Unveiling the Gender Paradox, Dynamics of Power, Sexuality, and Property in Kerala by Lekha N.B and Antony Palackal, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2020, interrogates and demystifies the ‘Kerala miracle’ through the route of sociological inquiry into the identity, status, and agency of women in the private and public domain. Questioning the hegemonic androcentric culture and the various proxies of empowerment, such as women’s high indices in literacy, education, sex ratio, and health, the authors puncture the twin-fold process of empowerment and development by interrogating the gender paradox in Kerala’s model of development and bringing to light the heterogeneous facets of being a Kerala woman.

The book, an ethnographic exploratory study into the matrilineal traditions of the Nayar Community women, a foreword caste, reveals the dynamics of gender relations from a socio-cultural lens. Property in the matrilineal traditions of the Nayar community was the foremost agentic apparatus that allowed Nayar women to negotiate and bargain with patriarchy and build autonomous conjugal relations that empowered Nayar women’s power and sexuality. Tracing the cultural and historical roots of the matrilineal traditions through literature and interviews, the authors take on the humungous task of mapping the changes in the inheritance rights of three generations of the Nayar Community, which has severely affected the bargaining status of women in the household and the larger socio-cultural structures of the society. These changes are accorded to laws of colonial modernity and the expansion of modernization and urbanization, which uprooted matrilineal traditions. In the latter years of India’s Independence, left-front rule and agrarian reforms in a way furthered patriarchal norms by diminishing female social and economic power. It attacked the ownership rights of women and made them dependent on the patrilineal concept of family and property rights. There are severe implications for the weakening of property rights in the Nayar community, which are explored in the latter part of the book.

Familial roles have been reimagined with the weakening of property rights and oppressive moral mores, particularly for women who lack autonomy and decision-making powers within the household.  Terming it the household responsibility syndrome, the book explores how women are confined to being good wives and mothers, leading to the country’s lowest female labour force participation. The unequal status of women in the private sphere is reflected in the public sphere through the dismal representation of women in legislative and executive bodies at the central and state levels.

The book powerfully asserts that the nexus between modern family and property has severe implications for the female body, choice, and sexuality. For instance, relegating women to an inferior status in the household changed the women-centric matrilineal traditions of the Marumakkatayam system – property belonged to women of the lineage and was passed down to the daughters. Historically, in the Nayar community, women stayed in taravad (ancestral property). There was a deep living sense of collective ownership and decision-making. Private property emerged, which made father and son the fulcrum of the modern family. However, uncle and nephew played essential roles in the affairs of the Taravad, which does make one ponder that male authority continued to exist, just the roles have changed. The family then became a significant actor in social production and reproduction, which determined economic production. In this context, the female body became the central manoeuvre of relations of power, transferring its impact onto gender and caste relations in contemporary Kerala.

The existence of Taravad was influential in celebrating and accepting sexual freedom as a natural expression of the female self and body within the marumakkatayam system. Women could freely exercise their sexuality in terms of choice of partners, the number of partners they preferred, and the duration of partnerships. It was celebrated and considered affluent for Taravad. Polyandry was freely allowed until it met its fate due to Victorian morality, which brought in shackles of monogamy, marriage, and fatherhood.

Taravad also provided safety to women, which remained unaltered after marriage. It extended the notion of safety to unmarried widows; old and young women could live freely without social taboos, which is so uncharacteristic in modern society. In their ethnographic study of  Nayar women in Central, North, and South Kerala, young women have a faint idea of the uncharacteristic nature of Taravad. Sambandam (Nayar marriage) further entrenched the notion of safety and authority as women could choose their partners without entering into formal rites of modern marriage that are co-residence, sexual exclusiveness, maintenance, and domestic service.

The book brings in a semiotic analysis of property instrumental in providing a critical fallback option in the form of bargaining power for Nayar women in nuclear families. For example, property in the lives of Nayyar women is not only a material reagent but a symbolic, political, and cultural one. There are still remnants of matrilineal traditions. For instance, in South Kerala, women in the private sphere play an essential role in decision-making. Thus, bargaining Matriliny within Patriarchy.

In the end, there is exhaustive scholarship on gender, development, and empowerment; the book’s novelty lies in provoking the reader to look for the political in the progressive landscape of Kerala and its politics. Stepping into the feminist literature, it avows that the direction for feminist assertion lies in public-political for bargaining within patriarchy to thrive.

***

Shailja Tandon is a Senior Research Associate at LEAD at KREA University.