Traces of reflexive imagination: Matriliny, modern law, and spirit worship in South India

Abstract

Matriliny in South India is often considered as having declined in the course of modernization. Recent studies, however, highlight the social construction of matriliny by modern legal discourse. As an alternative to these perspectives, this article presents a fresh viewpoint from which to analyze the reflexive relationship between modern law and local practice. In this article, I investigate the modern judicature's evolving interpretation and (re)construction of matriliny in colonial and postcolonial South Kanara. I also examine the practices of the local people who sustain and revitalize their own sense of matriliny through ritual practice while they cope with the new legislation on matriliny. Analyzing the legal discourse as well as popular practice, I elucidate the reflexive imagination involved in the discourse/practice of both the modern judicature and the people, which creates and recreates the gendered, legalized, and ritualized reality of matriliny in South Kanara.

Keywords::

• matriliny
• modern law
• South Kanara
• spirit worship

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).

Notes

^1. The undivided district of South Kanara was situated in the Madras province, ruled by the British. During the states' reorganization of 1956, the southern part of South Kanara district was ceded to the State of Kerala, and the remaining part came under the State of Mysore, now known as Karnataka (Bhat 2004, 3–4). The official language of Karnataka is Kannaḍa, while the native language of South Kanara is Tuḷu. This paper follows the system of transliteration of Učida and Rajapurohit (2013) and Upadhyaya (1988–97).

^2.Aḷiya means “nephew,” and santāna means “line” or “family” (Rao 1898, 1).

^3. It is generally considered that in both aḷiyasantāna kaṭṭụ and marumakkattāyam, descent is traced in the female line. Also, the basic unit in the matrilineal society is the joint property-owning group or “joint family” called taavɗ瞉ͥ in Malayalam, kuṭuṃba in Kannaḍa, and kuṭuma in Tuḷu (see Gough 1952, 72).

^4. In this paper I use the Kannaḍa terms such as kuṭuṃba and kavalu (a sub-division of the kuṭuṃba) when I refer to official governmental practice or codification, while I use the corresponding Tuḷu terms such as kuṭuṃa and kabarụ when I refer to local practice.

^5. Regarding other religious practices in the village, there are no prominent Hindu temples in Perar (although the villagers worship Hindu gods and goddesses, along with būtas, and have altars for them in households), as the villagers usually go to Hindu temples in the cities of Mangalore or Udupi for rituals. Therefore, the relation between būta worship and other ritual practices for Hindu gods/goddesses is not obvious in the research field.

^6. The traditional occupation of the Gauḍa caste is cultivation and cattle-breeding, that of the Billava caste is toddy-tapping, and that of the Baṇṭ caste is cultivation. While Baṇṭ is regarded as the “dominant” caste in the area, most of the caste groups in the research field are designated as “Other Backward Classes” in Karnataka State.

^7. According to a document held in the Padu Perar panchāyat office, the population of Mudu Perar and Padu Perar in 2001 was 4951 and 3520, respectively.

^8. On the interactions among various castes regarding the village būta shrine, see Ishii (2010). Also, see Menon (1993) for a case in Malabar.

^9. The month of māyi in the Tuḷu calendar corresponds to between 15 February and 15 March in the solar calendar.

^10. For the roles of the būta impersonators, see Ishii (2013).

^11. Subba Hegade v. Tongu, Madras High Court Reports 4 (1869), 196.

^12. For instance, in the court case held at the Madras High Court in 1890, the bench judged that a lunatic woman, Puttamma, who was the last survivor of an Aliyasantana family, should be entitled to the family property, rejecting the appeal of the wife and children of the last male survivor of Puttamma's family (Sanku v. Puttamma, Indian Law Reporter 14 (1891) Madras, 289). Also, in a court case held in 1910, the judge stated that it was reasonable to remove the elder sister, who had only one son, from the position of yajamāni and instead appoint the younger sister who had numerous children, from the viewpoint of family interests (Thimmakke v. Akku, Indian Law Reporter 34 (1910) Madras, 481).

^13. Santhamma v. Neelamma, All India Reporter (1956) Madras, 642.

^14. In the Muṅḍabeṭṭu guttu, there are three major kabarụs in the kuṭuma regarded as the original kabarụs descended from the three female ancestors. The other ordinary kabarụs, which each consist of a mother and her descendants, are generally called ula kabarụ, or sub-kabarụ. In this paper I refer to the three original kabarụs as the “major kabarụs” and other ordinary kabarụs simply as kabarụs.

^15.Muḍi gɵ睑i is a unit of weight of paddy paid as rent. One muḍi is equal to approximately 39.2 kg (one muḍi corresponds to three kalase or to 42 sēru). In the above case, the total weight of paddy that Muṅḍabeṭṭu guttu received yearly from all its tenants/cultivators was six hundred muḍi (approximately 23,520 kg).

^16. The land of some guttu families in Perar was divided and registered during the land reforms in 1970s to avoid loss of land, but in most cases the entire property of each family is still managed by a representative of the family.

^17. Kaveri v. Ganga Ratna, Madras Law Journal 1 (1956), 98.

^18. See Ishii (2010) for the contradictory as well as reflexive relations between customary law and the Madras Hindu Religious Endowments Act (Madras Act II of 1927), which directly affected the management and trusteeship of būta shrines in South Kanara.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Miho Ishii

Miho Ishii is an associate professor at Kyoto University. Among her publications are “Acting with Things: Self-Poiesis, Actuality, and Contingency in the Formation of Divine Worlds” (HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2012) and “Playing with Perspectives: Spirit Possession, Mimesis, and Permeability in the Buuta Ritual in South India.” (The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2013). Miho Ishii, Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University, Yoshida Honmachi, Sakyoku, Kyoto, Japan 606-8501. Email: [email protected]