Dana Diane Bowen, Social/ Cultural Anthropology
I demonstrated in my application for The Research and Creative Work Scholarship last Fall semester that specific patterns of transition in women’s roles and statuses occur in evolving societies. Examples of this evolution were illustrated in the American, !Kung San, and Chinese societies. I further hypothesized that these same patterns of evolution are also occurring in India and possibly other countries.
To investigate this theory, my initial proposal was to travel out to remote villages surrounding the Coimbatore, India area, in search of the more traditional way of Indian life. Then I was going to perform interviews within the city and, after compiling and comparing the data, I hoped to get a hypothetical analysis of what changes have occurred over the years regarding women’s issues. This would have been the ideal scenario in a case study of the new versus the old if it was not for one factor; modern life has reached the village extensively enough that they are no longer secluded communities adhering to age-old traditions. True, village life still seems a far cry from the city-considering villagers continue to cook on open fires and bathe in local streams-but the ideal was spoiled by the realities of the present: connecting roads to every village, frequent buses, electricity, and the panchayats’ 1 telephones and televisions. Foiled in my original plan by an altered scenario I had not foreseen, I apparently needed to reformulate. I not only found that the disparity between the village and the city lent little possibility to a thorough examination-since I only had seven months in India and the size of the task was overwhelming-but I also discovered a better research project in the recent evolution of the city of Coimbatore.
Stepping into my new case study, I discovered that just within the central city of Coimbatore, there has been a surge of recent changes. These have not only influenced women’s issues, but almost all aspects of urban Indian life. In this approach, I focused specifically on the past five to ten years of social change that has occurred within the city of Coimbatore. In the remaining paragraphs I will explain some of these recent transformations. Then I will analyze the impact these changes have had on women’s issues.
The Indian Movement: From Attached Families and Detached Toilet to Detached Families and Attached Toilet.
With the British rule carne imposed ideologies that anything western is better than Indian, yet this only led to an independent Anglo-Indian caste that continues to exist today. Then the Ghandian Era and the “Quit India” movements attempted to bring about national caste integration. Of course this only led to a post revolutionary stratification of all the castes into two categories-the Forward and Backward castes. These continue to be dominating factors in the contemporary Indian society. Consequently, the current Indian government now favors the Backward castes. They occupy 50 to 65% of all university seats and government positions despite the merits of Forward caste individuals. This has caused much anxiety among those denied the opportunities to succeed because of their caste standing. To overcome this dilemma, many have resorted to going abroad to tind their fortune.
Several of my informants explained that it is popular for male Indians to work in the Gulf countries. Often they will leave their families behind for up to five and ten years at a time. Most will even resort to doing menial jobs they would never consider doing in their homeland, just to get a quick buck. During this time they will send their incomes back to their relations until they have accumulated enough money for a comfortable lifestyle.
Upon returning, they will often purchase undeveloped land, then install bore wells, electricity, connecting roads and telephone lines. This has resulted in the artificial inflation of land prices. Traditionally, the general goal in life was to invest in a farm and provide a home for posterity. Now it is nearly impossible for most Indians to even dream of owning their own property or house. With the increased cost of land, large farms necessary to provide for joint families are becoming a rarity. Not only do people feel it would be too taxing on the parents to remain in a joint family, but the western influences have created a desire of independence from the parents. Hence, people have been moving to the cities in search of education, better job opportunities, and a nuclear family living environment. This migration has also brought about a new sense of equality and individualism for both men and women.
The British were the first to recognize India’s population problem2, yet it was only after this great influx of people surrendering the joint family system and renting separate, city apartments that the population explosion became most apparent. Consequently, the government has really begun to push population control and family planning programs. They give incentives to promote the use of birth control or receive a laparoscopy or vasectomy; social workers are laboring diligently to educate the uneducated and the villagers; Doordarshan, a government television channel, displays the number of India’s births and deaths per minute at the screen’s bottom comer while airing its programs; commercials, animated cartoons and documentaries regarding the population explosion are continually on the television agenda; stamps, coins, posters, buses, and billboards can be found everywhere displaying slogans promoting family planning. Actually, the slogan, “We two, our two” used to encourage two child families, yet recently this slogan has changed to “One tree, one branch,” which advocates one child families.
Because people are now renting apartments in the city and have much smaller families to be concerned with, their monetary goals have drastically changed. Now people are beginning to invest in luxury items such as food processors, refrigerators, televisions, video recorders, stereos, scooters, etc. Furthermore, although credit cards have existed in India since the 1980s, it has been in just the past one or two years that they’ve become popular. Local shops have subsequently picked up on this concept and have developed easy installment schemes to facilitate the consumers’ purchas_es.
“The houses went from horizontal to vertical and then the T.V. antennae began mushrooming up.”3
One of the most popular luxury items that has probably had the greatest impact on the masses is television. Oue informant, a 20 year old college student named Prince explained that when he was younger he had never set eyes on a television set. It was not until he reached the sixth or seventh standard, while attending a government technological exhibition, that he first stared at a T.V. screen in amazement. Now his family and all of his neighbors have at least a black and white television of their own. This phenomenon has occurred only over the past three to five years.
The popularity of television has also brought the introduction of satellite cable T.V. It has only been in the past two or three years that programs such as MTV, BBC news, Donahue, Oprah Winfrey, Dynasty, Santa Barbara, Bold and the Beautiful, and Riviera have entered the homes of Indians. This may not seem all that drastic, until one understands the conservatism of India. Except for a rare few of the larger cities, holding the opposite gender’s hand in public has always been taboo and kissing on the cinema screen is still censored. It is easy to see how these programs do not fit in without making rash changes in their society.
Several informants made comments about how the infiltration of western media has recently changed the general attitudes of Indians. Traditionally people would have arranged marriages at a young age. A woman was then more or less domestically confined and economically dependent upon her husband and his family.
The wife would remain in the home and raise the children, while the husband would either work on the farm with his father or obtain an education and job. Arranged marriages continue to be the norm, yet love marriages are becoming more common; and with the influences of the media, they are becoming more acceptable within the city. Now the government has also passed laws restricting marriage for women before 18 years and men before 21. This was initiated to prevent child marriages, yet people are beginning to marry at a much later age. Men especially are finding it imperative to obtain a higher education and establish their careers before marriage so that they can demand a higher dowry. Women also desire to obtain a degree before marriage, not only to improve their intellect and find a worthwhile job afterwards, but in hopes of being arranged with a more qualified man that can give her a better lifestyle.
Although motherhood is still considered an important role, working women are on the increase. Consequently, more children are being left at home alone or in the care of maidservants. With fewer children and multiple incomes, a new upper middle class has emerged. Several informants made mention that nowadays everyone seems only interested in the stock market, money, and material objects. Yet now that women are an earning partner within the household and western ideologies are in the home, men are also becoming more open minded to women’s issues and a rare few are even beginning to help with the domestic chores. Women are starting to become actively involved in the politics and economics of the community. Divorce continues to be difficult to acquire due to laws established by the government long ago, but attitudes toward divorced women are no longer as severe.
The focus of this study was to uncover incidence in the lives of women with whom I interviewed that would answer questions pertinent to a hypothesized evolution happening socially in India. From the interviews and participant observations that I outlined herein, it seems evident to me that this is the case in Coimbatore and many cultural changes are yet to smface.