MATRILINY AND THE ABOLITION OF THE JOINT FAMILY IN KERALA
Downloads
Abstract
The Malabar region of Central Kerala was largely matriarchal in nature in the pre-colonial era where women owned and managed their land. They would provide property to male members on a need basis but they retained the control over the property. The economy and culture of Kerala allowed the existence of such a system that was only interrupted by the coming of colonialism. The first part of this paper analyses the nature of marriage in Nayar society, that differed from the rest of the country. The second part of the paper traces the changes in the system that came with the colonial influence to make it the matrilineal system that became the most popularly followed. The third part of this paper chalks out what matrilineal succession entailed and finally, the last part of the paper analyses the impact of the abolition of joint families through the Joint Hindu Family System Abolition Act of 1976. Being from the Nayar community, I have many first-hand examples of the devolution of property pre and post abolition that I have attempted to use in the explanation of matriliny. Though these examples, it is evident that matriliny as an institution continues, though informally, and is etched in the culture of the society.
External References to this Article
Loading reference data...
Readership Data
Refreshing Cached Analytics Data
The cached analytics data has become stale and journal.thelawbrigade.com is making a fresh request to fetch the latest data from Google Analytics. This may take 20-30 seconds depending on the server response time from Google Analytics. Please do not close the browser during this time. We appreciate your patience.
License Terms
Ownership and Licensing:
Authors of research papers submitted to any journal published by The Law Brigade Publishers retain the copyright of their work while granting the journal specific rights. Authors maintain ownership of the copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication. Simultaneously, authors agree to license their research papers under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) License.
License Permissions:
Under the CC BY-SA 4.0 License, others are permitted to share and adapt the work, even for commercial purposes, provided that appropriate attribution is given to the authors, and acknowledgment is made of the initial publication by The Law Brigade Publishers. This license encourages the broad dissemination and reuse of research papers while ensuring that the original work is properly credited.
Additional Distribution Arrangements:
Authors are free to enter into separate, non-exclusive contractual arrangements for distributing the published version of the work (e.g., posting it to institutional repositories or publishing it in books), provided that the original publication by The Law Brigade Publishers is acknowledged.
Online Posting:
Authors are encouraged to share their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on personal websites) both prior to submission and after publication. This practice can facilitate productive exchanges and increase the visibility and citation of the work.
Responsibility and Liability:
Authors are responsible for ensuring that their submitted research papers do not infringe on the copyright, privacy, or other rights of third parties. The Law Brigade Publishers disclaims any liability for any copyright infringement or violation of third-party rights within the submitted research papers.
Published
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Copyright © 2026 by Aaditi Pradeep
The copyright and license terms mentioned on this page take precedence over any other license terms mentioned on the article full text PDF or any other material associated with the article.
