Page 270 - DSOC201_SOCIAL_STRUCTURE_AND_SOCIAL_CHANGE_ENGLISH

Unit 12: Processes of Change

the couple after which they sit for a while listening to the music and then depart, taking with them a Notes
paper bag containing a coconut and a few betel leaves and areca nuts. The reception is a costly affair
as both the price of coconuts and the fees of musicians are high during the wedding season. But the
number of guests, their social importance, the professional standing of the musician hired for the
occasion, the number of cars parked on the street outside the wedding house, the lights and
decorations, and the presents received by the bridal couple are all indicators of the status and influence
of the two affinal groups in the local society. Invitations are extended to ministers and other prominent
politicians, to high officials and various local worthies to develop, strengthen and exhibit links with
these important people. The wedding reception is a recent institution—the word “reception” has
passed into Kannada—and its great popularity is one of the many pointers to the increased
secularization of Brahminical life and culture.
Another evidence of increased secularization is the enormous importance assumed by the institution
of dowry in the last few decades. Dowry is paid not only among Mysore and other South Indian
Brahmins, but also among a number of high-caste groups all over India. The huge sums demanded
as dowry prompted the Indian Parliament, in 1961, to pass the Dowry Prohibition Act (Act 28 of
1961). So far the Act has not had much success in combating the institution.
The interesting feature of dowry among Mysore Brahmins— and this is probably true of several
other groups as well—is that engineers, doctors and candidates successful in the prestigious Indian
Administrative Service seem to command much bigger payments than others.
The amount of time spent on daily ritual has been steadily decreasing for Brahmin men as well as for
women. Ingalls has stated, "The head of the family might spend five hours or more of the day in
ritual performances, in the samdhya or crepuscular ceremony, in the bathing, the offerings, the fire
ceremony, the Vedic recitations. The Brahmin’s wife or some other female members of his family
would devote an hour of the day to the worship of the household idols.” In order to be able to spend
five hours every day in performing ritual, a man had to have an independent source of income or
have priesthood as his occupation. Traditionally, Hindu kings at their coronation made gifts of land
and houses to pious Brahmins, as well as on other occasions such as birth, marriage and death in the
royal family. Such acts conferred religious merit on the royal house. However, as Brahmins in Mysore
became more urbanized and as Western education spread among them, they found it increasingly
difficult to lead a life devoted to ritual, prayer, fasting and the punctilious observance of pollution
rules. Milton Singer has recorded a similar process among Brahmins in Madras:
That is to say, they found in their new preoccupations less time for the cultivation
of Sanskrit learning and the performance of the scripturally prescribed ritual
observances, the two activities for which as Brahmins they have had an ancient
and professional responsibility. They have not, however, completely abandoned
these activities and to some extent they have developed compensatory activities
which have kept them from becoming completely de-Sanskritized and cut off from
traditional culture.
The sharp rise in the age of marriage of Brahmin girls enabled them to take advantage of opportunities
for higher education, and this resulted in a breach in the crucial locus of ritual and purity—the kitchen.
Traditionally, a young Brahmin girl worked in and around the kitchen with her mother until her
marriage was consummated and she joined her affines. All that was required of her was knowledge
of cooking and other domestic chores, the rituals that girls were expected to perform, knowledge of
caste and pollution rules, and respect for and obedience to her parents-in-law and husband and other
elders in the household. Education changed the outlook of girls and gave them new ideas and
aspirations. It certainly made them less particular about pollution rules and ritual, though as long as
they lived with their affines they could not completely ignore them.
Very few urban Brahmin parents would now deny that education is a necessity for girls, though they
would certainly differ as to how much education is desirable. Aileen Ross, who recently made a field
study of the urban family in Bangalore, sums up the position as follows:
On the whole this study shows that most young Hindu girls of the middle and
upper classes are still educated with a view to marriage rather than to careers.

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