CULTURE NAYAR OF INDIA

Culture Nayar of India



Culture Nayar of India

Introduction

The Nayar, a caste of southern India, provide another example of extended households. The Nayar lived in matrilineal extended-family compounds called tarawads (residential complexes with several buildings headed by a senior woman and her brother). The tarawads were home to the woman's siblings, her sisters' children, and other relatives of matrilineal descent. These compounds were responsible for child care and provided the home for retired Nayar men who were armed warriors (Bochel, 2005).

During the 19th century, a caste group in southern India called the Nayar appears to have treated sexual and economic relations between men and women as separate from marriage. At puberty, Nayar girls took ritual husbands but after the ceremony, the husband had no responsibility for his wife and typically never saw her again. The girl lived in a large household with extended family and visited by other men through the years. If she became pregnant by any of them, the man was not responsible for supporting her or the child except for paying for a midwife. The female's relatives remained responsible for supporting her. Thought to be a response to extended male absence during military service, Nayar unions seemed to fulfill the needs of this caste group within a historical and aesthetic period. Today, the Nayar men are not involved in soldiering to the extent they once were, and stable marital relationships have become the norm (Morgan, 1991).

Beliefs and Values

All societies have families, although family form and households vary from society to society. The nuclear household, still commonly referred to as the nuclear family, comprises one adult couple, either married or “partners,” with or without children. Most people belong to at least two different nuclear families during their lifetime. Anthropologists distinguish between the family of orientation, ...