Family, kinship and marriage among muslims in India / edited by Imtiaz Ahmad

PARTAP C. AGGARWAL received his training in anthropo logy at Cornell University where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1966. He taught for four years at Colgate University at Hamilton, New York, and is currently Head of the Sociology Division at the Shri Ram Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources, New Delhi. His major research interest has been in the areas of social and cultural change, social stratification, economic development and applied social science. He has contributed several papers to anthropological journals and is also the author of Caste, Religion and Power and Landless Labour and Green Revolution. He is currently engaged in the study of the impact of the special privileges granted to the Scheduled Castes under the Indian Constitution in Haryana and plans to do research on management sub-culture in India in the near future, Dr. Aggarwal will be a visiting Professor at Colgate University during 1975-76.
This collection of papers on family, kinship and marriage among Muslims in India was undertaken with a view to bring ing together a body of empirical data on the actual patterns of these institutions among different Muslim communities in different parts of India and to exploring the relative impact of the shari'a and the local environment upon their structure and functioning. Each paper presented here is based on data collected by the authors themselves through direct personal observations. Further, each contribution seeks to describe those social institutions as they function in reality rather than on the basis of the written laws of Islam. Some authors no doubt refer during the course of their discussions to Islamic ideals and try to examine the correspondence between reli gious principles and social practices. For example, Saiyed. treats the absence of purdah among the Jamaati women against an ideal-the type of purdah as, he thinks, it is practi sed among Muslims in other parts of the country. Again, Jacobson refers repeatedly to the provisions of the Shari'at, and finally offers an explanation for the observance of purdah among the women of the Bhopal region in terms of the Islamic rules of inheritance. Even so, Islamic laws as embodied in the Shari'at are not their principal concern. Their primary con cern is to provide factual accounts of kinship and marriage among the Muslim communities studied by them.

The papers presented here range from simple ethnographic descriptions to detailed analytical discussions. Furthermore, they cover a wide range of themes, especially because each contributor has written about a theme on which he or she had data or thought was worth discussing. Therefore, the picture which emerges from these papers on family, kinship and marriage among Muslims in India is too varied and diffused to allow brief summarisation.