Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (1200–1550 A.D.) c7.s1.1

c7.s1.1

1. *The Joint Family.*—In rural countries, the family is the major institution of domestic life; it ranks even above the church and the state. The Indians in this respect are still a ‘family community’. For an Indian peasant his family has a special economic significance. Apart from serving as a home for his wife and his numerous children, his aged parents and his other relations, his family is an indispensable factor in his farm economy. Every single member of his family contributes in some measure to the process of agricultural production. We have dealt with this subject in an earlier chapter. The family tradition in Hindustan has been a primary factor in carrying on the work of organized social life almost since the dawn of history. In course of time it has developed into what is commonly known as the Joint Hindu Family.¹ To describe its broad features, there is no individual property within the family, but only a right of maintenance from the coparcenary property which extends to all the male members of the family, their wives and children.² On marriage, the daughter becomes a member of her husband’s family. If a male is adopted into the family, which is permissible and even encouraged under certain conditions, it has the effect ‘of transferring the adopted boy from his natural family into the adoptive family’. And while he acquires all the rights of a son in the new family, he renounces all his rights in his natural family, including the right of claiming any share in the estate of his natural father or other natural relations or any share in the coparcenary property of his natural family.³ This gives a fairly accurate view of a Hindu family of Hindustan to-day, as probably it does of the past. The development of the joint family follows naturally from the conditions of life and production in an Indian village.¹ The Muslims brought with them their different laws of inheritance and divorce and an entirely different conception of family life.