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‘Matriliny did not become patriliny!’: The transformation of Thiyya ‘tharavad’

houses in 20 th -century Kerala

Article in Contributions to Indian Sociology · September 2017

DOI: 10.1177/0069966717720514

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 ‘Matriliny did not become patriliny!’:
The transformation of Thiyya ‘tharavad’
houses in 20th-century Kerala

Janaki Abraham

In contrast to a preoccupation with Nayar matriliny, in this article I look at the

transformations of matrilineal tharavad houses among the Thiyyas who ranked below
the Nayars in the caste hierarchy and were not generally large landowners. Moving away
from the more exotic practices of matrilocality and duolocality, I look at matriliny coupled
with a strong norm of virilocality in which a woman moved to her husband’s house after
marriage. This enables an exploration of the implications of this residence norm for women,
and particularly its implications for our understanding of the transformation of matrilineal
kinship in Kerala. Paying special attention to the experience of women in tharavad houses
and the creation of new houses, coupled with the continuities in the right that a woman retains
to residence in her natal house and a right to a share of the property, forces us to question
the common sense understanding that matriliny has transformed to patriliny.

Keywords: matriliny, matrilineal kinship, residence, tharavad, Kerala, Thiyya

Ipo marumakkathayam illyalo! (Now there is no matriliny!) Sukumar

shot back in response to my saying that I was in Thalassery, north Kerala,
to study the Thiyya1 community2 and marumakkathayam (matriliny).

1
The Thiyyas are a large heterogeneous caste who have suffered considerable disabilities
due to the practice of caste. Although, known to have a ‘traditional occupation’ of toddy-
tapping, members of the caste have been engaged in occupations ranging from agricultural
labour and Ayurvedic doctors to modern bureaucratic jobs from roughly the middle of the
19th century. Educational and occupational opportunities, made accessible through the Basel
German Mission and the British in Madras Presidency, led to the formation of a sizeable
elite among the caste during colonial rule. The Thiyyas are classified by the State as an
Other Backward Class (OBC).

Janaki Abraham is at Department of Sociology, University of Delhi, Delhi, India.

Email: janaki.abraham@gmail.com

Contributions to Indian Sociology 51, 3 (2017): 287–312

SAGE Publications Los Angeles/London/New Delhi/Singapore/Washington DC/
Melbourne
DOI: 10.1177/0069966717720514
288 / Janaki abraham

Sukumar’s response was shared by a number of people I met during

fieldwork, curious about what I was doing in Thalassery and somewhat
puzzled by why I wanted to study matriliny. Marumakkathayam pandu
ayi poyi … ippo makkathayam anu (matriliny has become old … now
there is makkathayam), people would repeat. The puzzle then was
‘What was makkathayam?’ Was it ‘patriliny’ as so many scholars have
characterised it? (see, e.g., Arunima 1996, 2003;3 Menon 2012; Moore
1985; Shah 1998).
At the end of the 1990s, it was clear that dramatic changes had taken
place in the institution of the matrilineal tharavad. Many large tharavad
houses had only one or two old people living in them and many were
locked up, with greenery growing tall and wild around them, the building
crying out for maintenance. Other tharavads had been sold and several
of them demolished. Memories of old people who grew up in tharavad
houses were in sharp contrast to everyday life in houses in the 1990s.
These descriptions focused on the large number of people in the tharavad
house, including a large number of children who were being brought up
in the house. Sometimes there were even enough for one side of a cricket
team! Women spoke of the large quantities of fish that had to be cleaned
every day and the huge pot of rice cooked.
By the end of the 20th century, one could see the dramatic shifts that
had taken place not only in the size of households and in the structures
of authority in them but also critically in the devolution of property.
Moreover, while there were continuities it was clear that ideas about joint
living and joint property ownership had changed. Many of these large
locked-up houses were symbolic of lives lived away from the tharavad
and away from Thalassery. They signified changes that had taken place
through the 20th century in land relations, in the nature of employment,
widespread migration, aspirations in work and lifestyle and critically in
ideas of the family and joint living.
Writing on matriliny in Kerala has predominantly focused on the
Nayars. In particular, the focus on the more ‘exotic’ practices of central

2
The focus on the community or samudhayam rather than caste was considered the
more legitimate reference.
3
While Arunima (2003) argues that inheritance remained bilateral in the first half of the
20th century (2003: 177), her stress remains on a shift to patriliny.

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 Matriliny did not become patriliny! / 289

Kerala Nayars described as following duolocal residence with ‘visiting

husbands’ has led to a romanticised conception of the tharavad house and
what it meant for women. Not only have other groups in Kerala with a
history of matrilineal inheritance received little attention, but the lure of
the exotic has meant a neglect of practices of matrilineal descent coupled
with the norm of post-marriage virilocality (in which a woman went to live
with her husband after marriage). This was4 the residence norm among
both Nayars and Thiyyas in North Malabar.
Residence has been an important variable in studies of matriliny
elsewhere (see, e.g., Fortes 1949; Goodenough 1951, 1956; Richards
1950), and there has been much discussion of kinship systems in which
descent and residence follow different rules (what Levi Strauss called
disharmonic regimes). However, the predominant focus on matriliny
coupled with matrilocality or duolocality in Kerala has been at the cost
of an understanding of matriliny coupled with the residence norm of
patrilocality or virilocality. This has had implications for our under-
standing of the transformation of matrilineal kinship in Kerala and has
contributed to the argument that matriliny has changed to patriliny.
Furthermore, while residence has been recognised as critical to women’s
experience of marriage (see, e.g., Dube 2009 [1997]), what we have not
adequately understood is what matriliny coupled with a strong norm of
virilocality meant for women.
In this article then, I explore changes that have taken place in
Thiyya tharavad houses5 over the 20th century. I argue that the study of
tharavad houses in the context of matrilineal inheritance coupled with
a strong norm of virilocal residence complicates our understanding of
transformations in tharavads in the 20th century. I look at how the mean-
ing of the ‘tharavad’ changed and how residence in tharavad houses
changed in the first half of the 20th century. Looking at transformations
of tharavad houses in the 20th century points to the multiple ways in
which the term makkathayam is used in Malayalam in North Malabar.
In contrast, then, to the easy translation of the term to mean patriliny,

4
I use the past tense here because even though virilocality is very much still a norm
and ideology, considerable changes have taken place in matrilineal kinship as discussed
in this essay.
5
I specify tharavad houses because the word tharavad refers to both a house and kin
group.

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290 / Janaki abraham

a shift to makkathayam needs to be understood as a shift to bilateral

inheritance and kinship.6
I argue that a focus on the practice of kinship in everyday life enables
an elaboration of how people appropriate words and negotiate residence
and allows us to understand the transformations in tharavads better. Looking
at negotiation in everyday life is crucial because so much of the focus in
kinship studies has for long been on rules rather than the messiness of
practice.7 Within the field of kinship, Bourdieu’s work has been influential
in pointing to the relationship between official kinship (rules) and practical
kinship (practice). I would also like to evoke de Certeau’s (1984) formula-
tion that the users of social codes ‘turn them into metaphors and ellipses
of their own quests’ (1984: xxii–xxiii), in underlining the importance of
looking at the way rules are negotiated and played with.
This article is based on 18 months of intensive fieldwork primarily in
Thalassery but also in Bangalore, Palghat and Delhi in the second half of
the 1990s. Since then I have returned for fieldwork or just visits several
times. This article also draws from rich personal archives that I came across
during fieldwork, including write-ups on family history and everyday life,
letters, diaries and photographs.

I
The decline of matrilineal tharavads
The study of matrilineal kinship has been somewhat plagued by the idea
of its transformation, primarily because of the power of the evolution-
ary view of the stages of society which saw matriliny or mother right as
preceding patriliny or father right (see, e.g., Morgan 1877). While British
Social Anthropology of the 1950s and the 1960s critiqued the evolution-
ary assumptions about unilineal descent (see Radcliffe-Brown 1950), the
focus on stability led to an interest in the transformation of the kinship
systems. A naturalised image of the father figure with authority or a desire

6
Studies done by Dube (2009 [1997]) and Fuller (1996) have argued for a move to
increasing bilaterality. However, a common sense remains about the shift to patriliny.
7
It is unfortunate that Kathleen Gough (nee Miller) never published her doctoral work
(1950) as a book. The thesis is full of rich ethnographic description indicating precisely the
messiness of practice. However, the force of the structural functionalist method in the 1950s
led to her writing a series of articles in the edited book Matrilineal Kinship (1961), which
tended to focus far more heavily on the normative (see Gough 1961a, 1961b).

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 Matriliny did not become patriliny! / 291

for authority over his children in opposition to the authority of the maternal
uncle led to an image of matrilineal systems as being inherently unstable.
This view is evident, for instance, in David Schneider’s ‘Introduction’ to
the influential book on matrilineal kinship that he co-edited with Kathleen
Gough (Schneider 1961). Schneider enumerated nine distinctive features
of matrilineal descent groups which seemed to characterise matriliny as
inherently unstable. The description of ‘tension’ and ‘conflict’ are illustra-
tive of the way patrilineal descent groups have been taken as the ‘norm’
against which matrilineal descent groups were to be measured.
Audrey Richards’ influential essay on the ‘matrilineal puzzle’ (1950)8
pointed to the multiple ways in which groups sought to resolve the puzzle
of authority and control by mother’s brothers and husbands through
residence rules such as duolocal residence or strategies such as marriage
between cross-cousins which brought a child back to her or his matrilin-
eage (see Richards 1950: 246–51). While Richards’ work has been read
as outlining a ‘gender puzzle’ (Peters 1997) and has been seen as making
a feminist argument which focused on what matrilineal systems meant for
women, her writing underscores an assumption of a unitary masculinity
with authority concentrated in one person. In response, several scholars
have pointed to the importance of recognising polyvocality and multiplic-
ity in different aspects and domains of social life such as authority. Dube
(1996) argued that authority was diffused and not necessarily concentrated
in the hands of one person in relation to gender and/or masculinity (see
also Peletz 1995).
Equally, what characterised the earlier literature on matrilineal kinship
were single and grand explanations for the transformation of matriliny.
For Kerala, Kathleen Gough in her article on the ‘Disintegration of Matri-
lineal Descent Groups’ (1961b) argued that the growth of capitalism, and
individual forms of property, would inevitably bring about a decline of
matriliny. David Aberle’s now famous statement ‘the cow is the enemy
of matriliny’ (1961: 680) expressed precisely this link between private
property and the decline in matriliny. This became a point of debate.
Critiquing Kathleen Gough’s explanation for Kerala in particular, Fuller
(1976) argued that there was little evidence to show that capitalism on
its own would bring a decline in matriliny, particularly given that matri-
lineal kinship persisted long after its insertion into a capitalist economy.

8
For an elaboration of the puzzle, see Richards (1950: 246).

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292 / Janaki abraham

While Kathleen Gough’s work on matriliny has been valuable, the focus
on the grand explanation has been at the cost of looking at more micro-
processes and at concurrent changes in the meanings of words, of houses
and of relatedness.
Dramatic changes have characterised 20th-century Kerala and have
had lasting implications for the practice of matriliny and for the institu-
tion of matrilineal joint family tharavads. Literature on Nayar tharavads
describes the way large matrilineal tharavads maintained residents through
the cultivation of wetlands and these lands may have been leased out to
junior members of the tharavad. Wage labour brought about a shift in the
relationship between members of the matrilineal joint family tharavad,
particularly in hierarchies based on age (Arunima 1996, 2003; Gough
1961b; Kodoth 2001a). Changes in tenancy also had a dramatic impact on
the tharavad in which younger members leased out land from the tharavad.
Land reforms brought about in Kerala reduced the property holdings of
tharavads and challenged the ability of the tharavad to maintain a large
number of dependents (Kodoth 2001b; Radhakrishnan 1989). In addition,
ideas about a ‘modern’ family and individual property have been strong
influences through the 20th century. Further, modern bureaucratic jobs led
to migration away from the tharavad and men, the beneficiaries of most
of these jobs, often took their families with them.
Legislative changes have run concurrently with these processes through
the 20th century starting in 1896 when the first legislation was passed for
people following matriliny. It linked marriage with rights in property for
the first time and introduced a provision for half a man’s self-acquired
property to go to his wife and children. This legislation came as a result of
elite Nayars petitioning the colonial government for a marriage legislation
that would legitimise sambandham (lit. connection), understood as marriage
in many parts of Kerala but derided often as concubinage. Although
this legislation was scarcely used, it marked the beginning of a series
of legislations that culminated in the final legal axe on matriliny. Thus,
in 1976 the government passed the Kerala Joint Family (Abolition) Act
which meant that no new members would accrue to existing tharavads.
The far-reaching impact of the law was that it foreclosed the possibility
of property henceforth being defined as matrilineal property.
Although the changes both in law and in everyday life have been
tremendous, the characterisation of the transformation in kinship and
property devolution as a shift from matriliny to patriliny is simplistic. One

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 Matriliny did not become patriliny! / 293

example of this is Melinda Moore (1985: 538) who writes that the thara-
vad, ‘the house-and-land unit which was the symbol of … matrilineality
was just as easily made the symbol of patrilineality (i.e makkathayam)’.
The translation of the word ‘makkathayam’ as patriliny and the view that
marumakkathayam and makkathayam are terms describing opposing uni-
lineal descent principles has resulted in this idea. In contrast to this view,
in the 1990s there was a strong and continuing view that women must
inherit property and have a right to residence in the parental home—that
is, a parental house was a house a woman could return to on widowhood,
separation or even move to with her husband and children in some cases.
In addition, gift-giving practices at important occasions indicated the
continuing expectations from the mother’s brother. What seemed impor-
tant when evaluating changes in matriliny among the Thiyyas was the
strong norm and ideology of virilocality in which a woman moved to her
husband’s house after marriage. This had consequences for the nature of
conjugality and the role of the father in the lives of children. Although I
will not be able to deal with each of these aspects in equal detail in this
article, they are important in considering the continuities in matriliny and
simultaneously a shift to a more bilateral kinship. This article primarily
explores how the nature of houses changed through the 20th century and
the processes that influenced this. In the next section, I investigate the
changing meanings of the word tharavad and the multiple ways in which
the term makkathayam is used.

II
Changing meanings of ‘tharavad’
In the second half of the 1990s, there were two distinct senses in which
people spoke of a tharavad: as both a physical house and as kin-groupings.
This usage is not new, even while it diverges from many definitions by
scholars.9 For example, Gundert’s A Malayalam–English Dictionary
(1995), first published in 1872, defined the tharavad as ‘1. a house, chiefly

9
The tharavad has been defined in numerous ways—as a ‘matrilineal joint family’
(Puthenkalam 1977), a ‘matrilineal household’ (Arunima 2003), a ‘matrilineal descent group’
(Gough 1961b) or ‘a house and land unit’ (Fuller 1976; Gough 1961b; Moore 1985). Some
of these definitions, such as Arunima’s definition of the tharavad as a ‘matrilineal household’
(2003) is indicative of the assumption of duolocality.

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294 / Janaki abraham

of noblemen, ancestral residence of land-owners 2. Family’. In the defini-

tion provided by Robin Jeffery, the tharavad is ‘the name applied to the
house and family of Nayars’ (1993: 230).10 Many of these definitions see
the tharavad as exclusively or primarily (as in Gundert’s definition) associ-
ated with the Nayars and ‘noblemen’, an association I wish to challenge.
In contrast, my Thiyya respondents used the word tharavad for matri-
lineal jointly owned property even if the house and plot of land was small
and the genealogical depth and breadth was shallow. Contrary then to the
image of the prestigious large landowning Nayar tharavad, the way people
used the term made it clear that tharavads needed to be reconceptualised
as joint family houses and kin-groups, which could be small, built on a
small plot and with no history of glory. The appropriation and redefinition
of the term tharavad is particularly significant given the caste injunctions
that restricted not only access to certain material goods but also to words
and language.11
At the same time, while tharavad houses can be large or small, the
idea of belonging to a tharavad is still popularly associated with high
status. The term tharavadieth, literally meaning those who have a tharavad,
indicates the way in which belonging to a tharavad is an indication of high
status. Moreover, what emerged was that in popular usage the meaning of a
tharavad had been expanded. The word tharavad was now used to refer to a
house/property and kin-group(s)—not necessarily organised on the principle
of marumakkathayam or matriliny. Any ancestral property—irrespective
of whether it would be divided along the principle of marumakkathayam
(membership traced through women) or makkathayam (to be equally
divided between the children of a man or woman)—was referred to as a
tharavad. However, there was no consensus on this usage. What this meant
then was that the way a house was named depended on the generation
and on the relative position of the person in relation to the joint property.

10
While Kathleen Gough tended to focus on the tharavad as clan, lineage and matrilineal
household unit, she recognised that the tharavad also referred to a physical house. See
also Mencher (1966), Fuller (1976) and Uyl (2000) for the dual way in which the word
‘tharavad’ is used.
11
Caste restrictions in Malabar were known to be one of the most stringent in the country
and dictated the kind of house that different castes could have, particularly what kind of
materials could be used for the roof, as also the term used to refer to the house. Thus, a Thiyya
house was referred to as a pura, distinct from the Nayar veedu or tharavad, a Nambudiri
Illam or a royal family kovilagam (Gough 1973).

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 Matriliny did not become patriliny! / 295

Thus, while a young woman may have called the house a tharavad, her
grandmother, whose husband built the house and had registered it in his
name so that it was not defined as marumakkathayam property, would not
have called it a tharavad. This intergenerational variation in the meaning
attached to houses is critical to understanding transformations in tharavads.
In the household survey I conducted in two neighbourhoods, the word
tharavad was also used by respondents for a house that used to be a joint
family house but had been partitioned and inherited as one person’s share.
The idea of a tharavad then, contrary to definitions, is not premised only
on joint ownership in the present as much as on a social value that the
building and the land had come to acquire. A history of joint ownership
gives a house the quality of a tharavad distinct from legal or administrative
definitions of tharavads. This indicates the continuities in the sentiment
that the house embodies, even after partition.
Additionally, the word tharavad was used to refer to different circles
of kin and would shift according to context. One common usage of the
term tharavad was in relation to those who have a share in a tharavad
house that would be divided by either the principle of marumakkathayam
(traced through women) or makkathayam (for children). Even in situations
in which the house had been partitioned already, the group who had been
joint holders (coparceners) continue to be referred to as the tharavad. Or
sometimes a shared name could mean that they belong to the same thara-
vad, even if the exact genealogical relationship is not known. In addition,
a shared tharavad identity may be organised around a place of worship and
traced bilaterally through both parents. These shifts in the ways the word
tharavad is used are thus significant: they point not only to an appropriation
of a term that had been denied as a result of caste injunctions, but critically
to the way the popular usage of the term deviates from the usage in law.

III
Two kinds of ‘tharavads’
In the English language, matriliny refers to a system of kinship in which
the line of descent and inheritance is through the female, while patriliny
is through the male line. In contrast, etymologically marumakkathayam is
derived from the word marumakkal—nieces and nephews—and refers to
a system of inheritance (dayam = gift or ayam = property) in which prop-
erty of a man devolved to his nieces and nephews, while makkathayam

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296 / Janaki abraham

(makkal—children) expresses a system in which property devolves

to the children. This is in contrast to definitions that have split up the
words marumakkathayam and makkathayam as marumakan (nephew)
and makan (son) conjugated with dayam or ayam (gift or property) and
thus see makkathayam as inheritance to sons alone.12 What is significant
and interesting is that while the English terms specify a line of devolu-
tion, the Malayalam words are in relation to a male subject (male ego in
kinship parlance) and describe who his property will devolve to. In both
cases, women’s property devolves to her children although not in equal
shares.13 This terminology in Malayalam seems to additionally express
the idea that men generate wealth and that devolution, therefore, is with
respect to the man.
The uniqueness of the usage of the term makkathayam in North
Malabar (as literally for the makal or children, both male and female) is
brought out through a comparison with the practices of South Malabar
Thiyyas described as following ‘makkathayam’. In a document, dated
1947, of a committee appointed to enquire into codification of law relat-
ing to marriage, divorce and succession for Thiyyas of South Malabar
following makkathayam,14 it is stated that dowry is given when a daughter
gets married and a woman does not receive a share of property from her
father. This is in contrast to North Malabar where even after the creation
of what are called makkathayam tharavads, dowry was not given and
women received a share of property equal to her brothers at the time of
the partition of makkathayam property. This points to the flaw in trans-
lating makkathayam in North Malabar as ‘patrilineal’ or ‘patriliny’ and
highlights the importance of distinguishing the different senses in which
the term ‘makkathayam’ is used in Malayalam.
The second important question is, how do we understand the differences
between a marumakkathayam tharavad and a makkathayam tharavad?

12
For example, Gundert’s dictionary first published in 1872 defines makkathayam as ‘the
right of sons to inherit’ and remained ambiguous on whether women have a right to inherit
under makkathayam. Marumakkathayam was defined as ‘inheritance in the female line’.
13
In marumakkathayam property, a woman’s female children will receive a share for
themselves and a share for their male and female children, plus a share for the children of
daughters and so on. Makkathayam property is divided equally among male and female
children, unless a will or gift deed states otherwise.
14
G.O. 939 (H) 10/3/1947 (Madras Archives). I am grateful to Professor Kamala
Visweswaran for sharing this document with me.

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 Matriliny did not become patriliny! / 297

That the Malayalam terms refer to the devolution of property in relation to

the male ego acquires a significance when one looks at who built or bought
the tharavad house and land. In an overwhelming number of cases, a man
had built and bought the house. Furthermore, a majority of respondents
that identified the house/land as a tharavad said that a father or a husband
had built the house, sometimes on the land owned by his wife, while only
a minority in each area named a karanavar, a mother’s brother, or mother’s
mother’s brother, as the person who had built the house.
Looking at the history of some of these houses made clear that men
building houses for their wives was not new in the late 19th century. The
case study of the Putheyapuzheyil tharavad, that is roughly 200 years old,
is illustrative of the way property that a man gave to his wife and children
became part of marumakkathayam tharavad property. Srinivasan, who
occupied the house in the late 1990s was the sixth generation to live in
the house that was built on roughly 120 cents of land (4856.4 sq. metres).
The land is believed to have been bought around the first decade of the
19th century by the husband of his great great great grandmother (his
MMMMMH), who also constructed a small thatched building. Similarly,
Srinivasan’s grandmother’s father (his MMF) had bought his wife two
houses in a neighbouring town. These properties accrued to the matrilineal
tharavad as the man and his wife had only one daughter.
Discussions on transformations in matriliny have tended to focus on
the changes that came with new ideas of the ‘modern’ patri-centred family,
especially changes in the shift from the mother’s brother to the husband
as provider and bearer of authority. In contrast, the aforementioned case
study highlights the importance of considering the continuities in a husband
(and father) providing property for his wife (and children). A branch of a
tharavad (a matriline or thavazhi15) was often started by a husband building
a house on land owned by his wife16 (tharavad land or the land given by
her father). Alternately, as described earlier, he would both buy the land
and build a house on it for his wife and children. Such property, as the
aforementioned case suggests, either became part of the tharavad property or
became an independent thavazhi which over time would become another
tharavad. These properties were considered marumakkathayam property

15
Over time a thavazhi came to be called a tharavad.
16
This is well documented for the Nayars. See, for example, Gough (1961b), Nikane
(1962) and Arunima (2003).

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298 / Janaki abraham

unless otherwise stated. In instances where the house was not built by a
man on his wife’s tharavad property, the house would often be legally
gifted17 by the man to his wife and children.
By the late 19th century and early 20th century, there was increasingly
a shift in ideas of marriage and of what constituted a ‘fair’ and ‘just’
division of property. The influence of what were seen as ‘modern’ ideas
of conjugality and the patri-centred family were strong (Arunima 2003;
Kodoth 2002, 2004). The Malabar Marriage Act passed in 1896 stated that
if a marriage was registered under the Act, then if the man died without
a will, his widow and children were entitled to half of his self-acquired
property, the other half would accrue to his tharavad. The Malabar Wills
Act passed in 1898 enabled men to will their property to their wife and
children. Divisions on the principle of marumakkathayam were often
disfavoured and men often registered self-acquired property in their own
name, so that the property would not be considered a marumakkathayam
property later on. They would either legally gift the house to their wife
and children or after the passing of the Malabar Wills Act in 1898, would
will the property to their children. These properties were often called
makkathayam properties and devolved in equal share to all children.18
What needs to be underlined is that the establishment of new houses was
common under matriliny and these houses may have been built or bought
by a man for his wife (see, e.g., Saradamoni 1996, 1999). The process by
which a makkathayam house came about was often not very different.
What differed was that the house was registered in the man’s name and he
willed it to his wife and children. This house came to be defined in law as
makkathayam. In the context of a residence norm of virilocality, we then
observe strong continuities in the formation of new houses—defined as
either marumakkathayam or makkathayam. Thus, Here Comes Papa, the
caption of a well-known painting by Raja Ravi Verma and the title of an
influential book on the transformation of matriliny (Arunima 2003), does
not capture the transformation of tharavads in a context of virilocality in
North Malabar because Papa (or rather Achan) was often already there
and was in many cases already providing for his wife and children.

17
See, for example, the testimonies of some Thiyya men who deposed before the Malabar
Marriage Commission in 1891 (MMCR 1891).
18
A study of a few cases of partition indicates the contingencies in how such properties
came to be defined in law. The interpretation of the will played an important role in this.

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 Matriliny did not become patriliny! / 299

In the next section, I argue that women’s experience of virilocal resi-

dence is a crucial factor in understanding the creation of new houses—new
houses that were seen as thavazhis (matrilines) earlier and others later
that came to be defined as houses to be divided equally between children
(makkathayam).

IV
Women’s experience of virilocality
and the creation of new houses
It is worth starting by spelling out the rules linked to virilocal residence
and matrilineal inheritance. The norm of virilocal residence meant that
a woman moved19 to her husband’s house after the wedding ceremony.
She and her children had a right to live and be maintained by him and his
family while he was alive. At his death, a woman and her children would
have to move back to her tharavad. At the same time, a woman and her
children always had a right to live in and be maintained by her matrilineal
tharavad. And her brother and mother’s brother had an obligation to pro-
vide for her and her children. These formal rules in themselves show the
complexity of residence based on whether a woman’s father was alive and
whether her parents had established a new house. In practice, residence
was even more complex given various contingencies and the different
ways residence is negotiated in everyday life. What is significant is that
with the rule of virilocality, tharavads comprised a mix of in-marrying
women and tharavad women, and equally children who had a share in
the property and those who had none. In some cases, a man lived in his
wife’s tharavad, and so a tharavad may have had not only in-marrying
women but also in-marrying men.
Long before any of the legislations were passed, it was customary for
a woman to ask for a plot of land on which she, often with the help of
her husband, could build a house. While a part of the property would be
given for this purpose, it did not necessarily entail the formal partition of
the property. What we have not known enough about are the conditions
under which a woman, or a couple chose to set up a new residence or

19
Given the transformations in the tharavad, I choose to use the past tense here. However,
post-marriage virilocality remains a forceful ideology and practice in contemporary
marriages. For a discussion of this, see Abraham (2007).

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300 / Janaki abraham

whether it would be close to inherited property. The arguments generally

presented for the establishment of a new house, were of overcrowding in
tharavad houses (Fuller 1976; Karve 1965; Nikane 1962); in the context
of duolocality or matrilocality because a man wanted to live independently
with his wife and children (Karve 1965; Osella 2012); as a sign of his
love and care for them (MMCR 1891; Saradamoni 1999); and because
the establishment of new houses as a result of tenancy laws discouraged
absentee landlordism (Arunima 2003; Karve 1965: 11). What is missing from
all these explanations are the motivations of women to start a new house,
particularly a consideration of women’s experience of virilocal residence.
Discussions with women in Thalassery about living in their husband’s
tharavad house pointed to two issues which may have acted as a push to
start a new house. One was the everyday experience of virilocality for a
woman, while the second pointed to the insecurities of residence at wid-
owhood. Each of these presented a push to negotiate the rule of residence
and start a new house, generally on the tharavad land of a woman. An
understanding of the negotiation of residence is enabled by a focus on the
practice of kinship rather than the rules. Such a focus also enables looking
at the flexibility enabled by women’s access to property.
Many women spoke about how everyday life for a woman in her
husband’s house was often not comfortable. This experience of course
depended on the composition of the household, the number of women
in it and the nature of the relationships between its members. Generally,
women would be the last to eat in these large tharavads—and especially
young in-marrying women. A recurring comment in conversations about
tharavad living was that often there would be no curry left for women
who ate last and they would have to make do with rice and pickle. There
was also a great deal of housework to be done—sweeping the house and
yard, washing clothes, grinding, pounding, cleaning the rice and lentils,
cleaning fish, in addition to child care and care of the elderly. The burden
of work was so great that there was an institutionalised mechanism to
ensure that women got some leisure and ate well. At least once a year
then, a woman returned to her mother’s house for a period of a month to
have a break and be ‘fattened up’.20

20
This was during the month of karkadam (June/July), considered an inauspicious month
when children should not be conceived. In addition, it is in the monsoon that a general
tonic called peta maranda is prepared and given to women, particularly new mothers, for
improving their health.

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 Matriliny did not become patriliny! / 301

Additionally, in households with a large number of people, there was

often very little space, and other than for a newly married couple who
were given a separate room for some time,21 there were few rooms for
couples to sleep together. This constraint of space was another reason that
prompted women and men to seek neolocal residence when they had the
means to do so.
Women often asked for a plot on the land surrounding their tharavad
and their husband paid for the house to be built as few women had an
independent income. Most importantly moving into a house on property
she inherited meant that a woman lived near her kin. This house was like
a matriline, even though it may have been defined as a makkathayam
tharavad later.
At the end of the 20th century, the age at which a couple chose to set
up neolocal residence had come down considerably as a result of the
availability of home loans from government institutions and private
banks (see Abraham 2007). Furthermore, the push to fashion one’s house,
replete with goods from the booming consumer market was strong. Thus,
as with the case described by Osella (2012) for Kerala Koyas, integral
to the new ideas of conjugality was the imagination of the house filled
with the signs of a modern domestic lifestyle, including electric goods,
crockery and glassware.
The second reason why a woman wanted to start a new house with her
husband was tied to the insecurities of residence when widowed, since a
woman and her children were expected to leave her husband’s tharavad
on his death. For women who had a tharavad to return to with earning
members or an independent income there was no problem. But this was
not always the situation. Often, if a woman and her husband had not set
up neolocal residence and her mother’s tharavad had been partitioned or
for some other reason she could not return there, then a woman had to
negotiate residence in a context of few choices, if any. Chathot Lakshmi’s
case is an example of a woman who was caught in a difficult situation
when her husband died prematurely. When Lakshmi’s husband died, they
were staying in his tharavad. Although Lakshmi and her children did have
a house to go to, they did not have an income to support themselves there.
Knowing this, her brother-in-law is believed to have written to tharavad

21
This varied depending on the size of the house and the number of residents. It also
depended on the time that lapsed before another marriage in the tharavad.

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302 / Janaki abraham

elders saying that she should be allowed to stay on in her husband’s thara-
vad. Five years later, when one of her sons began working, they moved
out to her tharavad and lived off his income.
That Lakshmi stayed on in her husband’s tharavad for five years after his
death and did not move out after the 40th day ritual observances, or earlier,
illustrates the way in which rules of residence are negotiated and contin-
gent in practice. In many instances, I came across, despite a formal right
to residence, women had not felt happy about returning to their tharavad
houses or their parent’s house—either because of the lack of resources to
help support them and their children or insufficient space and amenities
there. In many cases, there was no house to return to because the property
had been divided. It was this situation of uncertainty, coupled with the
very idea of having to move residence within 40 days of the death of her
husband that made a woman want to start a new house—a house that she
would not have to move out of when widowed.
A woman’s vulnerabilities (as a young woman in particular) in her
affinal tharavad (whether with respect to food and the amount of house-
work or the authority exercised over her) are in sharp contrast to images
of women in tharavads in which post-marital duolocal residence was
practised. Here, women enjoyed the company and the sharing of domestic
work with their mothers and sisters. Thus, hierarchies in the tharavad house
were not only based on age and gender but also between kin and affines
or tharavad women and in-marrying women. Furthermore, a woman’s
insecurities about residence when widowed were tied to the rule that a
woman and her children had to leave her husband’s tharavad on his death.
These are important for understanding some of the reasons for the creation
of new houses and highlights the need to look at the practice of kinship
and women’s experience of a particular form of residence.

V
Residence in marumakkathayam
and makkathayam tharavads
Given the history of women starting new houses, often with the help
of their husbands or sons, what changed in the early 20th century was
the way these houses came to be defined in terms of how they would
devolve. As mentioned earlier, a man may have chosen to put the house
in his name so that it would not be seen as marumakkathayam property.

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 Matriliny did not become patriliny! / 303

However, in the first half of the 20th century shifts in property ownership
did not always mean shifts in household composition, and in fact indicate
continuities in the sentiment of matriliny. The case of the Kalathil house
and the Koroth house indicate the variability in the practice of residence.
Furthermore, what we see is that there remained some fluidity in terms
of how the property came to be defined in law. The discussion on these
two houses is based on family write-ups by two brothers Radhakrishnan22
and Narayanan, conversations with both of them and with several other
members of the family, and additionally on diaries, letters and other
documentation that I have had access to.
The large double storied tharavad house which I call Kalathil was built
in the Thalassery town in 1891 by P.K. Damodaran, a successful lawyer.
Damodaran built the house for his second wife and children a few years
after his second marriage. His grandson, Narayanan, documents the residents
in the house in 1925 in his write-up on the family (see Figure 1). By this
time, P.K. Damodaran had died and his wife Madhavi lived with four of
their children and four grandchildren (daughters of three sons). Madhavi’s
sister who was single also lived in the house even though her own tharavad
in which her brother lived was down the road. Thus, while her formal
‘right’ to residence was in her tharavad house, she had chosen to stay with
her sister to help raise the children and grandchildren. Narayanan writes

Figure 1

Source: Author’s own work.

Note: Residence in the Kalathil house in 1925—shaded region.

22
When Radhakrishnan retired as an Army engineer in 1977, he began working on the
history of his family. This inspired his brother who lived in the UK, who then wrote his own
piece for his grandchildren growing up abroad.

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304 / Janaki abraham

that she was a full-fledged member and ‘we loved her as our grandaunt
and called her Ele-amma (younger-mother)’. He writes that since his aunt
had no children, she had brought up her sister’s youngest two children
as her own.
The presence of Madhavi’s sister in the house was not exceptional, as
tharavad houses often included persons who did not have a formal ‘right’
to live in the house either as a result of property ownership or marriage.
Apart from this, residence in the Kalathil house looked much more like
a makkathayam tharavad house—a house to be divided among children
equally. What is significant about the residence in the house is that grand-
children lived there without their parents and a widowed daughter had
returned to her mother’s house with her children.
However, some houses started by a man for his conjugal family
showed more complex residence practices. Ahead, I draw from a write-
up that Narayanan did about his mother’s father’s house in Cannanore
(now Kannur), in order to describe residence in the house in the early
1920s.
The Koroth House was built by Koroth Vijayan for his wife and six
children in 1909 on about 2,500 sq. metres. His eldest daughter returned
with her children to the Koroth house after being widowed quite young.
One of Koroth Vijayan’s sons lived in the house with his wife, another son
was an eminent doctor and worked in Madras in the Medical College and
the third went to work in Africa. His younger daughter was married to an
officer in a government department—a job in which he was often posted
to different areas in Madras Presidency or even outside. Narayanan was
her eldest son and the first to be sent to the Koroth House at the age of
three. All three of Narayanan’s male siblings followed one by one when
they got to roughly the same age. Narayanan’s eldest sister, Lakshmi,
was sent to their father’s family house in Tellicherry (now Thalassery),
where there were other female cousins growing up.
Narayanan lists the people who lived in the Koroth house at the end
of the 1920s (see Figure 2). There were also five domestic helpers not
shown in the diagram.
As shown in Figure 2, in addition to Koroth Vijayan’s children and
grandchildren, his sister’s two daughters also lived in the house. One
of them was widowed and lived there with her six children. She had
returned to her karanavar’s (mother’s brother’s) house on widowhood.

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 Matriliny did not become patriliny! / 305

Figure 2

Source: Author’s own work.

Note: Residence of the Koroth house in the late 1920s—shaded region.

The composition of the household resembled that of a tharavad in which

the children (and grandchildren) of brothers and sisters lived together. In
addition, there were relatives of Koroth Vijayan’s wife. The two daughters
of his wife’s sister lived there as well and continued to live there even after
their mother’s sister died. Residence in the Koroth house in the late 1920s
looked like a combination of two matrilines or thavazhis—one started by
Koroth Vijayan’s mother and the other by his wife’s mother.
Thus, a look at the practice of residence in the house in the 1920s
and 1930s suggests the complexity of household composition in a house
identified at the time as a ‘makkathayam’ house—‘for children’—and
the continuities in sentiment such that a man continued to take care of
his sister’s children in a house he built for his children. Makkathayam
tharavads thus also seemed to have the quality of tharavads to absorb a
number of people and have the quality of a refuge.
However, the image of large tharavads that seemed to have this kind
of refuge-like quality is complicated by accounts in which differences
were made between members in terms of access to resources, food
and household work. Apart from hierarchies of age and gender, and
distinctions between the karanavar and other younger male members,
there were distinctions made between in-marrying women and tharavad
women. Further, a share in the property, a formal right of residence, the
economic status of a parent and the genealogical distance to people who
had authority were also lines along which hierarchies were played out.

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Thus, in the Koroth house, the relatives of Koroth Vijayan’s wife who
lived in the house did a disproportionate amount of the domestic work
and were not considered equal members of the family.
Nevertheless, marumakkathayam and also makkathayam tharavads
with the spirit of composite living, provided shelter and care for several
people. With care vested in the tharavad—in a parent, an uncle or sib-
lings—the focus on marriage as a means to ensure care and support and
even safety was mitigated. Thus, a greater pressure to get married—what
one may refer to as the ideology of ‘compulsory marriage’—has emerged
and been strengthened with the slow decline and partition of tharavad
houses particularly through the second half of the 20th century.23 Equally the
tharavad house with several members ensured the care of the old or those
who were mentally or physically unwell and infirm24 (cf. Gough 1975).
In addition, the Koroth tharavad is a good example of the way people
chose to innovate with wills (and gift deeds) in the early 20th century in
order to provide property and with it greater security to daughters and
daughters of daughters. Although Koroth Vijayan could have put the
house in his wife’s name, and thereby defined it as marumakkathayam
property, he instead willed it with a complicated clause that all his
children would have access to the property for their lifetime, but the house
would be inherited by the two daughters of one of his daughters, as the
other daughter who was widowed had only sons. What is significant is the
continuity in the sentiment of leaving property to women in the family; a
sentiment which eventually led to the property being identified in law as
a marumakkathayam property.
The case thus shows the contingencies in how a property came to be
seen in law and points to the continuities between the marumakkathayam
and makkathayam properties in terms of the sentiment that the house
should be accessible to everyone while critically acting as an insurance
for women. It was the passing of the Joint Family (Abolition) Act in
1975 which foreclosed the possibility of property being defined as matri-
lineal property. The ramifications of this law in Kerala contrast with the
Minangkabau case in Southeast Asia, in which while women set up new

23
Genealogical charts show several single people in earlier generations. In contrast, in
the 1990s there were few women above 30 who were unmarried.
24
The nature of the care was of course dependent on several factors, most importantly
the nature of the affective relationships between the person and other residents.

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 Matriliny did not become patriliny! / 307

houses with their husbands, the houses continued to be transmitted through

the matrilineal principle. Blackwood argues that in doing this, women
were able to use the ideology of matriliny ‘to configure new houses to
their advantage’ (1999: 52).

VI
Uncles, husbands and sons
A lot has changed since the time when men worked predominantly on the
land and had to give their entire earnings to the karanavar (the mother’s
brother and head of the tharavad). In old descriptions of tharavad living,
the karanavar’s control was great and how well a man could ‘provide’ for
his wife and children was dependent on the will of his karanavar. Testimo-
nies of Thiyyas in front of the Malabar Marriage Commission in the early
1890s make evident that karanavars were no longer seen as protecting the
interest of all members of a tharavad. Many men expressed the opinion
that self-acquired property should not go to the tharavad but instead should
be given either to the thavazhi or matriline started by his mother or to his
wife and children. This shift was not confined to the Thiyyas. Arunima
writes about the Nayar caste association centrally addressing the issue of
disparities in privileges based on age in the tharavad at the beginning of
the 20th century (2003: 164).
In the early 20th century, a man’s responsibility to support his mother,
siblings and sister’s children was strong. In turn, there was an assump-
tion that a woman’s children would be taken care of by her tharavad. For
instance, Radhakrishnan writes that his father would regularly send money
to his own tharavad house—the Kalathil House, while only paying his
and his brothers’ fees during their school years in his mother’s house, the
Koroth house. There was clearly a difference in the responsibility a house
had towards children of daughters and children of sons. Kalathil was the
house that Radhakrishnan’s father’s father built but more importantly it
was the house in which his father’s mother and his father’s sisters lived.
His father’s responsibility was towards helping maintain his mother and his
single or widowed sisters and his financially-dependent male siblings who
lived in the house (members who would be considered part of a thavazhi
or matriline). In contrast, Ramakrishnan’s mother’s house, built by her
father, was like Ramakrishnan’s mother’s tharavad and was where her
children had a right to stay and be maintained. The idea of the ‘providing

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308 / Janaki abraham

husband’ (Abraham 2011) was mitigated by a tharavad’s responsibility

towards a woman’s children.
When a woman established a new thavazhi, she was dependent on
her husband until her children were old enough to earn and support the
family. Brothers and sisters, when they earned, provided support to their
parents and siblings, often taking on the responsibility to educate siblings.
However, after they got married, and especially if they lived separately,
they were not always able to support their parents and siblings as much.
Sharada Amma had 13 children and wrote about the difficulty she and her
husband had in educating them after her husband retired and took up a job
which paid him less than what he could earn before. In her autobiography, she
chronicles how her brothers helped her educate her children. Brothers were
thus a source of support even while a woman’s husband was alive. However,
Sharada also mentions the relief she felt when her eldest son finished his
education and got a job. She says her mother used to say, ‘A mother breathes
easier when her son finishes his education and starts working.’ While the
literature on matriliny has focused on brothers and mother’s brothers as
providers, it has tended to underplay the importance of sons as breadwinners
and supporters of a thavazhi house or matriline (see Jeffery 1993). Studies
on the transformation of matriliny then focus on the shift from the mother’s
brother to the husband as provider and bearer of authority and have tended
to remain silent on the continuities with the dependence on husbands and
sons. Stories of widows such as Sharada’s sister-in-law Lakshmi who had to
move back to her tharavad, but did not have a brother or a mother’s brother
who could support her and her young children, speak of the dependence
not only on brothers, uncles and husbands but critically on sons. This was
particularly so given that few women finished school and went to college.
And few women from middle class tharavads took up employment.
Thus, while women inherited property, and with marumakkathayam
property were entitled to a share of property for themselves, for their
children, the children of their daughters and so on, by and large, they
were not wage earners. Instead it was men—husbands, brothers, uncles
and sons—who were providers. This dependence on men in the context
of matriliny and virilocal residence is important in evaluating the nature
of changes that took place with the breakdown of tharavads. In addition,
a look at the sentiment that brothers and uncles felt to their sisters and
sister’s children, and the expectations from brothers and uncles expressed
in gift-giving, for example, indicates strong continuities.

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VII
Conclusion
This article has attempted to highlight the importance of a residence
norm (viriocality) in understanding transformations in matriliny. Moving
away from the formalism that characterised much of the early work on
matrilineal kinship, it has focused on the practice of kinship in looking at
tharavad houses, particularly the shifting meaning of the word tharavad
and at who built houses, lived in them and contributed to the finances of
these houses. The usage of the word ‘tharavad’ has expanded in the 20th
century such that a generation that saw a house as joint family property
would name it as a tharavad even if it was not matrilineal. A look at these
tharavad houses referred to as makkathayam tharavads in north Kerala
indicates that they do not devolve patrilineally, but follow a bilateral
principle in which the property is inherited by daughters and sons equally
(or almost equally, often in favour of daughters).
I argue that despite the dramatic changes in the nature of property,
there were considerable continuities in residence and in property devolu-
tion. This is particularly so in relation to women’s residence and right to
residence in her natal home and to the understanding that women must
inherit property. Thus, makkathayam tharavad houses started by a man
for his family had the quality of a thavazhi or matriline but was, in the
20th century, often defined in law as a house to be divided equally among
children. Furthermore, a focus on the practice of virilocality showed the
dependence on husbands, fathers and sons and not just karanavars. This
is important in evaluating transformations in kinship through the 20th
century. In addition to property devolution and residence which indicate
bilaterality, there remain continuities in expectations of mother’s brothers
and other matrilineal kin especially at important occasions such as marriages
or housewarmings. These continuities in sentiment are critical for our
understanding of transformations in matrilineal kinship.
Finally, it is important to stress the contradictory currents in con-
temporary society. On the one hand, a dominant ideology of patriarchy
surrounds Malayali society, including the Thiyyas, and the abolition of
the joint family has both symbolically and otherwise delegitimised the
matrilineal principle. Joint living has been undermined and the age at which
couples establish their own houses has gone down leading to an increas-
ing number of simple households. The decline of joint households which

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310 / Janaki abraham

often took on the character of a refuge has simultaneously strengthened

compulsory marriage. The nuclear family is normatively patri-centred
with a woman and her children now often taking the husband/father’s
first name as surname.
On the other hand, women’s education is on the rise, the age at mar-
riage has increased, women’s employment is high, even if secondary
to men in many sectors in Kerala, and most important the 2005 Hindu
Succession Act has brought new gender-just laws for women in relation
to property ownership. There are also continuities in the expectations of
mother’s brothers and other matrilineal kin, most evident in gift-giving at
important occasions. These, when taken together, suggest that the argu-
ment that matriliny has moved to patriliny is inadequate. Thus, if we move
away from the idea that kinship systems transform in some evolutionary
progression from matriliny to patriliny, then we can appreciate that the
continuities in affective ties with matrilineal kin is not just a ‘remnant’
but indicates strong bilateral kinship.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and Rita Brara for extremely useful
comments on this article. I am grateful to Professor Andre Beteille and Rajni Palriwala
for comments and conversations on this work over the years. I thank the Department of
Sociology, South Asian University for the opportunity to present a version of this article at
a seminar in March 2016.

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