Read this comprehensive essay about Tribal Family, It’s Characteristic, Classification, Functions and Kinship System.
The family is the basic unit in all human societies, though its nature may be different. The basis of every human society whether primitive or modern is the family. It is found, in one form or other, in all cultures and among all groups of people.
According to Burgess and Locke, “Family is a group of persons united by the ties of marriage, blood or adoption consisting a single household, interacting and intercommunicating with each other in their respective roles of husband and wife, mother and father, son and daughter, brother and sister and creating and maintaining a common culture”.
Characteristic of Tribal Family:
(i) A family has a limited size.
(ii) The relationship between the members of the family is of permanent nature.
(iii) Husband and wife are permanent sexual partners.
(iv) At least one member of the family has to be bread earner for all the members.
(v) Members have a common habitation.
(vi) Members have a common nomenclature.
(vii) Family is centre of education for the children.
Tribal societies have a simple social organisation. The society is organised on the basis of kinship.
Classification of the Family:
Tribal families have been classified on the following important basis.
1. On the Basis of Marriage
(a) Monogamous Family:
This family is composed of one husband and one wife. This type of family is very common among the tribes.
(b) Polygynous Family:
A polygynous family is a type of family in which one man marries more than one wife. Polygynous families are prevalent over most of tribal India. This type of families are found among the Nagas and Gonds and among all the tribes in Orissa.
(c) Polyandrous Family:
It is composed of one woman and more than one husband. Polyandrous family is of two types – (i) Fraternal Polyandry, (ii) Non-fraternal Polyandry. In fraternal polyandry husbands of a woman are brothers. The Khasas practise this type of family. In non-fraternal polyandry husbands of a woman are not related to each other.
2. On the Basis of Structure:
(a) Nuclear Family:
It consists of both couple and their unmarried children. These families are found among the Khasi, Juang, Santhal and Bhuinya.
(b) Joint Family:
It is composed of closely related kins or any two or more nuclear families. It may be matrilocal or patrilocal. This type of families are found among several tribes of India.
(c) Extended Family:
When the nuclear family is extended by the addition of closely related kin, it is called the extended family. It is composed of aunts, grandparents, grand children etc. Therefore, the size of an extended family is very large. These families are prevalent among the Santhal, Ho. Juang etc.
3. On the Basis of Residence
(a) Patrilocal Family:
When the couple after marriage moves to live with the husband’s family the family is called patrilocal family. This type of family is quite common among the Oraon, Ho and Kharia tribe.
(b) Matrilocal Family:
In this type of family the husband goes and lives in the house of the wife after their marriage. The matrilocal family is found among Khasi, for example.
4. On the Basis of Authority
(a) Patriarchal Family:
In this type of family, the father enjoys supreme power. Patriarchal family is a common form of family in majority of tribes in India.
(b) Matriarchal Family:
When authority is vested with the mother or any of the female members of the household it is called matriarchal family. An example is the Khasi tribe.
(c) Avunculocal Family:
When the sources of authority is neither father nor mother but uncle it s called avaunculocal units.
5. On the Basis of Ancestry and Property Inheritance
(a) Patrilineal Family:
When descent is traced through the father and inheritance of property takes, place along the male line of descent, such a family is called patrilineal family. This type of family is common among a number of tribes.
(b) Matrilineal Family:
The family in which descent is traced through the mother and in which females inherit property is called a matrilineal family. The Garo and the Khasi families of Assam may be cited as examples of this type of family.
6. On the Basis of Blood Relationship
(a) Consanguineous Family:
This type of family is formed if a nucleus of blood relatives is surrounded by a fringe of spouses. In other words, primary families together with blood relations constitute the consanguineous family.
It is composed of members who are related by birth. Marriage does not break up in this type of family and membership in the family tends to persist even after marriage. This kind of family is found among the Khasis of Assam.
(b) Conjugal Family:
This kind of family is composed of husband, wife and their children along with their affinal kins. In this family, the emphasis is on the conjugal bond. Conjugal family is prevalent among the most of the tribes in India. The family of Kharia of Orissa and Chotnagpur may be cited as an example.
Functions of Family:
Family among the tribes, as in any society, -is a functional unit. It performs certain functions for its member as well as the society. The functions of family may be discussed under two main categories – basic functions and traditional functions.
1. Basic Functions:
(i) Biological Functions:
These functions include the satisfaction of sexual needs, reproduction etc. These are considered as essential functions.
(ii) Psychological Functions:
These functions include the protection and rearing of children, safety and security of wife etc. Family is not only the birth place but also the place of protection and care of children.
2. Traditional Functions
(i) Economic Functions:
It includes fulfillment of economic needs such as food, cloth and shelter of its members. A member or some members of the family arrange for livelihood of the whole family. They also create and take care of the family property.
(ii) Social Functions:
These functions include socialisation of children for the development of personality and their education. Through the process of socialisation the members learn their culture. The family moulds the behaviour of members according to culture. Thus, family is an important agency through which culture is transmitted to the present generation.
(iii) Religious and Cultural Functions:
The family provides religious training to its members. Children learn about their customs, traditions, taboos, art, music and dancing from the family.
(iv) Health Related Functions:
The family looks after the health of its members. It also gives them the knowledge about tribal system of medicine mostly based on herbs. However, they have faith in magic, witchcraft, sorcery etc. for cure of disease. Because they believe that diseases are caused by the bad spirits.
(v) Organisational Functions:
The tribal family happens to be the principal unit in the village organisation. Each family contributes money, labour and personnel for the participation in the welfare of the village.
Finally it helps in the effective exploitation of the environment which is necessary for the satisfaction of man’s more intimate needs like hunger.
People in all parts of the world and in all the societies, irrespective of their technological level, are bound together in groups by various kinds of bonds. The most universal and the most basic of these bonds is that which is based on reproduction, an inherent human drive, and is called kinship. But social recognition is seen to override biological fact in the affairs of kinship, especially among the primitive societies all over the world.
The tribes of India are divided into lineage’s. While most of the tribes are divided into patrilineal lineages, Khasi and Garo of Meghalaya have matrilineal lineages.
Like other people of India, the tribal population too recognises both types of kinship viz, consanguineous kinship.
While consanguineous kinship includes all the kin’s related through blood or biological ties, affinal kins consist of those recognised through marriage. But an interesting and significant fact, as mentioned earlier, is that the consanguineous kinship among them does not recognised only biological ties. The case of Todas of Nilgiri Hills following fraternal polyandry may be cited as an instance.
Paternity is established among them through a social ceremony known as bow and arrow ceremony in which the particular brother who presents the common wife a bow and arrow before a congregation, is recognised as the father of the child and until another brother makes the ceremonial presentation all children born to her of several brothers are regarded as the children of that brother who last performed the ceremony.
The most profound impact of kinship ties on the social life may be felt through kinship usages found in every society. Kinship usage’s among the tribes of India present very interesting and significant spectacle.
Such types of behavioural pattern, verbal and non-verbal, explain many complex intricacies of kinship system.
It has been found among many tribes that many sets of kins avoid each other. The avoidance between daughter-in-laws and parents-in-law is quite common. Likewise, though less universally and also less rigorously, a son-in-law’s relations with his parents-in-laws found to be cramped by certain restrictions. Among the tribes of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the elder brother does not talk with his younger brother’s wife. Radcliffe-Brown has given one of the most plausible of contemporary explanations.
He points out that avoidance is a social fact and must, therefore, have a social explanation. He says that whenever people come in contact with each other, the possibilities of cooperation as well as conflict are always equally present. But there are certain kinds of kinship where hostility is regarded as against social norms. The best way to prevent such hostility from becoming manifest is to put restriction on the growth of intimacy; and hence the kinship usage’s of avoidance. Freud’s psychoanalytical explanation is based on sexual attraction and the need to prevent sexual intimacy between various kinds of relatives.
Another kinship usage which is just reverse of the avoidance relationship is an extreme degree of familiarity expressed through joking relationships. Such joking may amount to exchange of abuse, obscene and vulgar reference to sex, ridicule and so on. Apart from joking relationship between sister-in-law and brother-in-law and between a wife and her husband” brother, such relationships have also been reported between grandparents and grandchildren among the organs and the Baigas.
The Hotribe of Chotanagpur also indulge in a variety of joking relationships. Majumdar opines that joking relationships may be indicative of equality and mutual reciprocity.
They may also be indicative of equality and mutual reciprocity. They may also be indicative of a potential sexual relationship. Thus is explained the joking relationship between a man and his wife’s younger sister.
In each case the two may be potential mates. A joking relationship, when not mutual, assumes the role of social control. It becomes indicative of correction through ridicule.
Avunculate the amitate, as known in anthropological parlance, are two other kinship usages prevalent among the Indian tribes. Among the Khasis, Garos, Nairs, and a couple of other societies the maternal uncle enjoys a preeminent place in the life and affection of his nephews and nieces as a matter of convention. He has special obligations towards them which exceed those of their father and transmits his property to his nephew.
The kinship usage is called avunculate. Obviously, this is a common usage among matrilineal societies. A special role, similar to that outlined in case of the maternal uncle, for one’s father’ sister is designated as amitate. This is explicable in patrilineal tribes.
Among the Khasi, Toda, Ho, Oraon, and a host of other tribes, a queer practice has been reported, called covuada, on the basis of a similar practice known among the Trobriand Islanders by the same name in their local dialect.
The practice consists in “making a husband lead the life of an invalid along with his wife whenever she gives birth to a child. He refrains from active life, goes on sick diet and observes certain taboos” (Majumdar, 1967). Thus, the Khasi husband, like his wife cannot cross a stream or wash clothes until the spirits tribes, this practice is extended to the extent of putting up the poor husband in an adjacent hut to his wife’s where she intends to deliver the child, is made to cry and scream in agony like his wife and made to ape the action of his wife. Malinowski believed covuade to be a cementing bond of married life and a social mechanism designed to secure paternal affection.
Other anthropologists have sought to give a psycho-analytical explanation. They have attributed this usage to the husband’s desire to lighten the wife’s discomforts, in the absence or lack of proper modern medical care, by a process of participation through identification. Some scholars have attributed this practice to the matriarchal and matrilineal mode of social organisation but the prevalence of this practice till recent past, among some patriarchal and patrilineal societies like the Ho, Oraon, etc, negates this assertion.