. Deaf parents expected their deaf children to respect their decisions, whereas children expressed their disagreement in the decision-making process, which led to arguments, and the mothers had to negotiate with them for peace. In the case of family K, the father’s employer suggested that his daughter might act as a liaison between them, because the father believed that people in the hearing world take undue advantage of his deafness, and he reported that he used to fght with them on small issues and divert his anger onto his daughters if they tried to solve an issue against his wish. One can imagine how tough a job it was for his daughters to deal with such situations at a workplace. It also gave the impression that deaf people do not trust people. This hearing daughter felt tired of interpreting because she is the only hearing member in the deaf family, and she used to fght with her father to change his attitude but failed. It also appears that she has no choice but to continue as interpreter, needing to suppress her own anxiety and frustration. Preston’s (1994) study on the hearing children of deaf parents revealed that the hearing children experienced their responsibilities within a deaf family as both a badge of honour in terms of importance and power and as a burden. The next issue is about the confict between modes of communication adopted. For instance, all deaf family members use sign language for internal communication purposes. However, the eldest son and his wife in family K use both sign and the oral method of communication. The younger son, who heavily depended on sign language, believed that the elder one was not deaf, because the latter uses oral language. It was tough for the elder son to prove that he was deaf. Their deaf parents also supported their younger son because they strongly believed that deaf people never speak. This confict refects the identity dynamics that prevail among the deaf population, on the basis of the distinction between the users of sign language and those of oral language. This is because the older deaf people, like the parents in family K, may not have been exposed to the oral deaf model. Thus, the difference in their worldview appears to be the result of each member’s socialisation, their experiences with family and society, lack of awareness about changes in the outside world and fear of experimenting with new things.

Being part of a deaf family The stigma of being deaf, the diffculties faced in communicating with the hearing world and their exclusion from learning culture in fact increase the value of membership in the deaf culture. Members from families S and K expressed that they feel proud to be deaf because they feel a sense of belongingness, inclusiveness and confdence that they can become a productive member. The frst-generation parents, whose parents were not deaf, reported that they felt excluded in many ways. Now

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as a part of the deaf family, they can enjoy their rights, power and decisionmaking authority. One father said, I was asked to think and talk like a hearing person. But my parents could not explain how to think and what to talk? I could not understand the speech, context of communication and therefore could not do either of the tasks. My family told me that I am useless and thought that it would be better to keep me at home. This lack of understanding about the limitations imposed by deafness may have led to their feeling ashamed and feeling like an outsider in their own hearing family. However, marriage with a partner with hearing impairment, having children with hearing impairment and exposure to deaf networks helped these deaf people overcome their inferiority complex and enjoy their rights as human beings. In the United States, at least 85 percent of individuals with profound deafness marry another deaf person, whereas in India, there is hardly any data on it. There are a few deaf people who may get married with hearing people because of pressure from their families for such a marriage. However, marriage with another deaf person fosters easy communication between spouses, and it will lead to a feeling of security and belongingness. In the case of the second-generation children, they have grown up with the thought of being deaf in a deaf family, and that made them feel at home in their families. The son of family S and daughter of family K said, When we talk about our deafness, we use this term in relation to our language, and our community. Therefore, we feel a sense of pride in our deaf family and we are proud to be deaf. They also have successful deaf role models and got familiar with deaf networks where they have an opportunity to be independent. They realised that if they work hard, deafness would not obstruct their growth. Thus, being a deaf of deaf (DOD) is a matter of pride for members in the deaf community (Berke, 2018). They added that Many deaf people of hearing parents feel that we are lucky to have deaf parents as we get what we want and thus be independent. Padden and Humphries (1988, p. 48) believed that deaf children of deaf parents may have a respectable status among deaf people because they display effortless facility in the language of the group.

Conclusion One of the contributions of this study to social work practice is to help sensitise social workers working with deaf families to the structure, dynamics

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in relationships and challenges that they are likely to face while working with such families. This chapter reached the following conclusions: 1

2 3

Studies on deaf families in the Indian context are scarce. Therefore, it is important to undertake research in this area, especially on issues relating to deaf families, deaf culture, the life experiences of being deaf and so on. The understanding and learning about deaf family experiences will help develop practical applications on the basis of their actual needs, develop resources and deliver them to promote family resilience. The young deaf and hearing children having deaf parents should get immediate attention so as to develop an appropriate intervention plan to support them. There is a need to strengthen the community’s capacities to help deaf families by creating awareness about deafness, by educating people regarding creating deaf friendly resources and by delivering evidencebased programmes to support such families.

In summary, an effort is made in this chapter to analyse the experiences of parents with hearing impairment while raising their children with a similar impairment all as one deaf family. Deafness is seen as one of the factors that structure the experiences of parents with hearing impairment while creating and maintaining their family. In this light, challenges regarding our understanding of deafness and how impairment (a lack of a particular part of the body) and disability (social barriers) together infuence these experiences have been explored. These families, like their non-disabled counterparts, are concerned about raising their children with hearing impairment to make them productive members of society. But mostly, they are overlooked by many scholars, and the exclusion of these families from the mainstream research agenda has served to reinforce their isolation. Therefore, there is a need to explore the different dimensions of deaf families in the Indian context, such as their culture, their experiences of living in other’s world, their practices, the status of hearing children in such families so as to develop appropriate services to meet their specifc needs. Acknowledgements Special thanks go to two deaf families for sharing their experiences and to Ms. Neeta Mukharjee for her sign-language interpretation.

Notes 1 See DeafTEC. (n.d.) Deaf and hard-of-hearing: Some defnitions. Retrieved from https://deaftec.org/stem-employment/for-employers-resources-for-hiringand-inclusion/deaf-and-hard-of-hearing-some-defnitions/ [Date of Access: 13 April 2020].

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2 A cochlear implant is an electronic device that partially restores hearing. Unlike hearing aids – which amplify sound – a cochlear implant bypasses damaged portions of the ear to deliver sound signals to the auditory (hearing) nerve. 3 Wikipedia contributors. (2020, April 10). Indo-Pakistani Sign Language. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/ index.php?title=Indo-Pakistani_Sign_Language&oldid=950119009 [Date of Access: 14 April 2020]. 4 See TargetStudy. (n.d.). Education of disabled children in India. Retrieved from https://targetstudy.com/articles/education-of-disabled-children-in-india.html [Date of Access: 1 June 2016].

References Baker, C., and Padden, C. (1978). American Sign Language: A look at its story, structure and community. Silver Spring, MD: T. J. Publishers Inc. Barnett, S. M. D. (1999, January). Clinical and cultural issues in caring for deaf people. Family Medicine (Online), 31(1), 17–22. Retrieved from www.urmc. rochester.edu/medialibraries/urmcmedia/ncdhr/information/training/documents/ barnett1999.pdf [Date of Access: 13 December 2017]. Bat-Chava, Y. (1993). Antecedents of self-esteem in deaf people: A meta-analytic review. Rehabilitation Psychology, 38(4), 221–234. Baumeister, R., Twenge, J., and Ciarocco, N. (2003). The inner world of rejection: Effects of social exclusion on emotion, cognition and self-regulation. In J. Forgas and K. Williams (Eds.), The social self: Cognitive, interpersonal and intergroup perspectives (pp. 161–174). New York, NY: Psychology Press. Berke, J. (2018, May 29). When can deafness be hereditary? Mom and dad are deaf, so is grandma and grandpa . . . Retrieved from www.verywellhealth.com/deafculture-deaf-of-deaf-1046237 [Date of Access: 1 June 2016]. Blume, S. (2010). The artifcial ear: Cochlear implants and the culture of deafness. New Brunswick, Canada: Rutgers University Press. Coontz, S. (1997). The way we really are: Coming to terms with America’s changing families. New York, NY: Basic Books. Corrigan, P. (2004). How stigma interferes with mental health care. American Psychologist, 59(7), 614–625. Cripps, J. (2000). Quiet journey: Understanding the rights of deaf children. Owen Sound, Ontario: Ginger Press. Erera, P. (2002). Family diversity: Continuity and change in the contemporary family. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Foster, S. (1996). Communication experiences of deaf people. In I. Parasnis (Ed.), Cultural and language diversity and the deaf experience (pp. 117–135). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Frank, A. (2017). Deaf families’ unique experiences and obstacles. Journal of Social Work in Disability & Rehabilitation, 16(3–4), 216–229. Gordon, R. G., Jr. (Ed.) (2005). Ethnologue: Languages of the world (15th ed.). Dallas, TX: SIL International. Hetu, R. (1996). The stigma attached to hearing impairment. Scandinavian Journal of Audiology, 25(43), 12–24. Jambor, E., and Elliott, M. (2005). Self-esteem and coping strategies among deaf students. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 10(1), 63–81.

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Jones, M. (2002). Deafness as culture: A psychosocial perspective. Disability Studies Quarterly, 22(2), 51–60. Ladd, P. (2003). Understanding deaf culture: In search of deafhood. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Laird, J. (1993). Lesbian and gay families. In F. Walsh (Ed.), Normal family processes (2nd ed., pp. 282–328). New York, NY: Guilford. Lane, H. (1992). The mask of benevolence: Disabling the deaf community. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. Lane, H., Pillard, R., and Hedberg, U. (2010). The people of the eye: Deaf ethnicity and ancestry. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leigh, I. (2009). A lens on deaf identities. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leigh, I. (Ed.). (2010). Psychotherapy with deaf clients from diverse groups. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Lentz, E., Mikos, K., and Smith, C. (1993). Signing naturally: Vocabulary review, level 2. San Diego, CA: Dawn Sign Press. Limaye, S. (2015). A disabled mother’s journey in raising her child. In A. Hans (Ed.), Disability, gender and the trajectories of power (pp. 133–154). New Delhi: Sage Publications. Mindess, A. (2006). Reading between the signs: Intercultural communication for sign language interpreters. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing. Mitchell, R., and Karchmer, M. (2004). Chasing the mythical ten percent: Parental hearing status of deaf and hard of hearing students in the United States. Sign Language Studies, 4(2), 138–163. Morgan, M. (n.d.). Deaf and sign language in India: Problems, awareness and M3 solutions. Retrieved from www.academia.edu/792916/Deaf_and_Sign_Language_ in_India_Problems_Awareness_and_M3_Solutions [Date of Access: 1 June 2016]. Mottez, B. (1990). Deaf identities. Sign Language Studies, 68, 195–216. Myers, S., Marcus, A., and Myers, R. (2010). Hearing children of deaf parents: Issues and interventions within a cultural context. In I. Leigh (Ed.), Psychotherapy with deaf clients from diverse groups (pp. 109–135). Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Nash, J. E., and Nash, A. (1981). Deafness in society. Toronto: Lexington Books. National Association of the Deaf (NAD). (1991). Report of the Task force on childhood cochlear implants. The NAD Broadcaster, 13(1–2), 6–7. Olsen, R., and Clarke, H. (2003). Parenting and disability: Disabled parent’s experiences of raising children. Bristol: The Policy Press. Padden, C., and Humphries, T. (1988). Deaf in America: Voices from a culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Padden, C., and Humphries, T. (2005). Inside deaf culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Phinney, J. (2002). Ethnic identity and acculturation. In K. Chun, P. B. Organista, and G. Marin (Eds.), Acculturation (pp. 63–81). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Preston, P. (1994). Mother father deaf: Living between sound and silence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rienzi, B. (1990). Infuence and adaptability in families with deaf parents and hearing children. American Annals of the Deaf, 135(5), 402–408. Roots, J. (1999). Politics of visual language: Deafness, language choice, and political socialization. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Retrieved from www. jstor.org/stable/j.ctt814kb[Date of Access: 30 November 2016].

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Schein, J. D. (1989). At home among strangers. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Smith, S. (2008, May 31). Celebrating 180 years of deafness. Retrieved from www. theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/may/31/familyandrelationships.disability [Date of Access: 1 June 2016]. Solomon, A. (1994, August 28). Defantly deaf. The New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/1994/08/28/magazine/defiantly-deaf.html?pagewanted=all [Date of Access: 8 May 2017]. Swaffer, K. (2015). Creating life with words: Inspiration, love and truth. Retrieved from https://kateswaffer.com/2015/12/06/un-crpd-article-30 [Date of Access: 8 May 2017]. Vasishta, M., Woodward, J. C., and Wilson, K. L. (1978). Sign language in India: Regional variation within the deaf population. Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 4(2), 66–74.

9

Families of the future Some refections B. Devi Prasad and Srilatha Juvva

Introduction Since the beginning of the 19th century, family transition has been a prominent subject of discourse among sociologists, philosophers, and writers. One of the outcomes of such discourses has been envisioning scenarios of families of the future: projecting what variations would unfold in terms of their structure and form. Families changed for a variety of reasons. Primarily changes in demographics, economy, culture, politics, and ideologies have impacted them – prompting scholars to refect on the changing features of families and families of the future. Historically, at any given point of time, the future of families was always perceived as bleak, though that future when it became the present, in its contemporary form, appeared less threatening. Some even predicted that family would disappear altogether as a social institution. However, families remained resilient, and the universality of family as a space for human socialisation and nurturance continued (Reiss, 1965) irrespective of the changes in its morphology – thus validating the permanence of changing family. We have documentation of how families looked during the 1960s and the 1970s in India in terms of their structure, size, the dynamics of their relationships, and cultural values that they embodied. Approximately 50 years from that point of time, now we have studies mapping the forms and working of contemporary families. Gazing from the vantage point of the 1960s and the 1970s, the contemporary forms of family would have been (were) the families of the future. From this frame of reference, there have been reviews about the broad changes that Indian families have gone through during this period (Uberoi, 2014; Patel, 2005; Sooryamoorthy, 2012; Niranjan, Nair, and Roy, 2005). However, not much contemplation has been done in the Indian context to foresee what families will look like in future, say 30 years from hence (approximately 2050), taking into account the pace at which they have transitioned. In this chapter, we make a modest attempt at such an exercise, essentially comprising bold brush strokes – rather broad sociological imaginations – not based on any statistical projections.

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Diversity will be the predominant feature of families in the future given how families – in other words, this primary group of human beings – are changing around the world. Asian continents, including India, are not exceptions to this phenomenon. In this volume, we made an attempt to capture a few emergent family forms and their contextual factors. Beginning from there, we envisioned some scenarios of families of the future in the Indian context – namely elementary families with changes in interpersonal relationships, joint/extended families, transnational families, cohabitation families, childfree families, same-sex families and other forms of families, such as displaced, non-kinship, and those with special needs. The main purpose is to capture their present form and speculate about how they may appear in the next few decades. We take a stance of looking at family change not from the lens of a structural-functional tradition, which has for so long driven the studies on Indian family, kinship and marriage, but rather from a more culture-specifc and region-specifc perspective (Das, 1976; Hareven, 1988; Desai, 1981; Palriwala and Kaur, 2014, p. 6) that does not subscribe to any linear model of change process. Our perspective also captures and treats diverse family forms not as dysfunctional or deviant social units but as family variations which are part of a wider normative range. In fact, these variations do not indicate any movement towards a more modern and progressive state of family forms. We further concur with Tamara Hareven’s (2001) argument that although the major forces affecting families in societies cross-culturally appear similar and universal on the surface, they are dissimilar at deeper levels and in their outcomes. More specifcally, when examining family transitions in the Indian context, we believe that we need to take into account the rural/urban divide, the village society1 (Jodhka, 1998) where the rural dimension2 of Indian families is one major factor. This factor will continue for a few more decades to come in explaining most of the variations in the forms of marriage, kinship, family structure and size, age at marriage, fertility rate, sex ratio, migration, and the impact of forces such as information and communication technologies (ICTs). We shall begin the chapter with a few refections on defnitional issues pertaining to family and relevant to the current theme, followed by an examination of the major drivers of family transitions in the Indian context, narratives of the emergent family forms, and a conclusion.

Family: defnitional issues No attempt will be made here to suggest any defnition of family. We would rather attempt to look at the key dimensions that make up the meaning of “family,” because those would serve as more endurable criteria to set the boundaries of defning family irrespective of time and location. It would also help us see, across the different forms of families that will be narrated, the common attributes of changing families.3

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Three dimensions – offcial, sociological, and subjective – need to be taken into consideration when defning family (Gilding, 1997). Thus, family can be seen as the following: 1 2 3

A group of people objectively defned by demographers, social scientists, and jurisprudence as legally recognised relationships that bestow entitlements and obligations on its members. A social institution that is seen as performing specifc social functions, including reproduction; socialisation; and fnancial, physical, and emotional care for its members. A subjective view that is based on the meaning and language of family.

Let us look at them one by one. First, we shall consider the offcial defnition of family as a demographic, legal, or policy relevant to a primary social group. Under this category, as relationships are defned on the basis of legal or blood ties in the context of law and custom, they lead to prescribed mutual obligations and entitlements on the part of their members (Lindsay and Dempsey, 2009). The state recognises only this defnitional category. There can be different families sociologically defned, but they need to fall under this category so that they can inform policy and planning arenas. For example, a Hindu undivided joint family (HUF) is a legal entity recognised by Section 2 of the Income Tax Act 1961 and consists of all people lineally descended from a common ancestor and includes their wives and unmarried daughters. It is still a predominantly patriarchal entity with male coparceners holding the property jointly, though there were recent amendments treating women as coparcenaries.4 In fact, how laws and policies defne these relationships refects the dominant sociocultural attitudes and beliefs about families at a given time. Second, the sociological dimension takes us into the realm of academic discussion about the family, a critique of offcial defnitions, and, even more importantly, the epistemological and ontological understanding of the complexities of the term “family.” There are contentious debates about the concept and suggestions to replace the term “family” with such terms as “personal life” or “intimate relationships,” to avoid the emotive and historical baggage that is associated with the term (Lindsay and Dempsey, 2009). Starting from Murdock’s (1949) functionalist defnition of family to the more fuid defnitions of the postmodern stance (Stacey, 1996), the primary discourse revolved around identifying or eliminating the different functions and attributes of family, which varied depending on time and context, and the lens used by the scholar in interpreting the family. Most of the functions articulated by family scholars have their opposing realities. For instance, if one sees family as a space for sharing and cooperation, for another it is based on clearly established hierarchies of gender and age, with an adult male generally more powerful than an adult female (Menon, 2012). Yet another scholar may see it as a place for the sheer exploitation of women’s

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labour (Benston, 1969). Postmodernists went a step further. To them, there is a fundamental break between modern family and postmodern family (see Shorter, 1975; Zimmerman, 2001), and any one type of family cannot be held up as the norm against which other family types can be compared. For this reason alone, they argued that different explanations are needed for different types of families. According to them, an important criticism of sociological dimension is the Western perspective with which families are defned and interpreted. For instance, until the mid 1970s, for structural functionalists, the benchmark to interpret other family systems was the nuclear family (Lindsay and Dempsey, 2009). On the other hand, Chinese, Indian, and South African extended family systems present a situation where the nuclear family is unimportant. Similarly, sex and blood ties were considered important markers of family, whereas gay and lesbian families do not fall into the box using the same criteria, and hence, “family” needs a redefnition (Meadow and Stacey, 2006). Therefore, the argument that one family form can be used as the normative or evolved form to interpret other families cannot be maintained. Lastly, family is a subjective idea or a choice – that is, a subjective interpretation of what family is. This dimension goes beyond and is a precursor to the offcial and sociological dimensions. It encompasses ideas about family, including relationships based on choice and commitment – that is, relationships acquired rather than prescribed. In this sense, both normative and non-normative family forms can ft into this dimension, though it predominantly signifes the latter forms. For example, the subjective dimension is covered in family as a heteronormative group when it is seen not merely as a residential group or a household but also as “a system of relationships, rights and duties and the norms that the members try to live up to” (Desai, 1981, p. 114). In contrast, the non-normative family relationships are chosen, formed, and committed to – which also constitute family for their members, such as in the case of gay or Hijra families, though at the same time, they may accept or reject their biological family ties (Wall and Gouveia, 2014). Our Family (CMCS, 2007) brings out the experiences of Aravanis (transgender female subjects) of Tamil Nadu, who formed their families when they were not treated as a part of heteronormative family. Hijra families can be cited as another example (Aasaavari, Mohapatra, and Sharma, 2016). Similarly, this dimension also covers families which are not bound by conventional criteria and may not yet have fgured in the sociological or offcial realms. They could be fights of imagination of what families would be. For example, friendship networks as families which are also called as intentional families or fctive kin (Muraco, 2006; Stacey, 2011). The foregoing three categories of defnitions are not mutually exclusive, and the boundaries between them are rather porous. Further, the sociological or subjective dimensions of the defnition can become an offcial defnition if it is legally recognised. Thus, for example, the judgment of the Supreme Court decriminalising Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code5 as

190 B. Devi Prasad and Srilatha Juvva arbitrary will pave the way to formalise same-sex unions and a revision of the defnitions of families. The transition between the different dimensions involves a process of the legitimisation and formalisation of these dimensions of families. It means that, for example, a subjective defnition before becoming legitimatised will pass through the sociological analysis and knowledge-building process of the concept. This understanding will be helpful in comprehending how the future forms of families get or may not get formalised over time. Moreover, all dimensions are important as part of the historical knowledge-building process around the defnitions of families.

Drivers of family transition Historically, changes in demographics, ideologies, technology, and laws have paved the way for making and remaking families. They will do so even for future families. On the basis of a review of the literature, the major causes attributed to large-scale changes in marriage and family institutions in the West and to a some extent in other parts of the world are the rise of individualism,6 the rise in education, the economic independence of women, movements towards gender equality, migration, advances in the human reproductive technologies (including basic contraception delinking sex, sexual morality, and reproduction), and the information and communications revolution (Giddens, 2006; Castells, 1997; Srinivasan and James, 2015). The cumulative impact of these forces led to a decline in the popularity of marriage and family in peoples’ lives. While these changes have an infuence even in the East Asian and Indian contexts, the impact will be slower for some decades to come as caste, religion, kinship, and collective familial values are still holding sway on the majority of the population in India. There is an element of truth in the following argument: The rise of individualism in the Western sense is unlikely to happen in India in the near future since all individuals in Indian culture are a part of a larger network of family, gotra, caste, and religion. . . . There appears to have been no major changes in such norms in India even with considerable demographic and socioeconomic changes. No religious groups are an exception to this. . . . So there is little chance of anyone born in India declaring that he or she is an “individual” bereft of all familial connections and concentrating solely on his or her own personal development. This is not likely to happen, at least for many decades to come. (Srinivasan and James, 2015, p. 43) While acknowledging both the differential impact and pace of family change in the Indian context, we especially note the power of ICT as a crucial driver of this change. Unlike the transitions brought by conventional media such as TV and radio, the changes accelerated by ICT are metachanges, which are and would be more encompassing and multilayered (Beck and

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Beck-Gernsheim, 2004). Now that the Internet has become frmly embedded in people’s lives, their succeeding technologies, such as smart phones, social media, YouTube, and others, are impinging on families and their dynamics in far-reaching ways (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2011). The younger generation works with the new technologies in such an integrated manner that they not only impact families but also change the younger members in families in more enduring ways by making them independent in interactions and autonomous in decision-making. For instance, mobile (smart) phones have eroded the effectiveness of restrictions imposed on the mobility of women and created opportunities of interaction with the outside world. More importantly, the new media transformed the scope of the public sphere (Habermas, S. Lennox, and F. Lennox, 1974) in fundamental ways. It made the conversational spaces, formal and informal, unrestricted in terms of structures of participation and reaching out, thus radically affecting political, social, and family arenas. One example is the #MeToo movement on Twitter and how it will defnitely pave the way to bringing important changes in gender roles in relation to love and courtship norms by freeing them of force and male domination. These changes will have important implications in structuring men’s and women’s relations in family and non-family contexts, though at the moment, the movement could not bend much of the existing structures (How to believe Women, 2018). Suffce it to say, these broad forces are kept in mind while we look at how families would look in the coming decades.

Emergent family forms As mentioned earlier, diversity will be the core phenomenon of future families the world over, and India is no exception. However, as far as the Indian scenario is concerned, though only some forms of families envisaged in the West (e.g. see Toffer, 1980, pp. 207–225) may tend to fgure in urban centres, keeping in view of the liberal, middle-class expectations and behaviours displayed in these contexts, they would make up nowhere near “the whole picture” of the country. One major reason for this is that the rural context will decide the whole picture for the country for some more time to come, where the contemporary traditional forms of family arrangements would likely continue with a few changes (Palriwala and Kaur, 2014, p. 20). In this light, as indicated, the following family forms are visualised. In a way, it is not a representative mapping of future forms of families. Rather, it is based on our hunch about what kinds of families we may see and may need to be prioritised from the point of view of policy in the coming three to four decades. 1 Elementary families with changes in interpersonal relationships According to Castells (1997), the model of the patriarchal nuclear family isolated from strong lineage bonds that dominated the Western family

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systems has been in crisis since the post–World War II years. He explained that the changes in the global economy, women’s entry into the labour force, contraceptive technologies, women’s rights movements, and information technologies have infuenced the relations between the sexes in fundamental ways since the late 1960s.7 The number of people living in a nuclear family living arrangement in the West has declined, and it has been replaced by other living arrangements, such as single-person households, cohabitation arrangements, and lone-parent households. As early as 1996, only 56 per cent of the adult population in the US was married (Furstenberg, 2014). Evidently, the journey is more towards the individualisation of family, making individual’s rights and autonomy the central axes of the process (Settles, 1999, p. 148). Given the pace at which families are changing in India, we would still be seeing the elementary family form (husband, wife, and unmarried children) as a branch of extended family continue into the future for some more decades and to relate in ways such as fnancial, ritual, or social with stem families. It will be a family form where there can be a single-earner or dual earner component with the participation of women in the formal and informal (including agricultural labour) sectors. Other variants of families – single-person households, two-person households without children, and lone-parent (mostly mother-headed) households – though a growing phenomenon in the West (Child Trends, 2015), are less likely to dominate the Indian scenario in the distant future. This is because, as per Census 2011, the average household size in India was fve, with a quarter of the total households (24.9 percent) being in three- to fve-person households. On the other hand, one-person households and two-person households comprise only 3.7 percent and 9.7 percent of the total number of households, respectively (Dommaraju, 2015; Nayak and Behera, 2014). Factors such as individualism and women’s rights movements have affected aspects of functioning within families in India and will continue to infuence them in the future. However, what routes the transitions will take is a controversial subject for contemplation. Look at how the factors put forward by Castells (1997), in combination with individualism, have infuenced the delinking of reproduction from marriage in the West. And the impact may not be similar here because marriage in India has deep cultural roots with its origins and foundations in the caste and kinship systems (Srinivasan and James, 2015). At the same time, a greater enforcement of these endogamous family norms when clashed with individual rights and autonomy has had adverse consequences for individuals8 (Chowdhry, 1997). The focus is essentially on controlling female sexuality, which will erode further under the impact of the factors discussed thus far. There will certainly be more pervasive attitudes towards reducing gender differences in family roles, which will lead to new modes of parenting, gender relations, and patterns of child socialisation. Further, in the light of the fast-growing information technology and electronic revolution, one often-cited prediction is that the work

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will come back to the home (Settles, 1999, p. 150), thus creating as Toffer (1980, p. 221) observed “the electronic expanded family.” It is similar to its predecessor, the so-called extended family in preindustrial societies, which brought a generation of family members together under the same roof. For instance, two decades from now, if 25 percent of the work can be done from home, a number of challenges, including childcare, can be solved. Interestingly, when the unprecedented covid-19 pandemic hit the world since January 2020, it seems a major part of Toffer’s prediction about the electronic expanded family became a reality. Most countries around the globe, including India, went in for a lockdown between March and May at varying levels in order to slow down the progress of the virus (Aura Vision, 2020). The pandemic has brought with it many disruptions as well as signifcant changes in the contours of family life. With basic services, travel, and outside market closed, the lockdown meant a forced self-isolation for families. As a result, the world has changed dramatically. Home became a new offce for the period of lockdown and Internet a new learning and meeting space (Frederick, 2020; Medina and Lerer, 2020) If these changes are going to stay, a considerable portion of work will come back to the home. Then, families in the post-covid world, fve years from now, will look different. With most of the family members together under one roof, the child care and elder care arrangements will change in a number of ways with important consequences for family and workplace policies. 2 Joint/extended families9 Scholars, especially the structural functionalists (Goode, 1963; See Khatri, 1975, pp. 633–634), predicted that Indian families will follow the footsteps of Western societies in terms of transitioning from an extended family to a nuclear family structure, which will be accompanied by changes such as increasing individualisation, the weakening of ties with one’s kin network, a decline in community orientation, a decline in flial piety, and a decline in collective familial values. Looking at various factors operating in India that impinge on family – the connection between caste, religion, and marriage, and the pace at which the statistics relating to age at marriage, age at frst child birth, the household size and longevity are changing – the collective family values and connections with kin network may not change drastically in the coming two to three decades (Srinivasan and James, 2015). However, potential changes can be witnessed in three aspects: the continuation of extended relationships in terms of kinship ties, a modifed form of extended families, and family support and other help. First, apart from other evidence, sending remittances to migrants’ households back at home in the village or their place of origin for such purposes as consumption, marriage, clearing household debts, purchasing land, etc. signifes the continuation of such kinship ties (Sahu and Das, 2010, p. 147). Still in Indian society, pursuing personal interests is viewed as a selfsh and

194 B. Devi Prasad and Srilatha Juvva irresponsible behaviour on the part of a family member. Second, in the light of the adaptability displayed by the traditional Indian extended families in modifed forms such as adaptive extended family10 (Khatri, 1975), the same may probably continue into the future. This fexibility of extended families is validated by the occurrence of a similar adaptation termed “two-headed families”11 among contemporary Chinese families to meet the needs of the family because of rapid socioeconomic development (Xu and Xia, 2014, p. 38). Third, supplying family support is one of the functions of multigenerational households, where grandparents will assume a signifcant role in the future due to population ageing, resulting in long years of shared lives with them (Bengtson, 2001). With a life expectancy of 67+ years,12 an average Indian may likely remain grandparents for about 20 to 25 years, with a couple of years less for men as compared to women. Thus, the role of grandparenting in future families will become more relevant in childcare, the socialisation of grandchildren, and re-establishing multigenerational bonds (Smith, 2005). As of now, they are playing a role in facilitating the labour market participation of women in most of the Asian countries, including India, both in native and transnational family contexts (Husain and Dutta, 2015). Given evidence in the Indian context, the three generational family relationships will continue into the future, and the grandparents will be a source of support to grandchildren as surrogate parents in times of parental divorce, major illnesses, or other crises. 3 Transnational families Here, we are concerned with those transnational families (TNFs) who remain connected with their families in India through cultural and fnancial remittances. International migration created large numbers of TNFs, and of late, women formed a signifcant proportion of the migrants, either in connection with software jobs (Umadevi, 2002) created with the advent of IC technologies or with reference to marriage migration, which is more pronounced from the northern states, such as Punjab (Kaur, 2012). There has also been an increase in the fow of lifetime migration from India, where the migrants intend to settle in the destination countries (United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 2009). Notable destination countries which attracted most of the Indian migrants are the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, South Africa, and many in the Middle East. Although these family members are increasingly geographically separated due to their migration, they remain connected via mobile technologies in a manner that was nearly impossible a few decades ago. They also actively maintain links with their kin and communities, located both in urban and in rural communities, for purposes of marriage and cultural and political identities (Patel and Rutten, 1999; Patel, 2016). Given the scenarios just described, the number of TNFs having connections with their homeland (India) will substantially increase, and so will the

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number and spread of originating states. Two issues will assume importance in terms of their future formations: relationships and identities. Relationships Extended kinship ties, however contentious, will assume greater importance in the day-to-day lives of these immigrants in the days to come as receiving societies increasingly tighten controls on the rights and the incorporation of immigrants. Thus, the intergenerational links of the initial entrants and naturalised members with their parents, siblings, grandparents, and other relatives in the home country will become stronger because they can contribute to their transnational households abroad through support in childcare and in other survival strategies. Remittances to extended kin will come in the future, not just from men, as in previous periods of history, but also from women as well. Emotional necessities and practical considerations play an important role in these mechanisms (Trask, 2010, p. 20). Due to the adaptation of modes of the behaviour of their receiving countries, there will be changes in the intimate relations (love, marriage, parenting, etc.) among families in India connected with TNFs and within TNFs. Nevertheless, an emphasis on kinship ties and extended family networks, a cultural trait of Asian communities will continue to have their sway in these matters, including in marriages and bringing up their children,13 for a few more decades. Identities Next, TNFs will face two kinds of identity issues: a mixing up of identities and future hostilities. While most of the TNFs and their descendants are less and less willing to identify themselves with their country of descent, putting them into the ethnic boxes in the destination countries will continue. Thus, even in the next few decades, for most immigrants from India in their receiving countries, such as the US, Australia, or South Africa, appearances trap them into predetermined identities. These appearances cannot be transformed for long periods or even for generations, including their cultural and social categorisation (despite their efforts to blend themselves into the host society’s culture) from which these families cannot escape (Trask, 2010, pp. 76–77). While the members of TNFs face the dilemmas relating to the mixing up of identities as just described, the other outcome will be hostilities faced by the ethnic descent of families in host countries, including those from India. The world over, the current trends show a greater solidifcation of ethnic, national, or faith-based identities exacerbated by global politics and the new communication technologies. In the near future, such divisions are likely to get more articulated, and the Indian descent families in the receiving countries might face problems of expulsion, which the Rohingyas and Syrian families are facing at present.

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4 Cohabitation families “Live-in relationship” is a more popular term used in India for cohabitation, and it can be defned as voluntary non-marital heterosexual cohabitation and socialisation in public between two heterosexual adults who share domestic, sexual, parental, and fnancial responsibilities for a considerable period of time on a continuous basis. This defnition comes close to the scenario of cohabitation in the Indian context. There have been landmark judgments from the Supreme Court of India granting women in these unions protection from domestic violence, the right to inherit property, the legitimacy to children born in such relationship, and the rights of palimony14 in case of breakup (Agrawal, 2012). How would this alternative living arrangement evolve in the coming few decades in the Indian context? First, as things stand now, factors such as the increase in the age at which people get married and the declining popularity of marriage (resulting in the higher incidence of cohabitation of couples in the West) are not relevant to India and will not be at least for some decades to come. The median age of frst marriage as per 2011 Census is 21.7 (men 22.8 and women 19.2 years), and few (only 4 per cent) women remain single or unmarried until they reach the 30–34 age range.15 Similarly, the rise of individualism in the Western sense is also unlikely to happen in India in the near future since all individuals in Indian culture are still a part of a larger network of family, gotra, caste, and religion (Srinivasan and James, 2015). However, higher levels of education, economic independence, liberal ideas from Western infuences, long stays away from families, and the anonymity of metros will create a favourable environment for young people to enter into live-in relationships in the Indian context. It has been reported that metros such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, and Kolkata are harbouring these unions in increasing numbers, and they may as time goes on spread to smaller cities, though it would still be unthinkable to happen in small towns and rural areas. As of now, mostly these relations are entered into without the knowledge of their parents or communities (Agrawal, 2012, p. 51). With a greater incidence of this form of living arrangement, families formed on the basis of this relationship may fnd social acceptance as well as social and legal recognition for public policy purposes. 5 Childfree families Childfree marriages, or voluntary childlessness,16 has been an emerging trend because of its emphasis on an individualistic orientation, the availability of birth control measures, the economic independence of women, and priority given to career. Voluntary childlessness is an intentional choice by a married or never-married person not to have children, either biological or adopted in their lifetime. It is predominantly an urban, educated, middleclass phenomenon. Those who are involuntarily childless because of infertility are not considered here.

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Although childfree womanhood has a historical presence in India, Indian society, which is obsessed with fertility and motherhood as the apexes of womanhood, treats voluntary childlessness, especially with reference to women, with a great deal of cynicism and ostracism (Nandy, 2013). Motherhood in India, though a contested terrain between liberal and conservative forces (Sinha, 2007), still forms an important aspect of a woman’s life in the family, refected in her roles as a mother and a wife. Several scholars have acknowledged the presence of childfree women and marriages of voluntary childlessness in the Indian context and also indicated the stigma against them (Riessman, 2000; Chhapia and Iyer, 2010 cited in Nandy, 2013). A glance at the motivations mentioned in the literature for voluntary childlessness indicates the individualistic attitude, higher incomes, preference for a professional career and mobility, and other self-related justifcations (Houseknecht, 1986) more congruous with Indian urban, educated, middle-class contexts. Another important demographic indication for the growing incidence of childfree culture, as evident in the West (Toffer, 1980, p. 213), is the increase in the proportion of adult-centred households in the population. In India, unlike in the West, the numbers of one-person or two-member households are in negligible numbers (3.7 and 9.7 respectively, as per the 2011 Census17). Therefore, the number of childfree individuals or unions in India will remain small, though their presence will certainly become increasingly visible in the urban context, either as a choice or as a statement of ideology. They will be looked at as the end points of kinship networks, so the individuals would move towards more institutionalised living options as they approach their advanced years. Will we see the childfree lifestyle more among urban, educated, professionals as compared to non-urban, poor, and less-educated individuals? The answer perhaps is yes. 6 Same-sex families The Supreme Court judgment against Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (delivered on 6 September 2018), while recognising the sexual orientation as an inextricable component of one’s identity, ruled that any consensual sexual relationship between two adults in private – be it homosexual, heterosexual, lesbian, or transgender people – is acceptable and does not constitute a criminal offence18 (Baset, 2018). Thus, the judgment paved the way towards creating acceptance for same-sex unions in Indian society. One thing that would happen is that most of the people who were in secretive unions will now make their relationships public, if they choose to, without the fear of prosecution. As of now, the situation of gay and lesbian unions is going through a process of coming out and of negotiating public approval (Ranade, Shah, &Chatterjee, 2016; Sarma, 2017). The state’s recognition of the sexual citizenship of gay and lesbian individuals by decriminalising Section 377 will certainly make the journey less stigmatic and traumatic. Samesex sexual relationships have been attested in almost all societies historically,

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including India. And instances of same-sex marriages in contemporary times have already been reported and their stories documented (Vanita, 2005). Further, unlike heterosexual live-in relationships, gay and lesbian unions are different from gay and lesbian (i.e. same-sex) families. They need to go a step further to form a family by including children, one of the ways of which is adoption (Stacey, 2011, pp. 51–52). This will be facilitated if the state in India takes next steps by making laws for same-sex marriage, adoption, inheritance, and maintenance rights. These decisions will create the necessary preconditions for forming future same-sex families (also called families of choice). Postmodernists argued that gay and lesbian families need a language of “family” different from the one used by heterosexual unions. They require a reinvention of roles, intimacies, relationships, and even reproductive technologies (Stacey, 1996). At the same time, as the current trend suggests, these families will follow the conventional gender stereotypes of the “wife-and-husband” trope in their relationships. Another prediction is that there would be more lesbian families as compared to gay families (Biblarz and Savci, 2010; Tellis, 2014). The situation of same-sex couples bringing up children will emerge in urban and small-town contexts in the coming few decades. Also, their number and spread will likely be greater given that they are linked to the incidence of sexual orientation in the general population. As their numbers increase, the social, cultural, and public spaces in society will become accessible to these families, and so will their activities get refected in the cultural imageries of society, such as writings, advertisements, movies, and other scripts. 7 Other forms of families Under this category are included those forms of families which share certain common characteristics such as their displaced culture capital, livelihoods, kinship and family networks, internal relationships, specifc legal frameworks,19 and differential access to resources to allow them function as full citizens in society. From this perspective, a number of examples can be cited as coming under this category, such as displaced families, families affected by war and confict, non-kinship families resulting from cross-border and cross-state marriages, and families with disabled or mentally ill people. The list is only indicative and will instead serve to offer only examples to portray other emergent forms of families which may come up in the future. Now, what distinctive characteristics make them noticeable as families of the future in India in the coming decades? Take for example the category of displaced families, which are mostly families affected by war, confict, or involuntary displacement due to such projects as dams, sanctuaries, and roads. They all exhibit a similar profle of characteristics and challenges. They are also signifcant in terms of their numbers and who they are composed of. A majority of them comprise poor adivasi, dalit, and minority

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groups. They are forcibly displaced, and as Cernea (2000) pointed out, they are characterised by their social disarticulation – that is, dispersed and fragmented communities, scattered kinship groups, dismantled patterns of social organisation, and interpersonal ties. Similarly, war and confict result in large number of women-headed households because of the loss, disappearance, or migration of adult male members from the family. Another example is non-kinship families. Mostly spurred by skewed sex ratios in Asian countries, including India20 (Kaur, 2013), a specifc form of women’s marriage migration called cross-regional and cross-border marriages is taking place in both national and transnational contexts. In India, the female defcit regions such as Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat are importing women from areas with higher sex ratios such as West Bengal, Bangladesh, and Kerala (Mishra, 2013). They are reported as “bought brides” from these regions, and the marriages are contracted, breaking caste endogamy and religious barriers, which presents an unconventional situation. Families created by such marriages will certainly increase in number in the future: even if sex ratios at birth return to normal by 2020, the proportion of men remaining unmarried at age 50 is expected to be 10 percent in India by 2065 (Guilmoto cited in Kaur, 2012, p. 81). In all likelihood, issues of marriage, citizenship, and religion will fgure prominently for these families because of the stark differences in the religion, region, caste, and culture that the women and children bring to these families (Kaur, 2012), for which support networks and legal frameworks will need to be developed. Intentional families are another variant of non-kin families which comprise networks of friends and can include not only LGBTQ+ families but also friends who share common living spaces and enduring relationships. They remain connected on a daily basis and extend social and emotional support, thus providing some of the functions of a normative family (Muraco, 2006). Lastly, there are families with special needs, such as families with people with disability. As families, they are different in terms of their interactions within families, their relationship with external systems, their distinctive subculture, and their identity. In the light of special rights and facilities provided by laws for people with disability, families with disabled people will be more visible in public and private spaces as a distinctive form of future family.

Conclusion The crumbling of the nuclear family as a demographic reality and a family form idealised by the West began in the late 1960s, to be replaced by different family structures as representations of new family demographics. By the end of the 20th century, acknowledging family diversity as the emerging norm, family text books in the West began including chapters on the new variants of families, such as single-parent families, childfree families,

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remarried and reconstituted families, and other nontraditional families (Peterson and Steinmetz, 1999, pp. 2–4). By contrast, even as we enter the 21st century, the family demographics for the most part of Asia, including India, have not changed much in the family structure, marriage stability, household size, and family values (Child Trends, 2015). However, because the winds social, economic, cultural, and technological change have impacted families across the globe, it will be far from truth to say that these major forces have not affected the Indian families, though the pace at which the family structure and other demographics have changed is slow. There are changes in Indian families which are signifcant in terms of increased individualism, gender egalitarian ideologies, the democratisation of family systems, and changing family structures and types. New variants of Indian families began to be noticed by the mid 20th century, though they are not a replica of the family forms of the West. Thus, for example, two family forms that received some research attention around the 1980s were dual earner and women-headed households. By the end of the 20th century, there was a noticeable presence of other family forms, such as live-in relationships, transnational families, families torn by war and confict and so on. Despite these developments, not many family textbooks devoted chapters refecting the diversity of family forms in India. Ideas about families of the future will be helpful in forming a critique of current families as well as in determining the theoretical lens with which new forms of families should be studied and defned and the interventions to be contemplated. Families can be acknowledged or forgotten as they are defned. If a family is not recognised under an offcial defnitional category, then that family form remains unacknowledged. For example, a hijra person from Warangal, Telangana, who was found dead near a dustbin, was not allowed to be claimed by her hijra sisters and other hijra people because only biological parents or “blood relations” can lay such claims. Thus, an offcial defnition of family assumes importance in negotiating rights as a member of family (Datta, 2017). Therefore, one of the tasks is to defne new forms of family as they emerge to guide theory building, practice, and policy interventions. Next, changes in families have also infuenced the course of family policies and the outcomes for the larger social contexts affecting our lives. In the context of new forms of families, depending on what form of family it is, changes in family policies need to be contemplated and introduced. As mentioned earlier, cohabitation families necessitated changes in treatment relating to inheritance, maintenance, the rights of children, and protection from domestic violence. Similarly, same-sex families will require a range of new provisions relating to the right to marry and to adopt and rights of inheritance, which have yet to come into existence. Visibility accorded to and claimed by families with people with disability will now require new information to understand how these families function and what provisions would improve the well-being of its members.

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From this point of view, research assumes importance in theory building and critiques of families of the future. This will be facilitated by the production of knowledge on the new family forms that are emerging. As sociological knowledge gets accumulated and critiqued, the new forms may be accepted with modifcations and adaptations or may get rejected. The information is also needed to make the family variants offcially and socially acceptable as discussed under the “Family – defnitional issues” section in this chapter. Research also prepares the ground for the state if it is to recognise some forms of families as relevant for policies and programmes. Thus, it is important for research to focus on emergent forms because they are critical for knowledge production, offcial recognition and policy formulation. From what has been discussed so far, a few areas of interest for research focus in a futuristic sense can be hinted at. More needs to be understood about the role that communication technologies play in the lives of families and, in particular, in the lives of transnational families. This subject area needs urgent focus. With reference to families displaced by war or confict, the focus of research should be on studying aspects such as the nature of their identities, family structure, internal relationships, kinship networks, relationships with external systems, and cultural capital. With regard to same-sex families, parenting, custody, adoption, assisted reproductive technologies, and related rights and privileges need research attention. Grandparenthood, though a neglected area of research, saw a spurt in studies in the West during the 1980s (Smith, 2005, p. 2). It can be an independent area for investigation in view of the future implications of this important cohort to intergenerational support for future families in the Indian context.

Notes 1 There was a spate of village studies in the 1950s and 1970s which brought the holistic account of the social, political, and cultural aspects of villages in India. 2 As per the 2011 Census, about 67 percent of people live in rural areas. 3 The term “family” is used here not as a monolithic unit but as including diverse forms of families. Alternatively, “families” is also used with the same meaning, unless specifed otherwise. 4 The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act 2005. Similarly, Section 2.1 (h) in Mental Health Care Act, 2017 defnes family as “a group of persons related by blood, adoption or marriage.” 5 SC decriminalises Section 377: What the court said. Times of India (6 September 2018). 6 Individualism emphasises being person centred, with one’s self-interest and personal goals taking precedence over familial or community interests. In contrast, collectivism emphasises family and community embeddedness, underscoring the importance of relationships based on kinship, loyalty, sharing, and common ownership (Peterson and Steinmetz, 1999, pp. 6–7; Hareven, 1988, p. 54). 7 In fact, the precursors were already apparent in their subjective idea stage during the late 1920s in the West, as would be revealed by a close reading of Bertrand Russel’s (2009) chapters on marriage, trial marriage, the liberation of women, and family.

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8 In the same societies, the norms of caste endogamy were relaxed to “import” women across borders and states for marriage purpose in the light of skewed sex ratios in Haryana, UP, and other states (Kaur, 2012, 2013). 9 A minimum of three generational family: parents, children, and grandparents. 10 Simply, it is the stem family continuing a fexible and democratic inter-household relationship with its separated households in matters of aid relating to childcare, marriage, and other social and cultural obligations and responsibilities. 11 Young and older couples of the joint family living under the same or different roofs may or may not share living expenses but still aid each other in childcare and other inter-household support services. 12 According to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the average life expectancy in India is 68.3 years (2011–2015). 13 Amy’s Battle hymn of the tiger mother (Chua, 2011) is an example of the powerful articulation of the bitter clash of two cultures and the identity issues in parenting faced by Asian parents. 14 “Palimony” is a grant of maintenance to a woman who has lived for a substantial period of time with a man without marrying him and is then deserted by him. 15 The mean age of getting married in the US as on 2000 was 26, whereas for India, it was 20.2 (Srinivasan and James, 2015). However, in the 1970s, cohabitation preceded only 11 percent of frst marriages in the US; by 2002, it rose to 54 percent of women in the 19–44 age range (Cohan, 2013). 16 The two terms will be used synonymously in this chapter. However, we are aware of the feminist interpretation of the latter term signifying the cultural mandate that woman ought to have children, thus creating a connotation that a woman who wants to go childfree is a deviant. 17 In contrast, for example, in the UK in 2010, the one-person and two-person households are 29 percent and 35 percent respectively (ONS, 2011, p. 3). 18 Section 377 prohibits sexual acts that are considered against the order of nature – that is, penetrative acts other than penovaginal intercourse. The provisions will remain applicable in cases of non-consensual carnal intercourse with adults, all acts of carnal intercourse with minors, and acts of bestiality. 19 For example, Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013; the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill, 2014. 20 In India, the child sex ratio has declined from 976 in 1961 to a low of 914 in 2011.

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Index

Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes. Aasaavari, A. 7 acculturation 11 Adams, B.N. 55–57, 60 Adolf, M. 86 adoption 2, 3, 5, 37, 83, 197, 201 age 5, 10, 98, 139, 187; at frst child birth 193; of consent 36; of/at marriage 5–7, 47, 88, 107, 187, 193, 196; mean age at marriage 16, 107, 202; reproductive 31 The Age of Innocence 56 agriculture 15, 45, 125 Ahuja 5 amendment: Hindu Succession Act 2005 24, 201; Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act of 1994 37; 73rd constitutional 37 American nuclear family 47 American society 56, 57, 64 Americas 54, 55 anthropology 27, 93, 102 anxieties 31, 85, 86, 162 Appadurai, A. 13 Aravanis 189 Aries, P. 1, 18n2 armed conficts 130, 134 armed forces 123, 129, 131–132, 136, 138, 140 Armed Forces Special Protection Act (AFSPA) 120 armed groups 131 ASL (American Sign Language) 171 Aspden, P. 84 Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) 120, 130, 133–135, 137, 139–140 Aura Vision 193 Azadi rallies 130

Baba Nagar 94–98, 100, 101, 103–105, 107 Banerjee, M. N. 2 Banfeld, E. C. 30 Banovcinova, A. 106 Basu, Pekham 15 Bat-Chava, Y. 179 Beck, T. 97 Beck, U. 12, 47, 52, 63, 66n3 Beck-Gernsheim, E. 12, 52, 66n3 Bernard, J. 57 Beteillé, A. 88 Bhandari, P. 31, 34 Bharat, S. 2, 3, 6, 61 Bhargava, R. 49 Bhatti, R. S. 7 Biranganas 124 Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood 64 Bose, P. 35, 36 Boss, P. 137 bought brides 198 Bourdieu, P. 4, 8 Breman, Jan 97 Broderick, C. B. 56 brother–sister bond 29 Burgess, E. W. 56 Burr, W. R. 43 capability approach 97 capitalism 109 Castells, M. 191, 192 Census of India 33, 88n2 Cernea, M. M. 198 Chambers, Robert 97 Chattopadhyay, S. 7 Cherlin, A. 63 Chhattisgarh 114–118, 120, 122, 124–125

208

Index

childcare 13, 193 childfree families 196–197 childhood 32, 108, 170, 178 child labour 106, 108 childlessness, voluntary 196 child marriage 5, 104–106, 108 Child Marriage Restraint Act 36 children 7, 15–16, 32, 35, 100, 106, 108, 123, 131, 157, 161–164, 167, 177–182; second-generation 174, 179, 181; young 12, 30, 124, 125 Christensen, H. 55, 56, 59 civil society organisations 117 classroom 42, 64–65 cochlear implants 170, 183n2 cohabitation 8, 54, 55, 57, 62, 64, 195, 196, 202n15; families 16, 37, 187, 195–196, 200 Cohen, Stanley 89n10 collective assertion 136–138 collectivistic societies 49 Committee Against Violence on Women (CAVOW) 121, 123 communications 4, 33, 36, 83–86, 152, 161, 169, 173, 175, 176–178, 180, 181; media 12 complexity 9, 10, 23, 28, 37, 58, 103, 156, 157, 188 conceptions 42 conficts 15–17, 49, 114, 115, 117, 123, 125, 131, 134, 135, 140, 179, 180, 198, 200; areas 117, 122, 123, 125; facing 16, 129, 131, 133, 135, 137, 139, 141; internal 120; situations 119, 125; zones 114, 115, 117, 119, 121, 123, 125, 129 Conley, C. L. 156 73rd Constitutional Amendment 37 consumption 32, 33, 35, 78, 81, 96, 97, 103, 104, 193 contestations, political 16, 130, 131 Coontz, S. 65, 167 coparceners 23–24 Covid-19 50, 193 Crenshaw, Kimberley 18n7 Cullity, J. 81 culture 11, 37, 77, 86, 103, 106, 117, 118, 125, 168–170, 178, 182, 186; local 11, 48; rural 11; urban 11 cyber bullying 89n11 Dand, S. 88 Dandakaranya 114

Das, K. C. 32 Dave, P. 5 Davis, Kingsley 43 Dayabhaga law of succession 29 D’Cruz, P. 3 deaf 168–177, 180–182 deaf children 168–170, 172, 174–176, 178, 180, 181; second generation of 175 deaf clubs 175, 179 deaf community 169, 170–172, 175, 178, 179, 181 deaf culture 168–171, 176, 180, 182 deaf families 16, 167–183; challenges faced by 173; communication 175–177; deaf community membership 170–171; deaf culture 169–170; generations of 16; multigenerational 168; part of 180–181; profles of consulted 172–173; sign language 170; sixthgeneration 168; social life 177–179; stigma 173–175; views on deafness 168–169; worldviews 179–180 deaf identities 169 deaf members 172, 177, 178 deafness 168–170, 173, 174, 176–182 deaf of deaf (DOD) 181 deaf parents 16, 168, 171, 172, 174–182; hearing children of 180 deaf people/person 16, 168–171, 173–181; inability of 178 “Defantly Deaf” 168 Deicke, D. 86 deprivation 15, 97, 101, 108, 156 Derné, S. 81 Desai, I.P. xiii, 26, 46, 48–51, 55, 187, 189 Desai, M. 2, 45, 61 Deshmukh-Ranadive, J. 6 Deshpande, S. 77 Devi Prasad, B. 17, 38, 61, 65 digital habitats 84 digital media 58, 62, 75, 76, 82–84 digital technology 75, 82, 86 Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (DDLJ) 32–33 disabilities 9, 13, 16, 17, 167–169, 173, 177, 182, 199, 200 disclosure 146, 149, 152, 153, 158, 162 discourses 36, 37, 61, 79, 141, 186 discrimination 28, 98, 106, 110, 160, 162, 173, 174, 179

Index disintegration 46, 51, 58 dislocation 11, 123, 124 diversity 187 divorce rates 57 Doherty, W. 63 domain, public 16, 130, 131, 159, 160 domestic relationship 8–9, 130 Domestic Violence Act 8, 9 Dommaraju, P. 8 Donner, H. 33 Donzelot, J. 38n5 Dreze, J. 97 dual earner households 200 Dube, L. 24, 27 Dube, S. 97 Dyson, T. 7 economics 43, 44, 93, 95, 102 education 3, 4, 10, 12, 28, 31, 32, 53, 99–101, 106, 109, 110, 176 Eisenberg, L. 63, 64 electronic media 75 elementary families 187, 191–192; family 63; form 46–48 electronic expanded family 193 elite families 28, 31 Ellis, Havelock 56, 62 Elwin, Verrier 115, 117 enforced disappearances 132, 133, 136, 139, 140 Engels, F. 56 equated monthly instalments (EMIs) 31 Etzioni, A. 63, 64 extended families xiii, 3, 4, 42, 45, 46, 49–50, 54, 63, 79, 115, 135, 158, 159, 163, 187, 192, 193; adaptive 4, 50, 194 extended kinship ties 194 Facebook 47, 82, 89n9 familial acceptance 148, 151, 154, 156 familial responses 145, 154 familial values, collective 190, 193 families: adoptive 6, 8, 65; black 57; change and continuity 2–4; changing 65, 186, 187; childfree 187, 196, 199; cohabitation 16, 37, 187, 195–196, 200; complex 12, 58; concept 23–24; in confict zones 114–126; conjugal 29, 45–47; contemporary 14–17, 186; cooperative and conficting institution 28–32; defning 8, 187–188;

209

defnitional issues 187–190; displaced 65, 198; diverse 167; dynamics and governmentality 36–37; dynamics in 21st century 32–34; elementary 63, 187, 191; forms 191–199; forms, multidisciplinary approach 8–9; gay and lesbian members 144–165; grand Indian 78; hijra 13, 189; and household 51–52; impact 13, 53, 125, 191; intentional 12, 189, 199; intersectional perspective on 9–12; joint/extended 187, 193; “jointness” in 26; kinship-oriented 51, 58; large joint 24, 26; lower-caste 26; middleclass 14, 56; migrant 17, 23, 49, 50, 62, 102; modern 189; natal 49, 107, 145; national 79, 81; non-kinship 198; normative 24, 65, 163, 199; other forms of 198–199; politics of 140–141; postmodern 189; povertystricken 93; process dimension of 24–26; reconstructing 12–13; rural 11; same-sex 6, 7, 58, 65, 187, 197, 200, 201; single-parent 8, 199; slum and desert, survival 102–108; small 50, 53; stem 192, 193, 201n10; structure and dynamics 2–4; studies, interests and approaches 27–28; television and 78–82; transition, drivers 190–191; transnational 6, 12, 187, 194, 200, 201; tribal 61, 117–119, 126; two-headed 50, 193; two-parent 54, 56; understanding of 4–7; see also individual entries familism 26, 30, 45, 52, 53–54, 63, 66; vs individualism 47, 52–55, 64 Family and marriage in Kerala: With special reference to matrilineal castes 24 The Family as a Unity of Interacting Personalities 56 family discipline 43 family dynamics 2, 32, 36 family forms 4, 6–9, 13, 17, 57, 61, 62, 65, 189, 191, 192, 199–200; elementary 46, 192 Family measurement in India 61 family members 4, 15, 16, 33, 80, 83, 109, 134, 135, 144–149, 153, 157, 158, 160, 162–163; gay/lesbian 146, 156, 163; generations of 33, 193; joint 24, 103 family-oriented individualism 33

210

Index

Family Planning Programme 36 family roles 15, 133, 192 family science 43 family structure 2, 3, 5, 7, 50, 55, 58, 62, 64, 65, 104, 107, 109, 199, 201 family structures: traditional 14 family studies: xiv, 2, 9, 12, 14, 26, 27, 37, 64, 103; A comparative view of the emergence in India and the West 59–60; defnition of 44; history 43–45; history and development, India 58–62; history and development, West 55–58; about the Indian context 44–45; major themes and trends 45–55; nuclear vs joint family/household 45–46; in West and India 55 family support 30, 35, 193 family systems 4, 50, 63–65, 75, 103, 109, 177, 189, 199 Fang, S. R. S. 10 Farmer, P. 93, 95, 108 Fei, X. 50 feminism 57, 62 feminist critiques 27 feld, interdisciplinary 44 Firestone, S. 57 Folk Devils and Moral Panics 89n10 Fortes, M. 27 Foster, S. 169 Frank, A. 175 Frederick, P. 193 French, P. 30 Freud, S. 57 Gait, E. A. 45 Garrett, R. 78 gay and lesbian members 144–165; engaging with 152–154; familial acceptance, complexities 156–158; mutual solidarity and empathy 155–156; non-conformity by parents 154–155; non-normativity 155–156; parental and sibling responses 161–163 gay children 146, 147, 152 gay families 198 gay people 16, 144, 145, 147–148, 151, 152, 154, 159 gazing 186 gender 9, 10, 28, 63, 80–82, 98, 104, 107, 109, 188; differences 148 Gergen, K. J. 84

Ghani, E. 110n1 global cultural system 75 global culture 5 globalisation 77, 81 Golandaj, J. 32 Goldfried, M. R. 146, 159 Goldfried, P. 146, 159 Goli, S. 32 Gond communities 124 Gond tribe 115 Goode, W. J. 4, 46, 47–49, 57, 193 Goody, J. 47, 53 Google+ 82 Gore, M. S. 46, 48–51, 65, 67n8 governmentality 36–37 grandparents 25, 30, 107, 193, 194 Grover, S. 34 hardships 95, 100, 101, 105 Hareven, T. K. 11, 187 Haythornthwaite, C. 83 health 15, 99, 101, 106, 108, 110, 137 hearing children 175, 177, 180, 182 hearing family 174, 176, 177, 181 hearing impairment 173, 174, 176–179, 181, 182 hearing loss 169, 171–173 hearing people 172, 174–177, 179, 181 hearing societies 169, 171, 177 Heatherington, L. 146 heterosexual marriage 154 hijras 7, 189, 200 Hindu Gains of Learning Act 53 Hindu Marriage Act 36, 164 Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act 2005 36, 201n4 Hindu undivided joint family (HUF) 188 The History of Human Marriage 56 Hollinger, M. 44 homosexuality 145, 149, 150, 152, 153, 157, 160–162; decriminalisation 159 households 2, 23, 24–26, 28–34, 44, 51, 52, 75, 87, 88n2, 100, 102, 118; formation 25; joint 25, 33, 50, 51; member 102; nuclear 4, 29, 50, 51, 58; parental 24, 29; patrilocal 129, 134; two-person 192; widow-headed 96, 105 household size 16, 34, 45, 50, 51, 64, 65, 87, 193, 199 hukou 66n6 Hum Aapke Hain Kaun (HAHK) 33

Index human development 1, 45 human poverty approach 108 Humphries, T. 169, 181 impairment 168, 172, 178, 179, 182 Income Tax Act 1961, Section 2 188 indebtedness 107 India: the family in 9, 23, 32, 36; households in 26, 32; modern 2; urban 25, 26, 34; see also individual entries Indian Army 120, 133, 135, 136 Indian families 5, 14, 17, 27–31, 35, 42, 45, 58, 65, 187, 199; see also families Indian sign language (ISL) 171 Indian Sign Language Research and Training Center (ISLRTC) 172 indigenous knowledge 124–125 individualisation 52–53, 63, 64, 85–87, 192 individualism 36, 46, 47, 52, 53–54, 56, 57, 60, 62–64, 66n3, 190, 192, 196, 200, 201n6; vs. familism 26, 45–49, 52 Instagram 47 Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme 100 integrated network 76 Internet 12, 82–86, 150, 191, 193 intersectionality 9–12, 17, 18n7 intimate relationships 32 Iyer, L. 110n1 Jacob, S. 7 Jensen, R. 80 Jensen, T. 78 Jodhpur 96, 98, 100, 101, 105 Johnson, K. 80, 81 Johnson, V. E. 57 joint/extended families 3, 4, 24–26, 30, 45–46, 48–53, 58, 79, 81, 103, 193–194 Jones, M. 169 Joshi, P. 88 Journey into Sexuality 57 Kannabiran, K. 9, 45, 87 Kapadia, K. M. 4, 24 Karchmer, M. 168 Karve, I. 3 Kashmir 16, 120, 129–141; battles and struggles 138–140; collective

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assertion 136–138; militarisation 130–131; transitions 136–138; violent conficts 134; women and family, shifting roles 131–136 Kashmiris 130, 131, 140 Kashmiri women 16, 129, 138 Katz, J. E. 84 Khatri, A. A. 50 kinship 34–36; behaviour 75; group 10 kinship-oriented understanding 26 Kolenda, P. 2, 25, 51 Konantambigi, R. M. 44 Kraut, R. 85 Kumar, M. 97 Kundu, A. 78 Lane, H. 170 language 169, 181, 188, 197 Laslett, P. 25, 50 Lavner, J. A. 146 Leigh, G. K. 43 Leigh, I. 174 Lentz, E. 169 Lerer, L. 193 lesbian 9, 13, 144–147, 150, 152, 154, 158, 161, 162, 197 Levicka, J. 106 Lewis, O. 66, 103 LGBT individuals 146, 148, 151; see also gay and lesbian members liberty 76 Lister, Ruth 94 live-in relationships 8–9, 60–61, 195–197, 200; live-in families (see cohabitation families) lockdown see Covid-19 Madianou, M. 86 Maharashtrian Brahmin community 172 malnutrition 98, 100, 101, 105, 106, 123 Maoists 122 Marcus, A. 175 marriage: partnerships 118; popularity 55; same-sex 197 Masters, W. H. 57 material culture 124–125 Matriliny and Islam: Religion and Society in the Laccadives 24 Mayo, K. 36 McDowell, T. 10 media: moral panic and 84–86; multiplexity 83; social ties and 82–84

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Index

media–family interactions 86–88 Medina, J. 193 Mental Health Care Act, 2017 201n4 Metcalf, Stephen 94 #MeToo movement 191 migrant families see families Mikos, K. 169 militarisation 117, 119, 120, 130–131 military families 13, 17, 65 Miller, D. 86 Mindess, A. 171 Mishra, S. 110n1 Mitakshara school of law 23 Mitchell, R. 168 Mobile Economy India 2016 report 82 mobile phone(s)/cell 12–14, 33, 82, 84, 86, 88, 89n11 modern family life 35 modernity 1 Mohapatra, S. 7 Moore, M. 7 moral panic 84–86, 89n10 Morgan 27 mothers 86, 120, 121, 134, 135, 138–139, 141, 147, 151, 153, 155, 156, 158, 160, 173 Mumbai 23, 45, 146–149, 152, 155, 164, 172, 196 Murdock, G. P. 188 Muria Ghotul 117 Muslim United Front (MUF) 130, 141n2 Myers, R. 175 Myers, S. 175 National Association of the Deaf (NAD) 170 National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) 43 National Sample Survey (NSS) 34 neoliberal economic mechanisms 100 neoliberalism 76, 78, 94, 98, 109 neoliberal policies 94 neotraditionalism 78 Nighat 135 Nimkoff, N. M. 4 Noah, Trevor 64 nuclear families xiii, 2–4, 6, 24–26, 35, 36, 45–49, 51, 57, 63, 87, 103, 189 Orenstein, H. 51, 53 The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State 56

Oster, E. 80 ostracism 108 other backward classes 165n6 Padden, C. 169, 181 palimony 201n14 pandemic see Covid-19 parental worries 162 parentifcation 175 parenting 2, 63, 150, 167, 168, 192, 195, 201; abilities 174, 175 parents, hearing 168, 174, 179 Parsons, T. 25, 46, 48 participatory poverty approach 97 Patel, T. 23, 37, 46 Pattanaik, S. 6 Pearlman, S. F. 146 Persons with Disability Act 172 Pew Research Centre report 99 political leadership 30 “poly-media” environment 86 Ponniah, U. 34 post-industrial modernity 87 poverty 15, 93–97, 99–101, 104–110; everyday experience of people in 95; experiencing 15, 93–95, 98, 109; families in 94, 95, 100, 108, 109; impact of 15, 95, 96, 100, 105; report 99; urban and rural experiences 95–101; voices, families 108–110 power 5, 35, 36, 84, 100, 180, 181, 190; dynamics 10 Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act 37 prejudice 144, 145, 173, 174 Preston, P. 180 private family 36 private schools 109 Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 5 Protection of Women Against Domestic Violence Act 9 Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 8 psychology 1, 26, 44, 93, 102 public interest litigation (PIL) 116 Puthenkalam, S. J. 24 Rajalakshmi, S. 44 Ramu, G. N. 15 Ranade, Ketki 164, 197 Rapoport, R. 11

Index Reiss, Ira 57 Rose, N. 36 Roth, Jackie 168 Russell, Bertrand 56 Saavala, M. 31 Sabido methodology 89n6 Salwa Judum 116–117, 120–121, 123, 126n3 same-sex families 197–198 same-sex relationship 158 same-sex sexuality 145, 148–149, 151, 154, 161, 163 Sanskritisation 26 Saraswathi, T. S. 44 Sasikumar, S. K. 33 Scheper-Hughes, Nancy 94 Section 377 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) 18n3, 164, 197 Sen, Amartya 97 Sen, I. 116, 118, 119, 126n3 sense, making 144–165 sexual assault 122 sexual orientation 10, 16, 17, 98, 145, 146, 149, 152, 157, 158, 197, 198 sexual violence 119–120, 124, 144 Shah, A. M. xiii, 4, 6, 23–25, 30, 38, 44, 46, 51–52, 55, 58, 60–61, 75 Shah, C. 16, 145 Sharma, A. 7 Sharma, U. 26 sign language 168, 170, 171–173, 175, 176, 178, 180 Simpson, B. 26 Singer, M. 4, 26, 50 Sinha, Ruchi 15 smart-phone(s) 82, 191; see also mobile phone(s) Smith, C. 169 Smith, S. 176 social anthropology 44 social changes 17, 48, 83 social customs 104, 105, 107–109 social embeddedness 34 social exclusion 98, 108 social life 36 social media 12, 14, 47, 82–83, 85, 191 social networking access 82 social polarisation 78 social psychiatry 1 social structures 10, 80, 97, 98, 102–104, 109, 156 social work 1, 35, 44, 102

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society 2, 36, 47, 77, 86, 87, 102, 103, 105, 131, 155, 167, 174, 177, 198; mainstream 167, 176, 178; tribal 116, 117, 126 socioeconomics 75–78 sociology 1, 9, 25, 27, 44 South Africa 47, 55, 194, 195 South America 54, 55 South Asia 47, 129 Srinivas, M. N. 2, 24 Sriram, R. 1, 5, 15 Srivastava, R. 33 Stacey, J. 13 stigma 173–175 structural realities 66n5 structural violence 15, 93–111; experience of 15 structural violence lens 100, 108, 110 suicides 85, 145 Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) 82 Taylor, D. 141 technology 9, 12, 14, 45, 62, 83–86, 88, 177, 190, 191, 194; use of 12, 177 television 5, 12, 14, 75, 78–81; serials 79 Titzmann, F.-M. 33 Toffer, A. 191, 193, 197 transgender people 164, 197 transitions 136–138 transnational families (TNFs) 194–195, 201; identities 195; relationships 194–195 tribes 117, 118 Turkle, S. 85 Twitter 82 two-headed families 193 Uberoi, P. 2, 23, 27, 32, 36, 44, 46, 51, 52, 55, 58–61, 59, 67, 75,79 UNDP human poverty approach 97 unit for family studies 2, 5, 45 unmarried children 3, 23, 24, 192 urban areas 6, 11, 13, 15, 34, 46, 50, 96 urbanisation 4, 10, 26, 33, 45, 48, 50–52, 58, 77 Vanita, R. 7, 197 Vasishta, M. 171 Vatuk, S. 25, 26 Vera-Sanso, P. 31 Veres, P. M. 106

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Index

Vijayalakshmi, B. 61 violence 14, 16, 98, 108, 119–123, 125, 129, 131, 132, 144, 145; women and men 119–123 violent conficts 134 Voela, A. 78 voluntary childlessness 196 Wadley, S. S. 29 Westermarck, E. 56 Western model of ft 48–50 Western nuclear family structure 47 Wharton, Edith 56 WhatsApp 12, 82, 89n9, 177 White, J. M. 10 Wilson, K. L. 171

women 5–9, 16, 27, 28, 79–80, 101, 104–107, 118, 119–125, 129, 130–133, 135–141, 153, 160, 193–196; and everyday life in Kashmir 130–131; and family, shifting roles 131–136; older 106; widowed 103; working 61, 97 women-headed households 96, 104, 105, 198, 200 Woodward, J. C. 171 World Health Organization 101 Xia, Y. 50 Xu, A. 50 Zaretsky, E. 47