The Nāyar case

The Nāyar family evokes interest because it casts doubt on the universality of both the nuclear family and the institution of marriage. The Nāyars are a high-caste group in southwestern India. Modern Nāyar families are not appreciably different from those of other Hindu groups, but before around 1792, when the British assumed control over the area where they live, Nāyar family life was very different.

According to a number of scholars who studied 18th- and 19th-century reports on their social organization, marriage did not exist among the Nāyars, although certain customs that bear a resemblance to aspects of marriage did. In particular, these included the tali-tying ceremony and legitimate unions between a woman and a series of lovers or “husbands” known as sambandham partners.

A tali is a gold or silver emblem that, in other parts of India, is tied around a woman's neck by her husband during the wedding ceremony. Among the Nāyars it was tied instead by a man of equal or higher status, sometimes a non-Nāyar, on a Nāyar girl during a ceremony that otherwise resembled more an initiation rite than a marriage. Several girls received talis at the same time. Some Nāyar girls removed their talis soon after the ceremony (which would never be done elsewhere in India), and in no case did the Nāyar tali-tying ceremony imply an enduring sexual relationship between the girl and her tali-tier.

In contrast, the sambandham relationship involved no religious ceremony, but it did involve a sexual union. Each woman took a series of partners through her life. She could, in fact, be involved in more than one such relationship at a time. (The explanation for such an arrangement may lie in the fact that the Nāyars were traditionally a warrior caste, women being left alone to look after their households and children while the men went to war.) Apart from gifts to his partners, a man had no obligations within the sambandham relationship. His only strong ties were to the family in which he grew up, which included his mother and other relatives related through his mother, such as his sisters and brothers. The father was not socially important, and a man had no obligations toward his children. Nevertheless, he did have obligations, through his female relatives, to a kin group including his mother, mother's mother, mother's siblings, and sisters' children. His responsibilities were to his sisters' children, not his own, and his sisters' sambandham partners' responsibilities were to their sisters' children.

It is doubtful that the term nuclear family accurately applies to this arrangement. Some scholars use the term subnuclear family, which retains the notion of family organization, for such an arrangement, and indeed the traditional Nāyar subnuclear family bears some resemblance to the one-parent family in Western society. The Nāyar system can also be regarded as separating the two phases of Hindu marriage and two or more of the roles normally ascribed to a Hindu husband. Among other Hindus (and indeed among the Nāyars today), the tali-tier and the lover are the same person, whereas in the past the Nāyars held these two roles to be distinct.

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