Moral Continuity 
Gujarati Kinship, Women, Children and Rituals. 
A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. 
by 
Alison Mary Spiro 
Department of Anthropology, Brunel University 
June 2003 
1 
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Abstract 
This thesis is a study of Gujarati women and children living in the North London 
Borough of Harrow. It addresses the issues concerning women in the household, that 
include their relations with other kin and wider networks, caring for children, feeding, 
and protecting them from evil influences, and their key involvement in ritual practice. 
Men as husbands, fathers, uncles and grandfathers are also discussed. Children's 
involvement in ritual from birth, or even before, is addressed and the way they make 
sense of the world through multiple carers. 
Households were studied using the methods of participant observation and in-depth, 
taped, unstructured interviews. Different caste groups, religions and social classes were 
included in the study group, but the majority were Hindu, and a few Jain. Muslim 
households were excluded because they represented less than 10% of the Harrow 
population and would have made the study too broad. Data obtained from a three-month 
period of research in Ahmedabad, informed the Harrow data, but a direct comparison 
was not made. 
The theme of moral continuity emerged from the data as a central concern for Hindu 
and Jain households. This was linked to kinship ties, respect for elders, obligations, 
religious festivals and rituals. The joint household remains popular and many younger 
people are learning Gujarati, practising rituals and asking for arranged `introduction' 
marriages. Family `rules' which have been followed through many generations are 
followed in respect to festivals, life-cycle rituals of childhood, warding off the evil eye 
and what foods to eat. Childhood is a time of purity when children are thought to be 
close to the gods, requires special consideration, especially when it comes to food, and 
milk may be thought to be the safest option. Children live in a network of 
interdependency with other kin and through rituals participate in a world that respects 
the hierarchy of the household and wider Gujarati `community'. Western influences of 
toys, peers and the educational system are acknowledged at various points. In 
conclusion, a sense of being Gujarati is still held by individuals today in Britain. 
Continuity of moral codes is achieved through ritual practice, which is transformed over 
time, links with the ancestors and gives a sense of belonging to `one of us'. 
2 
To Stephen, Jonathan, Matthew and Michael. 
3 
Table of Contents 
Abstract 
............................................................................................................................. 
2 
Table of Contents .............................................................................................................. 
4 
Table of Maps and Figures ................................................................................................ 
7 
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... 
9 
Chapter 1 Introduction 
................................................................................................ 
11 
The study group ...................................................................................................... 
12 
The research experience .......................................................................................... 
13 
The history of migration to Harrow ........................................................................ 
17 
The background to religious beliefs ........................................................................ 
25 
The house or ghar ................................................................................................... 
37 
Chapter 2 Caste, Marriage and Kinship Obligations .................................................. 
40 
Is caste still important? ............................................................................................ 41 
Marriages - arranged or introduced? ...................................................................... 
48 
Kinship obligations ................................................................................................. 56 
Gift exchange between kin ...................................................................................... 
61 
Chapter 3 Women in Kinship 
...................................................................................... 
67 
The bond between bhai and bahen (brother and sister) .......................................... 
69 
Networks of Gossip ................................................................................................. 
78 
Attachment to the house .......................................................................................... 
79 
Shared substance and respect .................................................................................. 80 
Bhajan - gatherings of wider kin ............................................................................. 85 
Joint households ...................................................................................................... 90 
Navratri -a festival for women .............................................................................. 98 
Clothing -a public display of meaning ................................................................ 106 
4 
Chapter 4: Women and Spiritual Continuity ................................................................. 
110 
Women as mediators of spiritual continuity in the household .............................. 
114 
Conflict between women of different generations ................................................ 
115 
Gender relations and spiritual responsibilities ...................................................... 
117 
Rituals to ensure a good husband .......................................................................... 
121 
Household purity ................................................................................................... 
124 
Protecting the household from pollution ............................................................... 
128 
Women as pure with a close affinity with the mate .............................................. 
133 
Chapter 5 Food .......................................................................................................... 
137 
Food for different generations ............................................................................... 
137 
Food for guests ...................................................................................................... 
142 
Generation and gender in the kitchen ................................................................... 
144 
The importance of fasting ..................................................................................... 147 
The purity of milk ................................................................................................. 
149 
Food for the gods .................................................................................................. 
150 
Commensality ....................................................................................................... 
152 
Positive and negative energies in food .................................................................. 
155 
Chapter 6 Evil influences that cause illness .............................................................. 
160 
Marriage and pregnancy ........................................................................................ 
161 
Protecting children ................................................................................................ 
164 
Detecting an evil presence .................................................................................... 
167 
Warding off evil .................................................................................................... 
173 
Bhut (ghosts) and other evil spirits ........................................................................ 
174 
People with powers to detect and exorcise ghosts ................................................ 
178 
Chapter 7 The household's moral duty to the child .................................................. 
182 
Pregnancy: a time for vigilance ............................................................................. 
186 
5 
The ritual for the seventh month of pregnancy ..................................................... 
190 
Childbirth -a new responsibility for female kin .................................................. 
193 
Chhati - the day the god of fate writes the child's future ..................................... 
194 
The hair-cutting ceremony in Harrow and Ahmedabad ........................................ 
202 
Chapter 8 Childhood: The Beginnings Of Interdependency .................................... 
216 
Childcare and decision-making ............................................................................. 
217 
Feeding relationships ............................................................................................ 
219 
Co-sleeping 
........................................................................................................... 
223 
The special relationship with ba (paternal grandmother) ..................................... 
225 
Involvement of other kin ....................................................................................... 
228 
Discipline or teasing7 ............................................................................................ 
236 
Conclusion: the child in ritual ............................................................................... 
238 
Bibliography 
.................................................................................................................. 
248 
Glossary 
........................................................................................................................ 
255 
6 
Table of Maps and Figures 
Map 1- India - the location of the state of Gujarat ................................................................. 17 
Map 2. The Growth of Greater London ................................................................................. 21 
Map 3. The Electoral Wards of the London Borough of Harrow ............................................... 22 
Figure 1. London Borough of Harrow: Ethinic Groups Statistics 1997 ..................................... 23 
Map 4. Gujarati-speaking school children in Greater London ................................................... 24 
Figure 2: Generational changes in marriage patterns ............................................................. 53 
Figure 3: Kinship terms 
....................................................................................................... 72 
Figure 4: Raksha-bandhan 
.................................................................................................. 74 
Figure 5: Raksha-bandhan 
.................................................................................................. 74 
Figure 6: Raksha-bandhan 
.................................................................................................. 75 
Figure 7: Raksha-bandhan 
.................................................................................................. 76 
Figure 8: Bhajan 
................................................................................................................ 86 
Figure 9: Bhajan 
................................................................................................................ 87 
Figures 10 and 11: Bhajan ................................................................................................. 89 
Figure 12: A joint Hindu Household 
...................................................................................... 92 
Figure 13: A joint Jain household 
......................................................................................... 93 
Figure 14: Dances performed at Navratri ............................................................................ 101 
Figure 15. Calendrical Festivals 
......................................................................................... 105 
Figure 16: Daily puja in Ahmedabad ................................................................................... 126 
Figure 17: Navratri puja in Ahmedabad .............................................................................. 127 
Figure 18: Gayatri ............................................................................................................ 134 
Figure 19: An advertisement for buffalo milk ...................................................................... 150 
Figure 20: Main life-cycle rituals - Hindu and Jain ............................................................... 185 
Figure 21: The Chhati Ritual .............................................................................................. 201 
Figure 22: Foi wraps the baby in a green cloth and turns him towards the shrine .................... 
201 
7 
Figure 23: Mandir constructed for the balmovala in Harrow .................................................. 208 
Figure 24: The Mandir constructed for the balmovala in Ahmedabad ..................................... 209 
Figure 25: Women worship at the shrine ............................................................................. 210 
Figure 26: Women and children dance ............................................................................... 211 
Figure 27. Seven-month old boy ........................................................................................ 230 
Figure 28: Seven-month old boy and his ba ........................................................................ 231 
8 
Acknowledgements. 
First, I would like to thank my two supervisors for their support, guidance and 
encouragement over the years that it has taken to complete this thesis. Christina Toren 
has taught me how to conduct proper fieldwork that is both thorough and meaningful. 
She has been tireless in her reading of drafts and guiding me through my analysis, for 
which I am very grateful. David Gellner has been an inspiration in his knowledge of 
South Asia and his depth of understanding of the literature. I am very grateful to him 
also for his reading of drafts and his encouragement. I would like to thank other 
members of the Anthropology Department at Brunel University and Liz Achroyd in 
particular for her support. 
I am indebted to the generosity of the Florence Nightingale Foundation and the 
Mercers' Company for awarding me a travel scholarship. This enabled me to go to 
Gujarat and live there for three months in Ahmedabad and visit pilgrimage sites around 
the State. The experience gave me a depth of understanding that could not have been 
gained by just conducting fieldwork in Britain. 
I am very grateful to the Gujarati families that have welcomed me into their homes in 
Harrow and Ahmedabad, at first as a stranger, and later as a friend. Many have shared 
personal and sensitive issues about their lives and trusted me to maintain confidentiality. 
I have been over-whelmed by the extent of people's hospitality both here and in India, 
and without exception, I have been welcomed warmly and generously. I have tried to 
represent their views at accurately as possible, but realise that I will always be an 
outsider, and can never represent the fullness of what it is to be Gujarati. Many have 
given me helpful comments on chapters and I would like to thank them for these and 
their encouragement. I would like to thank Mr and Mrs Rawal, Mr and Mrs Bhatt and 
family, Ameeta Pinnu, Mr and Mrs Amin and Anita Acharya in particular, for the time 
they spent explaining concepts to me. Anita Acharya and Sala Shah for their patience in 
teaching me Gujarati. 
Lastly, I would like to thank my family for their support, especially my husband 
Stephen for his understanding and positive contributions at every stage. I am grateful 
for the way he coped with the domestic chores while I was away in India, which 
included moving our youngest son, Michael, to university hall for his first year as a 
9 
student. Jonathan and Matthew have always shown a great deal of interest in the 
research and have discussed it with their Gujarati friends. I must say a big thank you to 
Michael, for his computer skills and his invaluable contribution to the final layout and 
illustrations of this thesis. 
10 
Chapter 1 Introduction 
Eyes wide with excitement, Yogesh came running into the parent and toddler group and 
joined a group of other two-year old children who were waiting to go down the slide. 
His grandmother proudly explained to me that he now knows how to greet the priests in 
the Swaminarayan Temple, calling them baps ji (honourable father) and bowing down 
on the ground in front of them. He goes with her to the temple every week and really 
enjoys himself. She said that they hope he will attend the Swaminarayan School, which 
is private but worth saving for, because she thinks it will teach him how to be a proper 
Gujarati. Once he has learnt how to eat properly (that is vegetarian, without eggs), to be 
respectful of adults in both his manner and the language he uses, to read and write 
Gujarati, and to know about his religion, then they will be happy for him to go to 
another school. The first years at school are important. If he goes to a local primary 
school, he might learn swear words, bad behaviour and lack of respect for adults. 
During the fifteen years I have worked as a Health Visitor with Gujarati families in 
Harrow I have become deeply interested in the moral values upheld by many and 
described so well by Yogesh's grandmother. These moral values reside not only in 
Hinduism or Jainism, although these are important, but in a general sense of what it is to 
be Gujarati -a sense that is informed by a long history of life 
in India and, for some, 
migration to Africa before the United Kingdom. This sense of being a proper Gujarati to 
which Yogesh's grandmother referred is recognised by Gujaratis of different castes and 
sets them apart from other people in the UK who are of South Asian descent. Punjabis 
to whom I have spoken suggest that many Gujaratis are conservative in their outlook 
and have held on to rituals, beliefs and practices that Punjabis now consider to be old 
fashioned. Festivals and religious gatherings, hymn-singing sessions referred to as 
bhajan by Gujarati Hindus and satsang by Jains, are popular meeting places for kin and 
wider sociality networks; here Gujarati ideals are reiterated. Life-cycle and calendrical 
rituals are meeting points for people referred to and addressed as kin. 
Victor Turner's (1969,1974) processual analysis of ritual will be used throughout the 
thesis in a variety of social contexts. He argues that rituals are performances, which 
follow distinct stages and occur in groups, which are bounded by shared values, norms 
and histories. The beginning of the ritual is marked by a separation from the usual social 
relations, followed by a period of liminality during which there is status reversal for the 
11 
individuals involved, with the structure and hierarchy of the group being overthrown. 
During the liminal period there is a `blend of lowliness and sacredness, of homogeneity 
and conradeship' (Turner 1969: 96). Through this a sense of `communitas' arises during 
the rite, in which there is a sense of being which is a: 
.. 
'moment in and out of time' and in and out of the secular social structure, which reveals, however 
fleetingly, some recognition (in symbol if not always in language) of a generalised social bond that 
has ceased to be and has simultaneously yet to be fragmented into a multiplicity of structural ties 
(Turner 1969: 96). 
Religious sentiments are brought into the secular world of the group and become 
accepted, even taken-for-granted. The research data explored in this thesis bear on ideas 
and practices important to Gujarati people in their day-to-day life, on how ideas and 
practices are articulated to one another and how children are inducted into the process 
of ensuring their continuing importance. The relevance of ritual in the household and at 
social gatherings became apparent at the beginning of the research as an area requiring 
detailed observation and analysis. 
The study group 
The people with whom I carried out my research came from households which had 
originated in Gujarat, but which may have been established in East Africa before the 
second migration to the UK. At the beginning of the fieldwork I also visited some 
Muslim households (Muslims represent less than 10% of the Gujarati-speaking 
population in Harrow) but soon realised that it would be too big a task to incorporate 
this group with all its different religious ideals into one thesis. My study therefore 
focuses on Hindu and a few Jain households in Harrow whose members share certain 
rituals and inter-marry, although they worship at different temples. I have focused on 
Hindu religious practices through my experiences and observations in India while living 
with a Brahman family, and through my temple and household observations in Britain. I 
have not been able to include Jain religious practices, but have included a Jain life-cycle 
ritual. Hindu and Jain Gujarati people speak of having a common sense of difference, a 
sense of shared history and, for all they belong to different religious sects, a shared 
moral code. 
12 
The research experience 
The object of my research is to understand the meanings my informants attach to 
kinship, life-cycle ceremonies, household rituals, religious and supernatural beliefs, 
food, child-rearing and everyday interactions in the households, temples and public 
gatherings. As will become plain, my interests focus on aspects of daily life that come 
within the remit of the Health Visitor. The fieldwork for this thesis began in 1997, 
following receipt of approval from the Ethics Committee for the local Health Authority. 
I work in an area that has a Gujarati population of about 30%, so I found it easy to 
recruit families who were prepared to co-operate in the research. At every meeting or 
home visit, I was welcomed warmly. On special occasions I wore a Punjabi dress: 
baggy trousers, tunic top and scarf; and as my confidence in spoken Gujarati increased I 
was able to make myself understood. I was told that wearing the correct clothing and 
speaking Gujarati indicated that I was showing respect. Few families refused to take 
part and most have been keen to see me and to have interviews recorded on tape, some 
actually asking where my tape-recorder was if I did not produce it in the first few 
minutes. At first, I identified ten families of different backgrounds to visit on a regular 
basis and the methodology I employed depended on the situation. Gradually the 
numbers of families have grown and I now have in-depth data on thirty families in 
Harrow. 
Two members of staff in the practice where I work are Gujarati and as a health visitor I 
have continuing contact with large numbers of Gujarati families as a matter of routine. I 
have been and in a position to make notes on discussions, to test ideas or themes, with 
eighty individuals in addition to the core 30 research families, always ensuring 
confidentiality and using pseudonyms. 
During planned research sessions with families I tape-recorded interviews if it was 
appropriate, but I always took notes of my observations or key quotations. Detailed field 
notes were made as soon as possible after the visit. I began to find that when I was 
listening to tape recordings, even semi-structured interviews interfered with the flow of 
the discussion. So later interviews were totally unstructured and I tried to interject only 
where I wanted clarification or where themes I had picked up from other discussions 
wanted confirming. There were also times when I needed information about, for 
example, marriage arrangements or genealogies when I asked direct questions. What 
people say they do and what they actually do may, however, conflict with one another 
13 
and so, where possible, participant observation always helped to provide a more 
complete picture. 
Participant observation as a method provides richness of data not otherwise available. 
By observing where people live, the lay-out of houses, how they greet each other, what 
they wear, how they conduct themselves especially in relation to others, how children 
are reared, kin relations and eating arrangements, a deeper understanding can be gained. 
In my own case, detailed descriptions are always completed as soon as possible after the 
visits and I became aware of an improvement in my observing-and-recording skills as 
time passed. The observations I have made in households of everyday activities, 
especially with families with children, have been invaluable. A group of nine women 
belonging to different castes offered to talk to me for three hours in March 1999, about 
their experiences of living as Gujaratis in London. We covered a wide variety of topics 
from caste to marriage, food, religion ideas of pollution and ritual practice. In Harrow I 
have also participated in many public gatherings of kin and friends and festivals at 
temples and have visited a Gujarati school and a caste association. I have attended 
household rituals (both Hindu and Jain), life-cycle rituals (including two weddings), a 
bhajan, a Jain Paryushan feast and two Navratri dances (garba), two Diwali parades in 
Ealing Road, Hindi movies at a local cinema with one of the families and a concert of 
Hindi movie stars at Wembley Stadium. 
I began to learn Gujarati in 1996 and now have an adequate understanding of the spoken 
language, can converse at a basic level, and can read and write the script. I have 
attended a GCSE Gujarati course where I was the only student not to have been brought 
up in a Gujarati household - an experience which was not only helpful in learning the 
language, but which gave me an opportunity to observe interactions in the class and to 
explore certain themes with the group. My classmates were aware of my research and 
invited me to their houses on special occasions. 
The main emphasis of this research is on the Harrow Gujarati `community'; Gujaratis 
themselves use this word, and use `community' to denote group unity or solidarity. 
Bauman (1996: 15) has argued in his search for a `dominant discourse' in Southall that 
the word `community' has become a polite term for `ethnic minorities', which was used 
by South Asians in Africa and is now used freely in Britain. In my research, the 
different meanings attached to `community' depend on context, but can refer to caste 
membership, religious affiliation, or a wider Gujarati cohesiveness. 
14 
When first I began my fieldwork, several of my informants suggested that in order to 
understand Gujarati people's lives, I should go and live with families in India -a 
sentiment reinforced by Banks (1992: 219) who argued that in order to understand the 
lives of people who are part of a diaspora, the researcher has to visit the diaspora's 
country of origin. I was fortunate to gain a travel scholarship from the Florence 
Nightingale Foundation that enabled me to travel to Gujarat in 1999 where I spent three 
months with a Brahman joint family in a two-bedroom first floor flat in the suburbs of 
Ahmedabad. At the time I was the only non-Indian in the neighbourhood and one of the 
few in Gujarat as a whole. People stared, children gathered round me and touched me. I 
found this difficult at first - that is until I learned to relax and smile and talk with them. 
Everyone wanted to know why I had left my husband and children in England - was I 
getting divorced? My time in Ahmedabad gave me the opportunity for participant 
observation on the household where I was staying and I learned a lot - especially from 
the two-year-old girl and her grandparents. The oldest son proved to be a useful 
informant too and took me on several trips on his scooter to visit inner city areas and 
families living there. We also went to Vadodra (Baroda) during Navratri (festival of 
nine nights) to observe dances there and visit a pilgrimage site up a mountain. I visited 
twelve other households in Ahmedabad on a regular basis - some in poor, slum 
dwellings, some in basic, one or two-bedroom flats, and others in wealthy bunglows. I 
visited temples, almost on a daily basis, with families and attended local celebrations, 
such as a full-moon festival. I was also able to visit health service institutions, local 
clinics and charitable projects. I was in Ahmedabad for Navratri and Diwali and 
participated in all the religious rituals and social events of that time. Without any of the 
distractions of doing anthropology at home, I was able to focus my attention on 
participant observation and found I had time in the afternoons when the weather was hot 
(over 40 degrees C. ) to write copious notes. I met Harishdaben Dave, a post-doctoral 
research anthropologist working in tribal research and development at the Gujarat 
Vidyapith, part of the University of Ahmedabad, who gave me material on the local 
deities (the Mataji) and spent two days with me going through relevant PhD theses 
written in Gujarati. I was invited to use the University library whenever I wished. She 
and her brother Kirit, who worked in tribal development, took me to visit Ambaji in the 
north of Gujarat, which is an important pilgrimage site. There I participated with them 
in doing darshan (being in the presence) of the goddess and the priest allowed me to go 
15 
into the innermost part of the temple, which is usually reserved for Brahmans. 
Harshidaben also took me to visit to temples in the central area of Ahmedabad. 
To understand Gujarati ideas of the person, the researcher has to address issues of 
kinship, sociability networks, ritual, religion, body boundaries and substance as well as 
concepts of health and disease. A processual view is essential to capture a time in 
history where change is rapid - especially in respect of women's roles. Traditionally, in 
the household, women have been responsible for ritual practice and guiding the family 
in religious observance. Will this still be the case in twenty years time when the 
majority will be working - many in demanding professional careers? Gujaratis have a 
reputation among other South Asians for clinging on to the traditions they practised 
forty years ago, perhaps more so in the UK than in India, but will this change in light of 
women's present educational achievements? This study addresses the current situation 
where rituals, religious observances, the eating of special foods and kin gatherings are 
all guided by older women in the family, many of whom migrated to the UK from 
Africa and India. The situation may change once the women born and educated in the 
UK gain seniority and authority in the household. 
16 
Map 1- India - the location of the state of Gujarat (Directorate of Tourism Government of Gujarat 
1992). 
The history of migration to Harrow 
Gujarat is aa coastal state in north-west India (see map 1) and the people there have 
been traders for centuries, selling their merchantise to other countries. A catastrophic 
earthquake hit the state with the epicentre near the western city of Bhuj, in January 
2001, killing 60-80,000 people and making over a hundred thousand homeless. In 
Ahmedabad, many concrete tower blocks of flats, similar to the one I stayed in two 
months earlier, were destroyed. Thankfully, the families I knew survived, but many 
were made homeless. Another disaster hit the state in 2002, when violence escalated 
17 
between Muslims and Hindus, resulting in riots in Ahmedabad. It is estimated that about 
6,000 people were killed across the state and many buildings were destroyed. 
Throughout these disasters the people with whom I was in e-mail contact, remained 
positive and accepted that this was the will of God, even declaring to me `God is great'. 
At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, Gujarati traders 
sailed to East Africa, often in small boats, staying there for a few years at a time. The 
intention initially was to return home to India, where their families remained. Gradually 
marriages were contracted there and life-cycle rituals began to be practised. Men 
retired and returned to India and sent their sons to succeed them in their businesses. 
These alien countries did not become their homes; India remained their ancestral home 
with their main temples and deities remaining there (Burghart 1987). 
Mrs Pandya told me of her experiences of migrating to East Africa as a child: 
My father went to Nairobi in 1944. He was offered a good job, but my mother and I did not 
go with him. So we stayed in India for a while, until he had settled there and he had learnt 
about the country. Then we went to join him a few months later, but because it was the war, 
a ship would not take us because they would only take authorised people. So there was no 
way of getting there and my mother was really fed up in India. So we went by boat, a 
schooner, from Janika to Mombassa. This took 21 days, was very rough and had no toilet 
facilities. They collect water before they start the journey and we were told that there was a 
cook and a doctor with us. After we had left we realised that we did not have a cook or a 
doctor. My mother said she had paid for a cook and she was not going to do it. Someone 
did cook and must have been given some money. We had a first aid box, but they had 
nothing. The toilet was a seat on the edge of the boat and everything goes into the water. 
My mother was just so fed up but she was determined to go. There were about 20-30 
people in the boat and the planes used to fly really low to check we were not a spy boat. 
When they came low, everyone shivered because they didn't know what was going to 
happen. Then within 15 days we reached Mombassa. We saw the port and the houses, but 
as it was night the captain anchored the boat, intending to let us off in the morning. He did 
not anchore the boat properly and the tide was going out. In the morning, we found we were 
out at sea again and it took us 8 days to come back again! We were very tired and had little 
food or water left. From Mombassa we went to Nairobi to join my father. 
By the time the Pandya family arrived, thousands of Gujarati settlers were already well 
established in East Africa and becoming economically successful. The first migrants 
18 
arrived at the end of the nineteenth century and worked as traders and clerks in the 
colonial administration or in the construction of the East African railway. 
Burghart (1987) argued that the Hindu Universe was no longer seen as the centre of the 
world. Queen Victoria was known by some as the `Maharani Viktoriya' who performed 
the works of the gods by bringing fire in the form of gas lanterns to India like Agni, the 
god of fire. She also brought justice like Dharma Raja, the god of justice. Religious 
leaders travelled to Great Britain at the middle to end of the nineteenth century, to give 
lectures on Hinduism. In the first half of the twentieth century very few Indians lived in 
Britain. In 1945 it was estimated that 7,000 people of Indian origin came here and these 
were mostly Bengalis and Punjabis and very few Gujaratis (Burghart 1987). There was 
no evidence of a public temple in use at this time, the first public place of worship being 
built in 1949. After the Second World War, work for professional and skilled labourers 
became available, and an open system of immigration from commonwealth countries 
enabled large numbers of people to enter Britain from the Indian Subcontinent. Many of 
these were professional people wanting to follow their careers in Britain (Kanitkar 
1972). Many of these were Punjabis who came after their homeland had been divided 
after the Partition of India and Pakistan. The Punjabis settled in manufacturing towns 
such as Bradford and Leeds and then in Southall in West London, finding work in 
transport or Industry. In 1962, however, the Commonwealth Immigration Act restricted 
the entry of Indians who did not hold British passports and in 1968 a voucher system 
was introduced which restricted the numbers that could be admitted each year. 
Gujaratis started arriving in Britain in the mid to late 1960s following political changes 
in Kenya and increasing nationalisation and `Africanisation'. In 1972 Idi Amin ordered 
all Asians holding British passports to leave Uganda within three months, taking no 
more than £50 with them. Most of the people who arrived in Britain were Gujarati 
speakers, and they settled in Leicester, Bolton, Birmingham, Manchester, Coventry, 
Harrow, Brent, Barnet and Newham. In 1977 there were 307,000 Hindus in Britain, 
70% of whom were Gujarati, 15% Punjabi and 15% other Indians (Burghart 1987: 8). 
The arrival of Hindu women in Britain was significant for the continuation of religious 
life, for although ascetic men and Brahmans are important in public ceremonies, women 
take the more active role in the observances in the home. In the early 1960s the 
immigration of men was double that of women, a chain migration occurred and by the 
end of the 1960s there were more women arriving than men. At this time temple trusts 
19 
were set up with the intention of purchasing properties that could become temples. In 
1969 the first temple was consecrated in Leicester, followed soon afterwards by one in 
London, another in Leeds and one in Bradford (Burghart 1987). Gujarati families have 
always retained their close kin and village ties with India. Even those who came from 
East Africa, still view the Indian Subcontinent as their home. 
Since 1970 large numbers of Gujarati families have settled in the London Borough of 
Harrow (see Map 2), which has attracted the wealthier, more upwardly mobile 
individuals. Adjacent to Harrow are other boroughs where South Asians have 
congregated, notably Brent and Ealing, which have added to the attraction of Harrow 
with their Indian shops, temples, caste associations and businesses. The Harrow 
population differed, however, from its neighbours because Harrow families showed a 
tendency to buy their own two- or three-bedroom, semi-detached properties built 
between the two World Wars. According to the 1991 Census, Harrow had the tenth 
highest proportion of non-white ethnic groups of all local authorities in the UK. Sixteen 
per cent (32,145) of Harrow residents were of Indian origin and in some southern wards 
of the borough, notably Kenton East and West (see Map 3), this rose to 43% of the 
population. The projected numbers of South Asians (Indian, Pakistansi and 
Bangladeshi) in Harrow for 1997, compiled by the London Research Centre was 49,700 
(see Figure 1). 25% of these residents in the 1991 Census were born in India, 32% in the 
UK and 39% in Eastern Africa. Kalka (1991) in her study of how Gujarati leaders 
fought for their rights with Harrow Council, estimated that 70% of these residents are of 
Gujarati origin and that the majority had arrived in the UK as a result of the upheavals 
in Kenya in the late 1960s and the expulsion of South Asians from Uganda in 1972. 
Rachel Dwyer estimates that of the half-million Gujaratis in Britain as a whole, about 
half have strong East African connections (Dwyer, in Ballard, 1994: 182). 
20 
Map 2. The Growth of Greater London (Publications research unit of the Autumobile Association 
1979). 
ý-ý 
wk: 
ýý 
L 
How London Grew 
OWN a- .. , 
9uiN-up uN 
1979 
m 
El 
CrMIrLaMai 
4omidNy 
Qwec.,. n, .. _r. a. waw. eaýnwr 
21 
Map 3. The Electoral Wards of the London Borough of Harrow. (Her Majesty's Stationery Office 
2000) 
Canons 
Stanmore Park 
Hatch End 
Harrow Weald 
Belmont 
Pinner 
Headstone North 
Pinner South 
eadstone So 
Wealdstone 
MarlbQrough 
Greenhill 
Rapers Lane 
Roxbourne 
Roxeth 
West Harrow 
Harrow on the Hill 
Kenton West 
Edgware 
Queensbury 
Kenton East 
22 
Figure 1. London Borough of Harrow: Ethinic Groups Statistics 1997 (Kaminska 2000). 
LB OF HARROW - ETHNIC GROUP STATISTICS 
In 1991 the ethnic group composition in Harrow was as follows: 
White 
Black-Caribbean 
Black-African 
Black-Other 
Indian 
Pakistani 
Bangladeshi 
Chinese 
Other Asian 
Other Groups 
TOTAL 
147,699 
4,411 
1,699 
1,349 
32,145 
2,339 
546 
1,797 
4,533 
3,612 
200,100 (rounded) 
73.8% 
2.2% 
0.8% 
0.7% 
16.1% 
1.2% 
0.3% 
0.9% 
2.3% 
1.8% 
100% (rounded) 
Source: 1991 Census, Local Base Statistics 
Crown Copyright 
The 2001 Census results will give updated ethnicity statistics, as well as some 
information on religion, which was a voluntary question in the Census. However, this 
information will not be available until early 2003. 
Government Mid-Year Estimates for 2000 for Harrow give an overall resident population 
of 214,900 for Harrow (no ethnicity breakdowns available). 
in June 1997 the London Research Centre (now part of the Greater London Authority) 
published some projections by broad ethnic groups in a report entitled "Cosmopolitan 
London: Past, present & future". 
The projections contained in this report, for 2001, for Harrow show: 
Projected percentage of ethnic minorities in Harrow: 36.7% 
Projected number of Black People in Harrow: 11,700 
Projected number of South Asian (Indian, Pakistani & Bangladeshi) in Harrow: 49,700 
Projected number of Chinese, Other Asian & Other ethnic groups in Harrow: 13,500 
Projected number of White people in Harrow: 129,300 
Sue Kaminska 
Research & Information Officer 
Planning Services 
ethstats. doc 
Tel: 020 8420 9651 (x5651 internal) 
Fax: 020 8424 1551 
email: sue. kaminska@harrow. gov. uk 
23 
Map 4. Gujarati-speaking school children in Greater London (Baker and Eversley 2000). 
Percentage of Gujarati-speaking schoolchildren 
in each LEA 
Average for London: 
3.19% 
Above average 
! or London 
y J 
Percentage of Speakers 
25-100% 
16< 25 % 
9<16% 
4ý9% 
1<4% 
025<1% 
0.125c 0.25% 
0.0625 < 0.125 % 
0 001 < 0.0625 % 
None reported 1) 
Ki6m,.: v- 
Map 15 
Within a few years after the arrival of the first Gujarati settlers, Harrow was established 
as an area with a substantial South Asian population. Men came first followed by 
women and children. Most families were prohibited from bringing money out of Africa 
and many arrived with only £50-£200 in their pockets, but businesses were soon 
established by means of money borrowed from lenders within their community (Tambs- 
Lyche 1980). Local people have told me that within three years of their arrival in 
Harrow, Gujaratis in some areas had purchased whole rows of shops. This was reflected 
in the Census data on employment, which showed a high level of self-employed 
residents amongst the Indians. Kalka argues that this group should not be seen as 
an'ethnic group at the edges of society', but as a `major element of society' (Kalka 
1991: 203). A more recent publication (Baker: Eversley 2000) estimates that 18.8% of 
Harrow's school children speak Gujarati as a first language (see Map 4). Personal 
communication with the Local Authority Education services in July 2000 indicated that 
20% of children entering school in Harrow are from Gujarati families. Following recent 
trends, through older people living longer and movement into the borough through 
arranged marriages from elsewhere in the UK, East Africa and India, it is likely that 
these figures will rise. 
24 
At first the Indian populations were concentrated in the south east of Harrow, where the 
prices of property were lower in areas that were popular with the Jewish community 
after the Second World War, but with increasing prosperity, the Indians have followed 
the Jews and moved to more prestigious wards of Harrow-on-the-Hill, Hatch End and 
Pinner. The southern wards are adjacent to the London Borough of Brent, which has its 
famous Ealing Road in Wembley with its lines of Indian shops more akin to a street in 
Bombay. The Swaminarayan Temple in Neasden attracts many followers from Harrow, 
especially from the Patel community. 
This similarity in settlement pattern of Jews and Gujaratis is interesting. They both 
share a desire to preserve their distinct religious ideas and customs, emphasise the 
importance of education, as well as achieving a highly successful socio-economic 
integration with the host society (Vertovec 2000: 3 1) -a pattern predicted by Pocock 
(1976) when discussing a sect of the Swaminarayan movement called the Bochasanwasi 
Shri Akshar Purushottam Sanstha: 
The Sanstha is faced with the dilemma to the extent that the Gujarati culture becomes the culture 
of religion and succeeds in establishing this conception in the minds of its youngest adherents, it 
can ensue its own continuity and emerge not unsimilar to the Jewish orthodox and conservative 
congregations in Great Britain. But the parallel with the Jews would break down to the extent that 
such an assimilation of 'culture' to 'religion' could isolate the Sanstha member, and thus frustrate 
the second part of the advice, 'Emulate the Jews' which urges not only the preservation of religion 
but also the maximum degree of integration compatible with that (Pocock 1976 quoted in Vertovec 
2000: 32). 
Religion becomes an integral part of everyday life - so much so that it is difficult for the 
observer to separate religious and secular life, but this is certainly not a concern of my 
informants. Dharma (moral duty) to kin is linked to spiritual relationships with the gods 
and a person's karma or the progress of the soul through life. The title of this thesis 
reflects this progress and the continuity of dharma from one generation to the next 
through all areas of social life. 
The background to religious beliefs 
Religion plays a central part in my informants' lives so an understanding of some of the 
main sects of Hinduism and some background to Jainism is essential to understanding 
25 
the details of the ethnography. I review below some of the anthropological literature on 
religious beliefs and practices and their implications for day-to-day life and examine the 
work of three authors on Gujarati religious practices. 
Rachel Dwyer (1994) explores the way religious observances are linked to caste 
membership. Pocock's depth of understanding gained from systematic fieldwork over 
time enables him to situate religious beliefs within the pantheon of the supernatural 
world of ghosts and evil influences (1972). Banks (1992) also paints a vivid picture of 
Jainism in Britain and Gujarat. 
Rachel Dwyer describes the importance of religion in the lives of Gujaratis. 
Yet apart from business enterprise and their highly developed and distinctive cuisine, Gujaratis are 
also known for another great love: religion (Dwyer 1994: 165). 
She describes the way the Gujarati temples, with their flags and spires, have brought a 
distinctive architecture to British cities. Gujarati religion encompasses the whole range 
of Hindu beliefs, but the two Vaishnava sects that are particular to them are the 
Pushtimargis, or followers of Vallabhacharya, and the Swaminarayans. Members of 
these two sects offer their devotions to Vishnu in the form of his incarnation in the form 
of Krishna. Pocock argues that in most parts of Gujarat, Krishna is chosen as the divine 
embodiment (1973: 108). Both these movements would seem to have had profound 
influences on social organisation, moral values, and law and order in Gujarat. 
The main greetings used by Hindus reflect these observances. Jayse Krishna and Jay 
Sivaminarayan convey the respective blessings of a god and a guru (who is often given 
the status of a god) and indicate how religious beliefs pervade social interactions. Some 
Brahmans follow a Shaivite path, but Dwyer does not include Mataji worship, which is 
particularly important in life-cycle rituals and during the festival of Navratri; Pocock 
does mention these, however, and they will be discussed in a later chapter. Pocock gives 
an interesting account of how Vaishnavism has been incorporated into social life: 
Vaishnavism provides the idiom for what seems to be a special area of Gujarati social life, a section 
in which universalist values can be expressed through the bhajan and individualistic values 
asserted through bhakti. Instead of obliging us to see as shaktipuja does, purity and impurity, 
Brahman and Untouchable, linked by a symbiosis which makes this life meaningful, this language 
speaks of an equality brought about by each individual's dedication to a single lord (Pocock 
1973: 107). 
26 
Although Hinduism has had a profound influence on the way Gujarati social life has 
developed, Buddhism and Jainism have also been influential, the latter especially with 
the twice migrant Gujaratis from Africa. Gujarat has also been under Muslim rule for 
many centuries, but only 10% of its population converted to Islam. My impression is 
that Gujarati Muslims still remember their Hindu roots and maintain similar joint family 
arrangements and kin relations. Many Muslims chose not to come to Britain and 
migrated to North America. 
In order for the reader to understand the references I will make below to caste 
membership in my research findings, I have to explain the names and origins of the 
main groups. The hierarchy of caste status may still be a reality in classificatory terms, 
but strictly speaking the caste system no longer exists in so far as there is no 
hierarchical interdependence of occupations and previously held purity restrictions 
would seem to have been considerably relaxed. In short, Ghurye's (1952) observations 
about caste in India, would seem to hold true for contemporary Harrow: 
Ghurye points out that hierarchy is attacked by the non-Brahman movement (p. 193), notions 
concerning impurity being much weakened (p209) and the rules concerning food and drink 
considerably relaxed, especially in the towns. The freedom of the new professions means that the 
caste no longer prescribes occupation. As a counterpart endogamy continues to hold sway with 
undiminished force save for certain differences of nuance (p186) (Dumont 1980). 
This quote from Dumont makes us realise that `hierarchy', `impurity', `freedom' and 
even `endogamy' are all relative terms - no doubt they meant something rather different 
to Ghurye, Dumont and their respective informants than they do to me and my 
informants. Even so, in contemporary Harrow, commensal restrictions may still be an 
important issue for some older people and certainly there still exists a sense of 
difference between castes such that references are commonly made to persons as being 
`one of us', `in ours', or `in our community'. 
Brahmans may still see themselves as `top community' and feel they have superior 
religious knowledge to other castes, because they are the priestly caste and wear the 
sacred thread, so are called `twice born'. Most are Vaishnavas and worship Krishna in 
his incarnation of Vishnu, while the remainders worship Rama, and a few are Shaivite. 
Of those who worship Krishna, some are Pushtimargs and some are Swaminarayan 
(Dwyer 1994: 171). 
27 
Bania (or Vaniya) is considered an overarching caste group by Gujaratis, although the 
term means merchant. They form a large group in Harrow and many Bania members 
migrated from East Africa; included in it are Jains (often referred to by others as 
`Shahs') as well as Hindus, and some inter-marrying occurs between the two groups. 
The Hindus are Vaishnavas, many are followers of the Pushtimarg and have a 
reputation for adherence to strict codes of ritual purity and vegetarianism and for 
wearing the sacred thread. `True' Banias are those who have a long history of 
merchantile activity, but other groups such as Bhatia, who were originally Rajput, have 
made claims to be Bania through successful trading and adoption of the Bania life-style. 
Kshatriya were previously a caste consisting of landowners, warriors and chiefs in 
Gujarat, but its power has now been over-shadowed by the Bania, whose success in 
business has allowed it to gain more social influence. Even the priestly Brahmans, who 
are now often relatively poor, have less power than the Bania. Some artisan castes such 
as the Mochi (leatherworkers) have aspired to become like the Kshatriya and marriages 
have been arranged with Mochi girls marrying into Kshatriya households. Rajput forms 
the kingly caste but often have strong links with the Kshatriya caste. 
Lohana and Bhansali are two closely related castes and form another large group in 
Harrow. The Lohana were successful grain-dealers and shopkeepers in Bombay in the 
nineteenth century and the Bhansali were successful traders (Dwyer 1994: 170). Many 
became successful businessmen in Kenya and Uganda and migrated to Britain from 
there, maintaining close links with India. They are devotees of the Pushtimarg and 
enthusiastic followers of the Lohana saint Jalaram. Many were shopkeepers after arrival 
in the UK, and have become upwardly mobile businessmen and women, some 
accumulating considerable wealth. 
Mochi (leatherworkers), Mistry (also leatherworkers), Luhar (blacksmiths), Suthar 
(carpenters), and Kumbhar (potters), are some of the artisan castes represented in 
Harrow; they have joined together in a joint caste association. 
Patels (as they are commonly known) are sub-divided according to their place of origin. 
The Patidars come from the Kheda district, south of Ahmedabad and were originally 
Leva Kanbi; through upwardly mobility they became the dominant group. This caste 
group is further divided according to membership of marriage circles that link certain 
villages. In Harrow there seem to be many Surti-Patels who have originated from the 
28 
area around Surat in the south. There are popular caste associations in Harrow and 
Wembley - for example the Patidar Association -that offer a variety of cultural and 
social events. 
There are some Gujaratis in Harrow who are unskilled workers and have jobs such as 
cleaning shops and business premises, unloading containers at Heathrow Airport and 
cleaning stations at London Underground. They do not mix socially with other Gujarati 
castes and often have English or Muslim friends. Here it appears that social class biases 
in terms of economic and educational distinctions may be more important than caste. 
Shahs (as they are commonly known) are mostly Jains so are not normally included in 
the Hindu varna hierarchy, but are recognised by other Gujaratis as a separate 
`community'. Banks describes Jains as a `first order division' in society, not a caste or 
caste category and argues that the divisions of caste have been used extensively in the 
literature but may not be important in people's lives (Banks 1992: 5). Jains became 
successful traders and businessmen and have become some of the wealthiest groups in 
India and the UK. Banks argues that this may be due to their strong internal social 
organisation, which encouraged credit associations. They have achieved a high level of 
educational success resulting in entrance for both men and women into the professional 
groups of law and medicine. 
Jains see themselves as superior to Hindus because they believe their religion to be 
more advanced and more modern: 
Most Jains see themselves as superior to Brahmans, simply because they believe 
Jainism to be a superior religion to Hinduism (particularly Shaivism with its stress on 
sacrifice) and because they consider themselves better traders than Brahmans who have 
entered into trade and with whom they come into close contact. Vaishnavism is 
generally seen as a religion of equivalent worth, perhaps, because the Jains have always 
had a very close association with Vaishnavites in this part of India; several jails (the 
Dasa Srimalis, for example) have both Hindu and Jain members (Banks 1992: 52-53). 
There are two main divisions: Oshwals and Scrimalis. The Oshwals arrived in Britain in 
the early 1960s and set up an association in 1968 that now represents well over 15,000 
members. I have been told there are a total of 85,000 Oshwals in the world and that only 
34,000 of them live in India. The Oshwals have a large community centre and temple in 
Potters Bar, north of Harrow, which is visited during festivals and weddings by most 
families; it is situated in a rural setting with an adventure playground for the children 
and there are plans to build a new temple on the site. The Scrimalis arrived in Britain in 
smaller numbers after the African crisis and although they do not have a large centre, 
they have a temple in Wembley and meeting place in Harrow. 
Gujarat (along with Bombay) has the largest number of caste associations in India. The 
earliest were formed in Bombay in the middle of the nineteenth century among migrants 
from the urban, upper castes from Gujarat, such as Bania (Vaniya), Bhatia and Lohana, 
and then spread to the homeland among all castes (Shah 1982: 28). Caste associations 
are popular in Harrow and Wembley; they provide places for people of all ages to meet, 
for festival celebrations, for language classes and classes in Indian dancing and crafts. 
The success and popularity of the associations or samaj has contributed to a continued 
sense of difference between castes. 
The Patidars were described by Pocock as an upwardly mobile caste that made claims to 
become Bania, by emulating their concern for ritual purity. Dwyer reported that most 
are now members of the Pushtimarg or the Swaminarayan movement. In my experience, 
Patidars (or Patels) continue to be concerned about differential status and this is 
reflected in complex marriage arrangements between descent groups organised in 
village marriage circles and accompanying large dowry payments, which will be further 
described in Chapter 2. 
During the sixteenth century there was a rise in the devotional bhakti movement and 
two important leaders emerged: the Bengali Chaitanya, who had most influence in 
North and East India, and Telugu Brahmin Vallabhacharya, who developed a 
considerable following in Gujarat. Vallabhacharya encouraged a path of devotion 
through participation in congregational worship and surrender to Lord Krishna. Worship 
is known as seva (service) not puja (worship) and is conducted in a special room in the 
house set aside for it; the sacred plant tulsi (sacred basil) is always present. The 
Pushtimarg (name of the sect that follows Vallabhacharya) has been popular with the 
urban rich, mostly the merchantile communities of Gujarat and Rajasthan, where even 
the Mughul emperors became followers, but most were Bania, Bhatia, Lohana and also 
some Patidar, Suthar (carpenters) and Luhar (blacksmiths), as well as a few Brahman, 
Jains and Muslims. The Swaminarayan movement, which followers believe is a 
reformed version of the Pushtimarg, is also grounded in the Vaishnava movement. 
Dwyer suggests that there are now five million followers worldwide and says that 
30 
devotees are drawn from a wide variety of castes including the Brahman, Bania, Soni, 
Kanbi, Suthur, Rajput and Luhur. In Harrow the Patels, both Patidar and Surti-Patel, 
also appear to attend regularly at the Swaminarayan temple and help with its 
maintenance on a voluntary basis. Recently I was told that there are now three hundred 
Swaminarayan temples in countries throughout the world. 
Although I agree with Rachel Dwyer's analysis and the links she draws between 
religion and caste membership, there appears to be a good deal of movement between 
different religious sects. A Brahman, for example, may visit a Shiva temple one day, the 
next a Swaminarayan temple, then a Krishna temple and worship Mataji (the goddess) 
during life-cycle pujas at home. Likewise, a Jain woman has told me that she attends a 
specific Jain temple, but her daughter has just had a baby so of course they will be 
doing pujas to Mataji. 
Pocock's description of life-cycle rituals is limited because of his restricted access to 
women. He gives vivid descriptions, however, of the Swaminarayan movement and the 
strong influence it has had on social life. It became popular during British rule in India 
and its teachings on law and order gained approval from both the Indians and the 
British, and considerable mutual respect was achieved. Bishop Herber, a Church of 
England bishop in Bombay met with Swami Narayan on several occasions in the early 
nineteenth century and mutual admiration was established. Although Herber could not 
accept that Swami Narayan was god, he was impressed by the ethical teaching of the 
movement and decided not to send missionaries to Gujarat (Williams 1984: 81). The 
rules were written in the Shikshapatri, which became a sacred scripture that was recited 
daily by followers. Magic, superstition, ghosts, demons and evil spirits were rejected 
and followers had to give allegiance to Krishna and worship the five important deities 
of the Hindu pantheon: Vishnu, Shiva, Ganapati, Parvati and Suriya. All followers had 
to observe a strict vegetarian diet and the doctrine of ahimsa, which they shared with 
the large Jain population. Swami Narayan worked with Governor Malcolm to try to stop 
infanticide and sati. The British produced law and order in Gujarat that encouraged the 
growth of this new religious movement. Williams reported an old Gujarati saying that 
"the topi (the British pith helmet) and the tilak (the characteristic mark worn on the 
forehead) came together, and they will leave together (Williams 1984: 24). 
In the iconography I saw in temples in Gujarat there appeared to be a Christian 
infuence. Akshadham, the temple at Gandhinagar (the capital of Gujarat) is the largest 
31 
Swaminarayan temple in the world and the place of the recent massacre of worshippers. 
The temple stands majestically in formally laid gardens, courtyards and cloisters. The 
pictures and figures of the guru appear to have halos over his head, and portray him 
teaching the people in poses similar to those depicting Christ. Swami Narayan who was 
born in 1781 near Ayodhya and was known as a boy as Ghanshyama (a form of 
Krishna). His parents died when he was eleven years old and even at a young age he 
was reported to perform miracles. He travelled to Gujarat as a young man where he 
gained a considerable following and he set up the Satsang or society of the true. 
Although there was no direct teaching against caste divisions, obedience to the Satsang 
was more important than caste regulations and Brahmanic rituals. Allegiance to a guru 
- usually a Vaishnavite ascetic - was also viewed as appropriate. Swami Narayan was 
seen as having divine qualities and many referred to him then as a god, as people still do 
today. 
The change from caste membership to sect fellowship and the adoption of a guru ji, has 
had a profound effect on reducing inequalities and promoting a more egalitarian spirit in 
Gujarat. A guruji is a man who has achieved a degree of enlightenment, but remains a 
mortal. Pocock argues that this effect has been experienced beyond Gujarat and has 
followed the people's migration to East Africa, Fiji and Great Britain. He maintains that 
caste divisions and hierarchy are disappearing as a result of these belief systems, 
especially in urban areas of India and the countries to which Gujaratis migrated, and 
that possibly they are being replaced by educational elitism and class. Many people 
have spoken to me about the guruji they have adopted. Meera told me of the profound 
effect her female guru she calls Mataji has had on her life. This Mataji comes to 
Harrow every six months and talks to groups of women about religious texts. 
Afterwards she asks Meera to give her a massage. Through the bodily contact Meera 
has with this highly religious woman, she feels she gains spiritual strength and positive 
energy. The gurujis I was told about in Ahmedabad are linked to the villages of their 
ancestors and perform miraculous tasks of healing. Pocock concludes that morality and 
non-violence are deeply rooted in concepts of purity and Vaishnavism, which affect the 
lower castes as well. 
Marcus Banks' book has achieved a picture of corporate Jain identity and the meaning 
of this identity through ethnographic analysis of Jain institutions and organisations in 
India and Britain (Banks 1992: 3). He describes Jain beliefs and their impact on the lives 
32 
of many people in Gujarat and the UK, the way the religion is organised in the two 
countries and the main festivals and ceremonies. He shares with other male 
anthropologists working in South Asia the problem of lack of access to women, who 
play such a central part in the religious life of the family, but admits more openly than 
Tambs-Lyche (1972), that his approach is `androcentric' (1992: 14). He refers the 
reader to his colleague Josephine Reynell's studies of Jain women in Gujarat and 
Rajasthan for a greater balance. He sees a need for more work to be done on men and 
women together to get the whole picture. 
Banks' intention is to avoid using the term caste or jati. He does not, however, escape 
its use entirely and suggests that the term `community' is used by people themselves to 
describe a section of society that may be the same or different from their own. This 
accords with my own experience: Gujaratis in Harrow use `community' to differentiate 
sub-groups and there is a definite reluctance to refer to caste. Whenever I asked directly 
about caste, people replied that it is no longer important. 
Jains became successful traders and businessmen, as previously mentioned in reference 
to Rachel Dwyer's work, and have become some of the wealthiest groups in India and 
the UK. Banks argues that this may be due to their strong internal social organization, 
which encouraged credit associations. Some writers say that their philosophy of non- 
violence (ahimsa) has excluded Jains from farming or joining the army and forced them 
into business. Banks is not convinced by this argument because Jains in South India are 
farmers. In India and the UK, Jains are economically very successful and now compose 
the wealthiest group of Gujaratis in both countries. They have achieved a high level of 
educational success, with both men and women entering into professions such as law 
and medicine in both countries. 
Banks (1992) describes how Jainism has developed alongside Buddhism historically. 
Beginning at a similar period, they both achieved the status of state religion in the pre- 
Moghul period. Jains show respect to Vaishnavism however, and some of their ideals 
have been shared. I agree with Banks about the influence that one has had on the other. 
For example, Jains have told me that they believe in a special type of Hinduism. In Jain 
temples I visited in India, the references to Hindu gods in the form of austere carvings 
on pillars or doorways indicated a strong connection between the two. Banks reverts to 
the concept of caste divisions when he refers to the two jati of Jainism: Visa Srimalis 
and Oswals. Puja worship of idols by laity is practised in similar ways to that done by 
33 
Hindus, and my observations indicate that life-cycle rituals done to Mataji are also 
conducted in a similar way. Banks sums up the beliefs of Jains by saying: 
Jainism is what we might call a non-processual religion: it does not progress, nor is there a 
cosmological 'end-point'. Instead the universe is eternal, time is cyclical, and adherence to religion 
remains entirely a man's or woman's responsibility- no god or higher being enforces it. No soul 
automatically reaches salvation, and the rise and fall of the quality of the universe over time ('light' 
and 'dark' halves) means that opportunities to do so are rare. Although none of these factors is a 
logical justification for the concept of eternity, merely that the universe (and hence mankind and 
society) will continue for a very long time, nevertheless Mahavira is said to have claimed that the 
universe is eternal and there will never come a point when it is emptied of all souls capable of 
achieving salvation (Banks 1992: 99). 
The way to enlightenment for Jains is based on the insights of twenty-four Jinas or 
`conquerors' commonly known as tirthankaras, which means ford-builders. Mahavira is 
the first; the tirthankaras show the way across the turbulent oceans to enlightenment 
and perfect bliss. Their nine-line mantra or namaskar is always recited at Jain religious 
ceremonies in which the tirthankaras are praised and revered for their special qualities 
and attributes (Banks 1992: 15). Jainism is basically a system of practices for 
enlightenment and all other aspects such as temples, idols, clothes, food and customs 
are subsidiary. Jains believe the pure soul is contaminated by the non-soul or karma that 
ties them to the world, and links them to the life-death cycle. All souls can be 
enlightened, however, through austerities, when the karma drops away and the souls are 
released. Below our universe are seven hells and sixteen heavens and the gods inhabit 
the heavens and the first of the hells, but demons inhabit the other six hells. Rebirth into 
any of these realms can occur following good or bad actions in life; there is no supreme 
being who assists the salvation of the soul and no distinction between the mundane and 
the transcendental. 
Banks tells us that the essential principle is ahimsa - the lack of desire to inflict 
harm, 
respect for life; the most serious sin of all is to deprive another being of life or stop a 
soul from residing in a body. This idea has had a considerable impact not only on all 
Jains, but also on social life at large in Gujarat. Not only are Jains strict vegetarians, but 
so too are the majority of Hindus in Gujarat. Jains will even avoid leafy vegetables in 
the rainy season for fear of killing insects on them. Many wear handkerchiefs over their 
34 
mouths in case they are breathing in insects and, in my experience, many temples 
require that worshippers remove leather garments or watch straps before entering. 
Ascetism is a central to Jainism and those who have renounced the world and taken 
diksa become chaste, homeless and possessionless sadhu (monks). They wander, wear 
few clothes, cannot use public transport, are forbidden to be in close proximity to the 
opposite sex, and the wandering journeys are known as vihar. The diksa is the only truly 
Jain rite of passage; all the other life-cycle rituals are Hindu in origin practised in a Jain 
style. Many Jains see their beliefs as a code of ethics, not a religion, and I agree with 
Banks that many see it as more modern and `scientific' than Hinduism. Banks' `rubber 
ball' approach, which bounces ethnographic data gathered in India off those gathered in 
the UK, works well and avoids direct comparison (1992: 219). Below I try to employ 
such an approach with my observations here and in India. 
Life-cycle rituals are an important aspect of the religious life of the family and always 
involve the meeting of kin. The goddesses or Mataji are called upon during these 
rituals, in both Hindu and Jain families. Pocock described how belief in Mataji helps to 
link several aspects of the Hindu pantheon of deities, not only to each other but also to 
the other forces in the supernatural world. 
McDonald (1987) describes some of the religious practices and life-cycle rituals 
practised in East London by Gujarati women. She distinguishes between transcendental 
religion, which involves the worship of higher gods such as Vishnu and Shiva, and 
pragmatic Hinduism, which is the worship of local gods and goddesses, involves 
ecstatic and possession states and is more likely to involve lower castes. I have seen no 
evidence for this divide, however, nor any link between Mataji worship and lower caste 
status; rather I would argue along the lines suggested by Pocock for the existence of an 
integrated system whereby different deities are called upon at different times. Some of 
McDonald's observations of life-cycle rituals are similar to mine, especially her 
description of the chhati, the sixth day ceremony after birth. 
Pocock (1973) argues that Mata (goddess, without the respectful suffix, ji) worship may 
be the remains of a much older worship known as shaktipi ja that was linked with 
Shiva. Most of the people known to Pocock saw themselves as Vaishnavites, followers 
of Lord Vishnu, but the commonest sacred sites in Gujarat are devoted to the Mara and 
Lord Shiva. My experience in Gujarat would reinforce this view. The temple at Ambaji 
35 
in the North of Gujarat is one of the most important pilgrimage sites; it is devoted to the 
Mata, Ambika. I visited villages around Ambaji, and almost all have a temple devoted 
to Shiva. Pocock gives a graphic description of Shiva temples and worship and sees the 
link with the Mata as being through Shiva's consort who takes one of two forms: 
peaceful or fierce; in her peaceful form she is known as Himavati, Jagan and Bhavani, 
and in the fierce form can be represented as Durga, Kali, Chandi and Bheiravi. Each of 
these Mata has different legends, habits and is associated with different places, but all 
can be linked together as one. People speak of mataji as one goddess, or as a collective 
of goddesses, and when questioned about which one they are referring to, look surprised 
and wonder why I am asking, as if it is irrelevant. 
At the same time every Mata can be equated with any other, all can be reduced to one, and that 
one in turn merged into the ineffable (Pocock 1973: 89). 
Ambika or Ambajimata belongs to the pantheon of the Mata and is very popular in 
Gujarat. I observed several rituals devoted to her during Navratri (the festival of the 
nine nights before Diwali) and worship of her is often associated with fervour and 
possession states. The special earthenware garbo (pot) used in the nightly pt ja in the 
home during Navratri becomes the Mata and is decorated with garlands of flowers and 
joss sticks, given prasad (offering) of fresh fruits, and called Mataji. Special songs are 
sung to her to ask for her blessings on the family. At the end of the festival, the pot is 
taken to a temple, and afterwards is to a flowing river where it is disposed of as sacred. 
Life-cycle rituals often involve rituals to another Mataji called Randalma, who is 
considered to have special powers to protect young children and pregnant women. 
Pocock argues that Shiva is linked to the local area through the Mata, who may be 
peculiar to a certain village, and yet he is also unlocalised and general and worshipped 
throughout India. The divine female energy or shakti is seen as pure yet impure, 
peaceful yet violent; which Pocock argues reflects the traditional caste society of pure 
and impure castes (Pocock 1973: 90). One Mata might be pure for one caste and impure 
for another and a custom or practice that might be a mark of a high caste one day, may 
become that of a low caste tomorrow. He suggests that everything in Indian society is 
relative and regional and purity is judged only in relation to others. Pocock has noted 
that some of the wealthy, educated Patidars see Mata worship as evil superstition, but 
this has not been my experience; many educated people in Harrow and Ahmedabad 
practise Mata worship. 
36 
The house or ghar 
The Gujarati ghar, or house, is the starting point for addressing my own field data, for it 
is central to Gujarati ideas of the person in kinship. The spirit of the person is attached 
not only to people with whom there is a consanguineal or affinal link, but also to the 
house itself. After death the spirit has to be freed from these attachments so that it can 
move on to its next reincarnation. The implications of these attachments for kinship are 
profound because ties to others are centred within the spirit, which is itself closely 
bound to a person's bodily substance; indeed during a lifetime one's kinship obligations 
and duties are, as it were, an aspect of the substance of the person. Concerns about 
substance inform one's choices of what to eat and whom to marry, as well as the day 
and time chosen for a ritual and the relationship with a god. Daniel (1984) suggests that 
for Tamils the equilibrium of bodily substances needs to be maintained and balanced; 
body boundaries are fluid, linking not only with other people but also with the house or 
with the soil of the village. 
Parry contrasts ideas of the Western and the South Asian person: 
By contrast with the Western concept of the individual as an independent and autonomous actor 
with a unique and unchangeable biogenetic makeup, the South Asian construct of the person 
postulates a far more malleable and protean entity (Parry 1994: 5). 
The Gujarati person is also not seen as a bounded individual but as one linked and 
attached to others through common substance; these links may extend through kinship 
into sociality networks. Food choices and preparation are essential aspects of one's ties 
to others and may be of particular importance at inauspicious or vulnerable times in the 
life-cycle - i. e. times that require special rituals seeking the blessings of a goddess or 
foods that will ensure continuation of the common substance. 
Shrikala Warrier's PhD research (1994) in London shows considerable insight into 
Gujarati kinship and sociability networks in the UK. She looked at the active roles 
women played in the migration and resettlement process, but her main emphasis was on 
employment issues affecting women. She has attempted to redress a perceived gender 
imbalance by studying women's perspective within the Gujarati Prajapati caste. Warrier 
explained that this caste was originally kumbhar or potters, who claimed a status higher 
37 
than that assigned to their occupation. Migration to East Africa enabled them to branch 
out into more lucrative occupations. 
This account, by focusing on women as active participants in the migration-settlement process, 
seeks to restore women to their proper place at the centre of family life (Warrier in Ballard 
1994: 191). 
Warrier provides an insightful account of the role of women in the ghar or Gujarati 
household and their increased involvement in economic activity and employment 
outside the home and suggests a move to nuclear family units, where she sees women 
gaining more autonomy than they have in a joint family arrangement. Her research data 
were, however, collected at a time when Asian women in Britain were only beginning 
to enter the world of paid employment and, because of the unreliability of employment 
statistics in their countries of origin, their previous contribution to the economy was 
difficult to measure. Although there is little doubt that in rural India women's 
contribution to work on the land is enormous, as is their work in the domestic sphere, 
the work may have been confined to family concerns and no payments were given. In 
the 1970s researchers saw women as tied to their maternal roles, and Warrier seems to 
agree with this when she says: 
Within the patricentred Hindu family system, for instance, the position of women is founded on their 
maternity. Brides enter the patrilocal households as strangers and legitimise their place through the 
birth of children (Warner 1988: 134). 
This research is now nearly twenty years old and although the joint family is still 
popular and women still move into their husbands' home after marriage: Warrier could 
not have predicted how much things would change for Asian women who are now in 
paid employment. Although a woman's position in her husband's household is still 
legitimised through the birth of a child, her position is also influenced by her work 
status. Women are now achieving a high level of success in education and entering the 
job market at all levels, and securing top positions in professions such as law and 
medicine. The Fourth Survey of Ethnic Minorities (1998) confirms the positive attitude 
that Indian and African-Asian families have towards the education of women and their 
work outside the home. But even for professional couples the ghar, the patrilineal 
household, remains the centre of kin activities and household rituals, even if they no 
longer sleep there. 
38 
This ethnography examines how beliefs in the supernatural inform concepts of health 
and disease, and how the protective powers can be obtained through life-cycle rituals. 
The inter-play between the gods and the forces of evil is a continuing concern in most 
Gujarati households, especially for women. It would seem that the performance of 
household rituals according to rules laid down by the ancestors is crucial for the 
maintenance of religious belief and indeed for what it is to be Gujarati. The data 
discussed below address the central problem how members of Gujarati households in 
Harrow constitute their `difference' from other South Asian groups in the UK and the 
rest of the population. The ethnography will be informed by data from Ahmedabad but 
not directly compared with it. Because I am a woman and a health visitor, most of my 
data come from women, some fathers and some elderly men in Harrow. I begin by 
looking at kinship and in subsequent chapters I trace the theme of moral continuity 
through activities in the household, especially rituals, food, concerns about the evil eye, 
children and life-cycle rituals. 
39 
Chapter 2 Caste, Marriage and Kinship Obligations 
`Is she one of us? ' 
Mr and Mrs Pandya, an elderly Brahman couple, were telling me how friends had asked 
this question about their son's fiancee. We were sitting in the front room of their semi- 
detached house in Harrow. Mr Pandya went on, `People want to know if the girl is 
Hindu and Gujarati and if this is the case, today, most will be happy. ' It is still very 
important, he said, that the two families are not related, which was more of a problem in 
the past, when everyone married within the caste. Then you had to trace the family back 
seven generations through the male line to the kola, the `root' (their word) or common 
ancestor; anyone not related within the fifth generation in the female line was 
considered a very distant relative, and marriage was permitted. People within the kida 
usually worship the same Mataji (goddess) and call her their kuldevi (family goddess). 
Mr Pandya said that many people found it difficult to trace their families back so far, so 
a thousand years ago sages set up the gotra, which is a clan-like unit in which everyone 
is related to one of the six Rishi, so consulting this is easier and this way you can ensure 
there is no close blood relation. He said that today things are changing and many people 
are marrying outside their caste, which is acceptable to most, so long as the girl is 
Gujarati and Hindu or Jain, not Muslim. The joint family arrangement - the kutumb - is 
still popular; it includes all sons and their wives. They may not always sleep in the one 
house, but the bond of interdependence between members remains. 
The complexities of these arrangements are at first confusing for the researcher. What 
constitutes a `household', an'extended' family, a `joint family'? 
In much ethnographic description as well as theoretical discussion, 'extended' or 'joint family' is a 
very ambiguous term because it is not always clearly specified in precisely what sense the natal 
and conjugal families are not separated, or in what sense they remain joined together (Holy 
1996: 67). 
Below I attempt to convey how UK Gujaratis in Harrow use and understand terms such 
as `household' and `joint family', how they see themselves and what it means to them to 
be `one of us'. Some marriages may still be arranged, albeit loosely, and ideas of caste, 
moral obligations and reciprocity continue even while they are inevitably being 
transformed by a UK-born generation that has grown up and been educated here and 
40 
sees itself as British. The centrality of kinship to all these issues has also been addressed 
by Holy: 
Kinship ties which people acknowledge and distinguish determine who to marry, where to live, how 
to raise children, which ancestors to worship, how to solve disputes, which land to cultivate, which 
property to inherit, to whom to turn for help in pursuing common interests and many things besides 
(Holy 1996: 13). 
Is caste still important? 
My informants did not often mention caste spontaneously but did refer frequently to 
their `community'or `in ours'. I have used `community' in the context my informants 
used it but I am aware of the multiplicity of meanings attached to this term. Bauman 
(1996) argues that within the discourse of `community' in Southall there are 
communities within communities and cultures across communities (Bauman 1996: 1). 
He warns the reader that: 
In the dominant discourse 'community' can function as the conceptual bridge that connects culture 
with ethnos. It can lend a spurious plausibility to the assumption that ethnic minorities must share 
the same culture by necessity of their ethnic bond itself (Bauman 1996: 16). 
The context in which my informants used `community' made it generally apparent 
whether they were referring to caste or to Gujaratis in general, but if there was any 
confusion on my part, then I asked them to clarify the term for me. 
The central position of caste in anthropological literature of South Asia meant this was a 
subject I had to explore with my informants. Sometimes people implicitly referred to 
caste within the context of `our community' but this could not be always read as such, 
because `community' might also be referring to the wider Hindu, Jain, or the all- 
encompassing Hindu/Jain Gujarati community. The Gujarati word for caste is gnat, the 
Hindi term is jati, which means variety or type. I realised early in my fieldwork that I 
had to clarify `community' whenever it was used, or my understanding would be 
severely limited. I decided to identify my informants' gnat, because of the sense of 
difference associated with it, although people were often reluctant to refer to caste 
without direct questioning, perhaps because of the historical connotations linked with 
structural inequalities. Among my informants there was also considerable ignorance 
about caste in the generation of Gujaratis who had been educated in Britain. 
41 
Caste has been described by writers on South Asian societies as a rigorous system 
demanding adherence to hierarchical categories that determine whom one marries and 
with whom one eats or lives, as well as which deities to worship and the level of purity 
attainable in this life. I will not attempt here to review the enormous volume of 
literature on caste, but will attempt to place in an historical context and address work 
that looks specifically at Gujarati concepts of caste and follow that with the views of 
some of my informants. 
Sharma (1999) argues that colonial rule ensured that caste continued. The colonial 
administration in India saw caste as `backward', `other', and mired in history; caste was 
taken to be a static structure that made Indian society unchanging and unchangeable - 
radically different from European society. Sharma discusses Inden's description of the 
`Orientalist view' of caste: 
That is, it [caste] constitutes Indian society as an object for scrutiny, constructing it as an'other' to a 
western self, and then privileges the knowledge so produced as superior to that of Indians 
themselves (Sharma 1999: 6). 
Ethnological writings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries drew on 
descriptions by historians, philosophers and sociologists (reviewed by Inden 1990 and 
referred to by Sharma 1999: 7). In this heterogeneous work, the recurring theme was that 
caste was the defining social institution that made India different from Europe. 
If colonial rule did not actually invent caste then it certainly ensured its continued existence and 
exerted a powerful influence upon its modem form... Some have claimed that effectively this 
discourse denied the Indians a history of their own. A timeless society steeped in tradition has no 
history other than what can be done to it by others, in terms of conquest, invasions and pillage. 
More specifically, Inden argues, the orientalist view of caste denies Indians agency (Sharma 
1999: 9). 
Ahmedabad is the city where Gandhi set up his Ashram on the banks of the Sabermati 
River, and where he first spoke publicly about the injustices of the caste system and the 
plight of the Harijan (untouchables). Gandhi's influence on life in India has been 
profound. It led directly, for example, to changed attitudes towards the `backward class 
and tribal groups' (terms commonly used by people and used in Government literature) 
who are now supposed to receive priority treatment when applying for Government jobs 
and entrance to university -a directive that causes some resentment from other castes. 
Even so, Gujaratis have told me how proud they are that through Gandhi's work, 
42 
Gujarat has led India in the fight against the injustices of the caste system. 
In Homo Hierarchicus, first published in 1966, Dumont argued that caste was 
reinforcing itself in a different form and agreed with Ghurye (1952) that caste was 
adapting to new conditions, undergoing a transition from structure to substance. 
In short, Ghurye ... 
has put his finger on an essential phenomenon, which may be called the 
substantialization of caste. In fact a number of the features quoted together indicate the transition 
from a fluid, structural universe in which the emphasis is on inter-dependence and in which there is 
no privileged level, no firm units, to a universe of impenetrable blocks, self-sufficient, essentially 
identical and in competition with one another, a universe in which the caste appears as a collective 
individual 
... as a substance 
(Dumont 1980: 222, italics in the original). 
Later on in the same work, Dumont finds evidence in a paper by Bailey (1963) for his 
view that: 
'there has been a transition from a structure to a juxtaposition of substances. There remain groups 
that one continues to call 'castes'; but they are set in a different system' (ibid: 227). 
It seems that Bailey saw the creation of caste associations - sabha - as effectively 
transforming castes as categories (as opposed to subcastes) into real groups that 
competed against each other; castes became `political units' and competition came to be 
substituted for interdependence. 
In the first place, the substitution of competition for interdependence is only one aspect of the 
phenomenon, the behavioural aspect. It could just as well be said that the caste seems to accept 
equality or that from the ideological point of view, structure seems to yield to substance, each caste 
becoming an individual confronting other individuals (Dumont 1980: 227). 
In respect of Gujarat, Shah (1982) argued that hierarchy was changing with increasing 
urbanisation and was critical of many anthropological and sociological village studies 
focused on village life, viewing caste as static. He argued that the integration of the 
study of caste in urban areas with that of rural areas is essential for a full understanding 
of caste and its implications for Indian society and culture (Shah 1982: 3). In urban 
areas, he argued, castes were becoming more like ethnic groups, with a shared sense of 
difference, where hierarchy was less important and inter-caste marriage becoming more 
common. Dumont's three basic principles of caste - hierarchy, separation and 
interdependence associated with levels of purity - appeared to be less important in 
urban areas of Gujarat. Pocock, working with Gujaratis in East Africa, saw hierarchy 
and structure as being replaced by a new, non-structural sense of difference. 
43 
Castes exist ... 
but the caste system is no more (Pocock, quoted in Dumont 1980: 226). 
Michaelson in her PhD thesis (1983) in North London found three main Gujarati castes: 
Patidar, Lohana and Visa Halari Oshwals; her research focused on the latter two groups 
and described how structural and ideological differences between the two expatriate 
castes led to differences in their ties to India and their patterns of marriage alliance. She 
argued that the caste system as it occurred in India could not exist in Britain or East 
Africa, but that there were continuing perceptions of ritual inequalities, with Brahmans 
at the top, Vaniyas in the middle and artisans at the bottom of the hierarchy; 
commensality only occurred with people of similar level. She emphasised that Vaishya 
models, as well as Sanskritic, Brahmanic, or Jain ideals influenced the East Africans 
including the importance of thrift, the support and endowment of temples and religious 
shrines, personal piety and strict vegetarianism - ideals to which many Gujaratis still 
aspire. Caste associations became more important as a source of reinforcing difference 
once the caste `system' of interdependency disappeared. Michaelson described how all 
gnati (castes) had their own associations or samaj, except the Patidar, who were the 
largest caste but at that time, the least successful in establishing an association. The 
Patidar do now have a thriving caste association with its centre in Wembley, in which 
many social events, classes for children in dance, day nursery, old people's clubs and 
youth groups are held, as well as special events at Navratri (festival of nine nights) and 
Diwali. 
Michaelson (1983) suggested that Gujaratis have stereotypical views about caste 
identity and this is certainly still the case; many would say they can recognise which 
caste a person comes from by the way they walk, what they eat, how they dress and 
speak. She reported that Patidars are said to speak `proper Gujarati' and eat spicy foods, 
whereas Lohanas are `onion people' (many stricter Vaishnava Hindus abstain from 
eating onions and garlic). The Jains are strict vegetarians and avoid root vegetables, 
onions, garlic, carrots and beet and are known as Shah. Like Michaelson, I found that 
the term Oshwal is not recognised by most Gujaratis, likewise that Patidars are known 
as Patel by the Gujarati population at large and outside the caste there seems to be little 
knowledge that there are different kinds of Patels, of whom the Patidar is just one 
group. It is also commonly said that Patels as a group of sub-castes like gold and at their 
weddings gold will be expected to be given by both the groom's and the bride's 
families. Caste identity and difference is emphasised at Navratri and Diwali, in both 
44 
Ahmedabad and Harrow, when separate events are held. Many events are not closed, 
being open to other castes as well but they will nevertheless be recognised as, for 
example, a Patel garba (special dance celebrating Navratri). 
This sense of difference exists but appears less important for young Gujaratis today in 
Britain, because it is not so important in determining whom they marry, whom they 
have as close friends, and with whom they share meals. Mala, a woman in her mid- 
twenties, who was born into the Patel community but had a `love marriage' into the 
Lohana community, described her feelings about caste and how it can determine job 
opportunities: 
The caste system is underneath everything and was a big issue for our parents, but not so for us. 
In India it was more to do with the type of jobs you do, with the Brahmans at the top. In this country 
things have changed. 
This sense of difference may still be hierarchical, especially for those who see 
themselves at the top or the bottom, but as there is no caste system, that superior status 
cannot be upheld. In socio-economic terms, Brahmans have not been as successful in 
Gujarat or the UK as Manias, or Banias (the merchant caste). An elderly Brahman 
woman still felt, however, that she was superior in conceptual terms: 
We are top community because we are Brahmans. 
Sapna, who lives in the same street as this Brahman woman, does not speak English 
very well and has not received much formal education. She will not tell me to which 
caste she belongs, but she works as a cleaner in a department store and her husband 
unloads containers at the airport. Many households on her street are Gujarati but, she 
says, no one will speak to her, everyone thinks they are superior to her; she says it is not 
a caste issue. She came to the UK fifteen years ago from India when her marriage was 
arranged with her husband. Although she is a Hindu, she has made friends with a 
Muslim woman in the next street. Sapna, like the educated more liberal women, feels 
caste is no longer an issue. Even so, she is being denied any relations with Hindus who 
are her neighbours. Perhaps the low status attached to her work is what is important 
here; she has no kin living in the area and has had to make friends outside her religion; 
her exclusion may have more to do with class status than caste, but her reluctance to tell 
me her caste is surely suggestive. 
45 
Hierarchy still seems to be an issue among the older generation, but less so for people in 
the twenty to forty age group, as demonstrated by the following group discussion. A 
group of nine Hindu and Jain women offered to help me with my research: in March 
1999 we all met up at one of their houses, sat in the front room and talked. I tried to 
tape-record what became a heated discussion. Three of the women were from Jain 
families, although one was born a Hindu, but had married a Jain; one was a Kshatriya 
(warrior caste), one a Lohana (merchant caste), one a Suthar (carpenter caste) and three 
came from the Patel caste: one a `pure' Patel from the chhogam (six village) marriage 
circle, one from a mixed sub-caste Patel marriage, and one a Surti-Patel or Prajapati 
(Patel from the Surat area). I began by asking them whether caste is still important 
today. Bina Dodhia, a Jain woman about thirty years old, said: 
Caste is not important in our generation. The older generation, yes it was important to them. 
I asked whether castes are still important for the older generation. Deepa Patel, a 
woman of forty replied: 
No not so much. I think they have come to realise that it is not so important to have castes. 
Seema Suthar a younger woman from the carpenter caste suggested: 
We are more open than we used to be. 
These women were suggesting an idea of openness that was not there in their parents' 
time, more social mixing, leading to a feeling of belonging to a wider, all-embracing 
Gujarati community. Pocock described specific Gujarati caste groups (1972,1973) for 
Gujarat and Tambs-Lyche (1980), Dwyer (1994), Michaelson (1983) and Warder 
(1994) for the U. K. There are studies of Jains by Banks (1982) for Gujarat and by 
Britain and Laidlaw (1995) and Reynell (1985) for Rajasthan. None of these authors 
have studied interaction across caste or what people have in common in respect of ideas 
of kinship and interdependency. Perhaps this is more important in a diaspora where 
shared history, language, and moral codes lead to a sense of difference from the rest of 
the population. 
Tambs-Lyche (1980) studied the Patidars at a specific time in history, soon after men 
had migrated to the UK: multi-generational households had not yet been established as 
the women and children arrived at a later date. His study was limited to the business 
transactions that he claimed dominated social life and he had little contact with women. 
Dwyer (1994) identified the Gujarati Banias (or Vanias) as a distinct `caste-category' 
46 
through their common concern as merchants and traders, but she describes several 
separate castes as belonging to this overarching category. Bania comes from the word 
vania, meaning merchant. Some are Jains and many are Vaishnavas and some are 
followers of the Pushtimarg. They are an upwardly mobile group, which has been 
economically successful in East Africa in the past and in Britain today. Shrikala Warner 
(1988,1994) studied a small caste called Prajapatis, more commonly known now as 
Surti-Patels, who originate from a small town called Navsari, near Surat in Southern 
Gujarat. Warner explained that the Prajapati jati (caste) was originally kumbhar 
(potters) who claimed higher status than that assigned to this occupation. 
Vertovec (2000) argues that what happened initially in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, 
was that Gujarati traders who settled there had originated in Kaccha or Kathiawad from 
a limited set of castes so there was no complete cross-section of ranked castes. Control 
of resources and exchange was so different from India that no system of caste 
relationships or ranking could occur (Vertovec 2000: 25). He compares the way caste 
identity has been retained and the caste system has disappeared in other Hindu 
Diasporas around the world, as a response to differing social and economic situations. 
In Britain, the transformation of caste-related phenomenon among Hindus has proceeded in ways 
paradoxically similar to both Trinidad and East Africa. The disparate caste origins of some 
migrants, and especially their inability to control resources on a corporate basis, have contributed 
significantly to the lack of a viable caste system in Britain. In some Punjabi or Punjabi/Gujarati 
neighbourhoods for instance, caste identity is of little matter to most daily affairs, and a more 
generalised sense of 'Hindu community' has been established. Yet particularly among Gujaratis 
from East Africa, a caste consciousness is little abated due to the presence of caste associations 
and the continued importance of caste identity in matters surrounding family status, patronage, 
marriage, leadership and voluntary organisations (Vertovec 2000: 25). 
Knott (1994) has drawn similar conclusions from her study of Gujarati Mochis in 
Leeds. This small artisan caste traces its ancestors to certain villages in Gujarat and like 
the members of other Gujarati castes they refer to themselves as a `community'. 
Allegiance to caste is second only to that accorded the extended family and entails a 
strong duty of reciprocity. The complex web of interdependency that existed in India is, 
however, no longer relevant in Britain (Knott 1994: 213). Michaelson argues similarly 
and suggests that caste status is open to negotiation and change according to the secular 
power of the caste. She sees three processes that happened in East Africa. People 
47 
organised themselves into bureaucratic associations for political and legal purposes, 
they created boundaries from which other castes were excluded, and the caste 
association that developed mirrored those that were developing in India at the time 
(Michaelson 1983: 120). 
The caste system as such may not exist in Britain, but caste is still salient when 
arranging marriages, or when performing certain festivals or rituals. Its importance in 
determining levels of purity or social mixing has apparently largely disappeared and is 
no longer responsible for structural inequalities. The presence of sizeable `communities' 
in the UK and their close links with India has enabled the continuation of a strong sense 
of caste identity among Gujaratis in Britain. 
Marriages - arranged or introduced? 
I asked the group of nine women about marriage arrangements and whether they are 
arranged within caste. Ameeta Amin said: 
To some extent, but not a lot. 
Seema Suthar disagreed with this: 
If it is an arranged marriage, then yes. They are quite open to seeing other boys, but they do try 
within their community. We tell our children straight away, do you have anybody? Then if you want 
to have an arranged marriage, then we can do something about it too. We give them the option. 
Dina Shah explained: 
In arranged marriages it doesn't mean you see each other at the last minute and you are married 
off. These days and even in my time [Dina has been married for 20 years] we would see each other 
quite a few times and go out quite a lot. When it is arranged, what they mean is that they help you 
to find a boy who is suitable. 
Seema Suthar agreed, saying: 
There is nothing wrong in that, in case we haven't met anyone. 
Uma Morjaria, a woman of thirty-five from the Lohana caste insisted that: 
The person has the right to say yes or no. They can see ten boys or ten girls if they want. 
48 
Everyone in the group had much to say about this subject and there was a noisy debate, 
the general conclusion of which was that women and men have a lot of choice today, 
even when marriages are arranged within caste. Dina summarised: 
Arranged means introduction on both sides. Having a society, it just helps you tell what sort of 
people they are. Not so often now because individually children are so much changed, you cannot 
tell if a family is good. Those days are gone. We could trust them [the parents] and say OK fine, it is 
a good family, and this guy is coming from a very good background. But nowadays the girls are so 
educated and they like equal rights, so they say OK fine, the family is good, but we have to get to 
know the boy properly. Things are changing and women are more demanding and wanting to know 
the boy much more. 
Ameeta Amin, a young Patel woman of twenty-five, who is a graduate and had an 
arranged marriage herself, added: 
It is difficult for families though, because if the parents don't know the family, they are trusting you, 
that you are 100% sure you know what you want to do. In arranged marriages the families know 
each other and the parents base how good the boy or girl are according to what the family is like. 
Here they are basically trusting the individual to know what they are doing. They don't have the 
background about the family and that is difficult. 
This sense of the responsibility being shared in arranged marriages and the background 
of the person making him or her `good' continued as a theme throughout the discussion. 
The responsibility resting on the individual in `love marriages' is seen as more difficult. 
This may reflect a wider concern about how other decisions are made with family 
consultation and responsibility being shared with other members. 
In general the women felt that arranged marriages were the safer option and it was 
important that families know each other and get on well. Puja Patel, Deepa's sister, is in 
her late twenties, the mother of two small children and also a graduate. She married for 
love - another Patel, but he was not from the same Patel caste 
(there are two main 
castes that relate to the area of origin). Puja said: 
When I had a love marriage, it was very important for my family to know that the boy's family was a 
good family. It was very important to my mother and father. We had a difficult start, but in the end it 
all worked out well. The families get on really well, and that is important I think. 
The other women in the group seemed surprised by this and appeared unaware that 
there were different Patel castes. Uma Morjaria asked: 
Do Patels get married to Patels? 
49 
Puja replied: 
I got married to a Patel, but he was of a different caste, so that still caused a problem. 
I asked about the different castes in the Patels and Deepa said: 
It depends on the villages they come from, especially with Patels. If you are from the same village 
you can't marry a Patel, because you might be linked by blood. 
She explained that she is a `pure' Patel because her family comes from one of the six- 
village marriage circles, or chhogam. You cannot marry someone from the same village, 
but only from one of the others in the circle. She married a man who came from one of 
the other villages, not from her own family's village. Within my group of informants, 
there are two women who have had arranged marriages within the six villages. Deepa 
explained that there are other village marriage circles and one of these has twenty-seven 
villages: she agreed to an arranged marriage to keep her parents happy, but for her 
children things will be different. 
But now with our children, we keep an open mind. We don't mind anything, they can go to Shah or 
Patel. I told them that in the end, it is in their hands, we cannot judge them. We see to our children 
and give them the best of our knowledge, keep it to our community. In the end, if they are going to 
marry an outside caste, it is in their hands, nothing to do with us in the end. 
This comment reflects a large shift over one generation, Deepa married within the 
marriage circle to please her parents, but is suggesting that her children will be free to 
choose, providing they stay within the `community', which here refers to the Hindu/Jain 
Gujarati community (see Figure 2). This implies a movement from an identity linked to 
a caste, beyond the caste association suggested by Pocock, to a wider one encompassing 
all Hindu/Jain Gujaratis: the interdependence of the caste structure moving to the 
substance of what it is to be Gujarati. 
The discussion moved away from that of accepted patterns of arranged marriages and 
enabled Dina to explain that she had an arranged marriage to a Shah, who is a Jain, even 
though she was born a Sangani and a Hindu. Arranged marriages between Jains and 
Hindus are common and acceptable and in many aspects of kinship and ritual 
observance, they share common ground. Dina felt she was moving into a more 
sophisticated, forward-thinking family, but religion was not so important to them. (Jains 
are often said to be more modern and Western in their outlook. ) Dina continues to give 
her children a Hindu education and take them to the temple, so that later they can 
50 
choose for themselves. Dina suggested that being Gujarati is more important than caste, 
or perhaps more important even than the religious differences between Jains and 
Hindus. 
Basically, we are Hindus and we believe in Lord Krishna as opposed to the Shahs who are Jains. 
We have slight differences in what we believe. I have come from India and my husband has come 
from Kenya. There are cultural differences in the way they conduct their lives. So it was different 
and at one point I thought, am I doing the right thing? Am I marrying a too sophisticated family? 
They were quite forward in their ways, so much so that my mother-in-law and father-in-law don't 
believe in any religion and they haven't told their children to believe either. 
This last remark caused surprise and concern from the rest of the group, indicating their 
different attitudes. 
Yes, and sometimes my husband tells me not to tell the children to follow religion, and I say, look I 
will tell them now and when they grow up, and if they want to then, they can stop doing so. But I will 
try and give them something. 
Within this heterogeneous caste group there was some difference of opinion: everyone 
did not share Dina's views. They agreed, however, that while changes have occurred 
over the last generation, arranged marriages are still popular. Caste may still be 
important when arranging marriage, but not as a hierarchical category ordering general 
social relations among their generation. Caste associations exist and ceremonies and 
special social events are arranged, but in the everyday lives of these women social 
contacts are made across caste divisions. 
At the end of the discussion we shared a meal cooked by several of the women and 
there seemed to be no concern about who had cooked which dishes. The women 
involved in this debate were all well educated and attitudes may be different in less 
educated families, but there was consensus on the acceptability and usefulness of 
arranged marriages based on introductions, where there was a large element of choice. 
They agreed that it was rare for anyone today to be forced into marriage. Caste did not 
seem important to them in everyday social life, as it was for their parents, but it would 
be a factor in arranged marriages where introductions would be made initially within 
caste. The women in this group stressed that today arranged marriages means making 
introductions, allowing the couple time to meet over a period of time, and letting them 
decide whether they want to marry. They are aware that forced marriages among South 
Asians are strongly disapproved of by white British people. This topic has recently 
51 
received Governmental comment, when unfortunately no distinction was made between 
arranged and forced marriages and South Asians in Britain were effectively represented 
as a single homogeneous group. 
Marriage patterns in North India have been widely discussed in the anthropological 
literature, especially the general acceptance of within-caste endogamy and hypergamy, 
where the bride marries into a higher status family. Pocock's description of the Patidars' 
desire for hypergamy demonstrates how this was linked to an improvement in the socio- 
economic position of the family. Michaelson (1983) identified a system of sister 
exchange among the Oshwals, a group of Jains, in East Africa, which was more akin to 
the South Indian system. Personal communication with Marcus Banks suggests that this 
was practised by the Halar only and abandoned on their move to East Africa. Usually 
Jains follow the Hindu rules of marriage and no marriage is allowed within seven 
generations of the male line and five generations in the female line. This unusual 
practice of sister exchange appears to have arisen for economic reasons - i. e. it avoids 
the cost of a dowry. I have found no evidence of sister exchange in Britain and there is 
no longer any pressure to give large dowries; there is however a complex system of 
present exchange between the two families at weddings. 
52 
Figure 2: Generational changes in marriage patterns 
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53 
The search for suitable marriage partners is a frequent topic of conversation between 
young people and their parents and forms the major subject of gossip. Marriage partners 
are found through personal connections between families, or through a person, male or 
female, acting as a go-between. The go-between can check whether the family is `good' 
by asking people who know them or by consulting the network of gossip. My enquiries 
into how you can tell whether a family is `good' were usually met with surprise: if a 
family is Hindu and Gujarati, then of course someone will know them. The emphasis is 
on the family being `good', not the individual boy or girl; and in discussion there is 
surprise that Western marriages may take place without the families knowing each 
other. 
Young people are encouraged to attend samaj (caste association) functions where they 
are more likely to meet others from the same caste. Suman Prinjha argued in her PhD on 
young Gujaratis in Brent (1999) that Asian marriage bureaux organise dinner dances 
where certain tables are designated for different groups. She also found that young 
Hindu women are different from their mothers and are strong, independent, and 
successful in education and careers, but pointed out that this may hamper them in their 
search for a suitable husband, who should be of higher status. Many saw love marriage 
as more appealing with the possibility of choice, romance and personal happiness. 
Prinjha agreed with Gillespie (1995) that attitudes to courtship are influenced by TV 
and films, that young people wanted to fall in love first and matrimonial lists were seen 
as a `cattle market'. Prinjha concluded that caste-endogamous marriage is still common, 
but young professionals were more likely to marry exogamously and more likely to be 
involved in the samaj. 
Women looking for husbands use several Internet sites, where a head and shoulders 
photograph appears with some personal details of age, caste, employment and interests. 
I discussed several sheets printed from the Internet with a group of three women and 
two men, whose ages ranged from twenty-seven to fifty. There was much laughter and 
many sexually explicit comments were made, pointing out the potential problems of 
most of the men photographed. One of the older women, Manju Shah was looking for a 
match for her daughter and son, and told us on 17/5/2001 of some of the problems she 
had. 
My son was told by an astrologer that he had a blockage which stopped him finding a wife, and he 
was told he had to take a vow to get rid of it. We belong to the Bania [merchant] caste, but are 
54 
Hindus, not Jains. We do not worry so much about whether the astrologer thinks the Rasi [stars 
signs written at birth] are compatible. One of my friends has a daughter who met a boy she really 
liked and they saw each other quite a lot, but the astrologer stopped the relationship. We would not 
do this. Sometimes a boy sees a girl for several months, but usually after about six meetings they 
have to decide on marriage. If they meet for longer than this, the two families must keep it secret 
from the community otherwise gossip will start. If anyone visits the house when the girl or boy is 
there, the boy or girt must hide in a cupboard. 
Manju was explaining her own family's views about the astrologer, which are not 
indicative of a pattern amongst Jains or Hindus. As with adherence to ritual practices, 
the degree of reliance on astrology varies from family to family and is an expression of 
its sanskar (religious and moral beliefs), which will be continued from one generation 
to the next and will be discussed in chapter7. 
A twenty-seven-year-old professional man in the group, Chirag, who comes from one of 
the Patel castes, said how hard it was for him to find a wife. Even though he had met 
several girls at university, he still wanted to have an arranged marriage, so that his 
Hindu/Gujarati traditions could be carried on to the next generation. He described to me 
on 17/5/2001, some of the introduction scenarios arranged for him: 
The go-between person checks the ages, astrology, whether the family is good - that is law- 
abiding, religious and professionally/educationally compatible. The telephone number of the girl is 
given to the boy and he contacts her and they chat. After talking a few times they decide to meet. 
There is an obligation to do this or the other family will be offended and the community will hear 
about it. 
One girl I contacted was quite cool on the phone and whenever I rang, she would be distracted by 
things, such as watching Brookside. So I thought she didn't seem interested, so there was no point 
in continuing, but she insisted on meeting. We arranged to meet in a coffee bar and she turned up 
45 minutes late, wearing a dirty sweatshirt and trousers. She had not done her hair and had no 
make-up. I felt it was obvious that she was trying to put me off, but when I said that she didn't 
appear interested, she became very angry and said I was rude and she would tell her family. 
Another girl I telephoned when she was at work in a travel agency. The first time I called, she 
seemed friendly, but the second time her work mates made excuses. Eventually when I spoke to 
her, she said she had a headache and was going on holiday. Later I met her at a function and she 
seemed interested in me, but only when I told the story of how rude this girl had been to me, did 
she realise I was the same person. I had my astrology checked to see if there was a block in the 
way of me finding someone, but there was not. Sometimes if there is a block, you have to do 
55 
something, like wear a special ring to get rid of the obstacle. Sometimes you have to do a vow to 
the goddess. It is easier if you find a reason, because you can do something about it. 
Clearly there are difficulties in meeting girls even when introductions are made and as 
time goes by the pool of available girls diminishes and people begin to think you have a 
problem. Prinjha (1999) reported that the average age for men to marry is 26 years, 
compared with 28 years for white men; for Indian women in the UK the average is 24 
years and for white women 26 years. She also found that the men in her sample wanted 
young, slim, attractive women who were educated and smaller than them. Women 
wanted men who were well educated and had good career prospects and many preferred 
those who were vegetarian, teetotal and not divorced. Gujarati parents in Britain are said 
to be more restrictive and controlling of their daughters' whereabouts than their 
counterparts in India and Kenya, according to Prinjha (1999). She was told that in 
Bombay brothers encourage their sisters to go to pubs and nightclubs and in Nairobi 
they are more modem than they are here. Mumbai (Bombay) is a busy, cosmopolitan 
city compared with Ahmedabad, where there appeared to be more restrictions on the 
social lives of young, unmarried women and only during Navratri were these were lifted 
to an extent. My own experiences with the joint family with whom I stayed in 
Ahmedabad reflected this concern. I was expected to tell them where I was going each 
day and with whom, and when I would be back. Although I am a married woman with 
grown-up children, the older members of the household treated me like a daughter. 
Kinship obligations 
Older people are usually cared for in the ghar but while they are able they will look 
after grandchildren, while the children's parents work. They expect no payment in 
monetary terms but do it out of a sense of family duty and obligation. An elderly 
grandfather in Gujarat told me he would like to spend time visiting temples and going 
on pilgrimages, especially to Dwarka and Dakor, two Hindu temples which have the 
special meaning of spiritual peace and are popular places to visit in old age. Men are 
often not so involved in spiritual matters while they are working, but once they retire 
these become particularly important. He has a moral duty, however, to look after his 
young grand-daughter while his son and daughter-in-law are at work; he expects that 
when he becomes infirm they will in turn care for him in his own home. Family duties 
and expectations remain central to kin relations in Ahmedabad and Harrow and mutual 
56 
reciprocity is taken for granted: the giving and the return may not always be equal, but 
there is an expectation that it will be so in time, even if not in this life. 
Among kin, it is anticipated that help and favours will be given freely, but there is 
always the expectation of return. Older people expect to be able to give more freely to 
younger people, as Madhu Patel, a forty-five year old man who is an accountant and a 
member of the organising committee of the Patidar Association, explained to me: 
I have an 80-year-old aunt who lives in Gujarat. I cannot challenge her because she is senior to 
me. She will not come here to stay, because I will have to give to her and elders are supposed to 
give to younger people... She will expect us to care for her when she cannot live on her own. 
The close relationship is acknowledged both in word and practice there even though the 
old aunt lives in another place. One is obliged still to look after older kin. Madhu then 
referred to kin at large when he said: 
Financial help is always there. It is our duty always to help relatives. 
When the help and support of kin is not forthcoming the result can be devastating as 
shown by the following case. 
Maya, a Hindu, married Fahad, a Muslim. She was born in Nairobi into a middle-class 
Lohana family; her father owned a shop and she was the only child. Her early childhood 
was happy and she had many friends. She enjoyed school and was one of the best in her 
class, but her life changed when her father died: 
My Dad passed away when I was very young, about twelve years old. Then my mum and I went to 
live with her two sisters. The younger one was married and had a son called Nilesh. He was a real 
bhai (brother) to me and we were very close. When I was fourteen my mother passed away and I 
stayed with my two aunts. I was very close to the older one who never got married, I told her 
everything. She knew I was seeing Fahad and so did Nilesh, but they knew they were not allowed 
to talk about it, that was a secret we had. When I said I was going to marry Fahad, I had to leave 
the house because my uncle did not want me anymore. I had nowhere to go in Nairobi, so I came 
to live with my mother's other sister in Harrow. 
Maya lived with her aunt in Harrow for six months, but her uncle would not talk to her 
because she was intending to marry a Muslim and the atmosphere in the house became 
intolerable. She decided to rent a flat in the area and shortly after that Fahad joined her 
and they were married in the registry office. Her relationship with her masi (mother's 
sister) and her masa (mother's sister's husband) became very difficult and she was no 
57 
longer accepted in their house. Her aunt used to telephone her every week when her 
uncle was out, but that was the only contact she had with them, her only relatives here, 
and Maya felt increasingly isolated. She felt this most acutely at times when kin support 
would usually be taken for granted, such as after the birth of her two children and when 
her husband was critically ill. 
Maya and Fahad had two daughters and after each birth Maya's masi made special food 
for her for the first week, but offered her no other assistance or support. The following 
is an extract from my fieldnotes in May 1997: 
Maya's second daughter was born a week ago and the baby appears healthy. Maya seems happy 
and relaxed today and enjoying breastfeeding. The flat is now very crowded, with two children and 
both parents in one small bedroom. Fahad now has a job working at the Post Office in the 
evenings, so is able to take the older girl to nursery school in the mornings, because Maya must 
stay inside for the first six weeks. A neighbour has been helping by collecting their daughter from 
nursery school and keeping her for the afternoon at her house, but she now says she wants to be 
paid for this and the family cannot afford this. Maya's masi has been doing the cooking for her and 
delivering the food in metal cans every night, but she says she can only do it for the first ten days 
because she has to go into hospital herself. 
When I returned to visit the family on May 19th the situation had changed: 
Maya looks tired and feels let down by her husband, who is expecting her to do the household 
chores less than two weeks after giving birth. He will not hoover the carpet or wash dishes for her 
and expected her to do the ironing for him. Her masi had already stopped cooking for them and 
Maya was tearful about how alone she felt, without the support of her family or her husband's 
family. Her aunt has been rude to her about the name they have chosen for the baby, because it 
was a Muslim one and she wanted her to be called Meera. She had a secret Chhati (sixth day 
ceremony) with her masi for the baby, about which neither Fahad nor her masa knew. Her masi 
consulted the Gujarati calendar and decided on the auspicious time to do the ceremony, which was 
between 9pm and 10pm when it was still light and the weather not 'heavy'. During the ceremony 
they wrote baby's name in a book with a red pen and placed it under the mattress of her carrycot. 
Now the book has been put in a safe place for when she is older. Maya explained that this is the 
book of life and no one can look at it because God has written in it. Her masi will give her black 
threads to tie on the baby's wrists to protect her from evil. Maya worries that the baby makes 
unhappy faces in her sleep and this may be the evil trying to enter her body. When the child laughs 
in her sleep Maya sees this as the influence of the fairies. 
58 
Later that year, Fahad was seriously ill in hospital with an infectious disease and 
Maya's masi did not offer to help her at all, even by looking after her children, so that 
she could visit him. She was treated as if she were unclean and her masi told her that her 
masa had to have a cleansing bath after speaking to her on the telephone. After two 
years she still sorrows over the fact that no one helped when she needed it and even her 
husband's family did not come from Kenya to help. This has left her very bitter. She 
says that feeling deserted by your kin makes you feel there is no point in living any 
more. She is reluctant to seek help from the local Indian women's support group, 
because she does not trust that what she says will remain confidential and thinks that via 
the gossip network her family will find out. Maya values my friendship and support - so 
much so that she tells me we are kin that I am like her mother. The relationship with kin 
is so central to feelings of self and the meaning of existence that its lack can have a 
profoundly negative effect on the person's psychological well-being. 
Usha Patel's story is different from Maya's because although they both had `love 
marriages', Usha married a Hindu man from a different Patel caste and although her 
family have now accepted him the situation was strained at first. Usha is a lively woman 
who wears Western clothes; she is a university graduate and enjoys reading Indian 
novels. She lives with her husband in a luxury flat in Harrow, has one two-year-old 
daughter and is expecting another child soon; she has close natal-kin support from her 
sister and mother. Usha was also born in Kenya and came to Britain when she was five 
years old with her parents and three older sisters. The following is an extract from a 
taped interview with Usha in March 1999, when I asked her to tell me about her family. 
We came to the UK in 1974 and had no blood relatives here as such. My father was the only one in 
his family who ventured out of India. He had five other brothers and he was the second eldest. He 
worked hard and sent money back to India to his family. Whereas my mother's side is completely 
different, all her family are in the States. We didn't have any relatives here, just friends and friends 
of friends and people my Mum and Dad called relatives, but they were just people they had known 
from the villages. We stayed with them for a few weeks and then my Dad managed to rent a house 
and get a job pretty quickly. Then we moved to south London, that's where we were for five or six 
years, and then my Dad did the usual thing, he bought a shop. We moved to Reading and that is 
where I grew up. My Dad continued with the shop in Reading until about seven years ago. It was 
doing really well, it was a huge shop -a supermarket, but with all the competition the rent went sky 
high in the late 80s and he could not maintain it. So he handed the lease back and is now retired 
and is quite old and he called it a day. 
59 
I asked Usha whether her sisters had arranged marriages. 
My oldest sister is disabled and lives with my parents, but the other two had arranged marriages 
within the caste. One of these worked well and they are very happy, but my other sister ended up 
getting divorced. It wasn't the man who was the problem, it was his family. She was expected to 
live with them and she did not have much of a say in what went on. He did not really fight for her, 
so she decided after six months that it was not for her. It was very difficult, because my Dad would 
not speak to her for two years after the divorce, even though they were living in the same house. 
What about her own marriage? How had her family reacted? 
When it came to me, I think I was expected to go for an arranged marriage, but I didn't. It was quite 
strange because I have always been the youngest and in my Dad's eyes I could do nothing wrong, 
I had always been spoilt. The most difficult thing I have had to do in my entire life was to tell my 
Dad that I wanted to get married. It was just like, he had always seen me as this innocent girl, and 
then one day I go home and say Dad I have met someone and want to marry him. It came as a big 
shock to him. I had led quite a private life really. For six years I was away from home and just came 
back at weekends. There was a problem. Although my husband is a Patel, he is a different type of 
Patel to me, we are different castes. To me, I had not even realised. When my father asked me 
what type of Patel he was, I said I didn't know. He did not know either what type he was, so he 
asked his family. He came back and said they were Gouri Patel, my Dad said no, you can't marry 
him, they are a lower caste. I said what do you mean? For a month, my father refused to meet 
them, but then eventually he agreed to meet him and his family. I had already met his family and 
they were happy about us. 
Did Usha's father want her to marry into a higher caste? 
Yes he did, but in the end he came round and now they absolutely love my husband. But to begin 
with it was very difficult. His family was pretty upset by my Dad's response, when he told them I 
was not marrying into that family. Although they are a really lovely family, very respectable, but 
because in the past they had this name attached to them and my Dad saying no, no, made it very 
difficult for them. The first year, it was difficult between the two families. I didn't have the ideal 
wedding because we just wanted to get married, we just let our parents get on with everything. 
They arranged the wedding and we did everything by the book, which I regret now and wish I had 
more say in it. We just wanted to get married and we went along with what they said. Now both 
families get on really well. 
Usha received help from her older sister, Dipti, when her two children were born. Her 
mother is elderly and has to care for a disabled adult daughter, so was unable to have 
her to stay in her home, so she went to stay with Dipti for the first six weeks after birth. 
60 
The children call Dipti `mummy' and she has remained involved in the children's care, 
co-sleeping with them when they stay the night. This intensive involvement by female 
kin in the care of children, will be addressed in chapter 8, but this help and support is 
expected and taken-for-granted. 
Gift exchange between kin 
People say that gifts are given to cement relationships between the two families at 
weddings and with the wider community, but these gifts have to be planned carefully 
according to strict caste conventions so as to reflect the social relationships entailed. 
Some women have told me that many families today give gifts because they want to. 
There are some general conventions that most people seem to follow, For example, the 
numbers of gifts given must be auspicious - that is three, five or seven; if you give 
money, you would give £11 not £10, or £51 not £50, or £5.25 not £5 because any 
rounded number would be considered inauspicious. A man sits at a table in the wedding 
hall, making a careful written account of all presents given. Alison Shaw (1997) 
describes a similar process at Pakistani weddings, where the type, amount and value of 
the gifts are written in a record and announced to everyone. When I arrived at a 
wedding with my wrapped present, I was told that I was not to give it to the bride or 
groom but to a man who would ask what it was and how much it cost. Reflecting on this 
now, I realise that no thank-you letters are written either, because the expectation of 
reciprocity in other ways stands, as a man in his late fifties explained to me: 
There are no words for please and thank you in the Gujarati language. There is always the 
expectation that any help given will be returned. Your reputation depends on it. 
The dowry system still exists but not in the extremes described in the 1960s by Pocock 
(1973), where families never recover from the financial effects. Prinjha (1999) reported 
that many young people had not heard of dowries, but refer to the exchange of gifts of 
money, jewellery or saris at weddings. The Patel community today still has a reputation 
for insisting on gold being given as presents to wider kin. From my observations at 
other weddings, however, one a Kshatriya and one a Brahman, the presents between the 
bride's and groom's families consisted mostly of large numbers of saris, which were 
displayed for all to see, as at Pakistani weddings described by Alison Shaw: 
61 
The display... represents the web of relationships in which any household is entangled, and as 
such is also an important indication of a family's standing among its relatives and friends. To 
receive only a few gifts from others in lens-dena would cause shame and would be a measure of 
the poverty of that family's inter-household ties. If gifts are not forth coming, there is considerable 
ill-feeling on the part of the bride's family, in much the same way that a groom's parents are 
dissatisfied if they do not receive the amount of dowry expected (Shaw 1997: 148). 
The exchange of presents begins at the engagement ceremony and then continues 
through the wedding ceremony, the bride's family being expected to give more than the 
groom's. After the wedding, the bride's family has to give her presents at special times, 
such as Diwali and Rakshabandhan. Mr and Mrs Pandya told me that if groom's family 
is wealthier than the bride's, then expensive presents, like gold, are expected. Although 
many people will say that the dowry system has disappeared, this system of giving 
continues until the death of the parents. Mr Pandya saw this as an unfortunate practice 
in Gujarati society, which can cause great hardship in poorer familes. Visiting by kin 
during festivals, especially Diwali, is expected and if not followed people risk losing kin 
status, as I found last year. Mita, one of my informants, who has adopted me as a 
member of her kin group because I stayed with her family in Ahmedabad, rang me after 
Diwali. 
Alison, where were you last week? Were you on holiday? Was someone in the family seriously ill? 
I couldn't believe that you did not come to our house during Diwali. You know you were expected to 
come and eat sweet foods with us. What happened? 
The anger in Mita's voice shocked me. I had seriously failed in my duties as a member 
of their kin group. My British reserve about not visiting unless invited had made me act 
in a way considered rude and left me wondering whether I would have behaved 
differently in India. 
Alison Shaw also mentions the wider aspects of reciprocity demonstrated in the lena- 
dena arrangements. The Pakistani women she describes spend much of their time and 
energy negotiating these kin and wider sociability networks, but I have not found the 
same arrangements between Gujarati women. 
Central to lena-dena is the creation of trust and the expectation of reciprocity. A gift is given in the 
knowledge that at a later date, at the next appropriate occasion, a return will be made. To break 
this trust involves considerable loss of face and, indeed, may even result in the termination of an 
inter-household relationship. As a result, the system is rarely abused (Shaw 1997: 148). 
62 
Pocock sees gift-giving among Patidars as more complex and involving no simple 
reciprocity. Relatives who give gifts may be thanked coolly and at their next visit given 
special attention. Receiving of presents must always be done without emotion, lest the 
receiver appears greedy. 
It is proper to demur when the gift is offered, but to refuse outright is an insult (Pocock 1972: 100). 
I gave a small gift to an elderly Brahman woman, when invited for lunch with her and 
her husband. She took the gift, an embroidered tea towel I had brought back from 
holiday, looked at it and put it down on a table without saying anything. She gave the 
impression of being somewhat offended by the gift and certainly not grateful and I felt 
that I had in some way failed to behave correctly; perhaps, as a Brahman, she expected 
to be a giver rather than a receiver, or perhaps it was an age discrepancy and she, being 
twenty years my senior, should be giving to me? The rest of the meal was friendly and 
relaxed and this episode has not spoiled our long-term relationship. This incident 
happened early in my fieldwork and marked the beginning of my understanding about 
the complexity of gift giving. Laidlaw (1995) describes a similar reaction in the giving 
of gifts to Jain ascetics in Rajasthan. 
They show no pleasure in receiving what they accept, and leave without expressing any gratitude 
(Laidlaw 1995: 321). 
Before I went to Gujarat I got detailed advice on appropriate presents, some of which I 
gave to my host family's patrilineal kin whom I met at a ceremony held in their flat for 
a two-year-old child. They all seemed pleased by my gifts and accepted them openly; 
indeed these gifts seemed to help my being accepted as one of the household. 
Presents are given by bhai (brother) to bahen (sister) at Raksha-bandhan when she ties a 
rakhi (bracelet made of woven, coloured threads) on his wrist for protection and he 
reciprocates by giving her a present. At Bhaibij the bhai visits his bahen's house and 
gives her a present and she cooks him a meal. I will describe these in more detail in the 
following chapter. 
Hospitality in Gujarati households is always generous; food is supplied in abundant 
quantity and more is usually given than can be eaten (see Pocock 1972). To give food to 
guests is a way to gain favours with god, because you can never be certain that the guest 
is not a god in disguise, so he or she has to be honoured like one. The treatment given to 
guests carries with it no expectation of return, so is not seen in terms of normal 
63 
reciprocity. Punjabi Hindus in Delhi told me that Gujaratis have a reputation with other 
Indians as being very hospitable; honouring their guests, and this practice went with 
them to East Africa and the UK. 
Historically, when Gujaratis first arrived in the UK, the reciprocal relations they had 
with kin and wider sociability networks proved invaluable to them. Most came with 
very little money and those from East Africa were allowed to bring only £50, even 
though many had left considerable wealth behind. Close kinship ties enabled pooling of 
resources and borrowing of money to set up businesses here, which in many cases has 
led to successful enterprises. One man explained the anxiety involved in borrowing 
money: 
Your relationship with the money-lender was vital. We never went to the bank, we went to people. 
We had no collaterals, you lost sleep until you paid your debt. Your wife, brother, everyone gave 
what they could to buy the shop. Your reputation depended on it. Returning help is understood and 
vital. 
Gujarati people have high expectations that kin will always help in whatever way 
possible, in emotional, practical and financial terms. When working well, kin support 
and reciprocity can benefit all age groups, childcare leading to care of the elderly, 
sharing of duties as well as the pleasures of festivals and rituals. The conventions 
surrounding gift-giving are complex, however, and involve careful understanding of 
status, in caste or social class terms, and future obligation. Many younger people today 
have told me that they give presents on special occasion because they want to, and this 
has nothing to do with convention. Perhaps there is a move towards a more Western 
pattern of giving, which may need further investigation. 
To be `one of us' today in Britain may mean sharing the same atak (surname) or caste, 
but is becoming increasingly related to being Gujarati and Hindu or Jain. The word 
`community' when used by Gujaratis usually refers to caste or samaj (caste association) 
membership and sense of difference, rather than their place within a hierarchical 
system, but the term can also be used to refer to the wider Gujarati community. Gnat 
and jati (caste) are rarely used and many prefer the terms `community', `in ours', or 
`class', which may be thought of as more progressive and not stuck in the structural 
inequalities of India. Class inequalities and associated socioeconomic differences may 
be posing more problems than caste in Britain today. 
64 
Caste identity is still important as as sense of difference with caste associations enabling 
a corporate caste identity to continue. Vertovec (2000) argues that, in Britain, these 
identities have produced a barrier to joint Hindu activity, other than that which takes 
place at a superficial level. The leaders of caste associations, who may be elected to 
represent Hindu interests, identify so strongly with their own castes that people of other 
castes may deny they have any power. Vertovec suggests that the divisions caused by 
caste identity are stronger among Gujaratis, especially those from East Africa, than 
among other South Asians, such as Punjabis. Caste difference centres around matters of 
family status, patronage, marriage, leadership and voluntary organisations. In mixed 
Punjabi/Gujarati communities, however, the sense of a joint Hindu community has 
emerged (Knott 1986; in Vertovec 2000: 25) where caste identity becomes unimportant. 
In Harrow and Wembley, this sense of caste difference among Gujaratis continues to be 
strong and may be perpetuated through the influence of the caste associations. Jain 
interests are also strongly represented by caste associations and notably the Oshwal 
Association in Potters Bar in north London. Vertovec contrasts the British situation with 
that in Trinidad, where caste identity has become insignificant within the Hindu 
diaspora, and a sense of `general Hindu communalism' has developed, together with a 
single religious tradition, `facilitated commensality, congregational worship and other 
patterns of consociation' (Vertovec 2000: 26). He suggests that commensality among 
Gujaratis in Britain may be limited to large, public events but may be uncommon in the 
domestic setting. My data indicate that there may be a generational change here with 
younger people happy to eat with any caste, but older people still reluctant to do so. I 
have observed people of different castes sharing food together at temples during 
festivals, both in Britain and Gujarat but within the household commensality tends to be 
confined to kin groups, including close friends. 
Kin ties continue to be strong in Britain and India and joint families the ideal, although 
members do not necessarily reside in the same building. The husband's family home or 
ghar is where all important kin activities take place, where food is eaten together, where 
children learn what it is to be Gujarati and especially where they learn the conventions 
of respect and reciprocity. Present-giving and exchange of favours follow complex 
patterns within the household, outside kin and wider community, reinforcing relations 
of hierarchy and seniority, within a moral framework, adding to a person's karma and 
standing with their god. More investigation is required to establish whether there has 
65 
indeed been a generational change here, with younger people who have been educated 
in Britain changing their ideas of gift-exchange. Kinship is strong in all South Asian 
groups and Gujaratis here may be following similar networks of dependency and 
obligations to others (Bauman 1995: 736; Shaw 2000: 227), but without comparative 
studies it is impossible to suggest that one is stronger or more intricate than another. 
66 
Chapter 3 Women in Kinship 
Rekka, our thirteen-year-old daughter gets angry with us, because she says we are not using the 
correct terms. We tell her that there is no such thing as cousins - they are considered brothers and 
sisters. She tells us that these are not correct terms, that is how she is taught at school. For us, the 
brother-sister relationship is unique, all other relationships are built around it. 
Rekka's parents reflect some of the confusion and resentment felt by some Gujarati 
children educated in the UK, who find their parents' and the schools' definitions of 
brothers, sisters and cousins do not agree. The words used indicate not only the relation 
between kin, but also obligations entailed, as do all other Gujarati kinship terms (see 
figure 3, p. 72). The special relationship between siblings across sex is the starting point 
from which others arise and extends across kulumb (joint family), caste, and clan. The 
bond between bahen (sister) and bhai (brother) is celebrated every year in the festivals 
and rituals of Rasksha-bandhan and Bhaiby. There is enthusiastic support for these two 
events from women and men as well as from children of all ages. The people identified 
as one's brothers or sisters may not be consanguineal brothers or sisters, because 
cousins will be included here, as will those friends who are considered close enough by 
virtue of friendship, common locality of origin, or common relatives. 
This chapter concerns itself with these links between brothers and sisters as well as with 
other people in the household, wider kin and sociability networks, and the wider 
Gujarati population. It explores the way children experience kin relationships in the 
household and come to realise that the moral codes of respect and duty are an integral 
part of the bonds that are made there. Women arrange the meeting of wider kin around 
special rituals and festivals and are responsible for transmitting moral knowledge to the 
next generation. A festival that all women look forward to and enjoy is Navratri (nine 
nights), and this is described below from my observations in Britain and Gujarat, as are 
the conventions surrounding clothes and colour symbolism. 
I argue that women are not only involved in household matters, as suggested by Tambs- 
Lyche (1972: 7), but are concerned with the moral and spiritual well-being of the wider 
kin group. Similarly Josephine Reynell has reported how Jain women in Rajasthan were 
seen as mediators channelling supernatural forces for the benefit of their families 
(Reynell 1985: 275). The oldest woman in a Gujarati kutumb is expected to offer advice 
on all occasions from weddings to funerals and all life-cycle rituals. Mrs Pandya is an 
67 
elderly Brahman woman whose mother died in 2001; for her this responsibility weighs 
heavily at times. 
I am expected to be wise and know all the answers to everyone's questions. I have to attend all 
important events. I was recently in Birmingham for my niece's wedding and had to be there for five 
days. I was so tired when I got home, I slept for two days. 
Men attend rituals but tend to gather on the periphery and talk together, as I have 
observed at weddings, bhajan (hymn singing gatherings) and life-cycle rituals where, 
apart from the priest who is always a man, women conduct the proceedings. At the 
chhati (six day ceremony after birth) held for his new grandson, Mr Shah told me that 
men were not involved at all in these rituals in the past; they did not even come. Now 
they attend, but are not allowed to take part; the women arrange everything and call 
upon the goddess. 
Moral continuity can be seen through the way these rituals continue through the 
generations. Gujarati kinship terms used in rituals and elsewhere represent the roles and 
obligations of participants as kin. For example the foi (father's sister) plays an important 
role at the chhati, but if the father does not have a sister, another woman who has not 
lost a baby will become the foi in the ritual and will take on future obligations to the 
child. Kinship terms used at other times represent the closeness of the relationship 
rather than the consanguineal or marriage link. Close, valued friends may be called by 
kinship terms that accord with the nature of the relationship and take into account age, 
sex and so on; the expectation is that those so-called will take on the obligations 
appropriate to the kin-term by which they are addressed. 
68 
The bond between bhai and bahen (brother and sister) 
The bond between bhai (brother) and bahen (sister) is the most important and the one 
around which others revolve. The relationship entails certain obligations, as well as 
warmth and expectations to follow specific rituals that I describe below. The bond can 
be between two bhayo (brothers) or two baheno (sisters) as well as between men and 
women. When there is no blood or marriage relationship it can cause confusion for 
other British people and Gujaratis, along with other South Asians, may be heard trying 
to explain the relationship as cousin-brother, or cousin-sister. Madhu, Deepa's husband, 
described the confusion this caused at his work when he asked for time off to go to a 
funeral. 
I had a cousin in Ahmedabad who died last year. I never called him cousin because he was a real 
brother to me. When I asked for time off to go to his funeral, I was told that he is only your cousin, 
why are you so upset? They were reluctant to give me time off, but did in the end. 
The festival of Raksha-bandhan (the tying of threads), celebrates the special 
relationship between bhai (brother) and bahen (sister), and is held every August. A 
small ritual is performed during which brightly coloured threads, which have been 
twisted together to make bracelets called rakhi, is tied by a woman on her bhai's right 
wrist. This is an outward expression of close emotional ties and obligations and the bhai 
is offered protection by his bahen. I have been told that women used to perform this 
ritual for Rajput men before they went to fight in battles and that wearing rakhi kept 
them safe. A woman in Britain may send rakhi to her bhai abroad in India, East Africa, 
the USA, Canada, or elsewhere. A man in Ahmedabad proudly showed me the rakhi he 
was wearing - sent from England by his bahen. He would wear his rakhi until Dusshera 
(the day after the end of Navratri) and then tie it on a tree or put it into a flowing river; 
it must not be thrown away. The following is an extract from my field notes (4/8/2000): 
Maya tells me she is going to Ealing Road in Wembley to buy rakhi for her bhai. On the way there 
she tells me about the significance of Raksha-bandhan. She says you must send rakhi to all your 
brothers every year, even if you do not see them or like them. One of her brothers is in hospital and 
she must send one there. She will buy more expensive ones for the ones she likes and some for 
her bhabhi (brother's wife) as well. She says if you see your brother that day (August 151,2000) 
you must put a chandlo (red spot) on his forehead with your right ring finger, with some grains of 
rice on top, and then give him some sweet food, like penda, which you must put straight into his 
mouth, and then be a thread around his wrist. Penda is a sweet ball made of wheat and is used on 
69 
special, happy occasions. If your bhai is married and has sons, you will give penda, but if he has 
daughters you give jalebi (sweet strands of wheat deep fried). Jalebi is also used on happy 
occasions but does not have the deep significance of penda. Maya looks radiant and excited about 
the whole ritual and I ask her why this is so important to her. She tells me that this is the most 
important relationship in families; it makes everyone warm and close and binds everyone in the 
family together. If she were to forget one, she would risk losing her relationship with the whole 
family. We arrive at Ealing Road and it is a bright sunny day. There are stalls everywhere in front of 
shops decked with brightly coloured rakhi, and an array of cards with sentimental messages on 
them, such as: 'Rakhi ties a brother and sister in a relationship beyond time and above any 
measure' and 'No distance is a barrier when the thoughts, feelings and souls of two people are 
united, especially if they happen to be brother and sister. ' 
The next week Maya telephoned me to invite me to go with her and her two daughters, 
aged seven and three, to the house of her Masi (mother's sister) where she would tie 
rakhi on the wrists of her bhai's sons. She was doing the ritual on behalf of her 
daughters who were too young to do it themselves; the little girls call these three boys 
aged ten, eight and six, bhai, and their mother's aunt Nani ma (maternal grandmother, 
in a respectful form). Maya explained that her mother's sister is the only woman who 
has cared for her in the UK, because her real mother died in Kenya, twenty years ago, 
and this is why her daughters call her Nani ma, because they have no other grandmother 
here, and their father's mother (Dadi ma) lives in Kenya. Her aunt is part of a household 
belonging to the Lohana caste; they occupy a detached house in a street where wealthy 
business and professional families live. Maya herself lives four miles away in a two- 
bedroom council flat; she said she found the contrast of their wealth and her relative 
poverty hard to take. She has a difficult relationship with her uncle, who disapproved of 
her marriage to a Muslim; he does not like her visiting the house. The following account 
is taken from my field notes on 15/8/2000: 
On a sunny day in August, I walk with Maya and her two daughters down the tree-lined street to her 
aunt's large, detached house. Maya is wearing a yellow Punjabi dress, decorated in the front with 
pink and green diamond shapes and a pink scarf. Her younger daughter is likewise wearing a 
turquoise Punjabi suit with pink patterns on the front and a pink scarf, but her older daughter 
prefers a black and white T-shirt and leggings. The two girls are excited about seeing their Nani-ma 
and ask their mother in Gujarati which family members they will see. Maya rings the doorbell, which 
is answered by a well-dressed businessman in his thirties, who says kern chho [how are you? ] to 
us and leaves. We walk into a large, carpeted hall, with an untidy pile of shoes by the door. We 
remove our shoes, leave them in the pile and walk into the living room, which is spacious, with two 
70 
sofas and matching chairs around the walls, religious pictures on the walls but few ornaments. 
Maya's aunt, wearing a green sari, is standing in the middle of the floor in a commanding manner. 
She greets us by putting the palms of her hands together and bowing her head, saying 'jayse 
Krishna' and we respond by doing the same. We repeat the greeting to an elderly lady sitting on a 
sofa; she is wearing a pale purple and white sari with a floral border, indicating that she is a widow. 
I am told later that she is Maya's aunt's mother-in-law. She seems surprised that I greet her in 
Gujarati and Maya explains that I am a friend who is learning about the way Gujaratis live and that I 
have come to watch her tie rakhis and she seems happy about this explanation. Maya leaves the 
room and I follow her into the kitchen, where she assembles a tray of kanku (red powder), rice, a 
divo (candle made of ghee and a wick) and some Quality Street chocolates and penda (sweet, 
dough balls), she explains to me that children do not like penda very much, so she gives them 
chocolates. Neeta, the wife of Maya's aunt's oldest son is a woman of about thirty-five, dressed in 
blue trousers and a white shirt. She comes into the kitchen to meet us, smiling broadly and Maya's 
two daughters run into the hall to meet her three sons. Neeta's husband was in hospital at the time, 
so Maya will send a rakhi to him. Once the choka (tray) had been assembled, with a satio (Hindu 
swastika) drawn on it and a sopari (betel nut) in one comer, we move into the living room to begin 
the rakhi-tying ritual. Maya begins by lighting the divo and summoning Neeta's oldest son to come 
to her. She puts kanku on his forehead and sticks a few grains of rice on it, ties the rakhi around his 
right wrist and then places a chocolate straight into his mouth. She repeats the process with the 
other two boys ending with the youngest. 
Once the ritual is over Maya blows out the candle and indicates to me that it is time to leave the 
room. She says 'jayse Krishna' to the old lady and prompts me to do the same. She took the tray 
into the kitchen and I follow her. There her aunt is preparing food and insists that we have some 
with them. I apologise, saying I have to leave, but I agree to have some kerino ras (mango juice). 
She hands me a plastic box to take home, it contains small pots of vegetable curry, puri (fried 
puffed wheat balls), rice, lentil cakes and jalebi. Maya and her aunt say goodbye to me at the door 
as I thank them and put on my shoes, while the aunt invites me to return soon. Maya says she will 
stay and eat the meal, but will leave before her uncle returns. 
71 
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72 
Puja, a Patel woman who was a member of the group of nine women I met in 1997, 
invited me to come to the Raksha-bandhan celebration 22"d August 2002. She was 
holding the ritual in her house with her small children and had invited her two sisters' 
children. I arrived at 4 p. m. and was welcomed warmly at the door by Mrs Patel, Puja's 
mother, and Puja's four-year-old daughter Veena and three-year-old son Pritam. Puja 
came into the hall and greeted me with a friendly embrace, although we had not seen 
each other for two years. Her older sister's children - Reshma aged thirteen and Harish 
eighteen - were in the garden. All the children were wearing Indian clothes; Veena had 
chosen for herself, a long, cream skirt and fitted blouse, with a long, matching scarf; and 
the Pritam wore a loose brown cotton shirt with beige fitted trousers. We talked for a 
while in the garden until Puja's other sister arrived with her ten-month old baby. The 
ritual began with the three-year-old boy opening several envelopes containing rakhi that 
had been sent from bahen in this country, USA and India. Her grandmother showed 
Veena how to put a red spot on her bhai Harish's forehead with the ring finger of her 
right hand, followed by some grains of rice. She then fed him with two different sweet 
prasad and tied rakhi on his right wrist. She repeated the ritual with Pritam and then her 
two bhai gave her presents. The small children were helped by their grandmother to do 
the ritual correctly and even the baby girl had her hand guided to do it (see figures 4-7). 
Pritam could not understand why he could not have a present like his bahen, so his 
mother explained to him that he had a rakhi, which was special, and she did not. 
73 
Figure 4: Raksha-bandhan. Bahen puts grains of rice on her nano (small) bhai's forehead. 
Figure 5: Raksha-bandhan. Bahen gives her moto (older) bhai sweet food. 
74 
Figure 6: Raksha-bandhan. Bahen ties a rakhi on her bhai's right wrist. 
75 
Figure 7: Raksha-bandhan. Ba guides baby bahen's hand to put a chandlo on her bhai's 
forehead. 
Bhaibij is the last day of Diwali and is the day when a bhai goes to his bahen's house to 
give her presents and she cooks him a meal, accompanied by a great deal of excitement, 
fun, and light-hearted teasing. During the spring festival of Holi, normal conventions 
between men and women are relaxed and bhai will chase their bahen and try to throw 
coloured powders over them. Unlike other South Asian languages, Gujarati only has 
one word for brother and one for sister; younger brother is nano bhai, older brother is 
moto bhai, younger sister is nani bahen and older sister is moti bahen. 
In January 2002 I asked Maya to tell me more about the special relationship between 
bhai and bahen: 
76 
If a bahen has a problem that she cannot tell her own family, then she will go to her bhai and he will 
help her. He will also tease her and joke with her sometimes, but she will always have respect for 
him. If he is younger than her she will call him by his name, but if he is married or older she will call 
him his name and bhai afterwards, such as Nikhil-bhai. 
I asked if a bahen can ever marry a bhai and Maya looked horrified, as if even 
suggesting such a thing was unacceptable. She said: 
A bahen can never marry someone she calls bhai. You would never marry your brother would you? 
Would her aunt mind if one evening Maya went out on her own to visit her bhai? 
She will not mind. When you are with your bhai you are always safe. 
She added that as her husband is Muslim, he would like their daughter to marry his 
brother's son in Kenya, but this practice goes against everything she has been brought 
up to believe about who you can marry and she would never agree to it. 
This special relationship between bhai and bahen gives a womn freedom to socialise 
with and obtain support from a man with whom she feels safe because any sexual 
relationship between them is out of the question and is regarded as incest. By the same 
token, any solitary meetings between women and men who do not stand to each other as 
bahen and bhai are unacceptable. Such behaviour in a woman would meet with severe 
disapproval from her female kin. Bauman's (1995) description of cousin bonds among 
young people in Southall makes an interesting parallel here. He reports that cousin 
claims were made across `different kinship traditions and marriage practices, and also 
with regard to different migratory histories and post-migration agenda' (Bauman 
1995: 734). This plural process included youth from Sikh, Hindu and Muslim South 
Asians, Afro-Caribbean and some `white' backgrounds. Many Punjabi parents felt that 
if their children insisted on going out at night, if they went with a cousin, whether 
genealogical cousin or not, they would be safe, because they would know the parents 
and their whereabouts could be checked. Gujaratis tend to refer to bhai and bahen 
bonds, whether genealogically related or not, but rarely refer to cousins. The annual 
tying of the rakhi (thread bracelet) emphasises the mutual protection symbolised 
through this action. 
77 
Networks of Gossip. 
Women commonly talk together about each other and if a woman's behaviour meets 
with disapproval or contravenes social convention, she may become the target of gossip 
- something every woman fears. Gossip is the penalty even for relatively minor 
mistakes; thus Mina, a young mother of twenty-two from the Lohana caste, told me: 
My great aunt passed away in Windsor and I will go to the funeral tomorrow. I will wear a black and 
white sari; black or white can be wom but no bright colours. If you do not do this, people will talk 
and say you do not respect the dead. 
The fear of `talk' compels women to follow behavioural and dress conventions when at 
public gatherings, such as funerals and festivals and after life events such as births and 
deaths. 
Maya told me in 2001, that she could not attend a garba (dance) during Navratri 
because her uncle had just passed away and people would see her, talk about her and 
ask how she could enjoy herself at such a time. 
Maya spoke to me (on 19/5/1997) after the birth of her second daughter, about how 
unhappy she was because she was not receiving support from her aunt because her 
uncle disapproved of her marriage to a Muslim. 
Maya feels resentful that her husband's family have done nothing for her, and do not care. She is 
tearful about how she feels and says I am the only person she can talk to. Her aunt has been rude 
to her over the name they have chosen for the baby, because it is a Muslim name and she wanted 
her to be called Meera. She feels that everyone is now gossiping about her. 
Marie Gillespie (1995) in her study in Southall of television viewing and social change 
reports that the pervasiveness of gossip and rumour makes these powerful instruments 
to control behaviour. 
Gossip and rumour are seen as one of the greatest threats both to a young person's 
freedom and to family honour, or izzat, in Southall. Gossip among adults is seen to be 
more pernicious, malicious and harmful than among young people since it usually has 
more far-reaching and dangerous consequences. It is very rare that peer gossip will be 
revealed to parents because complicity among youth is high. One of their consistent 
condemnations of Southall concerns the pervasiveness of gossip among adults and the 
instrumental role it plays in social control, especially in the surveillance of gender 
relations (Gillespie 1995: 150). 
78 
Gillespie emphasises that gossip and rumour are not peculiar to South Asian groups and 
anthropologists have reported on the pressures put on women to conform to social 
norms in studies ranging from working class women in London (Bott 1957) to the 
Tikopea (Firth 1956). In the former, she argues that gossip is `one of the chief means 
whereby norms are stated, tested and affirmed' (Gillespie 1995: 150). The Tikopea 
however, she suggests that `certain types of rumour serve as social instruments by 
which individuals or groups attempt to improve their status' (Gillespie 1995: 151). My 
female informants commonly refer to their concern about what people might think if 
they behave in an unacceptable way, or dress inappropriately. Izzat is a Muslim term not 
used by Hindu Gujaratis, although Katbamna (2000) also reports it used by Gujaratis. 
The social standing and honour of a family can be seriously affected by the spreading of 
bad rumours and gossip about an individual. 
Attachment to the house 
Some of my Brahman informants have also described a close attachment not only to the 
kin with whom one lives, but to the house itself and to inanimate objects associated with 
it, such as the car. This is varsna - an attachment that has to be broken after death, 
through a special ritual, so that the spirit can be freed to move on to the next 
reincarnation. The implications of varsna for kinship are profound, because these 
material ties are centred within the spirit and the moral obligations and duties they entail 
continue throughout life to be anchored in the substance of the person. Mrs Pandya, an 
elderly Brahman woman explained to me on 12/5/98 how she felt about varsna: 
Varsna is the attachment you have to the house, the family, the car and all material objects in the 
house. After someone dies a special ceremony is conducted so that the spirit can be freed from the 
attachment to kin and released from this life to travel to the next. During this ceremony a piece of 
dough is cut into three, one for the brother, one for the father and one for the grandparents. 
Mr Pandya had a different view on necessity for this ceremony: 
I do not want this ceremony done after my death because I feel I have done nothing wrong to 
anyone in my life, so I will not bother anyone after my death. 
At a later visit to the house in 2002 Mrs Pandya told me more about varsna: 
Varsna is tied up with the four stages of life. In the first twenty-five years you gain knowledge; in the 
next twenty-five you marry; in the third stage you delegate and give up your material possessions 
79 
to your children, so you give up your attachment to these objects; in the fourth stage you give your 
last twenty-five years to prayer and meditation. Now I am old, I am not buying any more saris. I am 
giving my jewellery to my daughter-in-law; these things are no good to me in the next life. 
Some Hindu Gujarati people see their bodies and spirits linked through varsna to kin, 
the house and the material possessions in it, and the person is constituted through these. 
To know a Gujarati person, you have to know the personality of his or her kin, house, 
and possessions; this is not a static state, but one that is constantly changing and 
adjusting itself to shifting kin obligations, stage of life and wealth. A comparison could 
be made here with Daniel's description of the Tamil person, which suggests that the 
equilibrium of bodily substances needs to be maintained and balanced, and body 
boundaries are fluid, linking not only with other people but also with the house, or the 
soil of the village. 
One begins to know the person by knowing the personality of the soil on which he lives. (Daniels 
1984: 9) 
The attachment to worldly objects and kin has to be weakened as old age approaches so 
that the spirit may be free to pass on to the next incarnation; if this does not happen the 
spirit may linger and worry others as a ghost. The spirit of the person is one linked and 
attached the ghar (house), its contents and to other kin and obligations to them. Moral 
duties such as respect for elders and obligations to kin, close friends and the wider 
Gujarati community, become part of the person and the standing he or she has with the 
gods. One who fails in dharma, moral duties, has not only let down a relative or close 
friend, but has ignored the wishes of the god and lost status position at death. 
Shared substance and respect 
Kinship is embedded not only in personal relationships, caste, sociality networks and 
wider Gujarati community concerns, but is central to the spiritual procession of a person 
through life. Children learn about relationships, obligations and respect through the 
dynamics of their early contact with kin. To view kinship purely in structural terms of 
marriage, caste and social obligations is to miss this central core, which informs not 
only the relationships but also the motivation for them. 
The complexities of these relationships and the processual nature of kinship in India 
have been addressed by Inden and Nicholas (1977) and Lambert (2000) who give a 
80 
dynamic view, rather than the traditional rather static approach via caste, hierarchy and 
status roles. Inden and Nicholas suggest that `one's own people' could be family, caste, 
patrinlineage or clan, and also people with whom one shares a close social relationship. 
Lambert argues that, in the Rajasthani context, relatedness can flow with shared 
substance in common locality, adoption of children, nurturance and feeding. These 
close ties can be more enduring and extend beyond personal relationships and carry 
with them rights and responsibilities as though the persons involved were biologically 
related (Lambert 2000: 75). The intricacies of relations between kin who shared no 
consanguineal or marriage link, became a real challenge to me during my fieldwork. 
Through my own personal relationships with families, and by virtue of being `adopted' 
as kin by two families, I have some understanding of the moral code expected of me. 
Kin who have no affinal or agnatic relationship have been referred as `fictive kin' in 
some anthropological literature. I prefer to go along with the views of my informants 
and to see such people as kin who may belong to different castes, who are given this 
status because of close, enduring social ties. 
The domain of intracaste affinal and agnatic relations, which has conventionally been taken to 
comprise the whole domain of kinship in northern India, does not encompass all the forms of 
relatedness that are locally recognised and valued (Lambert 2000: 74). 
Close friends who enjoy a warm, enduring relationship are given kinship status. The 
extracts below from a discussion I had with two eleven-year-old girls shows how close 
their two families have become. Both girls belong to the Patel community, but to 
different sub-castes. We decided to meet on April 4`h 2001 after school, in one of their 
houses. 
Reshma is wearing trousers and a T-shirt. She sits on a low chair with her hands folded on her lap, 
in a respectful manner, looking somewhat nervous about what I was going to ask her. Prina, her 
close friend, sits next to her, she is dressed in jeans and a sweat-shirt, but looks more comfortable, 
smiling in a welcoming way. The girls are close friends and attend a local primary school and Prina 
often comes to Reshma's house after school. Despite her nervousness, Reshma starts by telling 
me about how she learnt about religion, even though I had asked her to tell me about the 
relationships in her family. 
She says: I grew up learning about religion and things from my Ba (grandmother). Because when I 
was little she used to tell me all about the different gods. I used to ask her to tell me a story every 
night before I went to bed. I literally slept with her, I never had a cot. It was better that way. 
81 
Reshma recognised the importance of her grandmother in telling her religious stories 
and `things' and how she became close to her through co-sleeping, which will be dealt 
with in more detail in a later chapter. This close involvement in child-rearing of female 
kin other than the mother, and especially of dadi (paternal grandmother), but in this case 
nani (maternal grandmother), involves the child in the wider kin network of dependency 
that implicates a religious and moral context. 
When I asked Prina about her family, she told me how she missed the close contact she 
used to have with her ba (grandmother) who `passed away' last year: 
I used to have a ba and was attached to her as well. She used to live in India and I used to go there 
and make the most of it, but then I had to leave. 
Reshma explained that it is not only the ba who is involved with young children; in her 
family her mother's younger sister's children are very close to her mother. 
Mita is now three years old and she calls me bahen (sister) and my mother she now calls masi, 
(mother's sister) but when she was younger she called her mummy. She didn't really know names 
like masi because she was too young. She spent a lot of time with my mum and slept with her, so 
she was like her mum. 
It is through these relationships with older women that religious knowledge and ritual 
practices are conveyed and the Gujarati language is learned. Certain values such as 
respect for elders are communicated through kinship terms and respectful suffixes. I 
asked the two girls if they spoke Gujarati at home and Reshma replied: 
My dada [father's father] understands English, but I still speak to him in Gujarati, but my ba [father's 
mother] hardly speaks any English, so I have to speak to her in Gujarati. Sometimes I get my 
sentences muddled up. 
Prina added: 
When you speak to someone older, it is different from speaking to a friend. I am trying to speak to 
my dad's brother, my kaka, because he is here at the moment from Saudi Arabia. I end up saying 
words which mean you are talking to a friend. My parents keep correcting me. You make mistakes, 
you just slip. When I speak to my mum's family, I have to speak Gujarati. When I go to India, at first 
my Gujarati is not very good, but after I have been there for a week or more with everyone 
speaking, I become fluent. I just need a week in India and come back speaking Gujarati. I used to 
be very good when I was little, I learned Gujarati before English. My parents used to speak Gujarati 
to each other, because my mum originally came from India, so I must have picked it up from them. 
82 
When children first begin to talk they are told to address their elders respectfully and 
these terms will vary according to age or status and, like women, they always use 
respectful terms when referring to men. When women greet each other, after asking kem 
chho (how are you? ) or a more formal jayse Krishna (the blessings of Krishna) or jay 
Sivaminarayan (blessings of Swaminarayan) or, for Jains, jay Mahavira (the blessings 
of Mahavira), they will ask tamara puti sara chhe? (is your husband well? ). The a 
ending of tamara and sara, rather than the normal o ending, indicates that the person 
being addressed or referred to is of higher status than the speaker. While I was living 
with a Brahman family in Ahmedabad, the two-year-old child Radhika, was expected to 
call me Alison-auntie as a sign of respect and was severely scolded by her mother if she 
missed out the auntie suffix. She referred to her father as papaji, her grandfather 
(father's father) as dadaji and her grandmother as ba. (Many children refer to their 
father's mother as dadima, but ba is associated with an older woman and carries with it 
a special relationship that will be discussed in another chapter. ) Her mother's mother 
and father she called nanima and nanaji respectively but her relationship with them was 
not so close and although they lived nearby, her mother took her to visit them only once 
a week. They were not invited to her hair-cutting ritual and it was only the father's 
relatives present and in my three months there I did not see them in their daughter's 
household. Her masa (mother's brother) and masi (mother's sister) visited the house 
once a week, but tended not to eat with the family. Her father's older brother or kaka 
came to stay while I was there and was referred to respectfully by Radhika and her 
mother. The more formal, respectful nature of the relationship between Radhika and her 
father's relatives reflects their superior status. She had a more relaxed relationship with 
her mother's relatives but had less contact with them. Her recently deceased great- 
grandfather, aged 106, she called bapuji, a term usually reserved for gurus or highly 
respected members of the community. His photograph was on the wall above the dining 
table and was often referred to before or after meals and a fast was observed for him 
once a month. Through the use of the ji and ma suffixes, old people are elevated to a 
level nearer the gods, for example the goddess Kali is known as Kalima. It is usually the 
Brahmans and other higher castes who use this convention and it is not only considered 
bad manners to omit the endings, but an insult to the person and his or her standing with 
the gods. The moral codes implicit in the language not only reflect kin relations and 
hierarchy within the household or community, but also a person's progress through the 
dharma (moral duties) that will affect his or her eventual re-birth through reincarnation. 
83 
The house or ghar is the centre for close kin relations and is called by the name of the 
eldest male member, such as Madhubhainu ghar, Madhu's house, including the 
respectful suffix, bhai, after his name. All Gujaratis use this respectful address and it is 
a practice strictly observed, men having bhai and women having bahen after their 
names. These suffixes may reflect the respect and importance accorded to the centrality 
of the brother-sister relationship. The respectful form of `you' is tame, and is always 
used when addressing older people, or when women are speaking to men. Younger 
women and men have to behave in a deferential manner with their elders, should refer 
to them first and would consider it unacceptable to smoke or drink in front of them and, 
in some stricter families, would always eat after them. 
Learning Gujarati is not only important for communication with older kin, but also 
provides a sense of belonging to a wider Gujarati kin and social group and it is often the 
older female members who consistently speak to their grandchildren in Gujarati. Most 
parents I have known through my research use Gujarati in speaking to their children 
before they go to school, or else Gujarati interspersed with English words. Mrs Chavda, 
a grandmother from the Kshatriya (warrior caste) believes it is important that children 
learn Gujarati: `If we teach them the language, they will know the culture. ' 
Parents may attend evening classes in Harrow or Wembley, if they have not learned the 
language adequately as children. Many parents are concerned about the language 
disappearing in Britain and feel that it is important for children to learn their mother 
tongue. Many schools run Saturday classes for GCSE Gujarati and some schools are 
offering Gujarati GCSE and A Level as an alternative to French. Speaking Gujarati 
allows one to understand Gujarati kinship terms, which are used as to indicate the 
relationship between any two people, but the importance of understanding and using the 
language goes beyond assertions of its `usefulness'. To speak Gujarati is to be `one of 
us' in the broad sense and knowing the language brings with it certain subtleties of 
knowledge: about kinship, about morality and religion, about the art of participating in 
kin and social networks. 
Close, enduring friendships may be converted into kinship, even if there are no other 
linkages, such as common locality of origin. Reshma's and Prina's families have been 
close friends since their older brothers met at school ten years ago and although they 
both belong to the Patel caste they are not related consanguineally, or through marriage, 
84 
or through shared locality of origin, but they use kinship terms when referring to each 
other. Prina explained how kinship terms are used: 
I call Reshma's mum masi, [mother's sister] and her father masa, [mothers sister's husband]. Our 
parents call each other bahen, [sister] and bhai [brother]. I call Reshma's brother bhai too. We see 
each other a lot and Reshma and I do the Gauro ritual [annual five-day fast for girls to pray for a 
good husband] together. 
These terms convey the closeness of the relationship and imply certain moral 
obligations and responsibilities. In this case of Reshma and Prina's families, their 
brothers first met at school and are close friends, then the two girls became friends and 
then the parents, but in some cases links are found through common origins from a 
village or town in India, or by having a close association with a certain area. Common 
non-bodily substance will be shared through eating together, sharing rituals, and 
festivals and this embeds the relationship within a moral framework of obligations. 
Bhajan - gatherings of wider kin 
Commensality provides a reaffirmation of kinship and Gujarati food is always shared at 
the end of all festivals, rituals and bhajan (hymn-singing gatherings). Hindus refer to 
bhajan and Jains to satsang and although different hymns are sung, the act of coming 
together for a common purpose and a uniting of spirit is similar. Many Jains in Harrow 
rarely attend the temples, except at Diwali or the summer festival of Paryushan, so 
through the satsang a feeling of `communitas' (Turner 1974) and continuity is shared. 
Bhajans and satsangs are held in homes and their whereabouts spread by word of 
mouth. In November 2001, I attended a bhajan in celebration of the birthday of the 
Gujarati saint Jalaram, in a house that is also used as a temple for a wide network of 
kin, both patrilineal and social (see photographs). Bhajans are held every weekend, 
sometimes in Hindu temples or in people's homes and the more devout worshippers will 
try to attend every week or at least twice a month. The gathering of people in a ritual to 
celebrate a saint's birthday gives a sense of order and predictability and continuity. The 
meaning of the ritual may be different for each person present, although it is assumed 
that it is shared. Children will follow the rules as they see it and each adult present will 
have some rational reason for the performance. The ways in which rituals are 
85 
conducted, and how things are done link the present with history and the ancestors 
(Toren 1999: 123). 
The bhajan I attended on 25/11/2001 was held in the house of a retired Lohana couple, 
Mr and Mrs Morjaria, and I was told that their two sons, wives and children had 
recently moved to their own houses in the vicinity. Among those at the bhajan and were 
Mr Morjaria's three brothers and their families, but the other guests were also 
considered family, although there were no blood or marriage ties. A woman of about 
forty told me that since she came to the UK thirty years ago, Mrs Morjaria has been her 
mother. She calls her ma (mother) and Mr Morjaria papa (father). Their two sons she 
calls bhai (brother) and their wives bhabhi (sister-in-law). Mrs Morjaria is like a real 
mother to her, she said, and in many ways closer, because when she married and had 
children she could still stay close and did not have to move away from her, as she would 
have been expected to do with a `blood mother'. At the bhajan Mrs Morjaria expected 
this woman to do the chores with the other women of the house, in the way of food 
preparation and serving. 
Figure 8: Bhajan-Women sit on the floor, in the front, near the shrine. 
86 
Figure 9: Bhajan. Men sit at the back on chairs. 
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As people assembled, the women sat down on mats on the floor in the front of the long 
living room and the men sat on chairs at the back and started talking among themselves. 
A small band positioned itself in the front of the room, with an electric keyboard, a 
small drum and some clappers, some of which were handed round to the guests, 
including me. The ceremony began with great enthusiasm, the women singing songs 
written down in books, which were distributed among the participants. Different people 
were invited forward to lead the singing; they included one young man, but the rest 
were women. The singing continued for two and a half hours with only a short break, 
but no food or drink, and I must say that I admired the participants' enthusiasm and 
stamina. The hymns were sung according to their order in the special book and were 
familiar to most people present. The words seemed unimportant, but the coming 
together as kin and joining in the music created a strong sense of `communitas' (Turner 
1974). Bloch (1989) suggests that song or hymn singing is not the same as everyday 
propositional language, it is not simply a different way of saying something that could 
also be conveyed in speech. 
In a song ... no argument or reasoning can 
be communicated, no adaptations to the reality of the 
situation is possible. You cannot argue with a song. It is because religion uses forms of 
communication which do not have propositional force, where the relations between the parts 
87 
cannot be those of the logic of thought, that to extract an argument from what is being said and 
what is being done in ritual, is in a sense, a denial of the nature of religion...... Religion is the last 
place to find anything 'explained' because as we have seen religious communication rules out the 
very tools of explanation which, when reintroduced, are considered sacrilegious or irreverent 
(Bloch 1989: 37). 
The hymns are sung to Jalaram because that is what is always done; there are no logical 
explanations for them. Likewise, food is given to the Saint which then becomes prasad 
(blessed offerings) recognising his status as almost a deity. This offering included the 
usual nuts, fresh fruit and sugar crystals but also the first piece of birthday cake. `Happy 
birthday to you' (a Western aspect of the ritual) was sung, before the cake was cut by 
five boys, who gave the first piece to Jalarani and then fed each other, putting a whole 
piece of cake straight into their mouths, as people do at weddings. The sight of large 
pieces of food going into the boys' mouths causes the others watching to laugh. The 
sharing of prasad unites people in their rite to the saint as they incorporate his blessings 
into their bodies, and the shared meal brings kin together. 
88 
Figures 10 and 11: Bhajan. 
All celebrations, religious rituals and festivals involve the sharing of food at the end and 
this includes initially the sharing of prasad, usually nuts and fresh fruit brought by the 
attendees, and then a hot meal is served. It is considered very poor manners to leave 
before you have eaten, but once you gave done so you are free to go. The bhajan and 
89 
the meal emphasise the closeness of this kin group, although fewer than half the guests 
have any consanguineal or marriage relationship and the rest are kin within the sociality 
network. The women are more actively involved in the singing, some of the men play in 
the band, but the rest tend to sit in the background. 
Joint households 
Many women and men of all ages agree that the joint household is still the ideal way of 
living, although with increasing prosperity, the option for young married couples to 
move out into a flat or house of their own is now a reality for many. Living together as a 
kutumb (joint household) with both consanguineal kin and women who have moved into 
the household on marriage is still viewed as a source of strength. Mr Shah, an elderly 
Jain man, boasted to me about his family arrangement, when I visited their house 
following the birth of his new grandson, in June 2001: 
I have lived in a joint family since 1954. My sons have all stayed here even after they were married 
and until four years ago my father lived here, until he passed away aged ninety. 
Young couples in Britain may move into a flat or house of their own, but still tend to 
live locally and return to the ghar (household) for many of their meals and rituals. 
Relationships within the joint household are constituted in part through the sharing of 
food -a kind of physical unity is attained through the sharing of this non-bodily 
substance - and also in part by virtue of the attachment of a person's spirit to the ghar. 
Mala, a Patel woman who lives with her husband in a flat that is only the next street 
away from her husband's family ghar, told me: 
Eating together is almost like saying we are one. 
Within a joint household the marriage of a son heralds a period of adjustment and 
change for all members. The new wife joining her husband's home is a stranger from 
another family and perhaps comes from another caste and even religion, who brings 
with her a different sanskar, or moral background. She may initially be treated with 
suspicion and may be blamed for any mishaps that occur. Her mother-in-law (sasu) will 
attempt to teach her about the religious practices of the family and the food she is 
expected to prepare. The physical space in the ghar may be limited, with several sons, 
their wives and children, their parents and possibly grandparents, living in a two- or 
three-bedroom house. The younger wives are expected to do most of the domestic 
90 
chores and cooking, but as they become older or have children, this pressure lessens. 
Tensions do arise between women in the household, especially when younger women, 
who have been educated in Britain, may have expectations of autonomy and choice. 
Some young couples may choose to live separately after marriage, but usually in the 
same area as the husband's family, so that they can join them regularly for meals and 
rituals. 
Mala described her situation after she had a `love marriage' with a man of a different 
caste. Her family is Surti-Patel (from the Surat area) and her husband is a Lohana. After 
her marriage she moved into her husband's household with his two brothers and their 
wives and children; she was expected to learn their way of life and worship their gods. 
Her parents-in-law were very strict and expected her to feed the children and make rotli 
(chapatis) every night, because she was the youngest woman, even though she worked 
full-time. Mala found the situation difficult and she and her husband decided to buy a 
flat of their own in the same area and told me on 13/7/2000: 
At first they said we would bring shame on the family. The idea was brought from back home that if 
you are a good respected family, you live jointly in harmony. It is thought that if you live like this, 
you are good people, because you have to be able to share your lives and get on with people. 
People will say that my sons and their wives are so good that they live together. The move had 
nothing to do with finances, it was just that I couldn't cope physically, and we wanted different 
things from our lives. Eventually they agreed we could move out so long as we came for dinner 
every day. Now we eat together about twice a week, but my mother-in-law will ask us to come more 
often. 
91 
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Relationships between women in the household can be difficult, especially when they 
are of different generations. If couples leave the joint household, they usually live 
nearby and are still expected to return to the husband's family ghar for meals, 
ceremonies and rituals, as Mala explained. 
Nothing happens in our flat, we just sleep here. Everything happens there. We are one family, but 
we have an extra flat here. 
I have tried to demonstrate in the kinship charts (figures 12 and 13) how, even when 
couples move away from the ghar, all the kin and joint household activities continue as 
if they still lived together. Nikhita, a Brahman woman, told me on 9/4/98, how she 
found it difficult living with her husband's family after they were married and how they 
moved into a house of their own a mile away after the birth of their second child. 
Well, I had an arranged marriage, but I went out with Kiran five times before I said yes. It is all done 
on the basis of what you do for a living, how old you are, how tall you are and what qualifications 
you have. Then we got married and moved in with his parents and I noticed that his Mum made all 
the decisions for us. I thought, hang on, you're a solicitor and I'm a graduate, we both have good 
incomes, but my husband could not make a decision for himself. Everything I suggested, like let's 
go to our cousins' house, or let's give presents to so and so, and he would say, can I get back to 
you on that? I knew exactly what was going on, he would go and speak to his mum. He would say, 
yes let's do this or give that and I would think, this is not you speaking, its your mother. We came 
back from our honeymoon and she would come in and out of our bedroom and would go through 
our things, there was no privacy. In the evenings, we would all be together, we had no time on our 
own. I need my space and all the dinners we went to, they were there. Then I got pregnant in the 
second month of our marriage. I went to my mum's house after the baby was bom and still my 
mother-in-law was calling the shots from there. She made the decisions about who was allowed to 
come to my mum and dad's house, and said that no more than two people could visit at once. She 
would say, two people at a time and then they would come and sit there, so no one else could 
come. So my mum and dad had enough, and I had enough, so I came back early, because there 
was no point staying because it was too stressful for everyone. 
His mum and dad adored our son; they worship the ground he walks on now. He is very spoilt as a 
result. I went back to work and they looked after him, because I couldn't hack it at home. There was 
no privacy and at one time we were living in the same house not talking to each other. Sometimes 
they were downstairs and I was upstairs with the baby and I wouldn't come out of the bedroom; that 
was how bad it was. 
94 
The major dilemma facing young Gujaratis in Britain today is how to choose between a 
`modern' nuclear family life that offers the privacy that Nikhita wanted and a joint 
family living arrangement that offers support and close kin involvement. This dilemma 
maps fairly neatly onto Western values of independence versus the Indian values of 
dependence, which I will argue are themselves tied up with concepts of kinship, moral 
duties and continuity. 
The British ideal of a home of your own after you marry is a concept young Gujaratis 
who have grown up in the UK have heard about since childhood, observed through 
friends and in films and other media. Central to this ideal is the high value accorded to 
having private space with no interference from relatives and possibly little contact with 
them; relative status can be assessed according to the size and price of properties. Many 
Hindus see nuclear family living as opposed to their central ideal of interdependency 
and sharing of space, property and goods. When I first arrived in Ahmedabad and began 
to experience joint family life, I was immediately impressed by the lack of any private 
space. Everything was shared, the public space, the household food, the bedrooms, the 
household items; the only privacy permitted was in the bathroom. My adjustment to this 
was slow and at first I wondered whether I would have space for reading and study. I 
soon found that writing field notes could be done in the afternoon when the old people 
and children slept and it was too hot to go out. Among much else, the elderly 
grandmother told me that if one buys fruit, it must be shared with all; she strongly 
disapproved of the practice they saw in Britain: children buying cans of Coke and 
drinking it in the home themselves, without sharing. Moreover, if I went out, it was 
good manners to say where I was going and if I visited a temple then prasad (blessed 
food) should be brought back to the ghar for everyone to share. 
The joint household is still viewed by many young people as a convenient and 
economically sensible way to live. Food is cooked and shared and rituals are practised 
at the shrine for the benefit of all members. The success of a joint household depends on 
the relationships within it and how well the women relate to each other may depend on 
the way they relate to their respective husbands and how close the mother-in-law is to 
her son. Nikhita described above how dominating she found her mother-in-law and how 
her husband always consulted her before making decisions. This situation led to tension 
between the women, but was primarily due to the son's inability to break away from the 
strong ties he had to his mother. Pressure may be exerted on the son's new wife by his 
95 
mother to perform all the domestic chores that she herself had performed as a young 
wife in her the household of her parents-in-law and even though she may be working 
full-time outside the home, the new woman in the ghar has little power to refuse. Deepa 
told me: 
The mother-in-law thinks the daughter-in-law should do the same as they had to do, that they have 
to continue that. 
Sangita Shah, a Jain woman added: 
I think there are families, like they cannot afford to move, they stay together and they cope. The 
women adjust themselves in the family, even if there are problems. There are families like mine 
who have a mother-in-law. We have problems, but she is alone, you have respect for the old 
mother, you can't go. When there are problems you just have to leave her alone and adjust. You 
moan, but still you adjust. If the husband is good, then I think it is fair. 
The mother-in-law may be blamed unjustly for the failure of other relationships in the 
ghar. Thus Sangita's remarks suggest that relations between a mother-in-law and an in- 
marrying daughter-in-law pivot on relations between the son and his mother and the son 
and his wife. If the husband-wife bond is not strong, then the husband may side with his 
mother in disputes, which will exacerbate any tensions between his mother and his wife. 
Mintern (1993) reported similar findings in her ethnography on Uttar Pradesh; she also 
observed that the relationship between the new wife and her mother-in-law was 
changing, along with that between husband and wife: 
The balance of power between bahu [daughter-in-law] and sasu [mother-in-law] is changing as 
modem innovations affect women's lives. With decreased purdah comes increased husband-wife 
intimacy. Wives have more influence on their husbands and are more likely to enlist their support in 
bahu-sasu disputes (Mintem 1993: 306). 
Old people are cared for and respected in the household and, when they are able, they 
reciprocate with childcare, which they view as an important duty. Close relationships 
are built up between kin of different generations and are tied up in this web of inter- 
dependency. Harmony can be generated through the respect and understanding between 
the women, `adjustment', and a certain acceptance of hierarchy. The dilemma of 
whether to have a house of your own or live in a joint household faces most young 
married Gujaratis in Britain and urban Gujarat. Many choose to live jointly for the first 
few years of married life and then, when they have children and space becomes limited, 
to move into a flat or house of their own close to the husband's family. Interestingly 
96 
enough, in Harrow at least, the break-up of the joint household may be instigated by the 
older, rather than the younger, generation. Thus Mita told me of the way she and her 
husband persuaded her son and his wife to buy a house of their own. 
My son wanted us to buy a bigger house so that he and his wife could continue to live with us. We 
like our house and want to stay there, so we told them that they have been married for two and a 
half years and should find a place of their own. 
It is unsurprising; therefore, that Mita felt that the `true joint family with three 
generations living together' was disappearing: 
Today many young people do not see the true joint family. They have to go to Hindi movies, such 
as one being shown at the moment, to learn how obligations in these households are. 
The other dilemma, which is closely related to the residence dilemma, lies in the 
apparent conflict between the moral imperative of inter-dependency between kin and 
the independence valued by Western society and perpetuated through the education 
system in Britain. Even professional women who are not living in joint households 
expect female kin always to be available at times of crisis and to offer practical help and 
emotional support when needed, such as after the birth of a child. A woman's aging 
mother will travel from India or Kenya and stay for several months with her daughter in 
order to help at such times and, on the rare occasion that she does not, the young woman 
may feel bereft of hope and energy and become depressed. These older women who 
come will perform rituals and make special foods designed to give positive energy and 
health to mother and baby and to maintain continuity with their heritage. 
Joint household arrangements mean that running expenses of the house are shared as 
well as domestic chores. The oldest male member is usually responsible for the finances 
not only of the house but also of any family businesses. I asked a newly married couple 
who were both accountants, who made the decisions about money in their household. 
The woman replied that her husband would be expected to take control, but she would 
advise him. Many families started life in Britain owning a shop, which was run by 
family members, both men and women, so had no overheads. Usha described earlier 
about how her father's shop was bought by a supermarket chain, is a situation that now 
seems to be happening more frequently. When the oldest male member dies, the oldest 
son living in the ghar will take over the finances, but his wife will be in control of the 
daily affairs of the house. She will arrange the ritual observances, control the visitors 
and will direct the younger wives in the cooking. Although women appear to be gaining 
97 
more autonomy and more power in decision-making, men are often still referred to for a 
final opinion. For example, when I asked for permission to use a photograph of one of 
the Brahman grandmothers with her grandchild, the grandfather's approval was sought. 
Personality traits make it impossible to generalise about power and control, and every 
house will have different ideas about who has the power to make decisions. Nikhita's 
situation earlier showed how her mother-in-law had control over her husband, who 
could not make decisions without referring to her. Maya, who married a Muslim, has 
control over the household finances, she pays the rent and the bills. 
Women educated in Britain may feel they want to live separately and may reject the 
close dependency network of the joint home, but they commonly live within a few miles 
of their husband's parents and have meals in their home several times a week and 
always join them for feast days and ceremonies. After the birth of a baby such women 
may become dependent on close female kin, sharing the caring and relying on the 
advice given by the wider female kinship network. Women may feel torn between the 
desire to live an independent existence and the deep need they have for the support and 
guidance of female kin. Pocock (1973) and Warrier (1988) predicted the demise of the 
joint household, but it still remains popular today among young, newly married couples 
in Britain. Rather it would seem that relationships in the household are being re- 
negotiated and that the ghar is, as it were, changing shape; women in Britain are finding 
a new autonomy and this in turn is changing kinship relations and (slowly) the status 
accorded younger women. At the same time one can argue that there is renewed 
emphasis on established ritual patterns, and many young people are today adopting 
some of the ritual practices of their grandparents. 
Navratri -a festival for women 
The festival of Navratri (nine nights) is a special time for women, both in London and 
Ahmedabad. Maya said: 
Navratri is break time for us. You can wear heavy jewellery and clothes and you can go with your 
own brothers and sisters. 
It is a festival that has special significance in Gujarat and Rajasthan and, for many 
women, it surpasses Diwali in religious importance as well as in enjoyment. Young, 
98 
unmarried people are able to meet and dance in an approved venue and a degree of 
flirtatiousness is tolerated. For several weeks before the festival, clothes are discussed 
and tried on and the markets in towns and cities in Gujarat, and the clothes shops in 
north London display traditional Gujarati and Rajasthani dress, called ghagra choli, in 
bright reds, greens and yellows with flared shirts and tightly fitted blouses decorated 
with seashells or glass circles; some even have daring laced backs and no chunri 
(scarves). For these nine nights normal dress conventions are relaxed and women can 
enjoy themselves with their female friends. Married women may go with their sisters or 
female friends and leave their husbands at home. Older women tend to wear saris and 
sit at the side and watch the dancing, but become involved in the religious arti to 
Mataji. In Ahmedabad the arti took place before the dancing began but in Harrow it 
happens in the middle between the dances, before the dandya ras (the dance with 
sticks), which is the climax of the evening. Mothers, daughters and even grandmothers 
join in the fun of the occasion, meeting other patrilineal and natal kin as well as friends. 
Although men do join in the celebrations, they tend to be at the margins, but some 
younger men dance on the periphery in an energetic manner. In Ahmedabad 
expectations rise as Navratri approaches: the following account is taken from my field 
notes (3/10/99): 
A week before Navratri, Nutan, the young Brahman mother in the household, decides to visit the 
market in the centre of Ahmedabad city with her mother and her two year old daughter, Radhika, to 
choose a new outfit for the garba (dances). I go with them in a motor rickshaw, on a hot, humid 
morning in October, through the thick clouds of traffic fumes of the city. The central market is full of 
people pushing their way between colourful stalls and shops with vendors shouting to attract us to 
their wares. The clothes shops have material draped over the floors, so you are expected to 
remove your shoes before entering. Most of the shopkeepers are Muslim men dressed in white 
caps and long kurta (loose tops). Women laugh and joke with each other as they try different styles 
and fabrics, all in bright colours - reds, pinks and greens, 'happy' colours for Navratri, the festival 
that celebrates the victory of the Mataji over the demon. At each shop, Nutan and her mother 
examine the clothes carefully and bargain furiously, but do not buy anything. After two hours 
Radhika and I are beginning to feel the heat, so we stop at a stall to buy drinks. We discuss the 
outfits we have seen and Nutan decides to buy the one we saw in the first shop. It is made of a 
green and white fabric with a tight blouse, laced at the back, white shells sewn into the front, and a 
voluminous, gathered skirt. They are pleased with their purchase and its price. We buy some 
vegetables and find a rickshaw to take us home. 
99 
Navratri celebrates the power of Durga, one of the most revered Mataji, over evil. Her 
three manifestations are worshipped at this time, in the form of Kumari, Parvati and 
Kali. They represent the three stages of womenhood: the child, the young girl and the 
mature woman. During the fourth and fifth day until the eigth day, Lakshmi Mata, the 
goddess of peace and prosperity is worshipped, and this is an auspicious time to have a 
puja for the family business, as I will describe in chapter five. On the fifth day 
Saraswati Mata, the goddess of knowledge and art is evoked, and books are displayed in 
the house. Women have a close affinity with the some of the Mataji and during ritual 
they invite them into their houses and treat them like guests. The story celebrates the 
power of the Mataji over evil through her female, divine energy (shakti) that in turn 
relates to the energy and power of all women. The achievements of women are 
celebrated through the household puja and public displays of dancing. Garbas (dances) 
are held in parks, open spaces, town squares and any other available spaces, all over 
Gujarat. At the climax of the evening's garbas comes the dandya ras -a special dance 
with sticks, which Hindu myth suggests was performed by Krishna when he danced 
with the gopi (milk maids or cowherds). Some men join in and often do so in a vigorus 
manner, which appears to portray a sexual element. Carstairs suggests that Krishna in 
his incarnation of Vishnu is seen as the great lover and in his worship, sexuality is 
idealised. 
... 
but he [Krishna] is portrayed as an effeminate, seductive and yet divinely powerful 
youth. His devotees seem at times to identify with him as he makes his amorous 
conquests, at other times to identify themselves with the gopi (the girl cowherds) who are 
overcome with pleasurable anticipation at his approach (Carstairs 1968: 163). 
100 
Figure 14: Dances performed at Navratri (Times of India Oct 1999) 
Garba Ni hts 
ý_. ý 
, '"- lY1f'.. "^Ji-.. ._ ý%_ 
Women are envigorated by this display of sexuality and freedom of expression. Some 
are able to dance for nine nights in a row and work during the day. Many have told me 
they feel energised by the occasion. The relaxation in the dress code for women in 
effect emphasises their sexuality that is further acknowledged and celebrated in their 
dancing; women dance with women and flirt with one another and any men who join 
them. The usual conventions that pertain between natal and patrilineal kin are 
suspended and a real feeling of `communitas' (Turner 1974) is generated. Women may 
go out dancing all night with female friends and relatives, often without their husbands, 
relationships between women are cemented, natal female kin can visit the house freely, 
and women can celebrate the joy of having daughters. During the four years of my 
research I have attended three garbas in Harrow and five in Ahmedabad; the dances 
were very similar, with some individual variations. 
In India in 1999, I travelled around Ahmedabad one night during Navratri on the back 
of a scooter, visiting the inner city areas. In every available street square a garba was 
taking place, with men and older women sitting around the edge and a small band 
playing, while the younger women and some energetic older women danced in a 
clockwise direction, following the recognised dance routines. There seemed to be no 
restrictions on which women dance and no link with fertility because post-menopausal 
women also danced, but I did not see any widows dancing: they wore their usual pastel 
coloured clothes and sat at the side and talked. Some young men, also dressed in 
101 
traditional dress of loose trousers and short, close fitting jackets, joined in on the 
periphery, and danced in a vigorous manner, sometimes in an opposite direction to the 
women. 
In Ahmedabad, the evening began and ended with an arti, a religious observance to the 
all the Mataji, whereas in Harrow the arti came in the middle of the dances before the 
climax, the dandya ras (the dance with sticks). During the arti, people sing the usual 
hymn and a tray of diva (candles) is circled around in a clockwise direction and passed 
around so that everyone has a chance to touch the tray and run their right hands through 
the smoke and wipe it over their eyes and up over the hair line. 
Once the arti is finished, in Harrow the dandya ras begins. Everyone holds one or two 
sticks and stands in a line of about ten people opposite another line. The aim is to hit the 
sticks of the person facing you three times in time to the music and then move two 
people to the left and repeat. It looks simple enough but is quite hard to master and any 
lapse of concentration leads to total confusion. Dandya ras lasts for over an hour with 
the music getting steadily faster, so it requires stamina as well. In Ahmedabad some 
garba are also held in parks and private grounds where an entrance fee is required and 
some are quite elaborate affairs, especially in the wealthier areas. In Vadodra 
(previously Baroda), a two-hour drive from Ahmedabad, I observed a very large garba 
in a central park. Here we sat on wooden benches around a large area where about two 
hundred people were dancing: the women clockwise in eight circles and the men anti- 
clockwise in two circles on the periphery. 
In Harrow, garba are held in almost every hall and school gym in the Borough and an 
entrance fee of two or three pounds is usually requested. They are usually open to all 
but I have been told that some caste groups hold exclusive garba. I have attended garba 
organised by Brahmans, Lohanas and Patels in Harrow, but they all welcomed people 
from other castes. In Ahmedabad, we joined dances in the street squares in the inner city 
pol (high buildings around a central square, over a hundred years old) and were invited 
to join a Shah, or Bania caste garba which was organised with tables around the outside 
and food served. Others I attended were in Parks and sports areas or in grounds outside 
temples. The hot weather in Gujarat means that garba start later in the evening, because 
dancing would be too uncomfortable before then, usually they begin at IIp. m., and last 
until 3 a. m. or later, whereas in Britain they start at about 9 p. m. and finish at midnight. 
102 
Women appear driven not only by the exhilaration of the dancing and through this their 
expression of sexuality, but also the strong sense that the act unites them in a feeling of 
`communitas' that links them not only to one another, but produces a sense of continuity 
through generations with a past era. 
Turner (1969: 156) refers to the Bhagavata and its central theme of the childhood of 
Krishna, who is believed to be an incarnation of Vishnu. His love for the gopi, the 
cowherdesses, whom he charms with his flute playing, makes them leave their homes 
and husbands to follow him. The garba performed, especially the dandya ras, at 
Navratri represent the dances the gopi had with their divine lover, the blue Lord 
Krishna. Scenes of these dances are represented in Indian art throughout the 
Subcontinent. 
As a calendrical ritual, Navratri can be analysed using Turner's ideas of liminality and 
communitas. Women are given the freedom to dress in tight-fitting blouses and gathered 
skirts and meet with their natal kin and female friends, possibly without their husbands. 
There is status reversal as women take the lead and display their sexuality in dance. 
This liminal freedom breaks down structural inequalities of gender, caste, class, and 
wealth and joins them in a sense of communitas that liberates them from the restrictions 
of their everyday existence. 
As for those who are normally at the bottom of the pecking order and experience the conradeship 
and equality of joint subordinates, the liminality of status reversal might provide an opportunity to 
escape from the communitas of necessity (which is therefore inauthentic) into a pseudostructure 
where all behavioural extravagances are possible (Turner 1969: 202). 
Although structure is broken down through the liminality of the ritual, Turner 
(1969: 201) argues that the system of social positions is not challenged. The gaps 
between the structures are reaffirmed in this type of liminality for example, humility 
reinforces pride and poverty affirms wealth. In the final phase of the ritual the disturbed 
social group is reintegrated with its structure reconfirmed but with a renewed sense of 
communitas and shared humanity. 
Other processes are happening during the liminal phase when through dance and 
specific bodily movements a special kind of communication occurs. Dance follows 
specific routines, Bloch (1989) argues that the meanings conveyed are not as specific as 
in formalised speech, but may nevertheless be complex (Bloch 1989: 37). 
103 
As with speech, the formalization of body movement implies ever-growing control of choices of 
sequences of movement, and when this has occurred completely we have dance. We therefore find 
dance, as well as formalized body movements, typical of religion. The implications of this 
transformation from ordinary bodily control to dance are the same as they are for language: 
argument and bargaining with bodily movements are replaced by fixed, repeated, fused messages. 
(Bloch 1989: 38) 
What Bloch ignores here is the powerful emotional aspect of dance; in the case of 
Navratri, younger women can assert and express themselves in a way that is 
unacceptable at other times of the year, and dress conventions and some gender 
restrictions are suspended. To the outsider it may appear that the religious element is 
lost in the fun and enjoyment, but one could argue that at Navratri fun and enjoyment is 
the message. People come together to participate in the dances of the gods, dances that 
celebrate female energy and sexuality and, by implication, their fertility. The message 
of Navratri is carried in and conveyed through the repeated bodily movements of the 
dance and through them a kind of female solidarity is generated and women feel united 
with one another. In affirming the strength of the female deities, the dancing brings this 
strength into being in the bodies of the dancing women themselves and produces in 
them feelings of closeness to the goddess. This affinity with the Mataji (goddesses) and 
the women dancing as the gopi with their divine lover Krishna, unites women in a sense 
of communitas, strengthens female kin ties and engenders a feeling of female power and 
effectiveness. 
104 
Figure 15. Calendrical Festivals. 
Month Festival Name Description 
March Holi 7 days of celebrations- bonfires 
lit, rangoli (coloured powders) 
mixed with water are thrown. 
July Gauro Young girls fast for 5 days for a 
good husband. Grow 5 different 
plants. Usually celebrated in a 
group. 
July Vrat Once 5 years of Gauro 
completed Vrat begins. Fast for 
future husband or if married, 
health of husband. 
August Rakshabandhan Rakhi (coloured threads) are tied 
by bahen on right wrist of bhai. 
He gives her a present. 
August Janmastami Krishna's birthday. Fast then 
visit temple with kin. 
September Paryushan (Jain) 8-day festival. 6-16 days fast 
followed by gathering at a 
temple or community centre to 
share a meal and pray. 
October Navratri Household puja at 7pm in India 
every night for 9 nights 
followed by garba- dances in 
open spaces in Gujarat and in 
halls in Harrow. 
October Dusshera 10 night following Navratri. 
Celebrates the victory of Ram 
over Ravena and evil. Bonfires 
lit and effigies of Ravena burnt. 
Fireworks. 
November Dhan teras House cleaning, grains put in 
the sun in India. House 
decorated with rangoli - 
patterns on floors. 
November Kali Chaudas Night of darkness. 
November Diwali Festival of lights. House 
decorated with diva. Fireworks. 
Lakshmi puja. Presents given. 
Household celebration with 
sweet foods. 
November New year's day Ankut (donated food) given to 
temple. Prayers said in temple, 
gathering of kin in home. 
November Bhai Bhij Bhai goes to bahen's house for a 
meal. He gives her a present. 
105 
Clothing -a public display of meaning 
The clothes worn by women at Navratri and at other times evoke particular ideas of 
status, caste and respect and are controlled by strict conventions, especially in India. 
Colours carry emotional as well as auspicious meaning, with reds, pinks and greens 
being worn at celebrations and festivals. Green and red cloths are worn during rituals to 
invoke good deities and positive feelings amongst participants. Black threads worn 
around the wrists ward off evil attacks and black clothes are considered inauspicious. 
When I began my fieldwork I made many mistakes with my choice of clothes and their 
colours, and although no one actually told me so, I could tell when I was wrongly 
dressed and often enough too the meaning Gujaratis attached to the colour and type of 
clothes. Once I started wearing Punjabi suits - long tunic-type dresses worn over baggy, 
drawstring gathered trousers, with a chundari (scarf) draped over the shoulders and 
falling down the back - everyone around me seemed to become more relaxed and 
accepting. 
Most young women in Gujarat wear Punjabi dress and older women wear saris. Churida 
are similar to Punjabi suits, but have trousers with a closer fit, with long tunic tops with 
stitching or braiding in the front, sometimes with glass beads or embroidery; they are 
worn on more formal occasions. Women living in slums, where there is no running 
water and no streams or sea always look well presented and clean. Women take great 
pride in their dress and say that it shows a lack of respect for others when dress 
conventions are not observed, especially in front of elders. The top of the arms and 
shoulders and the legs should not be exposed, but large amounts of midriff are exposed 
when a woman wears a sari. Bungli (bangles) must be worn by married women at all 
times, and especially when out of the house; likewise chundari (scarves) must be worn 
both in the house and out side when there are older kin present, which can be 
inconvenient when cooking. These scarves can be useful too in the street for shielding 
mouth and eyes from traffic fumes, or from bad smells from dead animals on the road. 
Young women in Britain are not expected to follow these strict dress conventions 
except when attending rituals or festivals, when saris, churida or Punjabi suits are 
always worn. I have been surprised in Harrow to see young Hindu girls wearing mini 
skirts, shorts and off-the-shoulder sun tops and wonder how their grandparents view this 
type of dress. Emotion and aupiciousness are expressed in colours in the UK as well as 
106 
in India. Women who have been widowed in the UK should wear only pastel colours, 
but are not expected to wear the pure white that is worn in India. 
The red wedding sari is used to decorate the shrine assembled by the priest at life-cycle 
rituals. Mrs Pandya told me that this sari is very precious and is either worn or used to 
decorate during ceremonies. The bride arrives at the wedding wearing a white sari, to 
indicate her purity, and then her husband's kin dress her half way through the 
ceremony, in the red one. Mrs Pandya explained when I spoke to her on 12/5/98: 
The husband gives the red sari to the bride at their wedding. At the beginning she wears 
a white sari. Then half way through, we put the red sari on her, to say that you now 
belong to us. So the red sari is very precious to us, we always keep it. We always look 
after it. I am going to be married 41 years and I still keep that sari. If a lady becomes 
widowed, then she can't wear it. These days, widows can wear all colours but not red. 
Yellow, green- everything is changing, people do not stick to the rules so much. No one 
likes to wear white because if you do, everyone knows you are widowed. Sometimes in 
the society people will not look at you in the way they look at the married woman. Even 
we do not allow them to wear a bhindi [red spot on the forehead] when they are 
widowed. But in India, now they wear it, to keep the woman secure, so that people 
don't do any mischief. People know, oh she is a widow so she hasn't got anyone. 
I asked what was the significane of the bhindi and Mr Pandya replied: 
It is there so that the whole of society knows that this is a married woman. Sometimes 
they wear a black bhindi but widows are not allowed to wear it. Unmarried girls are not 
allowed to wear it. It has social significance. 
A young Lohana women explained to me that now she is divorced, she cannot wear 
bright coloured clothes, just greys and whites. At funerals, white saris, or Punjabi suits 
are worn with black borders. The fifth night of Navratri is considered a happy night, 
when the demon was defeated, so it is a `red night', when all the women except widows, 
or divorsees, wear bright reds or pinks. At weddings, the guests wear these colours and 
groom's parents give presents of saris in reds, pinks and greens to the bride's family. 
Strict conventions of reciprocity are observed by both sides in the exchange of saris and 
gold, which are usually given in multiples of three, five or seven - auspicious numbers. 
Women are responsible for buying, giving and receiving these presents and many 
women travel from the UK to India to make their purchases; there is a certain pleasure 
107 
to be had from this, but nevertheless the responsibility for gifts is an onerous one 
because it carries with it the responsibility for maintaining good relations between sets 
of kin. 
Women may live separately from their natal and husband's kin but still involve 
themselves in the webs of interdependency, duties and obligations, both here and in 
Gujarat. The special relationship between bhai and bahen offers women a certain 
freedom of friendship and support outside the confines of the household. Joint family 
arrangements remain popular with all ages and although residence may be separate, 
close relationships are maintained through regular joining for meals, childcare and care 
of the elderly. Kinship is articulated through rituals such as those performed at Navratri 
and during bhajan and through these religious gatherings, become enduring over time. 
Women's role in the household includes fostering kinship relations and conducting 
rituals and this gives them a powerful position perhaps undervalued in the past (Tambs- 
Lyche 1980). Research conducted by women in other South Asian groups has 
demonstrated the power women have in the household, which may have been 
underestimated in the past by male researchers (see Shaw 2000, Reynell 1985, Seymour 
1999, Hanchet 1988 and Bhachu 1988. ) Alison Shaw identifies the central role women 
have in Pakistani households in Britain in maintaining links with others, which has 
economic implications: 
The centrality of women's roles in this process [inter-household exchange] also raises issues 
relevant to discussions of the status of Pakistani women and of women generally. How well a 
woman conducts domestic rituals has implications for her husband and her household in relation to 
neighbours and relatives. In western societies, a woman's status is most often assessed in relation 
to whether she has paid work outside the home, that is, in large measure, to her socio-economic 
autonomy. Many Pakistani women do not participate directly in the wage economy; they create and 
maintain status in relation to other Pakistani women primarily through their networks of reciprocity. 
Yet in exchanging goods and services, in building networks of obligation, they create 'value' which 
is only partly of a financial nature, but certainly has socio-economic implications (Shaw 2000: 257). 
Josephine Reynell in her PhD on Rajasthani women in Jaipur, documents the way 
religiosity links religious ritual with wealth creation: 
This duty of ensuring family wealth through religious ritual is a female responsibility in that it is seen 
as an extension within the spiritual sphere, of a woman's nurturing and mothering role on the 
physical plane (Reynell 1985: 130). 
108 
In Orissa, Susan Seymour (1999) reports that attitudes are changing even in villages. 
Women are gaining greater autonomy through education and the younger generation of 
women will not accept the financial sacrifices made for the household in the way their 
mothers did: 
She would 'put her foot down' meaning she would not be able to sacrifice her own well-being or 
that of her children in favor of the well-being of the extended family (Seymour 1999: 267). 
Suzanne Hanchet, who studied women in South India, argues that the festivals repeat and 
reinforce patrilineal and virilocal ties, as well as the kinship ties between mothers and daughters, 
brothers and sisters. 
Some of the awesome powers attributed to women, however, can be related to their ambiguous 
position in the kinship system. Being ambiguous (compared to men), they are enigmatic, being 
enigmatic, difficult to control (Hanchet 1988: 27). 
Although the position of women is likewise changing in Hindu households in Britain 
the ambiguity in women's position can be seen the images accorded female deities who 
are associated on the one hand with shakti (female divine energy) and the goddess of 
wealth, Lakshmi and, on the other, with the destructive powers of the goddess Kali. 
Women have a responsibility to carry out rituals to ensure the spiritual well-being of the 
household. 
109 
Chapter 4: Women and Spiritual Continuity 
`It's the back of the mind that counts', said Mrs Chavda, a Hindu grandmother, talking 
of how Gujaratis in Britain today continue to be different from other South Asians. She 
sat in a commanding position in a high-backed chair in the centre of her daughter's 
living room, wrapping her sari around her. She directed her husband to take their two- 
year-old grandson out of the house to the nearby station to watch the train, referring to it 
as `Thomas' - i. e Thomas the Tank Engine, an icon for many British children. I asked 
if 
she could explain in more detail what she meant by `the back of the mind' and she 
replied: 
Our children learn through us to be Gujarati, through the language, the religion, the food, the rituals 
and the family. The back of the mind is who you are, not something you think about all the time, but 
it is always there whatever you do. 
Her daughter Sonita sat next to her on a lower chair, holding her ten-month-old baby on 
her lap. She has lived in this semi-detached house with her husband for the past two 
years, and now has two children. Her parents live in Birmingham and were visiting for a 
week and she values her mother's support, having almost daily contact with her on the 
telephone in between visits. Sonita, who was not in paid employment at the time, is a 
graduate and previously worked in a legal firm. Having been educated in Britain, she 
felt that things are different for her, and questions whether the moral ways of thinking 
her mother spoke about will continue through to the next generation. She saw women as 
having the prime responsibility for this continuation and now that most women work 
outside the home and have careers they will not have so much time to pass this 
knowledge on to their children. Sonita was born in Kenya and moved to Britain with her 
family when she was two years old. Her family, along with many others, was successful 
there. Having migrated from India thirty years before as poor, untouchable, leather 
workers, Mochis, they had become middle-income traders and set up their own 
business. They aspired to become members of the Kshatriya, the warrior caste, 
worshipped in the temples devoted to Lord Krishna and began socialising with that 
caste. They still eat meat, which distinguishes them from many other high castes, 
Gujarati Hindus, and may indicate their untouchable origins. Sonita's mother explained 
that, as untouchables, food was scarce for them, so if meat were available, they would 
eat it to survive. Sonita asked whether they should really be vegetarian and her mother 
110 
shrugged her shoulders and said they should believe in ahimsa, non-violence to any 
living creature. Sonita said she had never heard of it, although she knew that many Jains 
avoid killing small creatures. She recalled how she felt about being Gujarati when 
growing up in the UK. 
I had gone to school here and thought I felt the same as everyone else in my class. I wore Western 
clothes and did things that they did. I was not really interested in my parents' traditions. When I 
went to university, I found I made friends with other Gujarati girls. We spent time watching Gujarati 
films and N programmes, which made a special bond between us. I realised how comfortable I felt 
doing this. 
Sonita and her husband, who was also educated here, speak English at home and 
Gujarati in the presence of older family members, so their children have exposure to 
both languages. Sonita's mother thinks speaking the language is important, but belief in 
God is more so, as is the accompanying fear that God will punish you if you do wrong. 
That is why she believes that marrying a Hindu is essential, because the couple will 
share similar moral codes and pass these on to their children. Sonita and her mother 
agree that it is preferable to marry a Gujarati of a similar caste, but the reality in the UK 
today is that this does not always happen. Sonita met her husband at university, and 
although they are of different castes - she a Mochi and he a Kshatriya - they had no 
problems with the families agreeing to the marriage. When they were first married they 
lived with her husband's family for the first year until they bought their own house and 
Sonita said she had no problems living with her mother-in-law and they still remain 
very close. She finds the support she receives from both her mother and mother-in-law 
invaluable, and feels she could not cope with her children without this. 
Mrs Chavda explained to me how marriages are arranged today in Britain. A family will 
attempt to make introductions to suitable partners in the same caste. When the boy and 
girl are in their late teens, discussions between families will take place. If these fail, 
then a suitable Hindu or Jain partner is the next best thing. Continuing with the family 
rules, and a belief in God are the essential elements, which must be continued through 
to the next generation. Mrs Chavda added: 
If the family is Hindu, someone always knows it and you can check whether it is good. But if your 
daughter marries a Muslim, even today, she is considered dead and no longer part of your family. 
She will bring shame to the family because she can no longer maintain the beliefs and family life 
she was brought up with. 
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Sonita spoke of the way the decision is shared: 
Just because the family is good, the boy may not be. Finding your own partner, providing he is 
Hindu, is now becoming acceptable. The parents then cannot be blamed if things go wrong. 
In the generation now looking for partners, there may be a shift of responsibility from 
the group to the individual, in line with Western ideas of marriage. There is more 
choice, and marriage becomes a contract between two people, not two families, caste or 
wider community. The search for a suitable partner dominates much conversation 
among young women and gossip among their mothers' generation. My Gujarati class 
consisted of two women in their early thirties, one in her forties, and two young men in 
their twenties. We met every week for a year and during this time there were occasions 
when there was considerable explicit sexual teasing and banter by the older women 
directed to young men, which I found surprising and rather embarrassing. On one 
occasion one of the women brought in a printout from the Internet of potential marriage 
partners, for her sister. Once the high spirits had calmed down, there was general 
agreement that marriages should only occur when the moral standing of the family is 
high and they are Hindu (or Jain). It is often said that the family must be `good', 
meaning that it maintains high moral codes, not necessarily high religious ideals, but 
often they go together. It was emphasised to me again that knowing about the family is 
more important than the attributes of the potential partner. 
Mrs Chavda's claims that it is `the back of the mind that counts' and that a Gujarati 
person is distinguishable from another South Asian refer to those traits - at once 
personal and Gujarati - that make a person different. What is at `the back of the mind' 
is taken for granted, not thought of everyday, but nevertheless determines how a person 
behaves in different circumstances. Among my informants women are explicitly held to 
be responsible for the continuation of Gujarati ideals. Here some observations drawn 
from Carstairs' study of Brahman families in Deoli, a village in Rajasthan, near the 
border with Gujarat, would seem applicable; they concern unconscious processes that 
can only be understood through close personal relationships, trust and observation over 
time. 
That the key to understanding national character lies in the study of processes in the personality 
development of the individuals; that events which occur in the earliest stages of human 
psychological maturation have an enduring influence throughout later life; and that dynamic 
psychology provides the best available theory for the elucidation of personality development.... facts 
112 
about their language, history, geography, economics, social structure and religion can take us only 
part of the way. Sooner or later we come up against the realisation that these facts mean 
something to them and to us. In order to fully understand a people's 'otherness' we must try to 
grasp the essence of these distortions; and this involves a recognition of subjective emotional 
factors in their personalities - and in our own (Carstairs 1968: 153). 
Carstairs conducted his fieldwork with men because at that time the women were kept 
in Purdah, but he kept individual notebooks for each of the men he interviewed, 
recording their upbringing, personality and outlook. He gained considerable insight into 
the personality of his informants and also child-rearing patterns, considering how little 
work he was able to do with women and children. 
Through my fieldwork I developed close relationships with families and particularly 
women. In Harrow, these have been women of different ages, some young women in 
their twenties and thirties from different castes and social classes and one older 
Brahman woman in her sixties. In Ahmedabad, I lived with a family for three months 
and became one of the household. Through close association over days, weeks and 
months I have begun to understand some of these `subjective emotional factors' in my 
informants' personalities and in my own. Some refer to me in kinship terms as sister or 
aunty, depending on the age difference between us and one woman refers to me as like 
her mother, because her mother died when she was a child and she has very few female 
relatives to offer her support. Through these relationships I have found that there are 
times when I feel I can understand women's emotional responses to situations and yet 
other times when I am still surprised. Like Carstairs I think the ethnographer needs to 
use his or her own emotional responses to understand an informant's situation. 
These irrational, emotionally determined quirks of behaviour and response are not wholly arbitrary. 
They are found to recur in many different contexts; and when studied carefully they reveal a pattern 
and an interconnectedness in which the connections are not necessarily logical but in many cases 
symbolical, and only subjectively meaningful. In order to interpret them correctly intellectual 
understanding of the facts of an informant's situation is not enough; one has in addition to 
empathise, to "feel with" him before one can identify his elusive patterns of emotional response 
(Carstairs 1964: 152). 
Kirsten Hastrup has also expressed the view that the relationship of the anthropologist 
with her informants is one of shared human experience. Reflexivity and relativity are 
part of ethnography and analysis and the anthropologist becomes her own informant. 
113 
While we cannot, obviously, experience the world from the perspective of others, we can still share 
their social experience. In fact there is no social experience that is not shared. Sharing implies that 
we are part of the plot, and it is this position that provides us with a unique key to an understanding 
of worlds, of how they are constituted and transformed and how positions are assigned to 
individuals within the plot-space understudy (Hastrup 1995: 51). 
We cannot experience the world as others do, but if we live with people, spend stretches 
of time with them, and share experience, we can begin to understand their personalities 
and the way they react in different situations. Those women who have become good 
friends, some of whom refer to me in kinship terms, have given me insights into what it 
is to be Gujarati. 
Women as mediators of spiritual continuity in the household 
Mrs Chavda told me how a person becomes Gujarati, but her daughter Sonita was 
concerned that as women's lives are changing in the UK and they are now working 
outside the household, this could change in the future. Women are responsible, she said, 
for ensuring continuity from one generation to the next, through the passing on of moral 
codes in religion, kin relationships, food, language and observing customs and rituals; 
but will they have time for this in the future? A child learns through being included in 
every activity engaged in by female relatives: mother, aunt or grandmother. The child 
will observe ritual activity in the home and, if a girl, will begin to participate as soon as 
she is able. In the future, will women still have time to perform the rituals I describe in 
this dissertation? 
Women in Gujarati households have obligations towards members that change with 
increasing seniority. The newly married wife is expected to do most of the domestic 
chores including cooking, but once she has children her status rises and she can delegate 
some of the work to a more junior wife (i. e. the wife of her husband's younger brother). 
Older women adopt a more supervisory role and assume more responsibility for the 
spiritual well-being of the household, in order to gain the favour of the gods and 
ancestors. Hindu women have been portrayed in popular literature, as well as in 
anthropological texts, as dependent on male protection throughout life: firstly from their 
fathers, then their husbands, then their sons, so at no stage are they fit for independence. 
Kakar argues that this is a male view of protection from sexual proclivities and is about 
controlling women's sexual enjoyment. He suggests that the patriarchal culture's horror 
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and scorn are heaped upon the hapless wife, as a female sexual being (Kakar 1989: 18. ). 
He sees a Hindu version of the mother/whore dichotomy as a mother/whore/partner-in- 
ritual trichotomy that is crucial in understanding attitudes towards women. The context 
in which women are viewed determines whether they are regarded as good, bad or 
divine (Kakar 1989: 17). Images of woman as the needed mother or the feared whore are 
reflected in the proverbs of all the major Indian languages. Kakar sees the trichotomy he 
describes as fundamental to the way Hindu people view human relationships, not only 
between spouses, but also between siblings and between generations. His 
psychoanalytic view may give insights into the way women are viewed in different 
contexts: as close to the divine in ritual, as mothers, but at the same time as whores 
capable of unlimited sexual desire and the pollution it entails who have to be controlled 
by men. This may be a male perspective on women's lives and more recently female 
anthropologists have given accounts of the strength of women in family life. Susan 
Seymour's (1999) account of women in Orissa describes how influential women are in 
the household, how they reliably put the group's interests above their own, and how self 
sacrifice is an essential ingredient of being a `good' wife: a woman has a moral 
responsibility to support extended kin (Seymour 1999: 267). 
Conflict between women of different generations 
Nikhita is a Brahman woman in her late twenties, who was educated in the UK and has 
lived in North London all her life. She had an arranged introduction to Kiran and after 
meeting five times they became engaged. For the first three years she and her husband 
lived with his family and Nikhita found the relationship with his parents difficult. They 
moved into their own house a mile away when their second child was six months old I 
went to visit her in her new house one evening when Kiran was out playing football; he 
later returned and joined in the discussion. Nikhita began by telling me about meeting 
Kiran for the first time. 
He was different and wore trendy clothes and I thought, this is fine! Then he took me to his Mum's 
house. All along when we talked he would say we would live on our own, because his Mum's house 
is too small and I thought, brilliant! Another plus point, not to live with the in-laws and no hassle. So 
on the fourth time we went to see his parents and I thought the house looked small, but his Mum 
was sitting there looking very sweet, and his father was very nice as well, so I thought OK. Then we 
got engaged and he would come and go into our house as he pleased and give my Mum hugs and 
115 
kisses. Everyone was really happy that we were going to get married and we went to look for a 
house. Then we found a house and arranged the mortgage and one day he told me that he could 
not leave his mother. At first I thought he would he OK because we wouldn't be far away. Then we 
would go out to look at furniture and he would say why don't you take my mum with you? I would 
say that it is our house not hers, but he would say that it would make her involved and happy. Then 
we got married and we moved in with his parents and I noticed his Mum made all the decisions for 
us. 
Kiran returned home and, as I had met him several times before, he was happy to join 
the discussion; the subject changed from Nikhita complaining about her husband's 
family to more general areas of family life. Kiran explained why the relationship his 
two-year-old son has with his grandmother is so important. 
Aran has grown up with my mother and is being taught by her. He knows where the temple is in the 
house and knows how to pray by watching her. I consider myself quite religious, but if you were to 
ask my friends who are 99% English, they would laugh. They do not know. It is a matter of heart 
and conscience. I pray twice a day and go to the temple every week. 
Several women have spoken about the close relationship their husbands have with their 
mothers, aunts and grandmothers, and how difficult it can be for the men to move away 
from these older female relatives. Many women, however, find the arrangements in 
joint families life beneficial and supportive, but sometimes the responsibility for elder 
members weighs heavily on them. Sangita Shah, a Jain, lives with her two children, her 
husband and her mother-in-law who is elderly; it is her duty to look after her mother-in- 
law: 
It is a bond we have to stay with the elders. Life is different for us and our children. 
This duty to respect and care for the elderly implicitly reciprocates the care one received 
oneself as a child or indeed the care afforded one's own children. Thus Deepa Patel, a 
Hindu, says of the relation between her own two children and her parents: 
It is mainly families with young children that stay together because it is very convenient for them. I 
mean, both my children were brought up by my parents because we stayed together and now there 
is such a strong bond there. Now we don't stay together, they live in Leicester. Whenever they 
come here, my daughter won't leave my mother alone, she just calls'ba, ba! ' [grandmother] all day. 
My sister's daughter won't have the same bond because she has never lived with them. You can 
see the difference. 
116 
The strong bond that develops between children and their grandparents through the care 
they give them is, as I shall show below, crucial to what it means to be Gujarati in 
Britain today since it is this relationship that provides for the continuity of moral values 
over time. 
Gender relations and spiritual responsibilities 
Men and women may participate in the daily household puja in many instances, but in 
others it may be left for the women to perform, on behalf of all. Men who are Brahmans 
and/or elderly are more likely than other men to observe daily puja in the home. In 
households where there is a high level of religious observance, children of both sexes 
are taught from the age of three, to get up in the morning and shower, or take an Indian- 
style bath (by squatting on a stool and using a jug to pour water over the body), brush 
their teeth, and then do puja. Yogesh's grandparents told me that he has been doing this 
from the age of two years. The Swaminarayan guru had told them that if you drink in 
the morning before doing puja, it is like drinking blood. They also told me that daily 
puja shows gratitude to god and indebtedness to him, as well as being a personal 
communication with him. Some households observe gharsabah, which is joint family 
worship at the end of the day involving men, women and children, where a puja is 
performed and then the issues of the day are discussed before eating the evening meal. 
Yogesh's grandfather told me that they believe that `those who pray together and eat 
together will stay together, 'and here men may have an active role. 
Men are also actively involved in a special puja, at Navratri or Diwali, during which 
prayers are said for family businesses, and the account books are presented to Lakshmi, 
the goddess of wealth, or Ambaji (a popular mataji in Gujarat). I observed such a puja 
during Navratri in Ahmedabad, which involved only the male members and the 
following is an extract from my fieldnotes recorded on 17.10.99: 
The pujari (priest) comes at 10.30 a. m. and sets up a special shrine on the floor in the office: a 
picture of the goddess Ambaji sitting on her 'vehicle', a lion. In front of this are food offerings of 
three bananas lying on betel leaves, some ghol (sugar beet), a coconut, and some uncooked sweet 
prasad (made from wheat, sugar and butter), ghee, grains of rice, as well as incense sticks, yellow 
flowers, a steel pot containing water, another with red spots in it, a divo (candle), a steel pot with 
117 
kan koo (red powder used for making the Hindu spots on the forehead), some orange marigold 
flowers, a pink rose and another steel plate with five diva (candles) on it. The pujari conducts the 
first part of the service with the grandfather and begins by putting a red spot, or chandlo on his 
forehead with grains of rice pushed on top with the ring finger of his right hand, and then the 
grandfather reciprocates by placing a chandlo and rice on the priest's forehead. The divo is lit and 
the smoke waved towards the goddess and then water is sprinkled into the old man's hands, which 
he let flows into a bowl and then sprinkles some around him. Then his son, who runs the business, 
arrives for the mantra, and the priest puts the red spot and grains of rice on his forehead. The 
reading of Sanskrit lasts about 40 minutes. Father and son both sit on mats on the office floor, one 
opposite the shrine and one adjacent to the priest. Later it is explained to me that the energy 
released by the mantra sends sound waves travelling around the world, uniting the cells that create 
animals and people by changing the atmosphere, like thunder, which you cannot see. This energy 
can be positive or negative and like lightning or electricity can be very powerful and can kill men. It 
is hoped that positive energy will be created through the goddess as shakti (divine energy) for the 
office to make the business successful. A red Hindu swastika is drawn on a steel plate, five diva 
are lit, the arti is sung and the candles circled in a clockwise direction; then we are all given the 
opportunity to run our hands through the smoke and wipe this over our eyes and head. Money is 
given to the goddess by the men in the form of a ten-rupee note and three rupee coins, which the 
priest takes afterwards as payment. The puja ends with the young man burning one end of the 
candle and breaking the coconut on the threshold of the office. He catches the coconut milk in a 
bowl and then some of the flesh is given to the goddess and everyone present is given some to 
eat. The sweet prasad is handed round and then taken to the neighbouring offices for them to eat. 
Water in the bowl is then sprinkled around the office on everything (including my bag) ensuring the 
removal of any evil influences that might be interfering in people's lives and in the smooth running 
of the office. The young man then takes the water back to his family home and does the same 
there. The priest clears up the shrine and leaves the picture of the goddess but packs all the raw 
foods into his bag along with the money. 
Men leave the organising and conducting of life-cycle rituals to the women (see chapter 
seven). In the past, men did not attend these rituals and now they appear to have only a 
peripheral role and observe the proceedings from a place behind the women and 
children. The ji (father's sister) plays a central part in the chhati (six-day ceremony 
after birth) and the balmuvala (hair-cutting) and usually chooses the child's name. The 
child's mother is present but not active in the ritual, leaving the ba (paternal 
grandmother) andfoi to conduct it. A priest may be called upon to conduct the ritual and 
male kin attend and are involved in the Ganesh puja, which precedes it and in the 
118 
following arti, joining with the rest of the household kin. Women, however, perform all 
the specific details of the ritual. 
Men have an active role within the mandir (temple), which contrasts with the more 
peripheral one they have in household rituals. They are actively involved in 
administration and are voluntary members of committees that organise maintainance, 
catering, fund-raising, special events at festivals and security, amongst others. Retired, 
skilled workers, such as plumbers and electricians, offer their expertise voluntarily and 
many temples are almost entirely run on this basis. Women also work in the temple but 
to a lesser extent than men, organising the cooking of food, making garlands and 
conducting security searches on women. Following the massacre of Hindu worshippers 
at the Akshadam in Gandhinagar in 2002, security is tight at all Swaminarayan temples 
through the World, and because of the strict gender division here the women have to 
deal with the women and the men with the men. 
Within the Swaminarayan mandir men and women are kept separate to avoid any 
feelings of lust or sexual attraction, which might distract the worshipper. The 
worshipping areas are divided into male and female sections. In the Neasden temple, the 
entry to the large hall is through separate doors, directing men to the left side and 
women to the right. The temple priests here are called sadhus, they are always men and 
wear saffron coloured robes, and are strictly prohibited from having any physical 
contact with women. If by chance a woman inadvertently touches one, or her shadow 
falls across him, he must fast for a day. In Gujarat men walk in front of groups of 
Swaminarayan sadhus to clear women from their route. While visiting the Narmada 
River in Southern Gujarat in September 1999, my female informant and I were 
suddenly directed down a side street, to avoid a group of sadhus who were heading 
towards the sacred river to worship and bathe in the waters. These strict gender 
separations within the mandir contrast with the joint pt ja conducted in the home, where 
men and women worship together. 
The gender divisions in the Swaminarayan mandir begin early in life, with small 
children between the ages of two and eight in their shishumandal (small children's 
gathering) being separated into boys' and girls' groups. Then the balmandal (gathering 
for children eight to fourteen years) which is also separated into girls and boys; then the 
kishormanclal (gathering for boys aged fourteen to twenty-three) and kishorimandal 
(gathering for girls of the same age). Twelve-week parental training courses are run on 
119 
Saturdays for fifty people aged between twenty-three and thirty-five, called 
yuvakmandal. Women have their own lectures and men have theirs in different rooms. 
If women wish to communicate with the sadhu or guru, they have to write him a letter. 
This strict gender segregation only applies within the temple confines and does not 
apply to worship in the home or in other buildings. 
Other Hindu temples do not enforce a gender divide, and men and women can worship 
together. The Hari Krishna temple in Watford has a hall where men and women listen to 
lectures and perform arti together, as do other ISCON temples that I have visited here 
and in India. While in Gujarat, I visited many Shiva mandir, others devoted to the 
mataji, notably the mountaintop mandir at Pawaghar and the spectacular, marble 
mandir at Ambaji. At all these temples, women and men worshipped together, presented 
their offerings, received tikka (red spot on the forehead) from the pujari (priest) together 
and took prasad (blessed food). I witnessed two women who were possessed at 
Pawaghar and my informant told me that women were more likely than men to become 
possessed by the mataji. Many households have a pragmatic view of religion and will 
worship at different temples, at different times depending on the festival, time of the 
year, annivsersary, or any life event. This may mean that temples cannot rely on the 
regular support of a given community, and cannot ensure a regular income. 
Women may visit the mandir during the morning if they do not work outside the 
household and men and women worship together in the evening after work. The priest 
will conduct arti during these times and from my observations, the 7PM arti is most 
popular. The mandir is closed between 12 midday and 4 PM because the murti 
(representations of the gods) are given lunch, followed by a period of sleep, during 
which they must not be disturbed. When a man enters the mandir he rings the bell to 
signal to the god that he has arrived. If he is able, he will prostrate himself five times in 
front of the main shrine and then walk five times around the front and back of the 
images, touching the corners and sometimes kissing the stone. Women behave 
differently and they kneel or sit crossed-legged on the floor, with their hands together, 
in front of the shrine and then bow forward five times. Some hold prayer beads and 
recite a quiet mantra as they roll the 108 beads between their fingers. They too will then 
rise to their feet and walk five times around the murti in a similar manner to the men, 
touching the corners of the stone, and occasionally kissing the stone. 
120 
Visits to the mandir may be a daily occurance for some men and women, but there are 
larger numbers of women generally in attendance. Some may only visit at special 
occasions or festivals, and this seems to apply in both Britain and Gujarat. In a similar 
way to household worship, women appear to have a strong obligation to worship in the 
mandir on behalf of other household members and take the prasad, the blessed 
offerings of the gods back to be shared. Elderly men are more likely than younger men 
to worship on a daily basis in the mandir and because of distance, are more likely to do 
so in Ahmedabad than Harrow. 
Men have a more peripheral role than women in household rituals, especially life-cycle 
rituals, but may be involved in special rituals for family businesses. There may be 
continuity here with women being concerned with the domestic sphere and child- 
rearing, and men with business and social contacts outside the household. 
Rituals to ensure a good husband. 
The Hindu vrata tradition, that is a woman's devotion and service to her husband, his 
well-being being uppermost in her mind, still has a place in the lives of many women in 
Britain. Mary McGee (1991) argues that the putivrata (devoted wife) is rewarded in this 
life and the next, through her service to her husband: 
The life of the putivrata allows a woman the opportunity to pursue the three of the four aims of 
Hindu life (purusartha) - religious duty (dharma), wealth (artha), pleasure (kama) - while striving for 
a moral perfection leading to the fourth, liberation (moksa) ... 
By fulfilling this ideal role, a woman 
will be led along a path of righteous conduct and moral perfection. (McGee quoted in Leslie 
1991: 78) 
Some teenage girls, to ensure they get a good husband, perform the vrat ritual every 
year. Married women also perform the vrat ritual so that their husbands may have long 
and healthy lives. Young girls perform a gauro ritual for five years before they start 
performing vrat. Deepa's daughter, who is now thirteen, has completed the gauro. Girls 
did this annual ritual originally, to pray for a good husband. Some girls I know think it 
121 
is fun to perform this ritual with a group of friends in the summer holidays. It involves 
growing five different seeds - wheat, sesame seeds and other cereals, fasting for five 
days during which one eats no salt, wheat or rice, and doing puja every morning. Deepa 
said she worried about the girls during this time because they are not eating properly. At 
the end of the ritual they celebrate by going out together to the cinema. The girls enjoy 
the sense of togetherness this brings, the meaning of the ritual they told me is 
unimportant, but they told me it was to do with getting a good husband. They said that 
they do it because their mothers did it and they can have fun together, but Deepa told 
me that many girls today want to follow these rituals more then her generation did as 
girls. Kajol told me that women also do vrat for their children and other household 
members, and will fast for them. 
Although many women hold full-time jobs outside the home, they continue to be 
responsibile for the spiritual growth of the household, for cooking and for most 
housework. Today, however, men in Britain are becoming more involved in domestic 
chores and childcare than their fathers were and women's expectations of men are 
changing, especially now women are likely to be in paid employment outside the home. 
Two Patel sisters, Deepa and Puja, were among the group of nine women I met in 
March 1999 and reported in chapter two. They spoke to me in April 1999, about what 
has changed in the last twenty years and the differences they see between their 
husbands. Deepa is sixteen years older than Puja and there is a twenty-year age gap 
between their husbands, who have different attitudes to domestic chores. Deepa said: 
My husband does help in the house, but he doesn't really know what to do. I have to tell him, he 
has to be told to do everything. But he will help. Puja's husband is so good. He helps with 
everything. Lots of men my husband's age, they won't even lift their plate from the table. Even in 
this country, they just won't do that, even when their wives are working. 
Seema Shah, a Jain woman added: 
Women say their prayers, they cook, they go to work, they clean the house, everything. On ZEETV 
[the Asian TV channel] recently there was a programme that said that men should be hand-in-hand 
with women and should work beside them in the house. It is nice for her because she is a human 
being as well. It is nice if they give a hand. 
Sangita Shah, another Jain woman, suggested that Indian women are expected to have a 
different relationship with their husbands from their English friends. 
122 
Men you have to honour like gods. It is still like that in India. Even here, you have to take your 
husband as a god. Although it is not true, they are as good a human being as we are. It depends 
on the nature of the work, but especially if you are both working, it is nice to share work at home. If 
we are in the kitchen together, we talk to each other, and even the work gets done. 
I asked whether they felt attitudes to women are changing. Deepa Patel replied: 
Yes, women are becoming more independent than boys really. In the younger generation, the girls 
are going to be more demanding of the boys than now. They will be more demanding of their 
families too, it will change families. 
Changes are happening in the expectations women have of their husbands and these 
may be even greater in the second generation of women educated in the UK. Women I 
know who were born and educated in India or East Africa reflect in their greetings, the 
primary importance in their minds of their husband's well being. After saying `kem 
chho' (how are you) to me or to other Hindus, or using a religious greeting such as 
`Jayse Krishna' or `Jay Swaminarayan', they will ask, ` tamara puti sara chhe? ' is your 
husband well? This is often followed by enquiries about the rest of the family. 
Jacobson (1999) argues that the roles and positions of women vary considerably across 
Northern India, with the well-to-do college lecturer at one end of the spectrum and, at 
the other, the poor village woman working on the roads, her baby asleep in a hammock 
nearby. She suggests that women take an ambivalent view of themselves: the idea of 
motherhood is revered and `mata' or `ma' (mother) also means goddess and connotes 
warmth, protection and life-giving power; at the same time a woman's sexuality is 
controlled by men and when she is menstruating she can pollute others (Jacobson and 
Wadley 1999: 59). 
Some of the aspects of behaviour that have surprised me most in my friendships with 
Gujarati women have concerned their relationships with their husbands. Women, who 
appear to live independent lives in the workplace and seem to have autonomy in many 
aspects of their lives, may suddenly tell me that they cannot do something without 
reference to their husbands. An example of this happened recently when I had my 
nephew and niece staying with me, and had made an arrangement to visit Legoland with 
a Gujarati friend and her two children. The night before we were due to go, some days 
after the final arrangements had been made, my friend rang and told me that her 
husband did not want her to go because he wanted to go himself and would be working 
the next day. I was at first taken aback, but realised that if she did something that met 
123 
with her husband's disapproval she would be breaking her moral code and would lose 
favour with the gods. 
Through sharing some of my own family concerns with Gujarati friends, I have been 
able to gain insights into family relationships that I might not have achieved otherwise. 
My parents have not been well recently and I have made frequent long-distance 
journeys to see them. I have been told by several Gujarati women that helping your 
parents is the most important thing you can do in the eyes of God. It is not seen as a 
duty, but part of your moral being and a way of improving your karma, which will help 
you in your next life. Family relationships are based on more than obligations and 
responsibilities, they are indivisibly linked to a woman's spiritual standing with her god. 
The more she can behave like a moral being in her relationships with others, the more 
favours she will have from her god. Her growth as a spiritual being also depends on her 
performing the daily puja (worship) at the family mandir (shrine) as well as worship at 
the temples (also known as mandir), life cycle rituals and religious ceremonies. 
Household purity 
Almost all the families I have met, both Hindu and Jain, practise the daily or twice daily 
puja and it is usually women who perform them on behalf of men and the rest of the 
family. The third element of Kakar's trichotomy - the partner-in-ritual, referred to 
above - could be applied here. Women are expected to, and do, ask everyday for divine 
blessings and protection from gods or goddesses and ancestors through prayer at the 
family shrine, where photographs of deceased relatives are often to be seen alongside 
pictures or statuettes of the gods and gurus. Diva (candles made from ghee, clarified 
butter, with wicks) are usually lit each morning, prayers are recited, and sometimes a 
short hymn is sung. Women will often rise early at 5 m. and have a shower to cleanse 
their bodies before doing their puja. They are then expected to make cha (tea) for the 
rest of the family. If there are several women in the household, it is usually the older 
woman who performs puja and the younger one who makes the cha. Offerings are given 
to the gods at the mandir (shrine or temple); they usually consist of fresh fruit or 
flowers, which must be pure and uncooked. Once, in the house of the Brahman family 
with whom I was staying in Ahmedabad, I admired some fresh flowers that were going 
to be offered to the gods during Navratri (festival of nine nights before Diwali). I made 
124 
a move as if to sniff them, but was warned quickly that if I did so they were no longer 
pure and could not be offered at the mandir. Any taking of substances into the body, 
even smells, renders them impure. Once the fruit, nuts, sweets or sugar crystals, or 
flowers have been offered to the gods they become known as prasad, (blessed foods) 
and are shared within the household. If any member visits a mandir outside the home, 
they are expected to bring the god's blessing into the home by virtue of bringing the 
prasad back to the house for all to share. 
125 
Figure 16: Daily puja in Ahmedabad. 
126 
Figure 17: Navratri puja in Ahmedabad. 
The household's mandir is usually situated in the kitchen or a child's bedroom or in a 
living room cupboard. It invites the gods into the house and is, therefore, the first thing 
to be set up when a family is moving into a new house and the last thing to be 
dismantled when they move elsewhere. Some informants have told me that some 
elements of the mandir are hidden under the floorboards of the house when they leave, 
so the gods can remain if they wish. I observed Mita, a woman who belongs to the 
Lohana caste, move into her new flat and the following account is taken from my field 
notes (20/12/97): 
Maya enters the flat first taking the pictures of her gods - Shiva and his consort, Lakshmi [the 
goddess of wealth who is important for women] - and a photograph of Jalaram, her guru (holy man 
and teacher) whom she also calls god. She places the pictures on a comer of the work surface, 
lights an incense stick and a divo (a wick in ghee) and puts them in front of the pictures. The ghee 
is too hard at first and she has to soften it with the heat from the incense stick. Then she places 
mug beans, sugar crystals and salt on a steel tray and puts them in front of the gods. She prays 
aloud, bringing her hands together and bowing forwards towards the gods six times. Later she tells 
me that this ritual ensures that the gods are happy in their new home before the family can move 
in. 
127 
Protecting the household from pollution 
Women usually have close contact with the gods, but while they are menstruating they 
must abstain from contact with the household shrine and from visiting the temple. The 
word for mother and goddess is mata and this reflects the closeness of their relationship. 
The pure mother is seen as having a special bond with the divine, yet at certain times in 
her life she is seen as impure, polluting and a danger to others. During the days of her 
menstruation each month, she cannot touch the household shrine, enter a mandir 
(temple), or attend any rituals or festivals for fear of polluting those attending. In some 
stricter families the woman is not allowed to enter the kitchen when menstruating for 
fear of angering the gods. Two women in the group of nine that I met on March 5`h 1999 
said how frightened they were of their goddess Kali or Kalima (with the respectful 
suffix) if they did anything wrong. Uma Morjaria, a Lohana woman, began by saying: 
We all have a Kuldevima [the family's most important goddess] ours is Kalima. She wants us to 
offer special foods to her, such as uncooked rice, sesame seeds and different foods. When we 
have our periods we must not touch the foods or the mandir. 
Sonita Chavda a Kshatriya woman, agreed and stressed how difficult Kalima is to 
please: 
We can't even go to the temple at this time. Each family has a different Kuldevi, which is a 
goddess. I know my in-laws don't have one, but my Mum's family do. Kalima is a very strict 
goddess to please, especially at weddings and such. If you step out of line, or do something wrong, 
she will be angry. It makes my Mum slightly paranoid at times. 
Ameeta Amin, a Patel woman said: 
We don't understand it so much ourselves, we just follow. I used to be paranoid like that but now I 
am more relaxed. 
Sonita added: 
For me the fear has gone, but you can take it to an extreme and become paranoid. My mother is so 
concerned about her belief in the goddess and believes that if she does anything to offend her, her 
marriage will go wrong. 
Dina Shah, was born a Hindu and has married a Jain man, explained how embarrassed 
she was when she was younger: 
128 
You know this period business. We were six brothers and sisters, two years apart in age. When we 
were teenagers, I was told to sit outside the kitchen to have my meals when I had a period. So 
automatically everyone knew you had a period. It was so embarrassing and I used to fight with my 
mother and say, I am not going to follow this. Even then we had to follow because my mother 
followed it. Now I have my nieces and sisters-in-law, it has all changed and my mother has to 
accept it. Now my nieces are sixteen and they won't do it and I can totally understand why they 
won't. 
Deepa Patel joined in and said: 
I suppose in the olden days in India, in the villages, they had to be careful for hygienic reasons. We 
didn't have sanitary towels then, so that is why they had to keep us away, for hygienic reasons. We 
are beginning to think it is all to do with ritual, but I am not too sure. I still believe in it and when I 
have my periods I close my little temple until my periods are over. 
Dina said: 
I am the same; I won't go to the gods to pray for the four days while I am bleeding. I want to believe 
it because I feel comfortable with it. I think 90% of women would try not to pray when they have 
their periods. 
Uma wondered what happened if you make a mistake: 
If you do something and make a mistake and open your temple when you had your period, I think it 
is OK, I do not get scared anymore. I used to get scared and think this or that will happen. 
Seema Suthar added: 
I know a woman who won't even drink a glass of water or sit in a room with others when she has 
her period. Some people are very religious. God is very pure in our society, in our culture. If a child 
is invited to a religious ceremony and accidentally touches someone who has a period, then the 
child must have a bath to be purified. Gold is very pure and if a gold chain or ring is put in water 
and then that water sprinkled on the child's head, then that will purify too. 
The engagement and wedding, both civil and religious rituals, are organised and 
conducted by women, with men playing a secondary role. When a new bride joins a 
joint household this is both a time of joy but also a time of anxiety and even danger. 
The bride is a dangerous stranger from whom the groom's family needs protection (Leslie 1991: 5). 
The myth of Indra's guilt being transferred to women in the form of menstrual periods 
as a mark of sin, danger and impurity is used to rationalize their restriction in the 
religious arena. The blood spilt on the wedding night may require a Brahman priest to 
129 
protect the groom's family by removal of the stained cloth. Leslie argues that in modern 
times, there is no overt reference to the cloth, which is now usually removed by the 
women (Leslie 1991: 6). Hansa, a Lohana woman in her early twenties, described to me 
what happened to her after her arranged marriage in Gujarat. She met her husband three 
days before they became engaged and her parents had little time to prepare for the 
celebrations that followed and the more than one hundred guests who were invited. 
After her wedding she and her husband went to a hotel for four nights. 
Early in the morning, the day after my wedding, I was taken by my parents to their house. I was not 
allowed to wash or shower or anything in the hotel. When I arrived at my parents' house, I had to 
go straight upstairs for a shower. Then I put on a new, green sari that my husband's family had 
given me. After that I could return to the hotel and visit my husband's family. 
I asked Hansa if this showering had anything to do with concerns about pollution and 
she said that as Indian women are always virgins when they get married, it probably is, 
but no one talks about it. 
The new wife begins her life with her husband's family who will have certain 
expectations about her and the duties that she should fulfil. When she is menstruating, if 
there are other women in the house, they will take over her kitchen duties and attend to 
the household shrine. Similarly, for the first forty days after childbirth a woman is 
ritually impure and may be confined to her bedroom while her bleeding is heavy; 
another woman in the household takes over her duties and she is supplied with 
nutritious foods (to be discussed further below). Many women see this exclusion after 
childbirth and during menstruation as a time for themselves, when they can rest and be 
free of their everyday duties. 
In an overview of research conducted in India and Nepal, Allen (1990) reports views 
very similar to those discussed above concerning ambivalence about women and 
common Hindu female stereotypes: the pure virgin, voluptuous temptress, obedient 
wife, honoured mother, dread widow, impure menstruating woman, and powerful 
sexual partner. He argues that the hierarchy of the caste system based on relative 
impurity has had an effect on the lives of Hindu women. 
They are, especially during menstruation and childbirth, a source of pollution as great as that 
associated with untouchables; and hence of comparable social worth: on the other [hand] it [relative 
purity] had led to their veneration as pure beings whose condition reflects on the honour and status 
130 
of their menfolk. These two beliefs, though apparently resulting in quite contrary evaluations of 
women, share in common the social concomitant of male control (Allen 1990: 5). 
One of my male informants was adamant concerning the reasons for the restrictions 
placed on women's behaviour when they are bleeding. Women are excused from work 
in the kitchen during their periods and after childbirth because they need rest while 
losing blood. This has nothing at all to do with impurity. After all, he said, babies are 
conceived there, so how can it be impure? He said this is a misinterpretation of 
Hinduism. My own first-hand information suggests that most women in Britain will 
now cook during menstruation and that many have no choice if they are living in 
nuclear households; they will refrain, however, from opening their shrines, attending 
religious rituals and visiting temples. 
The purity of the ghar (household) is reflected in its members and is frequently 
threatened, so needs to be kept under constant surveillance by women. Regular ritual 
performance is essential or else the moral standing of the whole family is endangered. 
As men get older and retire, many show an increasing interest in religious ritual in the 
home and also go on pilgrimages to special temples, where there is believed to be a 
heightened sense of the god or shakti (divine energy). 
.. the 
idea of some spiritual withdrawal in the last years of life is strong. Old men properly devote 
themselves to pilgrimage and meditation, even if they do not totally abandon the general oversight 
of their land or business (Pocock 1972: 96). 
It is the women's responsibility however, to be guardians of the religious purity of the 
household. 
In a discussion in the evening of April 9th 1998, I had with Nikhita and Kiran, the young 
Brahman couple, I asked where in their new house they keep their mandir and Kiran 
said, 
It is upstairs in the children's bedroom. 
Nikhita said, 
It is not considered clean to have it in a room where you have relations between husband and wife. 
131 
Kiran: 
My family is more modem and Nikhita's more traditional. Yet my family is more religious. My 
mother is very religious and yet she was one of the first women to go to university. She gets up at 5 
AM in order to say her prayers. 
Nikhita: 
You have to have a bath before you pray, which means you wash your hair and everything. If you 
are menstruating, you cannot pray. The older women tend to be more religious than the younger 
ones because they are at work. With the older women it is a social thing, because they are at home 
all day. The mother's role is to bring up the kids and say the prayers. That is what every woman is 
taught to do. The generation now where you are working, Alison, do not have time for it. 
I asked Nikhita and Kiran whether in their generation the religious responsibility is 
more equal between men and women. 
Nikhita: It is still with the women. 
Kiran: I think as you get older, you have more time. 
Nikhita: Both your parents will not eat a meal or drink the day we go to the mandir, which is good. 
Kiran: It is against their social conscience. It is what you are comfortable with. I have a lot of Jewish 
friends and they do the same and fit religion around the way they want to live their lives. I fit my 
belief around what I feel should happen. 
The impurity of women during menstruation and after childbirth is well documented in 
the literature. Jocelyn Krygier argues that Hindu women are regarded as inherently 
impure in relation to men: 
The symbolic structural assimilation, in text and belief, of woman with Sudra suggests that the 
system, governed by the opposition of the pure and impure, opposes twice-born men to women 
and Sudra and untouchable men (Krygier 1990: 79). 
My own data suggest, however, that the idea that menstruating women are a danger to 
others in the household is lessening, but that a ritually impure woman is still a threat to 
the purity of the shrine and must not be in contact with it during such times. Krygier 
quotes Scheper-Hughes who argues that seclusion could be seen as an expression of 
female solidarity (Scheper-Hughes 1972, Krygier, in Allen and Mukherjee 1990: 96). 
This could well be the case after childbirth, when seclusion means the woman rests 
from daily chores and may return to the natal home where she is pampered and cared 
for by her own mother. 
132 
Women as pure with a close affinity with the mata 
Women have an obligation not only to do puja daily and to go regularly to the mandir to 
pray for the household, but also to perform rituals at certain auspicious times in the life 
cycles of household members and to organise and conduct ceremonies at specific times 
in the Gujarati calendar. Young girls who have not yet begun to menstruate are regarded 
as possessing great purity and may be the object of veneration and worship (Allen 
1990). The life-cycle rituals of childhood in effect separate the developing child from 
total dependence on the mother and foster interdependence with a wider circle of kin. 
According to Inden and Nicholas (1977) the life-cycle rituals are intended to remove 
bodily defects inherited from the seed or the womb and to infuse the body with good 
qualities. Each ritual prepares the body for attaining heaven and becoming a proper 
ancestor, in preparation for the ultimate goal of the release from life in the world and the 
cycle of re-births. The vital involvement of women in pregnancy, birth and other life- 
cycle rituals will be described in more detail in a later chapter, suffice it to say that the 
rituals practised inform a person's status within the family and among kin and the wider 
community and their spiritual standing with their god or goddess. 
The close affinity women have with the mataji (mother/goddesses with the respectful 
suffix) makes them mediators in ritual between humans and the divine. Girls and young 
women who are virgins may become the mata in ritual, and their inclusion increases the 
validity and efficacy of the occasion, as will be shown for the hair-cutting ceremony 
described in chapter seven, where seven virgins were invited for each Iota 
(representation of the goddess). Older married women encourage girls to involve 
themselves in the ritual and urge them to dance vigorously; if they do so, it is a good 
omen. Women's close relationship with the mataji demands adherence to purity 
practices, especially those associated with menstruation and childbirth, as Sonita 
mentioned earlier in the chapter. Even so, as I noted above, what constitutes `adherence' 
is undergoing a degree of transformation in that younger generation women may cook 
food at times when older women would not do so. This change requires, however, that 
women overcome what one of my informants referred to as `paranoia' concerning what 
may happen if they flout divine wishes. One of the mataji, Kalima, is often portrayed in 
violent, bloodthirsty poses and is represented as exacting reprisals if women do not 
follow the expected conventions. The purity of the household must be upheld to prevent 
133 
the mataji from becoming displeased and regular rites and duties must be performed 
for 
them. 
Figure 18: Gayatri, one of the mataji, riding on her'vehicle', a swan (Ambaji Mandir 1999). 
Raheja and Gold (1994) in their analysis of Rajasthani women's songs challenge the 
image of the Hindu woman as split between her `sexual potency' and `procreative and 
nurturing capacities'. The images of the goddesses have been used to emphasise this 
split have been largely obtained by watching rather than listening to women. They 
criticise Bennett's work with high-caste Hindus in Nepal who said: `Female sexuality is 
not denied in the mother as it is symbolically in the sister and the daughter. '(Bennett 
1983: 255) Bennett suggests here that `motherhood, then, purifies dangerous wives and 
makes their sexuality auspicious instead of dangerous' (Raheja and Gold 1994: 36). 
134 
They argue that the split image approach to Hindu women comes from a male 
viewpoint and women themselves as `participants in a society strongly oriented toward 
fertility' (Ibid 37). Through listening to women's songs they suggest that: 
Rajasthani folk culture, transmitted in women's songs and stories, supplies many images of 
females that are simultaneously seductive and fertile, erotic and domestic, and positive (Raheja 
and Gold 1994: 38). 
Through listening to women I agree that women themselves are positive about their 
lives and the expectations placed on them. The precautions that need to be made during 
menstruation are accepted by most and do not interfere with the close affinity they have 
with each other and the mataji. 
Mrs Chavda suggested that what is in `the back of the mind' would continue to be 
upheld so long as people `believe in god and fear that god will punish you if you do 
things wrong. ' For mature women, what is in `the back of the mind' includes respect for 
elders and looking after the physical and spiritual needs of husbands and their kin 
before attending to their own needs. Ultimately women benefit themselves spiritually 
and enhance their karma and standing with the gods if they do their duty by their kin. 
Women seek to maintain these ideals and pass them on to children by example. The 
feminist view of the Hindu woman as subordinated by men wants subtlety, for the older 
woman holds a powerful position in the ghar, in part by virtue of her control of ritual 
activity there. Older women tend to dominate the younger ones in the household, who 
are expected to be respectful to them. As in Nikhita's case, her husband Kiran had such 
a close relationship with his mother that he referred to her rather than to Nikhita when 
making decisions. 
Men still tend to control household finances, but women are beginning to have more 
influence over the way money is spent. I asked Sanjay and Veena who are both 
accountants, which one of them looks after the money in their household. Sanjay replied 
that he did, but Veena advised him. In Sapna's case, her husband, who unloads 
containers at Heathrow Airport, will not give her enough money to clothe and feed her 
three daughters. She has to work during the night as a cleaner in a department store to 
have enough money for her children, and she pays the money she earns into her own 
account for her children. Maya, who married a Muslim, controls the finances in her 
house. She pays the rent to the council and the flat is registered in her name. Hansa, the 
young Lohana woman who came from India following an arranged marriage, is now 
135 
divorced. She found that her mother-in-law and father-in-law made her life intolerable 
with their demands and started hitting her on a regular basis. Her husband did not 
support her, she had no family of her own in this country, so she fled to a women's 
refuge. She now lives in council flat with her four-year-old son and the contacts that her 
son has with her ex-husband's family are still very strained. 
There is an expectancy that newly married women in the household will do the chores 
that no one else wants to do and in some cases this may be unreasonable. Many women 
accept this situation, realising that as their seniority increases they will be in control of 
the household's physical and spiritual wellbeing, and will be able to influence how the 
household finances are spent. For some, as in Hansa's situation the relationships 
became so difficult that she had to leave. Change is occurring and younger women are 
becoming more assertive in the family and beginning to influence financial decisions. 
When referring to the ghar, men and women of different castes say `my mum's house' 
and tell me that she is responsible for the character of the ghar, the food that is eaten, 
the ritual practice and the moral codes upheld in it. 
136 
Chapter 5 Food 
If food is treated as a code, the messages it encodes will be found in the pattern of social relations 
being expressed. The message is about different degrees of hierarchy, inclusion, exclusion, 
boundaries and transactions across the boundaries Douglas M (1975: 249). 
In Gujarati households in the UK as well as in India, food carries specific meanings 
about relations between kin and families. Contact is made with the gods through food 
offerings, and special foods are used in festivals, in pregnancy and after childbirth, as 
well as in life-cycle rituals. Supernatural forces are kept at bay or dispelled through the 
use of certain pungent-smelling foods. Food is of central importance in women's lives, 
not only because they are responsible for nourishing and sustaining the physical bodies 
of all family members, but also because they have to maintain their family's spiritual 
well-being and protect it from evil influences. Pocock (1972) comments that women are 
responsible for the religious purity of the household and for this very reason have to 
control their own potential to pollute. 
As cooks they are guardians of the religious purity of the family. At the same time they are subject 
to pollution by menstruation and occasionally by childbirth. Not only are they believed to be 
physically subject to pollution, but are morally more subject to sexual temptation (Pocock 1972: 12). 
The preparation and eating of food has to take into account ideas of purity as well as 
certain family rules. By eating foods that were consumed by one's ancestors, foods that 
people have eaten for generations, the members of a household maintain their links with 
their ancestors in their village of origin in Gujarat or in another area of Gujarat that is 
called `home'. This chapter draws on my fieldwork in Harrow and India to explore the 
meaning given to food in different contexts and addresses women's views on the 
cooking of Indian foods and how to allow for the different food preferences of kin in 
different generations. 
Food for different generations 
The group of nine women I met on 5th March 1999 were friends who had children 
attending the same local primary school. Six of the women come from different Hindu 
castes, two were Jains and one was a Hindu married to a Jain. During the three- hour 
session, they told me their ideas about food, and the importance of food for what it 
means to be Gujarati, before we all shared a meal together. Despite their diverse 
137 
backgrounds and religious beliefs, they mostly agreed with one another, even with 
respect to the necessity for observing life-cycle rituals and rituals for warding off the 
evil eye. Any suggestion that their food might be different as a function of caste, or that 
cooked food could not be shared with others outside the caste because of concerns about 
purity, as argued by many authors such as Chapman and Macbeth (1990: 46) were 
rejected by these women and demonstrated in the way they shared the meal prepared for 
us that day. Pocock (1980: 141) suggests that at special functions such as marriages and 
funerals people of different castes will eat together and the group itself will make 
judgement as to whether the food is fit to eat or not. The essential question is, who has 
cooked the food? Later in this chapter I will show that the positive or negative 
influences of the cook may be the deciding factor as to whether the food is safe to eat. 
Ameeta Amin, a Patel mother of two young school children, began by telling me that: 
We have strong conventions and we do respect that, and it does work for us. It really helps us. It 
makes us feel comfortable, especially when we are eating our own food. 
Sonita Chavda, a Kshatriya mother, continued: 
I don't know, but I think all of us tend to, I know I do, have Indian food the majority of the week. I 
stayed with my mother-in-law for a year [after marriage] and then we bought our own house, and I 
still cook Indian food five or six times a week. It's quite a lot, so I do have lazy days. 
A heated debate followed about the importance of Indian food for the family and the 
length of time spent in its preparation -a complete meal takes about two hours to 
prepare, which is hard for women who work outside the home. Deepa Patel said that 
women have to adjust and adapt, which seemed to be applicable to various areas of their 
lives. 
You need to adjust and adapt, like when you don't have time, I think every family does that, do 
pasta and sandwiches. Vegetables are given importance in all the communities. But they use 
pasta, vegetables or pizza. OK there are people who do not like frozen foods, but it is quicker than 
rotli (chapati bread), and shak (vegetable curry); or dahl (lentils) and rice, which is easier again. 
People try to adapt and do chipped or roast potatoes with vegetables. 
All the women in the group are vegetarian and see this as an important aspect of their 
heritage and religious beliefs. Dumont suggests that vegetarianism is not a `primitive' 
feature but a fact of high civilisation that may have originated from the Jain or Buddhist 
communities through the doctrine of ahimsa, or non-violence (Dumont 1980: 146). 
138 
... that vegetarianism 
forced itself on Hindu society, having begun in the sects of the renouncers, 
among which are Jainism and Buddhism. No doubt these two disciplines of salvation are but the 
two main testimonies we have to a more extensive movement: ahimsa came from further afield and 
was more widespread; it remains true that to all appearances it was the renouncer who carried it 
right through to its practical consequences for diet, and gave it to Hindu society as an example of a 
value higher than the Brahmanical values of sacrifice (Dumont 1980: 149). 
The widespread influence of Jainism in Gujarat could account for strict observance of 
vegetarianism. The eating of meat is practised by low caste and tribal people in 
Ahmedabad but most Gujaratis in the UK are vegetarian. There is a gender difference 
here with more women avoiding meat then men. Dumont points out that cattle grazing 
played a large part of the lives of Vedic Indians, and cattle were only killed for 
sacrificial reasons and only the meat of sacrificed cattle was eaten (Dumont 1980: 147). 
Banks also suggests that Hindus have been influenced by Jains in Gujarat and become 
strict vegetarians. Hindus do not follow the rules of ahimsa to the extremes that some 
Jains do and will not share their concern for avoid killing small insects or 
microorganisms and will not avoid eating leafy vegetables, or cover their mouths when 
outside the house. Banks argues that the central principal of ahimsa, that is lack of 
desire to inflict harm, respect for life, and the most serious sin of all is to deprive 
another being of his life, or stop a soul from residing in a body (Banks 1992). As Mr 
Shah told me. `We believe in-live, and let live. ' 
Many Jains in Britain follow strict dietary rules and avoid root vegetables, garlic, onions 
and raw green salad that may harbour small insects. Garlic and onions are thought to 
have aphrodisiac qualities and are also avoided by stricter Vaishnava Hindus, many of 
whom follow the Swaminarayan sect. Laidlaw's (1995) informants told him the reasons 
why these underground tubers are not allowed: 
The earth is full of tiny jivs, Diving, microscopic organisms], and millions of these are killed when 
these plants are pulled up. They are bursting with life (they sprout spontaneously even if not 
planted). They contain an infinite number of jivs (even a tiny part of the root, if planted will grow). 
They have a bad effect on you, heating the blood and inflaming the passions. (Laidlaw 1995: 156) 
Reynell found that green vegetables may be restricted to the 8`h and 14`h auspicious days 
of the month, yogurt must not be eaten if it is more than a day old, in order to avoid 
eating any microscopic organisms, and alcohol is forbidden because of the fermentation 
involved (Reynell 1985: 48). 
139 
Three of the women in the group came from Jain households and there was general 
agreement about the importance of Indian vegetarian foods and introducing these to 
their older children. The difficulties women have in balancing the demands of their 
children (who wish to eat the same as their peers at school) with the needs of other kin 
and the mothers' desires to maintain the diet followed through generations were hotly 
debated by the group. 
Uma Morjaria, a Lohana woman explained how hard it is if they also work: 
If you work and you don't have time, you can't make Indian food everyday. But I do make a point 
because I want my children to know what their food is and I think if I didn't, they would very happily 
eat pasta and potatoes and everything everyday. So for that very reason, whether I have time or 
not, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, about three days a week I will try to carry on with Indian food. 
There was general agreement from this mixed caste group, and the opinions expressed 
above came from Lohana, Kshatriya, Patel, and Jain women respectively. Reference is 
frequently made to kin members in the context of food, Seema Suthar, who belongs to 
the carpenter caste, continued: 
It depends on the family, like if I have my mother-in-law staying. Even though I work from home, if 
the kids want something English, or something different, still I have to make Indian food. It is their 
way of satisfying themselves, they can't have just jacket potatoes or pasta with vegetables. 
Then Sangita Shah, a Jain woman continued: 
My father-in-law would never touch pasta, pizza, nothing. He just wants Indian food everyday. 
In general the women felt that the older generation, especially their parents-in-law, 
insist on Indian food as the only food that satisfies them physically, as a food that is 
their right and heritage and part of their bodies as Gujaratis. They admitted, however, 
that changes are happening. Ameeta said: 
The food has changed over the years. What a staple diet was to our parents and grandparents is 
no longer there. They still have millet flour and make a mixture of split lentils and rice that was their 
staple diet. The girls love that and in fact would eat it a lot, but I just give it once a week. 
A lively discussion followed on staple foods and special foods, so I had to ask them to 
speak one at a time and Bina Dodhia, a Jain woman, continued: 
We all have a special food to make and I said I like to make kichi from rice flour. It is actually 
dough, a steamed dough. 
140 
Deepa Patel said: 
We call it papion in Patels. You can have the green one as well that is made from rice and split 
lentils, green grams. 
Seema added: 
Khichadi [a mixture of rice, dahl and spices] is one of the staple foods that is one of the best foods 
in all its ways from Gujarat, full of proteins, starch, its very good for bones and energy. It came right 
from the small villages. 
This food can be linked with `the small villages' and is thus seen as real Gujarati food - 
food which, for generations, has been prepared the same way and which, in the eating 
allows a kind of access to those previous generations and `the small villages' where 
they lived. Deepa said: 
When people cannot not afford sweets and ghee, or butter - it is a simple diet. 
Sangita Shah said: 
My first child, the elder, was bom in India, and every second day I used to give her khichadi, rice 
and lentils with yogurt, which helps the digestion. But it gives strength, if you see her now, she is 
full of stamina because of her childhood food. All over India everyone has their own staple food. 
There was general agreement about the importance of diet in childhood, the benefits of 
which will continue into later life. Sonita suggested that there is now more awareness of 
health issues associated with diet and that nowadays people eat less saturated fat. 
There is not so much ghee [clarified butter] used and people use oil. Children used to have a lot 
more. I know we did. As a child I used to eat purl [fried, puffed bread], you know. My mum used to 
make it and even now I do like it, but you are always conscious about your diet. 
Uma suggested a reason why one has to be more careful in the UK: 
We do not perspire here. 
Sonita admitted that she has these foods sometimes but not always, and Ameeta 
contributed another reason why they have to be more careful now. 
In the old days they used to work much harder and used to bum it off. These days we have got the 
car and everything. It is the lazy way. 
Everyone said they made rotli [flat chapati bread] and this is still their staple food. Bina 
said: 
141 
We get the millet flour and make rotta [thick bread] and I don't know whether it is the same in most 
families, but I certainly make it several times a week. The girls like it, my husband enjoys it. 
Uma agreed: 
I make rotla too. In Africa we had hardly been to our GP, we were so healthy; or the hospital, where 
was the hospital? 
Deepa explained she had made some snack foods for our lunch; 
I have made rice from left-overs and all the snacks. You can help yourselves before you go. It is a 
tradition like, when a person comes, it is nice to give a cup of tea or a snack, or if there is time, you 
ask them for lunch or dinner. Sometimes it becomes too much, especially when you are tired and 
working. Like today my friends helped me. 
Food for guests 
Ameeta Amin, a young Patel woman from the group above, explained: 
Like as you say, someone would come knocking on the door, and they know I am at home, so if 
they are passing by, they would just stop here. We have to have something in the house, like 
snacks or at least a cup of tea and snacks, if nothing else, it is always there. 
Sangita Shah suggested a difference between here and India: 
Yes that is the difference I have found, coming from India, you can just knock on the door and you 
come in. Staying in this country for the last eight years, there is a difference. Even the people in our 
community say can you ring us. 
Certainly this is what I experienced in my stay in India, where the front door was open 
most of the day and visitors came without announcement, especially in the early 
evenings. Water is offered there to everyone, followed by cha and snacks to people who 
stay for longer or who are close friends, but only kin are invited for meals. Bina Dodhia 
could see an advantage in the British convention: 
The other side is nice as well, people are prepared for you. Time is so short sometimes. Working, 
kids, activities, family, you need a lot of time for them and suddenly people walk in and you don't 
know what to do. There are advantages and disadvantages. 
The UK women are experiencing time pressures, balancing the needs of the family as 
well as work and entertaining the wider community. Perhaps these pressures are also 
increasing in India now, as more women work outside the home, especially in urban 
142 
areas. 
Dina Shah explained what her childhood was like: 
In a small village, if they can't afford to buy milk, because it is expensive for them, they buy a little 
bit, 100 mis and then they can offer tea at least. I could remember because I was just 11-12 years 
old. Sometimes they use a saucer for themselves, but if guests come then they bring cups, even 
borrow cups from neighbours. Now you see how warm they were, but at the time, I thought it was 
silly. You value it now, when you see the world and grow up. 
However Sangita Shah's experiences of India were different: 
Recently when I went to India, we went to houses, but they didn't serve food. They didn't have that 
much courtesy, to serve food or make a little bit. It is quite tiring and the journeys are so far. 
Providing food for guests implies a participation in the wider community, which is part 
of their Indian heritage, but could be inconvenient in their lives here in the UK when the 
demands of work and children come first. In India entertaining people other than kin is 
expected, but here `time is short' and guests other than kin may not be encouraged 
without announcement. In the Brahman family joint household with whom I stayed in 
Ahmedabad, cooked food was served to kin only, unless prior arrangements had been 
made. 
Dumont suggests that food once cooked, `Participates in the family who prepared it 
(1980: 140). ' As Dumont argues, cooked food may be thought of as more vulnerable to 
evil influences and contamination from without, or impurity within, the household. The 
cooking transforms the food into a transitional state, which has ambivalent status, 
neither raw nor digested and is more vulnerable to jealous looks or evil influences. 
This is perhaps because, by cooking, food is made to pass from the natural world to the human 
world, and one may wonder whether there is not here something analogous to the 'marginal state' 
in rites de passage, when a person is no longer in one condition nor yet in another, and 
consequently exposed, open in some way, to evil influences. In India itself most of these rites de 
passage correspond to an impurity, which expresses the irruption of the organic into the social life; 
now there is something of the organic in our case, as with excretion, and, with the necessary 
difference, there is if not true impurity at least an exceptional permeability to impurity. Hence the 
preliminary bath which, however is not enough, because, as we know, the pure is powerless 
against the impure and only the sacred vanquishes it (hence in what follows, the use of products of 
the cow) (Dumont 1980: 140). 
143 
Generation and gender in the kitchen 
Generational changes in the relationships between men and women are apparent in so 
far as women in Britain and in urban Gujarat are asking for more equality with men. 
Some of the discussion about gender roles happens in the kitchen, with younger men 
taking part in cooking and clearing up after meals. In joint households women may still 
be doing most of this work but where couples have set up separate living arrangements 
men appear to be taking a more active part. 
Food and its preparation concerned all the women in the group of nine women I referred 
to above. In the kitchen, tensions between a woman and her mother-in-law can arise, 
over what food is to be cooked, or who does it. The rivalry that can exist between the 
two generations of women has been described to me as `kitchen power' by members of 
an Asian women's support group consisting of women of different ages. The conflict 
that can arise here may be reflecting other relationships in the household, as discussed 
in the previous chapter. 
Hierarchical positions in households are reflected in who eats with whom. In 
Ahmedabad men, guests and older women are usually served first and sit together at the 
table and younger women and children are served afterwards and may eat separately in 
another room or sitting on the floor. Food is always eaten with the right hand; the left 
hand is used after defecation and considered unclean. Some people do drink a `glass' 
(made of stainless steel) of pani (water) with their left hand. The hands are washed 
before and after eating and some people pour the remains of their pani over their hands 
onto their plate at the end of the meal. In Harrow, meals tend to be more relaxed and the 
hierarchical order of eating does not seem to apply, although men and guests are usually 
served first. When relationships are harmonious, the eating of food in the ghar brings 
kin together within households and unites them in the sharing of Gujarati food. 
Mealtimes can also be times when tensions are high and difficulties between household 
members exposed as I experienced in Ahmedabad and the following is an extract from 
my field notes on 7/10/99: 
I visit the Gosrani, Jain household in the west of the city, travelling there by rickshaw and managing 
to find the block of flats quite easily this time, despite the lack of street numbers. Three generations 
live jointly including Rita, a mother in her late twenties, her husband and his younger brother, her 
144 
two children, including a baby of four months. She explains that her brother-in-law is going through 
a divorce at the moment and that her father-in-law is upset about this. 
Rita was a lively, thin woman, who wore a blue, Punjabi top and white trousers with a 
white chundari (scarf). We spoke about her life- she has two living children, but sadly 
two of her children have died; a girl of breathing problems at four months and a boy of 
dehydration at nine months. She was tearful when telling me about their deaths but said 
she must be positive for her two surviving children: she had a girl of eleven years and a 
boy of four months. Her husband and his brother worked with their father in a family 
business that made folding chairs. She said that it was better to keep business in the 
family because you know you can trust everyone. She used to work as a traditional 
dancer performing garba all over the world, in public displays. Now she does not work 
then because she had decided to devote her life to her children. 
Rita met her husband when she was fifteen years old and they started dating and had a 
love marriage that both parents accepted because they were both Jains. She said her 
parents-in-law want her to use the house as her own and invite friends round, but at the 
moment relationships are tense because her husband brother's wife has recently left the 
household. She invited me to stay for lunch, but warned me that her mother-in-law and 
father-in-law are not very happy at the moment. 
Rita explains about the difficulties her sister-in-law experienced in the household: She had 
difficulties adjusting to living away from home. She said that Indian women have to get used to 
being told what to do by everyone, but they have to go through that phase without arguing. Now 
she says that she and her husband are good friends and respect each other, but it was not easy at 
first. Problems arise if women argue and do not give things time to settle. It is hard for women, they 
have to move away from their families and adjust to a completely new set-up. 
Mr and Mrs Gosrani came into the room and Rita introduced me to them and they said 
`kem chho' to me but nothing else. They indicated that it was time to eat, and moved 
towards the table and invited me to sit down. We eat potato shak, a curry with balls of 
soya, shredded cabbage with spices, dahl and rice. Mrs Gosrani kept urging me to eat 
more and told me `don't be shy'. There was a tense atmosphere at the table, Rita acting 
politely to her parent-in-law, but only speaking to me. Mr and Mrs Gosrani were silent 
throughout the meal apart from one or two words that they exchanged in Gujarati. Mrs 
Gosrani sat crossed legged on her chair and when she had finished eating, poured her 
glass of pani (water) over her hands into her dish. I realised I have observed older 
145 
women and men doing this, but younger people do not do it. After I had finished I was 
invited to wash my hands at the sink at the side of the room. Rita appeared relieved 
when the meal was over and asked me to go upstairs to her bedroom to look at 
photographs of her children. 
In this account, the tensions in the Gosrani household were expressed during the meal 
through the lack of social exchange between Mr and Mrs Gosrani, and Rita. Divorce is 
still difficult for families to accept both in India and Britain, and brings shame. I have 
known an old woman who has refused for ten years to accept that her daughter is 
divorced and still asks her about her husband. For the Gosrani family above, the 
difficulties were apparent, and the social relations were strained at all times but 
particularly apparent at mealtimes. 
Pregnancy and childbirth are times when younger women are guided by older female 
kin, initially mothers-in-law and then, after the birth, mothers. The relationship of 
dependency on other women becomes more apparent, with women who had apparently 
been leading independent lives in the workplace now following the advice and guidance 
of others. 
When a woman is seven months pregnant, the ritual called kholo bharvo (lap-filling, or 
literally putting in the lap) is performed where rice is given by her mother to her 
mother-in-law and passed from one to the other from the folds of one woman's sari to 
the others, this ritual will be described in more detail in a later chapter. Her mother-in- 
law saves the rice that will be cooked after the baby is born and shared between the 
patrilineal and natal family. 
After the birth the woman's mother makes special foods for her, to rid her of the 
impurity she carries, which is most dangerous in the first two weeks. This impurity 
could pose a threat to the health of other family members, which could be conveyed in 
cooked foods. So the woman is not allowed in the kitchen during this time and, in some 
households where this is strictly observed, she has to have her own cutlery and plates 
and eats in a separate place. The foods prepared include fresh, green vegetables and a 
special cooked food called katlu made from wheat, nuts, gum, honey and ghee that 
women believe ensures a strong back later in life. Proper care at this time, when a 
woman is in a state of ritual impurity, is vital for the production of milk for her baby 
146 
and her future health. She must also drink boiled water with spices, which women say 
helps in ridding the body of the blood. 
Food at this time links the two sets of kin in the exchange of rice and marks a special 
relationship between the newly delivered woman and her mother. Sometimes other kin 
such as sisters or aunts may step in and cook for them. The marginal state of cooked 
food may be augmented by the marginal state of the woman in this rite of passage 
where she is becoming a parent, and makes this time one that requires utmost vigilance. 
During this period of ritual impurity she is not only excluded from the kitchen but must 
have no contact with the gods or the family shrine. After the visit to the temple, 
however, she can resume this contact; but purity and closeness to the gods can be 
attained only through the removal by fasting of everyday cooked foods from the body. 
The importance of fasting 
Women, and occasionally men, may fast on a certain days of the week or month, for 
their god, or for deceased relatives. Some people will fast if they have made a vow to a 
god to do so, in exchange for a favour; thus Maya told me that she had been having 
problems with her husband and decided to fast every Tuesday for mataji, so that she 
would help her and give her strength. After the death of a respected kinsperson, a fast 
may be observed every eleven days. A fast may require abstaining from food altogether, 
or giving up wheat, and some may eat fruit only, which is considered purifying. Jain 
women are expected to drink only boiled water during the day of their fast and to eat 
nothing. Meera, from the Lohana caste, told me how she began fasting weekly as a 
child. 
When I was young my mother would fast every Thursday. She believed in a god who was born on 
a Thursday, called Jalaram [more often considered to be a saint]. Because I adopted the Thursday, 
I carried on. I was very young, I was only seven, when I started to fast with her. I have been in 
England for nearly thirty years and I have fasted in the last twenty years. I am now fasting because, 
I still believe in god you know, but because I am doing yoga. I believe you need to clean your 
system at least once a week and I thought keeping Thursday is a good option. I eat no cooked food 
on this day but I can eat fruit. 
I asked why she withheld cooked foods and she replied: 
147 
I think the reason is if you have cooked foods it is very heavy. It is not pure. I think it may be to do 
with positive and negative energies. If you are making a curry, you don't know where all the 
vegetables come from, you might have bought it from a supermarket and it was all nicely wrapped 
up. Then who picked it up, the person who did might have loads of negative energy while they were 
doing it. So if you restrict it from your system on that day so that you are completely purified. 
Someone like my mother doesn't have anything, just fluids, tea and coffee, nothing else. 
Meera emphasised the potential hazards of cooked foods being more vulnerable to 
negative influences in the way that Dumont (1980: 140) has suggested. Raw foods are 
pure and safe to be given to the gods and safe for some to eat on the days when they are 
fasting. Dumont suggests that the only way to ensure purity of cooked foods is to 
include one of the products of the cow and most meals do include dahi (yogurt) at the 
end. 
The older women advise on which raw foods to use on auspicious occasions such as 
life-cycle rituals, beginning with the exchange of rice in the seventh month of 
pregnancy. For the `chhati' or sixth day ceremony after the birth, an offering of mug 
beans (green lentils) is given to the gods. Mina told me that, for the hair-cutting 
ceremony, a special food is prepared made from seven different grains, sesame seeds 
and sugar, none of which is cooked. The number seven is auspicious and at special 
occasions is found in different forms. At one of the hair-cutting ceremonies I attended, a 
special cooked milk and rice dish was made and each of the seven virgins invited had 
this sweet food put straight into her mouth. At life-cycle rituals wider kin meet and eat 
cooked foods after the rituals, but the link with the gods in the ritual is usually made 
through raw foods. Sweet foods such as lade (round shaped sweets made of wheat, 
honey, and milk) and jalebi (strands of sweet, deep fried wheat) are always shared with 
guests at happy occasions like these, after the birth of a child, especially a boy, at 
ceremonies and festivals. 
Jains fast during Paryushan for one, three, five, eight, or sixteen days, and women told 
me that they are expected to fast every few years; only very religious people do it every 
year. Reynell (1985) argues that fasting is an important aspect of Jain women's 
religiosity and in each of the households she entered in Rajasthan, one woman was 
always fasting. In Britain, Jain women fast only occasionally, although recently a 
sixteen-year-old girl told me she had fasted for sixteen days and drunk only boiled 
water from 9 am until 5 pm everyday and that although it was difficult at first, her body 
148 
became used to it. At the end of Paryushan the fast is broken at a large gathering of the 
community where simple foods of peanuts, rice, bean curry and tomatoes are eaten. I 
attended one such gathering at the Oshwal Centre in Potters Bar, where 5,000 Oshwal 
Jains came one sunny afternoon in September. 
The purity of milk 
Grazing played a large part in the life of Vedic Indians, and it may be supposed that like many other 
pastoral peoples they killed cattle only when there were good reasons, sacrificial reasons, and only 
the meat of sacrificed animals was eaten. In other words there was a religious attitude towards 
cattle, which is not surprising, and which is to be taken as the starting-point for what was later to 
become the veneration of the cow, the cow having been already extolled in Vedism as a cosmic 
symbol, the universal mother and source of food ... 
(Dumont 1980: 147). 
The cow became venerated as a sacred animal, was no longer sacrificed and its five 
products then were seen as beneficial and purificatory (ibid: 150) these substances 
becoming `five immortal substances' in ritual. Cow or buffalo milk is regarded as a pure 
food for everyone and included in most meals as curd or yogurt (dahi), which is thought 
to help the digestion of cooked foods. Milk is particularly suitable for babies and 
children who are intrisically pure, so the food given them is similar to that given the 
gods. Thus an advertisement for milk from a local dairy in an Ahmedabad newspaper 
claimed that milk has ultimate purity. The word `purity' was written under a silver halo 
over the packet of milk. Milk is pure and sacred and so it is a safe food for children. 
Cooked foods, by contrast, are vulnerable to evil influences or negative forces and may 
be responsible for introducing an unclean element into the body of the child. So 
weaning may be delayed, depriving children of the needed nutrients, especially minerals 
that are present in a mixed diet. Being rich enough to buy milk may be seen as a sign of 
progress, as mentioned earlier by Dina, whose family could not afford to buy much milk 
when she was growing up in India. 
Milk is one of the five immortal substances described above, at least one of which is 
always included in rituals to the gods. The sacred cow is referred to as gai-mata (cow 
mother/goddess) and its presence in large numbers on the streets of India act as a 
reminder of this. In Ahmedabad, every night, leftover rotli (chappati bread) was left for 
cows on the walls outside the flats where I was staying. If a cow attempted to eat 
vegetables from the market barrows, it was treated with respect and gently pushed 
149 
away. The gai-mata produces milk, a pure, white fluid, believed to be essential not only 
for health, but also in linking humans with the divine. 
Figure 19: An advertisement for buffalo milk (Ahmedabad, Times of India October 1999). 
PASTEUR SED 
FULL CREAM M! Lm 
_. O. _ 
'ure milk is available just round the comer. Amul milk G fully 
Msteutsed to kill as harmful bacteria. Packed hygienically. H has the 
)esf of nature's goodness. Vitamins A. B. D. E&K, carbohydratit 
nkleraU and proteins. Besides, of course, fort and calcium. Choose 
ssiween Amull Gold, Shan and TOazo. Nutritious milk with such good 
ode can only be, well ... 
heaven sent. 
Food for the gods 
Ar ul Milk 
The Milkier Milk 
Food given to the gods ensures the removal of inaupiciousness from the household and 
is crucial in the protection of the wider community and even the universe. Raheja 
(1988: 68) shows how the giving of dan transfers auspiciousness to the person, the house 
and the village: the food given in ritual becomes the food left by the god or goddess. 
Prasad is the polluted food of the goddess, but for men it is the most pure 
While in Ahmedabad I observed that at every temple visit to do puja (worship with 
diva) or arti (ritual act with singing), raw food, usually in the form of fruit, nuts or sugar 
crystals, is presented to the god, and once blessed takes on a new meaning as prasad. It 
is taken home, as a blessing, but menstruating or newly delivered women cannot eat it. 
Cooked foods can only be given to the gods if special conditions are adhered to: a 
150 
separate area must be available to cook for the gods and the utensils must be kept 
separate from those used to prepare food for the family. Meera told me: 
My mother cooks for her god everyday. But everything is separate, no one can go in her kitchen. 
She only cooks herself and whatever she cooks for her god is offered to him and then she eats the 
same food. People like me can't cook for God, because I don't have the facilities just for him, and 
have everything separate, all the ingredients and everything is completely separate from the rest of 
the household. 
More commonly, raw foods are prepared for the gods because they are considered safer 
and not so subject to contamination, as Uma explained: 
We offer some food to Kalima, like rice, not cooked, sesame seeds and different, different foods. 
When we have our periods we are not supposed to touch that. 
The Brahman family with whom I stayed in Ahmedabad, prepare prasad (food for the 
gods) on special occasions at the family shrine, and usually fruit is cut into small pieces 
by one of the family members. If the younger women are menstruating, as was the case 
during Navratri (nine nights of celebration), one of the young sons was asked to prepare 
the prasad as instructed by the grandmother, and was told to place it in the front of the 
shrine by the diva (candles). During Navratri the prasad is a different fruit every night - 
apple, payaya, orange, pomegranate etc. - but once prepared for the goddess it must not 
be seen, touched or eaten by a menstruating woman in the household. The fruit is 
peeled, cut up, placed on a steel dish and put by the garbo - the earthenware pot used 
on the nine nights that is transformed into the goddess by prayers and called Mataji 
(goddess). This raw, blessed fruit is then eaten by the family before the evening meal. 
A special puja was conducted in Ahmedabad, for the family business on the eighth 
morning of Navratri during which special foods were offered. A priest said prayers and 
a mantra in Sanskrit to give the business shakti (female divine energy) for the next year. 
Coconuts are present in almost all rituals and represent the presence of the god. 
Breaking the shell and sharing the milk brings the gods into humans' own bodies. Raw 
food is a medium through which links can be made with the supernatural world through 
offerings, the coconut's powerful presence here, possibly substituting for a sacrificial 
animal through the breaking of the hard, skull-like shell. The significance of this being 
done on the threshold, which is neither inside or outside, may be an expression of the 
`marginal' state of this food. This coconut offering is neither supernatural nor natural 
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and neither pure nor impure. Raw food is not subject to evil influences in the way that 
cooked food is, so there are fewer regulations on its use. In the temples I visited in 
Gujarat, coconuts are blessed during the puja, but broken and eaten in the courtyard 
outside. 
This Navratri puja has been given as an example of how food provides this vital link in 
ceremonies. Different foods may be used, but the coconut and betel leaves or betel nuts 
are almost always present as are other staple foods such as rice, wheat, millet, milk, 
ghee and sugar beet. After the ceremonies this food becomes prasad, is treated with 
great reverence and distributed among the participants, or given to the priest, or to the 
poor in the local community. 
Commensality 
Commensality is governed by complex rules that are difficult for the outsider to 
understand. A Brahman who has performed a ritual may accept as a gift the raw 
materials for a meal. Dumont argues that raw food can pass without restrictions. Cooked 
foods are much more complex, may be vulnerable to impurity and reserved for kin or 
members of the same endogamous group. The perfect food, although cooked, has the 
protective element of cow's milk products in the form of butter or yogurt, which renders 
them more expensive to make and usually only made for banquets and festivals 
(Dumont 1980: 142). 
In the two weddings I have observed, one a Brahman and one a Kshatriya, the exchange 
of food between the families took place in different ways. In the morning of both 
weddings the bride and groom were prepared for the auspicious occasion by their 
respective families, beginning with having their bodies anointed with turmeric powder 
and dahi (yogurt), which is massaged in, to keep away evil influences. The purity of the 
products of the cow provide the ultimate protection against evil powers that overwhelm 
all other protective substances. This anointing ritual - pithi - is also supposed to tone 
and strengthen muscles and to improve self-image. The bride and groom are expected to 
fast before the wedding. The following comes from my fieldnotes, first from a Brahman 
(31/7/99) and then a Kshatriya wedding (9/5/99): 
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When the groom arrives at the Brahman ceremony he is welcomed by the priest by being offered 
grains of rice, a coconut, and a chandlo (red spot) on his forehead. His future wife's sister then 
attempts to put food into his mouth, which he tries to refuse but then eats reluctantly. A ritual 
cleansing takes place at the beginning when the priest gives the groom a coconut and a betel leaf 
to hold, while he washes his feet, first with water and then with honey and milk, before the arrival of 
the bride. Then after the couple have walked around the ceremonial fire, and taken their marriage 
vows, an exchange of foods takes place between both sets of kin. In this Brahman wedding the 
exchange began with the groom's mother feeding the bride, after presents have been given to her 
from the groom's family. This is followed by the bride's mother feeding the groom with large pieces 
of sweet food, causing the guests to laugh. 
In the Kshatriya wedding the bride's mother is the first to congratulate the couple by offering sweet 
food to the groom, from a silver tray. She gives him large pieces with her fingers, straight into his 
mouth, and his expressions make people laugh, and she repeats the feeding of the groom before 
feeding her daughter twice. This marks the end of the long, solemn part of the ceremony, and is a 
contradiction to normal kin expectations of behaviour. Certainly a bride should never refuse her 
mother-in-law and a groom may rarely get a chance to be fed by his mother-in-law. The woman 
acting for the groom's mother who has died, is his older brother's wife, and she is handed the silver 
tray and gives the bride two pieces of food which she eats, but then tries to force feed her with 
more, but she refuses and keeps her mouth shut, much to everyone's amusement. The two 
families now join the bride and groom under the canopy, to demonstrate the new kin ties between 
them, which were first expressed through the giving of food. 
The manner, in which the large pieces of food are forced straight into their mouths and 
the bride and groom's attempts to refuse, caused considerable amusement from the 
guests, and I realised that there must be a significance attached to this act. So while 
watching a four-hour video of Meera's engagement and wedding in Gujarat, I took the 
opportunity to ask her about the significance of this forced feeding. She replied: 
It is all to do with respect, which we call man. Refusing food, is asking for more and 
more respect. You have to refuse, or people will say, it was not a good wedding. The 
girl's family feeds the boy's family and the longer they refuse, the more respect they 
get. The next day, the vevai vela (boy's side) visit the girl's side and eat with them. The 
girl's family must never take food from the boy's family after the wedding. I remember 
my mother's mother visiting our home in Gujarat and she always brought her own food 
and drink, and if she used gas in the house, she paid for it. 
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The giving and receiving of food at weddings establishes the new social relations 
between the two sets of kin. In hypergamous weddings the bride's family will be seen 
as having lower status than the groom's family and so unable to eat together. While 
living with the family in Ahmedabad, the young mother's parents rarely came to her 
marital home and I never observed them eating or drinking there, but I on one occasion 
I saw her sister eating food surreptitiously in a bedroom. 
Dumont (1980: 138) argues that a father gives his daughter in marriage and 
simultaneously gives presents to a family of higher status. The bride's father makes it `a 
point of honour' not to receive anything in return, no food or even water from the 
bridegroom's family after marriage. Dumont argues that here food is a `minimal 
material gift and its refusal is symbolic' and the details demonstrated in wedding 
ceremony hint at the new relations which are even present outside hypergamous 
marriage. 
The bride's family offers the bridegroom a morning collation, and the tradition is that the bridegroom 
does not accept until he has been entreated at length. Here the bridegroom's superior rank betrays 
itself: to agree to eat food with somewhat inferior people, the bridegroom claims a present. The 
demand is expected, but it may be extravagant, adding considerably to the presentations agreed 
beforehand, and may thus lead to lengthy bargaining (Dumont 1980: 138). 
During the wedding itself, apart from the strict conventions concerning the bridegroom 
and the bride's family, cooked food may be eaten with people belonging to different 
castes. Dumont (1980: 137) argues that some rules concerning food are not directly 
related to caste and if foods contain certain dairy products this might resist impurity and 
allow relations between castes. He suggests that there is a parallel between with whom 
you eat and with whom you marry and intermarriage presupposes that both parties can 
eat together (Ibid: 141). My observations in the UK and in Ahmedabad suggest that 
restrictions on commensality are not so prevalent at festivals and large social gatherings, 
such as bhajans, life-cycle rituals, temple celebrations at Paryushan, Navratri, Full 
Moon festival, Diwali and New Year. Dumont suggested that there is some consensus 
of the wider group that these foods are safe to eat (Ibid: 141). In my observations, it 
may be that the temple approved the person who has cooked the food, or the food has 
been blessed by the presence of a priest, that renders it safe to eat. There appears to be 
more concern at a domestic level about who shares food and with whom, especially 
among older people. 
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Positive and negative energies in food 
Food has the potential to transmit not only impurities but also the emotions of the cook 
into the body of the eater, as Meera a NHS midwife working at a local hospital, 
complementary therapist, and mother of two children explained to me. I had previously 
been told how, while breastfeeding a baby, the mother can pass her emotions to her 
child and if she thinks about good things, her baby will grow up to be well behaved. 
Meera, a member of the Lohana caste, says that positive or negative energy can pass 
into food, so the mental state of the cook can affect the people who eat it. One day when 
we met at her home she told me: 
I am into positive energies in food, I don't think you can cook any food without a portion of love, no 
food. If I had a visitor and I had to cook for him, I had to cook and my mind is not there, then the 
food would be awful. The people who eat it, if they are into my way of thinking, it would be awful 
and they would come home having loads of gastric problems. This is why I avoid eating at other 
people's houses, because I don't know what sort of energy they are putting into food. I know this is 
an extreme view, but it is what I believe. If I was to cook for someone, I would only cook if I really 
wanted to. 
I asked if she restricted with whom she eats, and she replied: 
I do personally, that is only because I am very much into how people cook their food and what 
kinds of thoughts they put into it. It is like breast milk, there was a time when it was so much in 
fashion, when people were collecting it and putting it in milk banks. Then women started to think do 
I really want to give my child milk from another woman, who might have a different kind of 
personality, different kinds of thoughts, do I want to use it? I feel the same way. I have no way of 
proving it, but I believe it so strongly, I would like some sort of research material that shows this is 
the case. The same with the food, it doesn't matter what ingredients you have in cooking, if you 
don't have a portion of love in, the food is never good. 
Did she think that food could be affected by negative influences? 
Yes, but I am not into spirits, but I do think that how you feel, you actually transpire that into food. 
Because I do massage, if I was feeling really lousy, I would not be doing massage on anybody, 
because passing emotions is a two way process. As a complementary therapist, I have actually 
blocked that kind of feelings as far as receiving is concerned, but I am not sure I can block it as far 
as giving is concerned. 
155 
Sometimes she made food for other Gujarati women after they have had their babies, 
because she had built up close relationships with them and they may not have female 
relatives in this country to give them some of their traditional foods. I asked her why 
she felt it was important for her to do this, and she explained: 
It is still a myth and a tradition, especially with East African women.... the older generation, not my 
age, but older, who would feel that giving food to an antenatal mother and a postnatal mother is 
receiving a lot of gratitude and blessings; not only from the woman, but from a lot of other things, 
but especially God comes into it, a lot of blessing from God. It doesn't matter how much you pray or 
how much you donate money, and do things to God, this is the best way of getting his blessing, 
through cooking for antenatal and postnatal mothers. Although I don't particularly make food 
because I believe that you get blessed, I do it because I feel there is a need for it. In my experience 
as a midwife in the last twenty years, I would tend to agree with these old women because I am 
blessed very well and I never feel I am clever. I believe that everything that has happened in my life 
is very good because I have been blessed. That is my philosophy and people say, 'Aren't you 
clever, you have got everything the way you want it, you are able to live on your own, and you are 
able to study, your husband is so good, ' and I am thinking, I don't think so, I think I have been 
blessed so well. I really feel, although it is not a belief all the way through, I think that whatever you 
do, you are rewarded in some way or other. I don't think it is all cultural because I have loads of 
friends and a family and they don't all share my views. 
Meera expresses a strong view here that through making food for women before and 
after they have babies, women who are lacking their own kin support, she receives 
approval and blessings from God, which in turn improve her life. The influence of 
Vaishnavism and her belief in Krishna may be a factor here, where positive action 
carried out for others is called seva and there is no possibility of direct return. The 
positive energies she believes she imparts in making food for other women because she 
cares about them, make her strong. The reverse could also be true and negative thoughts 
or evil influences could be transmitted through cooked foods that have in some way 
been spoilt. 
Ayurveda is practised by many of the grandmothers I have spoken to, who refer to the 
body flows and balances that must be maintained if a person is to be healthy. Young 
children are given certain teas and herbal mixtures, which vary according to the season 
of the year. A few older women knew which foods were hot or cold, but most younger 
women thought I was referring to whether the food was spicy or not. Aromatic oils may 
also be applied to the skin if the heat of the body needs to be released, so a Brahman 
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grandmother explained to me that she had rubbed oils wrapped in a muslin cloth on her 
grandson's chest when he had a fever, because this would cool his body. Herbal 
supplements are frequently given to children and many families give them daily. The 
advice of Ayurvedic practitioners may be sought, but many of the younger mothers 
educated in Britain refer to the superior knowledge of their mothers or mothers-in-law 
for guidance, and admit they know very little themselves. Bhopal (1986), when he 
interviewed mostly Punjabi women in Glasgow, found their knowledge on the balance 
of hot and cold foods in their diet was poor, but most were knowledgeable about herbal 
remedies. Margaret Trawick (1992) describes how an elderly Ayurvedic doctor in Sri 
Lanka explains how the system works to a patient: 
Ayurveda is a naturalistic healing system and Ayurvedic physicians are inclined to emphasize the 
rightness of material life processes and in their treatment of disease facilitate these processes 
rather than to oppose them. Ayurvedic theory says that the body evolves through changes that are 
necessary to purify and liberate the changes within. The flow of life within the body, as long as it is 
orderly and unobstructed, produces naturally this purification and liberation of essences. It is 
important, therefore, that the channels of flow remain open, clear, and free. The culmination and 
termination of the flow of life is death, when the soul itself is purified and liberated from its bodily 
prison (Trawick 1992: 140). 
Carolyn Nordstrom links Ayurveda with the social context of a person's life: 
Well-being, then, is not assessed solely in terms of an individual's physical and mental health, but 
as a set of positive relationships with the people and processes in a person's world. This includes 
not only a rounded intellect and balanced emotional states, but also fulfilling social relationships, a 
clean environment, a stable society, and a proper configuration of supernatural and cosmological 
forces (Nordstrom 1989: 964). 
The balance of supernatural and cosmological forces is a concern for all Gujarati 
women, who are alert to the possibility of the evil eye, or najar, affecting their children 
and making them unwell. This will be covered in the next chapter that will also discuss 
those rituals concerning food and water that are carried out in most households to 
protect vulnerable members. Water, or certain foods that have pungent smells or sharp 
tastes, are used to rid a child of evil forces. The water or food that has the power to rid 
the child of evil influences mediates between the human and spirit world. 
Food has a powerful presence in Gujarati households. Its substance links kin when they 
eat together, and also maintains healthy body flows, free of disease. Cooked foods can 
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be affected, however, by negative forces or evil influences and protective measures 
must be taken to ensure that this does not happen. Any person who is considered ritually 
unclean has the potential to affect the food adversely. The marginal state of cooked food 
makes it particularly vulnerable to attack through its status being uncertain, it is neither 
natural, part of nature and pure, nor part of human substance, but having been prepared 
for the family already holds some of the character of the household. Mary Douglas 
quotes from an unsigned review article in `Contributions to Indian Sociology' 111. 
1959: 37: 
When a man uses an object it becomes part of him, participates in him. Then no doubt, this 
appropriation is much closer in the case of food, and the point is that appropriation precedes 
absorption, as it accompanies the cooking. Cooking may be taken to imply a complete 
appropriation of the food by the household. It is almost as if before being 'internally absorbed' by 
the individual, food was by cooking collectively predigested. One cannot share the food prepared 
by people without sharing in their nature. This is one aspect of the situation. Another is that cooked 
food is extremely permeable to pollution (Douglas 1966: 126). 
Mary Douglas suggests that this concern about the cooking of foods being ritually pure 
reflects concern about wider society and the relative purity of different castes. Food 
may be produced by a range of different people with varying degrees of impurity, so 
before being admitted to the body it must go through a `clear symbolic break', which 
the cooking process provides so long as the person cooking it is pure (Douglas 
1966: 127). Raw foods on the other hand may be seen as pure, closer to nature, to the 
world outside humans and nearer the gods, so they are used to link humans with the 
supernatural and the spirit world in ceremonies and rituals. 
The rituals enact the form of social relations and in giving these relations visible expression they 
enable people to know their own society. The rituals work on the body politic through the symbolic 
medium of the physical body (Douglas 1966: 128). 
Food conveys meanings about people's heritage and sense of belonging, and when 
cooked in the household passes positive energies and meanings into the physical body 
of the partaker. Relations between kin, across generations, and across sex, are at once 
maintained over time and transformed in the processes of preparing and consuming 
food. Raw food is given as dan to the gods in ritual to bring auspiciousness into the 
household. Cooked foods may be given as seva to others, as a selfless act with no 
expectation of return, but are rarely given to the gods because of the risk of impurity. 
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Restrictions on commensality between castes may, especially at public events and 
festivals, be more relaxed in the UK and urban India than described by Dumont, but in 
the domestic setting older people may be more careful with whom they eat. Young 
children are in a state of purity and so there are continuing concerns about the cooked 
foods given to them and milk is often seen as a safer option. Supernatural forces are 
kept at bay by the use of pungent foods, and care must be taken in food preparation to 
avoid jealous looks or negative thoughts, which might spoil the food. 
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Chapter 6 Evil influences that cause illness 
One afternoon in October 1999 I visited Maya in her council flat in Harrow. She met me 
at the door telling me how worried she was about Ami, her two-year-old daughter, who 
came running towards me smiling, throwing her arms around my legs in an affectionate 
manner. Her six-year-old sister Zeena, who was stretched across the couch, watching 
children's television, grunted at me as I entered the room. Maya said beso (sit down) 
and I sank into a soft armchair. At once she began to explain the problem she had 
recently discovered. Ami, she said, is susceptible to the `look' because she is pretty, 
intelligent and many people would like a daughter like her. Maya's masi (aunt) had 
warned her about a woman they met at a social gathering last week, who may have 
looked at Ami in a jealous way, because since then she had not been eating. This 
woman did not have children herself and may have wished she had a child like Ami and 
since the meeting with this woman, Ami's character had changed, which was a sign that 
evil eye or najar, had entered her body. She had become hyperactive, unable to 
concentrate for long, she was restless and eating almost nothing. Maya told me it was 
usually the mother or one of the grandmothers, who had the responsibility of removing 
najar (evil eye) from the child's body and she would show me how this was done. The 
following account is taken from my field notes on 20/4/2000: 
Maya sat Ami in the middle of the room on a low chair and explained that she must not be near a 
doorway, because that part of the room may not be safe for her. Ami sat on the chair happily 
watching television, while Maya poured some salt on the palm of her right hand and then passed it 
round Ami's head seven times, in a clockwise direction. She then dissolved the salt in a bowl of 
water in the kitchen and poured it down the sink, without looking at it. She said that once the salt 
has been dissolved in the water, no one must look at it, especially Ami, because that would be very 
dangerous for her. When her mother had finished, she jumped up and went to join her sister on the 
couch, smiling happily and Maya remarked how happy Ami looks now najar has left her body. 
Prayers must now be made to mataji (goddess) for her, at special times, at 6.30 pm or 12 noon on 
Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday. 
Maya and I spoke about najar, how children are vulnerable to attack and mothers must 
be vigilant if they are to avoid situations where it might happen. When she lived in 
Kenya, Maya's aunt showed her how to go to a char rasta (crossroads) where she 
would throw bhagyas (fried vegetables) over her shoulder, and walk away not looking 
back. One must not look at the objects once they have been thrown at the crossroads. 
160 
Mothers usually consult their own mothers or mothers-in-law about the most effective 
way of expelling najar, but in Maya's case her aunt was her nearest relative, so she had 
guided her. 
Supernatural forces pervade social life and influence mixing with others. Malevolent 
forces such as najar and bhut (ghosts) can cause illness, or even death, at vulnerable 
times in life, associated with periods of transition. A recently married couple, a pregnant 
or newly delivered mother may be susceptible, as are infants and small children, the 
dangers lessening with age. Envy and greed attract evil powers and the people suspected 
of transmitting najar ('the look') may be of similar social status, within the caste, but 
different in some way and unaware of their negative powers. The victim of najar will 
become unwell and his or her character may change, indicating the evil influence. No 
action will be taken in reprisal, but a person who is identified, through consultation with 
kin, as having given the `look', should be avoided in the future. 
Bhut (ghosts) may also have malevolent powers and bring misfortune to households. 
Untimely deaths, failure to follow correct funeral rituals, unfulfilled obligations, or 
unpaid debts, may result in souls lingering in this world, unable to pass on to the next 
incarnation. Houses and gardens can harbour bhut and so those who are buying a new 
house should consider its orientation and shape. Certain individuals have powers to 
detect bhut, to see into the past and to be clairvoyant; these powers are gained through 
the study of religious texts, prayer and meditation. 
Through the accounts of my informants, I examine below how these supernatural beliefs 
link with kinship and people's social networks and the worship of the mataji 
(goddesses). I will also look at certain times of transition - marriage, pregnancy, 
childbirth, and childhood - when vulnerability to najar attack is highest. I 
describe too 
how bhut are detected, how they are attached to houses, and give accounts of people 
who have special gifts of looking into the past and the future. 
Marriage and pregnancy 
A Hindu wedding requires days of celebration, is attended by several hundred kin and 
friends and usually entails considerable expense and lavish entertainment. For the 
young couple it is a time of transition and vulnerability to jealousy and greed, as is 
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illustrated in the following two accounts. Meera, a Lohana woman born in Kenya, told 
me the first story in 2000: 
One couple I knew had a large wedding near Nairobi. The girl was living here and went out to 
marry into a very wealthy family there. They had 3,000 guests. It was very elaborate and a lot of 
money was spent. Everything was perfect, the bride and groom were very handsome. They went 
on a honeymoon around the world for four weeks. When they returned it was customary for the 
bride's brother to meet them at the airport and take them home. They met at the airport and had a 
race with the brother in their cars. They had a fatal accident and both the bride and groom died. 
Meera said there must have been people at the wedding who `thought things' and 
something went wrong, because it was too perfect. 
If they had a quiet wedding it might not have happened. People have negative energies in these 
circumstances and that can be dangerous. 
She told me of another wedding in the North of England held in a castle: 
This was a very expensive affair with the groom arriving in a helicopter. Everything was perfect and 
beautiful. Soon after the wedding they went to Kenya and a car killed the groom. A week later the 
bride found a lump in her breast and her mother took her to a doctor in Nairobi who said it was 
nothing, but she was not reassured. She came to the UK and saw a specialist here and breast 
cancer was diagnosed. If you show off like this at weddings, then some people may give negative 
energy, which affects the bride and groom. I want my daughter to have a simple wedding in a little 
hall. These days everyone wants a hotel and it's like a fashion show, with the latest saris and 
Punjabi suits. 
Meera's explanations of the reasons why these disasters happened to newly married 
couples suggest that the ostentatious display of the families invoked envy in the guests 
and thus produced negative energy, or najar. The vulnerable state of the couple in 
transition from a non-married to a married state makes them more susceptible to attack. 
The following account differs in that it describes what followed on a poor wedding in 
rural India rather than a wealthy one in Kenya. 
I met Sala often during my time in Ahmedabad and knew her as a lively young woman 
who was always singing and laughing. She called me didi (older sister) and we talked in 
Gujarati about her lagna (wedding) and what she would wear. She was eighteen years 
old, belonged to a Harijan caste, and lived in a slum dwelling with her younger brother. 
Her parents had died when she was eleven and she supported her brother by cleaning 
houses and doing washing for local households. Her marriage was arranged with a 
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young man from a village fifty miles outside the city. The following is an account of her 
death that I received in a letter in 2000, from a member of one of the families for whom 
she worked: 
Sala died recently. That was just after her marriage. Some evil spirit entered her body. She was not 
behaving properly, her voice was different and she looked different. This was shocking and sad for 
us, because she was just like a family member. 
A change in character or appearance indicates the presence of evil forces, as it did in 
Maya's account at the beginning of the chapter. Uncontrolled shaking of the body may 
also be a sign and mothers may put a piece of iron under the baby's cot to stop the baby 
jerking. 
Pregnancy is also a time when the body of the woman may be more susceptible to 
attack and her head needs to be protected because evil can enter as wind via her ears; 
some people say that air-conditioning can make this more likely. Many older women 
who are now grandmothers say that a pregnant women should not wash her hair until 
after the ritual for the seven month; otherwise she weakens her body and makes it more 
open to attack. Mrs Pandya, a Brahman grandmother, explained why she did not wash 
her hair during her first pregnancy: 
I did not wash my hair for seven months when I was first pregnant. You see I waited six years to 
have Kiran when I lived in Africa; they said I couldn't get pregnant because my tubes were blocked. 
When I became pregnant here I wanted to follow the family rules, because if anything happened, it 
would always be in my conscience. 
Younger women who are in employment in Britain and urban Gujarat continue to wash 
their hair when pregnant, because they are not prepared to go to work with greasy hair. 
Mrs Pandya insisted that over time her hair became clean and shiny and did not appear 
dirty. Many women emphasised to me that following the family rules is crucial in 
avoiding evil attack and each family has different interpretations of the rituals and 
different ideas as to which ones should be observed. All the women I have met agree 
that women who have had miscarriages may not conduct life-cycle rituals, although 
they can participate, for fear of bringing ill health to the child. 
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Protecting children 
Belief in the power of najar to cause illness in children underlies many explanations of 
the origins of disease. Biomedical causes may also be sought, but at the same time, 
rituals will be carried out to ward off evil. In some households, an explanation of an 
illness as being due to najar may be dismissed by younger mothers as superstition, or as 
a belief held by the older generation, but not by theirs. Seema, a Patel mother, explained 
on 13/3/98: 
There is a generation change. My mother-in-law believes in the evil eye more strongly than me. 
Older people believe that you have to pass a container of water, made of glass or steel, around the 
baby's head seven times in a clockwise direction. Then you take it outside through the front door, 
not the back, to a crossroad and pour the water in the middle of the roads, without looking at it. 
Although some women educated in Britain may tell outsiders that they believe these 
rituals are superstitious, they still follow the direction of older women, and the `family 
rules' of the oldest man. Women in the wider group may be consulted about the most 
efficacious methods to follow and the advice of the most powerful senior women is 
followed. The child becomes the passive object of ritual action and through this 
experience the child over the age of one or so arrives at new knowledge about his or her 
kin and what it is to be kin. The methods used to remove evil have in common the use 
of water and pungent substances, the avoidance of thresholds, and leaving the 
substances used in protective rituals at crossroads. 
Meera's family, in the same way as Maya's at the beginning of the chapter, used water 
to dissolve the evil from the child and this time it was taken through the front door to a 
char rasta (crossroads), where it was poured onto the ground without looking at it. The 
front door is important, because supernatural powers may linger in gardens and may 
pose a threat to the household. Char rasta, a crossing of four roads, is believed to be 
where evil forces are concentrated because it is where people leave substances that were 
used to expel evil from the body. It is also a place where an ill person may have been 
carried and a ritual conducted to have the evil removed. Four roads crossing each other 
make a transitional place where a choice of direction has to be made. 
Nikhita, a young Brahman mother, who is a graduate, explained to me on 9/4/98, that 
there are two ways a person can have the evil eye: 
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One is the malicious evil eye. The other is when the person is not being malicious about it, but the 
thought just comes into their minds. 
She described how the evil eye caused her two-year-old son, Aran, to stop eating: 
One day Aran was playing happily with this woman and for some reason my husband felt unhappy 
about the situation and snatched him out of her arms, and she was very upset. She felt really 
offended and she cast the evil eye on him. She did not intend to cast it, but the hurt that it caused 
her affected Aran. 
Nikhita continued to tell me about situations that must be avoided, where the risk of 
transmitting the evil eye is high: 
Because we have this thing about the evil eye, Asian women will not breastfeed in front of other 
Asian women. They feel that woman might cast an evil eye on their child, and then you will stop 
producing milk. They are very cautious about who they feed in front of, and will probably restrict it 
to just direct family. If there is someone else there, they will not come out and feed their child. It is 
not the shame of showing a boob, it is out of fear of casting the evil eye. She may be jealous and 
think, oh, she's got a beautiful baby, or she's having milk, and I couldn't do it. Or it could be that 
she has a boy and I've got a girl. It could be a hundred and one things, and she could be from the 
most modem families. 
My mother-in-law told me not to feed in front of anyone, because we don't want anyone casting an 
evil eye on him. I would have breastfed him if there were no other Asian mothers present. We don't 
think that white people will have the same jealousy. 
Nikhita's mother-in-law gave her advice on how to avoid the evil eye and other women 
within the kinship network may have been consulted. If it is believed that there has been 
an evil attack, then female kin from the wider kin network may be contacted. Only 
women who are considered kin will be consulted. Thus, in effect, najar determines who 
is trusted kin and who is not and which women have the power and authority to direct 
appropriate rituals. White people are outsiders and are not considered `jealous' enough 
to cast the evil eye. Only those who are considered to be kin are consulted about 
appropriate action and they are never suspected of passing najar. Those who are 
accused of giving `the look' are friends or acquaintances - people who are similar in 
many respects to oneself and who may even come from the same caste, but who are not 
considered kin. 
The bounds of kinship are at once renewed and defined by najar and in requesting help 
from wider kin. Anyone is capable of inflicting najar, but not on those they call kin, so 
165 
everyone outside the network may be viewed with suspicion, especially those who may 
be close in other ways. The theory of the person as one capable of causing illness and 
disease, as well as one able to detect and remove evil, conforms with the pantheon of 
the Hindu goddesses, capable of both good and evil at the same time. 
All the households I know are concerned, to a greater or lesser extent, about the 
protection of children from najar. After birth, or on the Chhati (six day ceremony), 
black threads are tied around the baby's wrists, ankles, waist and sometimes a black- 
thread necklace, with a metal amulet is tied around the neck, but many women now 
refrain from this practice, because of concerns about strangulation. Sonita, a Kshatriya 
woman, has a two-year-old son who has an amulet on which is an engraving of Jalaram, 
a Gujarati saint; she was careful to explain to me that she always ties it into the top of 
her son's shirt, so there is no danger of it becoming twisted around his neck. 
Black marks made of kohl (soot from the burning of candles mixed with castor oil) 
called kajal, are put around the child's eyes, so that the child looks less attractive to 
envious people. This practice is less common in Britain than in India, where many 
babies had heavily blackened eyes. When I attended the Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad, I 
observed paediatricians strongly advising mothers against this practice, because of the 
toxic effects of the lead mixed with the carbon. Some women also put black marks on 
the palms of the hands and the soles of the child's feet. The child's nani (mother's 
mother), dadi (father's mother), or foi (father's sister), will, depending on where the 
child is staying after birth, advise on the threads to use, or tie them themselves. Hindu 
and, to a lesser extent, Jain households carry out some of these preventative measures, 
following the practices of the family of the eldest male. Some will routinely pass a steel 
container of water seven times around the infants' head, in a clockwise direction, at 
every bath time, as suggested by Seema above. Kajol, a Mistry mother told me on 
1/7/99, what she did to prevent the evil eye affecting her six-week-old baby: 
Whenever I have been out on a Tuesday or Sunday, it works better on those days, I will pass limes, 
cut into four around the baby's head in a clockwise direction, fourteen times. This will rid him of any 
influence he might have picked up. I always leave a piece of iron under his cot to stop him jerking. 
During my fieldwork, I found that Jain families were more likely than Hindu ones to 
dismiss belief in najar as superstition. In the following discussion, I look at some of the 
practices used to detect and expel najar and recount some of my informants' stories 
about the effects of evil attack. 
166 
Detecting an evil presence 
The presence of najar may not be as easy to detect as it was in the previous examples, 
where there were perceived alterations in the personality or voice of the victim or 
uncontrollable shaking of the body. In infants, the effects may be more subtle and 
varied: they may cry a great deal, jerk in their sleep, or reject their food. Often 
biomedical opinion will be sought first from Health Visitors or General Practitioners 
and their advice followed, or medication given. Then, if the symptoms continue, older 
female kin will be consulted and attempts will be made to establish whether najar is 
present. Methods of detection often include the burning of chillies or garlic, as follows: 
1. Heat dried, red chillies in a pan and if no pungent smell is given off, then the evil eye is present. 
2. Crush garlic cloves and strain them through a handkerchief. Give these to the child and if the 
child's digestion improves, then the evil eye was present. (see my MSc thesis, Spiro 1994: 30. ) 
Sometimes more distant kin are consulted in the detection process. When two-year-old 
Aran stopped eating, his father's mama (mother's brother) in Newcastle, was consulted, 
as his father Kiran described: 
Aran is very close to my uncle. He was concerned that Aran's eating habits were so poor. This 
uncle has a medical background. He mentioned the situation to a woman there, who has special 
powers. He described the scene to her where Aran was snatched from the lady. She told him that 
the evil eye was present. This woman has a special gift for detecting and expelling the evil. You 
have to understand, Alison, that in the Asian community, there are a lot of people who have gifts. 
People may not go to her; she may be anyone, or someone particularly religious who people 
consult. She is not a psychic, just someone who is very religious. She lives in Newcastle, so she 
did it through a photograph of Aran. She said prayers to break the influence. 
Once the presence of najar has been established, rituals to expel it will undertaken after 
consultation with other kin, who are often either the child's nani or dadi; or as in 
Maya's case, the child's great aunt and in Aran's, his great uncle. Once the hierarchy of 
kin has been consulted then a person with special spiritual powers was suggested by one 
of the elders. A child refusing to eat is a common theme in accounts of najar attacks 
and of particular concern to women. Najar can only be inflicted by people who are not 
kin, but share similar status, such as a neighbour, or someone known by the family. 
167 
Mala, a Patel woman married to a Lohana man, described on 13/7/00, how her mother- 
in-law guided her, when her daughter was thought to be affected by najar: 
Kanjan, my two-year-old daughter was not eating and a family friend told us that "Najar lage chhe" 
(the evil eye is coming). My cleaning lady's husband did this ceremony to remove najar in his 
house. He sat her on a chair in the middle of his kitchen floor and passed a handkerchief containing 
chillies and other stuff around her head seven times in a clockwise direction and then took it out 
into his back garden and buried it. My Mum also did it with chillies, but she set fire to it and said that 
the worse the smell, the stronger the najar attack. 
When Kanjan was six months old, we met a lady in India, who was possessed by Sai Baba. She 
told us that Kanjan was very susceptible to other people's looks and "Najar lage chhe" and we must 
put a black dot behind her ear and black threads around her waist. 
I asked Mala in 2002 about her cleaning lady and whether she still worked for her. She 
told me that she did and that she was a close friend of the family. She baby-sits for them 
and Kanjan calls her masi (mother's sister) and her husband she calls masa (mother's 
sister's husband). It appears that it is only members of the kinship group, including 
those not related by blood or marriage, known as kin, are consulted about najar attacks. 
Kajol confirmed this too and told me that you must consult your elders and either on the 
mother or father's side. She would always consult her mother because her mother-in- 
law does not believe in najar so much. I asked her what happens if the ritual she 
suggests does not work and she replied: 
My mother would consult other more senior elders. You must go in the right order, you know, or 
you might step on someone's toes. If the child is still ill, then a spiritual person will be consulted. 
This is a very religious person, not a priest, or a healer, but someone with special powers. It is like 
a part-time job for them. 
Here Kajol was emphasing the hierarchical nature of expelling najar and that you must 
be careful not to `step on someone's toes', but follow the seniority path in the female 
kinship group. When the knowledge and expertise of this group has been exhausted then 
a person with spiritual powers will be consulted, who is outside the kinship network, in 
the way that a priest is also. Kajol went on to tell me in October 2002, what has 
happened to her three-year-old son, Shivam, this year: 
He became very lethargic and lost his appetite. I kept taking him to the doctor with asthma and 
eczema, and he gave me more inhalers for him. I knew there was something else wrong with him. 
My mother came to visit and was very worried about Shivam and me, so suggested some ways of 
168 
removing najar, but nothing worked. When she went home she asked her sisters and they said it 
was definitely najar and she should see a spiritual person. This woman gave my mother this 
necklace [she pulled a black, bead necklace from under her sweatshirt] and said I should consult 
Shivam's rasi [certificate written by the priest after birth]. I suppose I had forgotten what the 
astrologer had written on this after birth. When I looked I remembered that it said that because of 
his horoscope, his mother would have to fast. It also said that he will have skin and chest problems 
and will suffer from anaemia. We took him to the hospital soon after this and the paediatrician told 
us he had anaemia. Now we give him iron tonic and he is much more lively and his appetite has 
improved, but I decided to follow the rasi and fast and do vrat (fast). The priest told me that I have 
to fast for 21 Saturdays, then 21 Sundays and 21 Wednesdays, each one for a different god. I have 
finished all the Saturdays that were for Hanuman, the god of wind. I had to eat black lentils at one 
time in the day, and nothing else except fruit, nuts and water or coffee the rest of the day. I have 
done two Sundays for the sun god Suriya. I can only have white foods on these days, so I eat rice 
pudding in the middle of the day and drink dardhpak [milk with almonds] at night. I do puja in the 
morning and afterwards do 5 malajapa [she showed me how she moved the string of 108 beads 
rolling each one separately through her fingers] receiting a slok [religious verse]. 
The priest said that I could ask a sadhu (priest) in India to do the malajapa for me, but it is better if 
the mother does them. When I have finished Sundays, then I will do Wednesdays to mataji, and will 
have to eat mug beans once a day. After each set of 21, I have to give shidhu [payment] to the 
priest -raw foods, some money, a shirt and a sari, and a piece of metal. For Saturday I gave iron, 
for Sunday I will give stainless steel and Wednesday, copper. I listen carefully to all the details, 
because I want to do it properly. 
Kajol wore the black necklace her mother gave her, but she did not tie black threads on 
Shivam, because she considered him too old. The accuracy of the rasi in predicting her 
son's physical problems compelled her to follow the vrat advised by the priest. The 
number seven, an auspicious number, or multiples of it are used in expelling rituals. She 
realised that biomedical treatment was helping him, but she had to ensure the removal 
of any supernatural powers by completing the fasts advocated in the rasi. 
Maya's daughter also had eating problems and below is an extract from my fieldnotes 
28/9/00: 
I visited Maya's council flat, and she welcomed me at the door smiling with her hands at her side. 
The two girls are at home, Zeena and Ami aged seven and three respectively, as they were on 
Easter holidays, and were busy drawing at the dining table. Maya explained that Zeena has had 
169 
stomach pains and has not been eating. A paediatrician has seen her, but no cause could be 
found. Maya has since been praying to mataji (the goddess) at certain times, on a Tuesday, 
Thursday and Sunday at 12 midday or 6.30pm. Last week, she stood Zeena in the middle of the 
living room and passed a mixture of rai (black seeds) and salt in her hand, around her head seven 
times in a clockwise direction, and then dropped them into a bowl of water, which she threw 
immediately down the sink, without anyone looking at it. She emphasised the importance of this 
happening in the middle of the room, and it must never be done in a threshold, because this is 'an 
in-between place, which is not good. ' She told me that she will repeat this whenever her children 
are tired or unwell and she does it on her husband, when he is angry with her, or in a bad mood. 
Once the substances have been used to remove the evil, they become extremely 
dangerous and nobody should look at them, Raheja reports similar findings: 
The negative qualities that have been separated from the person are extremely dangerous until 
they have been 'moved away' and assimilated by the appropriate receptacle (Raheja 1988: 84). 
Maya told me about a situation that happened last week on Zeena's birthday. Her bhai 
(second cousin she calls brother) came to visit with her babhi (sister-in-law) his wife. 
He married this woman five years ago and she is ten years older than him, and already 
has three children from her first marriage. Maya said she was a strange woman and she 
does not know which caste she belongs to, but it is not theirs. This woman liked Ami 
and wanted to adopt her. She brought a birthday cake for Zeena and asked if the two 
girls would go to their house in Manchester to stay. Zeena said she was too tired and 
both her masa (mother's brother) and his wife took offence at this and quickly handed 
the cake to them saying `lyo' (take it) and left. Maya said this was very rude and she 
told her aunt about it. The cake was plain and had no candles on it. Her aunt told her 
that no one must eat the cake, because `you don't know what might be in it'. Maya 
thought this woman might be jealous of Zeena's hair, which was thick and hers was 
very thin. Her aunt has advised her not to take any notice of her when she comes, and to 
ignore as much as possible, but as she is babhi, she cannot stop her coming. 
Maya and her aunt suspected this woman, who was married to her second cousin, of 
passing najar to Zeena. She looked for reasons why this woman might be jealous of 
Zeena, and focused on the difference in their hair because for many women hair is a 
sign of beauty and femininity and could become a source of envy. Maya also saw this 
woman as an outsider: she had been married before, which makes her different, because 
it is unusual for Hindu women to re-marry; she was ten years older than her husband 
170 
and her caste membership was uncertain. Maya's aunt advised them not to eat the cake 
and to ignore this woman as much as possible. Although this woman is in fact a distant 
relative by marriage, Maya emphasises her difference. Najar defines in effect, who is 
family and who is not. In this case, it would appear that Maya and her aunt dislike the 
woman who married the second cousin Maya calls brother; their dislike is expressed in 
the idea that this woman is an outsider, which is itself confirmed in their fear that she 
was envious of Zeena and that any food she gave to the children was bound to be 
unsafe. As I noted above, those suspected of inflicting najar may belong to the same 
caste and social class and in many ways may appear to have similar backgrounds, but 
are outside the trusted circle of kin. 
A child who refuses to eat has the attention of his or her mother, grandmother, aunts and 
close friends, who all of whom try to coax and cajole the child into eating. By virtue of 
this kind of attention, the child becomes aware of his or her place within the household; 
through the concerns of female kin, the child who will not eat learns about certain 
aspects of kinship. The child's symbolic rejection of the love that women put into 
preparing food makes it imperative that they encourage the child to eat, because it is in 
eating that people in general, and the members of any given household in particular, at 
once express and bring into being their specific relations with one another. 
Najar has the power to cause not only minor illnesses in children, such as poor 
appetites, but in some circumstances it can lead to serious disease or death, as in the 
story recounted to me by Sangita a Bania woman who is a Vaishnava Hindu on 22/3/01: 
I had a daughter who would have been twenty-six this year. When she was three years old, a 
neighbour and friend of my in-laws gave her the "look" and within an hour she had a temperature. 
We travelled to Leicester that evening, but while we were still on the motorway, she stopped 
breathing and passed away. I still blame this woman for being jealous and passing the evil eye to 
her. Even today, I cannot speak to her. Many people today say they don't believe in it, but when it 
happens to you, then you have to. 
Shefali is a Patel woman with two teenage daughters and she spoke to me after her 
return from India on 22/3/01: 
My sasu (mother-in-law) has been ill since we returned from India after Christmas. It often happens 
over there, that people do things to you. It is usually because of jealousy. I know who did it. She will 
be OK because we prayed to mataji and she was given a flower. 
I asked her if these things only happen in India and she replied: 
171 
Oh no, they happen here just as much. People may be jealous, like if you have a boy and they 
don't. I had a boy who died when he was two years old, and no cause could be found for his illness. 
He became weaker and weaker and the doctor said he had a neurological problem. He wanted to 
listen to bhajans (hymns) all day and kept telling me to light the diva (candles). Someone in India 
told me that he had been sent to save our family. After he passed away, my husband became very 
religious and still is now, although he was not beforehand. I still think of my son when I drive in my 
car and listen to bhajans. I no longer worry about my daughters, because I have entrusted them to 
Krishna and Rama. 
The ambivalent nature of the above story demonstrates how illness can at the same time 
be described within the context of najar, and also the divine; the child was on a mission 
from God, to save the family. The interchange between evil and good can be seen in the 
pantheon of the mataji, who are worshipped and called upon to protect people from 
najar, especially those who are considered vulnerable. These divinities carry Shakii, 
divine female energy. They demand daily worship at the household shrine and are seen 
as forces of goodness and purity, but at the same time as capable of destruction and evil 
when angered. The mataji at the lower end of the pantheon are considered less pure, but 
have still to be revered. Mary Douglas argues that the unclean and the holy could both 
belong to the same conceptual category in Hinduism: 
Holiness and unholiness after all need not always be absolute opposites. They can be relative 
categories. What is clean in relation to one thing may be unclean in relation to another, and vice 
versa (Douglas 1966: 9). 
The power of evil is often concealed and may come in many guises, so the person 
suspected of giving the `look' and transmitting najar may be a friend or neighbour, 
someone within the same social group, who is in some way different. A person who 
becomes jealous or envious is capable of passing on evil and causing illness. The victim 
can be a child, who is attractive in some way, appears well fed or who is seen feeding, 
either from the breast or the bottle. If the milk is seen by the jealous person, it can make 
the child ill, so many mothers will conceal feeding bottles with cloths or fitted covers, 
and avoid breastfeeding in public, as in Nikhita's case. A mother may be displaying 
pride in having a healthy baby and if the child is a boy this will exacerbate a viewer's 
envy. Meera believed that it was najar which, following displays of wealth, pride and 
greed that attracted the envious looks of guests, led to the sad and untimely deaths of 
young people who had just married. 
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Warding off evil 
The rituals used to ward off evil have much in common with those used in detection and 
include the use of pungent-smelling substances such as chillies and limes; water is 
usually used in conjunction with chillies, or on its own, because of its power to dissolve 
other substances and to remove the evil. The number seven (or multiples of it) is 
significant in most rituals, including those to ward off evil, perhaps in part because it is 
a prime number. 
Parkin argues that the presence of the evil other is part of a Hindu's lower self that is his 
or her badness. The higher self is the devoted follower of Vishnu (Parkin, 1985,162). 
This view of the person as someone capable of both good and evil explains why women 
need to be vigilant in protecting their children, because they can never be certain of the 
powers of the people they meet. The person suspected of passing najar could be a friend 
or acquaintance that is totally unaware of his or her powers so could never be accused to 
his or her face. Women discuss the origins or najar within the household and a certain 
source is identified, but this knowledge is not shared with outsiders. Rituals are done to 
ward off the attack, prayers said to mataji, and preventative measures stepped up, but if 
there is no improvement in the victim's condition, then help from wider kin will be 
sought. 
Pocock (1973) describes najar as the eye of envy, and as no humans are entirely equal, 
no one is immune from it. Apart from a woman called Surajben, and despite mention of 
women, most of Pocock's informants are men. It is women, however, who detect and 
ward off najar and pray to mataji, and they pass their knowledge to other women; men 
are rarely consulted. Some of Pocock's accounts have common ground with my data, 
but his contact with women was limited. Reynell (1985) reports that women in 
Rajasthan are also concerned about nazar, which is passed through jealousy and can 
cause misfortune and death. Pocock was told by his informants of the strength of the 
evil powers: 
A woman was once feeding her child and looked at it with great affection. Her mother-in-law, 
fearing for the child, suddenly directed the young woman's attention to the stone flourmill, which 
immediately broke in half. Here there is no question of envy, but of permanent evil eye 
unconsciously exercised (Pocock 1973: 29). 
173 
Surajben told Pocock that: 
Najar was usually unconsciously exercised and sprang from desire. If one was contented one did 
not feel desire and one's eyes could not hurt others (Pocock 1972: 30). 
I agree with Pocock that the evil eye is inflicted through people's unconscious jealousy, 
envy or greed, but found no evidence of a `permanent' evil eye. Women are 
discouraged from showing affection to their children in front of outsiders. Likewise, 
Nikhita said that her mother-in-law told her not to breastfeed in front of other mothers, 
in case they were made envious. She also felt that white women do not have the same 
jealousy as Indian mothers, perhaps indicating their difference, confirming that najar is 
usually passed by people of similar status and social group. I wondered from what 
Pocock described above whether it was possible for a mother to pass najar to her own 
child, and whether another mechanism was happening here. So I went back to see Kajol 
to ask her whether it was possible for a mother to inflict najar on her own child. For the 
first time I heard about a different form of the evil eye known as mithi najar, which 
means `sweet evil eye'. Kajol told me that this happens when someone boasts about 
their child or keeps looking at him or her lovingly. It is different from the eye of 
jealousy which comes from outside, but can cause problems in the child, who may stop 
eating. Similar rituals are used to expel it as they are for the eye of jealousy. So rather 
than the `permanent evil eye' suggested by Pocock, this mithi najar is inflicted if the 
mother is too proud of her child, or demonstrates loving behaviour in front of others. 
Bhopal (1986) found that the views of Punjabi women interviewed in Glasgow were 
similar to my findings and nazar (najar in Gujarati) was thought to cause fretfulness 
and loss of appetite in children. The gaze of a loving or malevolent person was thought 
to be responsible for transmitting the evil. 
Bhut (ghosts) and other evil spirits 
Supernatural forces can be attracted by envy and greed in the form of najar, in living 
people; but after death any unresolved grievance, or untimely death can result in the 
spirit lingering as a bhut (ghost). In times of disease epidemics, severe monsoons or 
natural disasters, such as the 2001 earthquake in Gujarat, there are reported incidents of 
ghost activity. Parry argues that any unexpected death can result in ghost activity: 
174 
By contrast with 'good' death, the 'bad' death is one for which the deceased cannot be said to have 
prepared himself. It is said that 'he did not die his own death'. The paradigmatic case is death by 
violence or as a result of some sudden accident; the underlying notion being that the victim has 
been forced to relinquish life prematurely with the result that his embittered ghost is liable to return 
to afflict the survivors unless the appropriate propitiatory rituals are scrupulously observed. 
Whether these have been successful can only be judged by their results, for the ghost that is yet to 
be satisfied will return to haunt the dreams of the mourners or to vent his malevolence in other 
more destructive ways. As a consequence, bad death in the family tends to be cumulative, the 
victim of one causing another (Parry 1982: 83). 
Some ghosts are not malevolent and bring fortune to households: 
The marginal and malevolent ghost becomes a benevolent and incorporated ancestor, a source of 
future fecundity and prosperity for his descent line (Parry 1994: 5). 
Pocock suggested that ghost activity may result from unfulfilled obligations (e. g. unpaid 
bills) or unfulfilled desires and he links this to najar: 
Just as I will fear the envious evil eye only if I am aware of my own greed, and vanity is only a form 
of greed, so will I only fear the activity of ghosts if I have a guilty conscience (Pocock 1973: 36). 
Thus Mr Pandya, a Brahman grandfather with whom I discussed the death rituals that 
free the person from worldly attachments, told me: 
I do not want this ceremony done after my death, because I feel I have done nothing wrong to 
anyone in my life, so I will not bother anyone after my death. 
Ruth and Stanley Freed (1993), argue that a fear of death and short life expectancy, 
combined with Hindu beliefs about the soul atman and karma, lead to a belief in ghosts 
causing death. In their detailed ethnography of a village in the Delhi region, ghost belief 
became apparent unexpectedly within the context of daily events, genealogies, and 
kinship. They argue that the belief that ghosts cause fever, illness and death comes from 
Hindu texts such as the Puranas and Mahabharata; when a person became delirious; this 
was the ghost trying to take away his or her soul. 
In my ethnography ghost belief became apparent in discussions about illness causation 
and najar and bhut were linked together as evil spirits or forces. Sala, the eighteen-year- 
old I described earlier, who died after her wedding, had an evil spirit enter her body, but 
it was not specified whether this was najar or a bhut. The character of the person 
changes as the bhut or najar tries to take over his or her soul. Najar is usually 
characterised as `a look' inflicted through jealousy, which then causes illness, but there 
175 
remains a degree of human control in all but the most extreme cases, provided it is 
identified in time and appropriate rituals carried out. The presence of a bhut may be 
more difficult to detect and exorcise, as in the following account, which was told to me 
in Ahmedabad, in which rituals, prayers and vidhya (knowledge gained through prayer 
and religious devotion) were all required to persuade the evil presence to leave. 
Mr Joshi, a Brahman grandfather in Ahmedabad recounted this to me after a ritual, 
during Navratri on 17/10/99, where Sanskrit had been recited for two hours by a priest, 
with the aim of increasing vidhya in the household: 
My older brother used to live with a man who was a sadhu [monk] called Gopari. Once a Marvadi 
man [a tribesman from Rajasthan] came to stay. He worked in the market selling rakhi [bracelets 
made of threads]. This man became very ill with a high fever, diarrhoea and vomiting, which did not 
respond to medicine given by the doctor. Everyone thought he would die, because he was so weak 
and thin, after one week of being ill. The next day the Marvadi man started shouting abusive things 
to Gopari. Gopari thought, this is not the real man talking, this is not my guest, it must be an evil 
spirit. So Gopari asked the spirit if he wanted to leave the man, and it said it did. So Gopari asked 
two other men to carry him [the Marvadi man] to a char rasta [crossroads] and an offering of kulu, a 
large fruit, was given with some mung [green lentils]. The evil spirit said it would go, if bread was 
thrown to the dogs first, which they did. The man was carried home and in the morning the fever 
and the diarrhoea had gone, he was cured. This goes to prove the power of the vidhya to overcome 
evil. 
Bhut (ghosts) may not always be malevolent, though they may reside in a house, garden, 
or in a tree but they often cause fear; thus many people say, Mane bhut bikhe lage chhe 
('I am frightened of ghosts. ') The shape of a house may make it more likely to be 
haunted and certain people have gifts for detecting and expelling bhut from them. 
Late in the evening of 12th May 1998, when I was visiting Mr and Mrs Pandya, in their 
house in Harrow, the conversation moved on to beliefs in ghosts. I asked them to 
explain what people believed and Mr Pandya replied: 
Most people do believe in ghosts, but I don't. What we believe is that when someone dies they 
have a life after death. As far as we are concerned, the body is nothing. The soul is all-important. If 
the spirit is good, it will have re-birth, but some people think if it is bad, it caries on wandering. 
I asked how they could tell if there was a ghost in the house and Mrs Pandya replied: 
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The house is always cold. The radiator is hot but the house is cold. If we want to get rid of them, we 
do prayers and invite people to the house. Then 108 times we do prayers. We call it the mantras; I 
will go and get it to show you. 
She left the room and went upstairs, returning a short while later with a string of prayer 
beads. She worked her way quickly, with great skill, through the 108 beads and 
explained: 
Yes, there are 108 beads and we have to move the beads with the middle and ring finger, like this. 
Then we say prayers to Hanuman. My mother lives in a beautiful bungalow, but it was haunted. My 
mother used to feel that someone was walking past the window. When I went to my mother's house 
the first time, it was cold, especially two rooms were very cold. When I came home, I said to my 
husband that I did not like that house. Then they had a lot of prayers, and I don't feel so cold now. I 
must tell you that when we buy a house the shape is important, there are two types. One is narrow 
in front and wider at the back, that means the house is very prosperous, like a cow. A cow has a 
little face and a big body, making milk all the time. We believe that this house is very good. Another 
type of house is one where the front garden is large and the back one is narrow, like a lion. A lion 
has a big head and a narrow body, so some one is going to die. When Kiran and Nikhita were 
buying their house, I told them not to buy a house that is wide in the front and narrow at the back, it 
doesn't matter if it is oblong. My brother saw a house in our road, but it was narrow at the back and 
wide at the front, so I said that is not a good plot. 
Belief in ghosts is an integral part of Hindu ideas of the soul and the condition of the 
soul as a result of its activities in life, or the person's karma. 
The soul of a person becomes a ghost at death and continues as a ghost for a time based on the 
sum of the soul's actions in past lives (Freed and Freed 1993: 15). 
Mr Pandya believed that he had done nothing wrong to anyone in this life, so he has 
good karma, so there would be no reason for his soul to linger and `bother' anyone. In 
the discussion on varsna, he suggested that the attachment to kin and possessions must 
be made to weaken, as the person grows older. The transition of the soul to the next life 
is made easier if varsna is reduced: obligations must be fulfilled, debts repaid and 
grievances resolved, so the soul will not linger, but be free to travel. If any of these are 
unresolved, or death is untimely the soul will be trapped in this life and will exist as a 
ghost. 
177 
Pocock also described how the people of Sundarana believed that the soul existed for a 
time after death when it passed through a heaven or hell depending on the state of the 
person's karma, before the re-birth into the next incarnation. 
Death is followed by a period of punishment or reward, which varies in length according to merit, 
but ultimately the law of karma requires a re-birth unless the soul has been freed forever from the 
operation of that law (Pocock 1973: 38). 
People with powers to detect and exorcise ghosts 
Exorcising ghosts or freeing the soul of a dead person may require considerable 
positive, good energy in the form of vidhya (knowledge), as described earlier by Mr 
Joshi, or as Mrs Pandya said, many mantras. As with najar, detection of ghost presence 
has to be done before rituals can be carried out and certain people have powers gained 
through religious devotion to see ghosts. Mr and Mrs Pandya told me of such a person 
they called Dadi (paternal grandmother) and accepted as kin once she detected a ghost 
presence in their house. Mrs Pandya began to recount her powers: 
We knew a lady; she was my mum's friend. We became so close that I was like her daughter. She 
used to pray a lot and could concentrate so much. Whatever she said came true. I don't know why, 
but there were so many examples of what we experienced. First of all we wanted to buy a house in 
Orpington. We saw the house and everything was fixed for us to exchange contracts. On the 
Friday, Dadi rang and said you are not going to buy that house. So I said rubbish, everything is 
fixed; we are going to have that house. 
Mr Pandya continued: 
That was the first experience I had. I am not the sort of person who just does not believe it unless I 
see it for myself. She said buy a house in Kenton or Harrow and you will be happy. We were living 
in Camden Town at the time. 
Mrs Pandya added: 
She came with my mother to visit me and asked to see my mandir (temple) in the house. I told her 
that because of my child, I kept it in a cupboard. She said, let me go and wash my hands and then 
she sat there for twenty minutes and then said that she was going home. I felt angry because she 
had come a long way and within an hour wanted to go back again. But then later she rang me and 
said someone had died in the house, and she had seen a little boy. I thought, oh my god! She 
described him, he has short hair, a round face and he wears a pyjama. I said, no one had died 
here, and she said, oh yes, I saw his face while I was washing my hands. I asked my landlady, who 
178 
was Indian whether it was true that someone had died in the house. She was surprised and asked 
how I knew. I said did he have grey and white striped pyjamas, short hair and a blazer? She asked 
how I knew and showed me a photo of a boy who was her son. She said their family came from a 
village in India, and her son was very fond of wearing a blazer, because he had never seen that. 
She told me he had leukaemia and then he died. After that I started to call her Dadi. She told me to 
move house as soon as possible because someone is going to die. At that time I was pregnant, 
and soon after I had a miscarriage. Dadi spoke to my landlady and told her to go to India and have 
a ceremony for her son and then she will prosper. Her second son was ill at the time and she said 
that he will be all right. She believed her and went to India and did the ceremony and they came 
back, opened a factory and now have a house in Finchley. 
Mr Pandya sat listening to this account about Dadi and decided to explain more to me 
about how she gained her powers: 
What happens you see is a very common thing. You have to study, you have to think, and you 
have to do these things. The same thing if you study physics, if you want to understand, you have 
to study hard. The same with the spiritual path, you meditate, you concentrate, and you control 
your mind. That is what Dadi did. We go to the temple, you go to the church, but we don't do 
anything, we just say that we prayed, but we just gave lip service. What Dadi did was to 
concentrate on it so much that she began to mind read and foresee things that were going to 
happen. Not everyone can do it. 
Mrs Pandya returned to her theme of ghosts and houses: 
Dadi said that this house is very lucky. She said the doorframe; the bottom one is very lucky. No 
evil things can come. Then she did something at the back. She said something there, and then 
said; now you are safe. We have illnesses like everyone else, but we get better. She said that in 
this house, no one has died. Her older son bought a house in a crescent nearby, although Dadi told 
them not to. They had a tree in their garden and they made a fire under the tree. Dadi told them 
they must not do this, but her son's wife was German and she did not listen to Dadi, so they did it. 
The next day when I was there, Dadi told me the ghost family came inside the house. I said Dadi 
don't talk like that, I don't believe you, but she said it was true. They had been living in the tree and 
now they had come into the dining room. I told her that I didn't believe her. The German wife left 
and they got divorced, and he married again. The new wife started to say that there was someone 
in the house. When she went to have a bath, she took her husband. She said she was scared in 
the house. A nephew came from India and stayed for four days, on his way to America for 
treatment. He died in the house. Dadi said that no one would listen to her, because she had said it 
would happen. They sold the house and a Pakistani family bought it. One day I was there with Dadi 
picking up post. The Muslim lady asked Dadi if there was something in the house. She said her 
179 
eleven-year-old son asked why there was always something following him in the house. The 
radiators are always hot, but the house is cold. When they go upstairs the lights come on and when 
they go down, the lights go off. 
Mr Pandya added: 
Our son used to tell us that on a very hot day, the dining room was always cold. I don't really 
believe it, but they say where there are ghosts, it is always cold. 
Mrs Pandya described a ghost that was detected by Dadi, but had also been experienced 
by outsiders such as a German wife and a Pakistani woman. These may legitimise 
Dadi's powers, as effective outside the kin and religious group, and thus stronger and 
more far-reaching than those of other female kin. In using the term Dadi for the woman 
who was `a friend of my Mum's', Mrs Pandya and her husband were according her the 
kinship term given to the most highly respected woman in the household, the father's 
mother. Her power and authority are recognised and respected through this term, with 
an accompanying obligation to protect and nurture them. 
Women need constantly to be vigilant: to avoid situations where evil may attack, and 
younger women will consult older ones in the kinship network. Precautionary measures, 
such as drawing the ohm sign or the Hindu swastika sign on the doorframe, or hanging 
leaves on it, prevent ghosts from entering. The back door may be potentially more 
dangerous, because ghosts tend to live in gardens, so signs will also be drawn there and 
rituals done regularly to expel any unwelcome forces. The dangers were associated with 
the doorway as a threshold, which is neither in nor out, so its status is ambivalent and in 
Turner's (1969) terms, a liminal place for people passing through who will require the 
protection of ritual. Pocock (1973) pointed out that doors must always be closed when 
people were eating, because once food was cooked it took on an ambivalent state half 
way to being digested, so it was vulnerable to attack. I argued earlier that people in 
transition were also vulnerable to najar; couples around the time of their marriage, 
pregnant women, infants and small children, all need special protection from the mataji 
(goddess). 
The concern felt for people in transition, whose status in uncertain, such as those who 
are newly married, pregnant or newly delivered women, or babies and young children, 
is such that special precautions are taken to protect them from attack. Detection of the 
source comes first and then rituals intended to ward off the evil eye. Najar may be 
feared by a person who is greedy or proud, and may attract the envious eye; or by a 
180 
newly married couple; or by a mother who has a son, who enjoys feeding him; or by a 
mother who has beautiful daughters. Those who have social obligations unfulfilled, or 
out-standing debts not paid may fear bhut. Both najar and bhut are rooted in social 
relations between equals outside the kin group, or people who appear to be so, or are 
striving to become so. Hindu beliefs in the transition of the soul from this world to the 
next incarnation require a degree of completeness, where attachments are reduced and 
correct rituals performed, so unfinished business, or untimely death, may mean the soul 
lingers as a ghost. Women continue to be vigilant in the protection of vulnerable people 
especially young children, from malevolent attack, through preventative ritual, detection 
and warding off rituals. The best protection against all malevolent forces is to strive for 
a high level of spiritual belief and vidhya or knowledge. 
Through the belief in malevolent powers, kinship relations are at once realised and re- 
negotiated. Women consult each other over the detection and expulsion of both najar 
and bhut and usually the opinions of the older, more powerful women are sought. 
Kinship becomes both competitive and hierarchical. Children grow to recognise this, 
and find they too have have effect on others by refusing to eat the household food, 
enjoying the attention they receive. Anyone is capable of inflicting the najar at any time 
and causing illness; also any person is capable of spiritual growth through meditation 
and reading religious texts, enabling him or her to expel evil and exorcise ghosts. The 
Hindu person as capable at once of both evil and good has been recognised by others 
(Parkin 1985). Kinship ties here are strengthened in women through belief in 
supernatural forces and kin from outside the household may be consulted. The 
knowledge of those specific rituals that are necessary to protect vulnerable kin informs 
the process through which, over time, ideas of the person, sociality and the nature of 
relations between kin are at once expressed and brought into being. 
181 
Chapter 7 The household's moral duty to the child 
Children occupy a central position in Gujarati households and are a focus of concern for 
all, especially for women. Children have to be protected from harm, even before birth, 
and their nurturance in a calm, spiritually fulfilling environment, is viewed as vital for 
their future personalities. Embedded in the idea of the Gujarati person is the concept of 
sanskar, the moral identity of the household, which must be conveyed to the next 
generation. There is no direct translation for this term in English, so it needs some 
additional explanation here. Sanskar is a quality shared by everyone in the household. 
The word comes from the same stem as Sanskrit itself and is known as samskara in 
Hindi, which means life-cycle ritual. 
Inden and Nicholas (1977) suggest that every samskara (life-cycle ritual) transforms the 
living body by purifying and refining it - i. e. by virtue of removing defects such as 
those inherited from the seed or the womb and infusing positive qualities. The rituals 
involve immersion, sprinkling, touching parts of the body and putting on new clothes. 
The recitation of special words and the feeding with special substances and anointing 
has to be done in a certain sequence, each ritual preparing the person for the next. Inden 
and Nicholas argue that these Hindu rituals differ from Christian sacraments in that they 
affect the total person, not just his spiritual life (Inden and Nicholas 1977: 37). 
In Western terms this may be thought of as a feeling or attitude, but Gujaratis have 
suggested to me that sanskar goes beyond a psychological sense of belonging and is 
informed by the actual physical space in the ghar, the house. As Mr Pandya an elderly 
Brahman explained to me: 
The sanskar is formed in the way you are brought up in the environment of the house. So a girl 
marrying into the house may have a different sanskar from her in-laws, even though she is of the 
same caste. 
On another occasion, Deepa, a Patel mother explained to me what she understood by 
sanskar: 
A person has a good sanskar if they are willing to do anything for other people. If anyone comes 
home, that person would always welcome him or her. It is learnt in the family, in the upbringing of 
the children. 
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NUMBERING 
AS ORIGINAL 
Here Deepa is suggesting that the meaning has moved away from the emphasis on the 
rituals themselves and has been generalised into one that describes the moral behaviour 
of the members of the household. She explained to me that the sanskar is the way we 
bring up our children as human beings and teach them how to behave: that is to be 
honest, respect elders and honour their god. For her, an important aspect of this was also 
how guests are welcomed and treated with warm hospitality in the house. The sanskar 
of a household will be known in the community and whether this is good or bad will be 
an important consideration when choosing a marriage partner for your children. 
Throughout this thesis, my informants have referred to the importance of determining 
whether a family is `good', especially when choosing marriage partners and have found 
it difficult to describe exactly what they mean by this, except that it is respectful to 
others and honest. Later in the fieldwork, when I was able to refer to the sanskar of a 
household being an important factor here, greater clarity was possible. Yogesh's 
grandfather explained to me that the sanskar of a child depends on his or her moral and 
religious upbringing. From conception, the child's gharbamar sanskar (the household's 
sanskar) is transmitted to him or her from the mother thoughts, diet and behaviour. 
There are sixteen sanskars or life-cycle rituals from conception to death that need to be 
observed. He emphasised that women have most of the responsibility, and estimated 
about 80% of the child's character depended on the women. 
So far as I have come to understand, my informants hold its sanskar to be firstly the 
very essence of a household's being, independent as it were of any given household 
member; it is the sanskar of the household that determines the moral outlook of its 
members, their religious beliefs, obligations, and the way they view the world. 
Secondly, the meaning relates to the more commonly recognised sanskar (or samskara 
in Hindi), which becomes embodied in the child through the nurturing in the womb and 
breastfeeding. The mother's health and diet, her emotional wellbeing, her thoughts will 
affect the way the child learns about the house and the wider world. As the child grows, 
the life-cycle rituals he or she passes through shape the moral outlook, and so transform 
the sanskar. 
It seems, further, that the sanskar of the household becomes apparent to the members by 
virtue of the rituals they perform. I was often told that a woman marrying in will bring a 
different sanskar with her, but will be expected to adopt that of her husband's family. 
Here the difference in sanskar across households is signified by differences in the way 
183 
Figure 20: Main life-cycle rituals - Hindu and Jain. 
Ritual Time Description 
Shrimant (pregnancy) 7th month of pregnancy Woman's hair may be 
washed. Rice is exchanged 
kholo bharvo (putting in the lap) between the laps of mother 
Often not observed. and mother-in-law. A small 
baby my also be passed 
between them. 
Chhati 6 days after birth Gathering of patrilineal and 
natal kin. Baby wrapped in 
Observed by most Hindus green cloth byfoi and turned 
and Jains. in front of the shrine, making 
sure his or her eyes not 
dazzled by the divo. God of 
fate, Vidhata, writes the 
child's future with a red pen 
on white paper. 
End of Sava- meno One month and a quarter Mother and baby have a bath 
after birth. and put on new clothes. 
They are taken to temple by 
Observed by most Hindus nani (mother's mother) baby 
and Jains is blessed by priest. 
Balmovala (birth-hair) One and a quarter or two and Child's hair shaved off by a 
a half years. barber. Hair is collected by Utava (shave off) foi on a green cloth, care 
More likely to be observed taken not to drop any. 
by Hindus. Some Patels Pujari conducts religious 
shave the child's head after rite. Large gathering of 
birth. patrilineal kin. Hair taken 
after ceremony to a flowing 
river or the sea, in India to 
the ancestral village. 
Janoi -tying of sacred Boys-7 years+ or 
before White thread is put over 
thread. Observed by high marriage. boy's left shoulder and tied 
Hindu castes only. around the waist- kept on at 
all times. A second thread is 
added at marriage. 
Marriage Usually 20-30 years Large gathering of kin often 
200-500+ guests. Ceremony 
Variations in ceremony conducted under mandap 
between Hindu castes and (canopy) and couple walk 
Jains. seven times around the 
sacred f ire. 
185 
the various life-cycle rituals are performed and so, in adopting the sanskar of her 
husband's household, the in-marrying woman is expected to perform the rituals 
advocated by the husband's line and to follow the ritual practices of her mother-and 
sisters-in-law. In effect it seems that the sanskar comes into being in the life-cycle and 
other rituals, that are held at once to reflect and inform the moral behaviour of the 
household members towards each other and the rest of the community. Everyday ritual 
practice is entirely taken-for-granted; it is accepted and performed as it is, because the 
family have always done it that way. Rational explanations are rarely given and reasons 
for the performance are considered unnecessary. Some households may adopt a 
pragmatic approach and combine two or more life-cycle rituals, for convenience, or 
because of unfavourable circumstances such as the season of the year or illness in a 
member of the kin group. Sanskar affects the total person not just the spiritual life and 
in this respect I agree with Inden and Nicholas (1977: 37); the rituals practised are not, 
however best understood as individual acts (even when performed alone), but as 
collective acts, which are held at once to shape and to evince the morality of the 
household, the kinship group and the wider Gujarati community. 
In this chapter, I examine life-cycle rituals and the way household members 
demonstrate their moral responsibilities towards a child from the beginning of 
pregnancy, through the rituals of childhood, showing that the continuity of sanskar to 
the next generation is the concern of all its members. 
184 
Pregnancy: a time for vigilance 
When a woman becomes pregnant, it is a time for celebration that affirms her position 
within the family. She now carries a child who shares the bodily substance of the family 
and is part of the patrilineage. Her rising status in the joint family ensures that she can 
share in more decision-making with her sasu (mother-in-law). She will no longer be 
given all the menial tasks and her physical, emotional and spiritual well-being become 
central concerns of all her female kin. It is thought that the infant gains knowledge of 
his or her kin, their practices and beliefs, through the mother's body fluids in pregnancy 
and breastfeeding, and the character of the child may be affected by the mother's 
thoughts. Young Gujarati women educated in Britain may previously have been 
uninterested in the rituals practised by their mothers, and some may have dismissed 
them as superstition. Once pregnant, many such women feel an obligation to perform 
life them, to ensure continuation of family beliefs and practices. 
I visited Kajol in February 1999, when she was expecting her second child, and her 
daughter Bina was two years old. She belongs to the Mistry caste; her father was a 
carpenter and they left Uganda in 1972, but she had spent much of her childhood in 
India. Her parents now live in Birmingham. She married a man of the same caste, 
Dipesh, who also came from Uganda and whose parents live in Hounslow. We spoke 
about what precautions pregnant women must take to protect their unborn children. 
As far as women who are expecting are concerned, there are a few things .... we 
don't go to 
funerals, I don't know whether you knew that. We do not go to the actual funeral itself. We also do 
not go to people's houses where they have just had a baby. Some say you must not go for thirteen 
days after the baby is born and others say you must not go for five weeks. 
I asked why not, and she replied: 
I am not sure, it is something to do with the fact that they say..... I don't know whether you have 
heard the word melu, not dirty but..... 
We agreed that `impure' might be an appropriate translation and Kajol continued: 
That is why we don't go to weddings, we must not go under the canopy. I think it has something to 
do with it being pure and spiritual. 
Were the precautions during pregnancy intended to protect the baby? 
Yes, it is to protect the unborn baby in all cases. I used to say to my mum that in this country most 
women go out with their newborn babies, even to hospitals or clinics, or somewhere. Like I go to a 
186 
toddlers' group, and there was a mother with a newborn baby, and my mum said to keep my 
distance. But she said that it is more important not to go near their beds, rather than near them. I 
have seen so many women in this country who visit friends with newborn babies. 
I said: 
So the reason why a woman is supposed to stay in for forty days after having a baby is not only to 
protect themselves and the new baby, but also to protect everyone else outside too. 
187 
Kajol: 
Yes, and I suppose it is common sense to protect your newborn from germs, colds, 'flu, whatever. 
You could go for a trip to Sainsbury's and you could .... you 
just don't know, do you? 
When I was expecting Bina, I was terrible. I was terrified of going out, to be perfectly honest. Then I 
could stay at home and restrict myself to going where ever, but this time it is different. I can't keep 
her in the house. It wouldn't be fair on her. 
I asked Kajol if women are vulnerable when pregnant and she replied: 
I think it is purely from the point that you must protect yourself from the evil eye. I suppose it is 
going a bit far but you know, things like, you don't know what people have down the road. You are 
a bit concerned, well I am anyway. But then that is life isn't it, whenever you go, wherever you go. 
In the olden days the girl used to be taken at seven months of pregnancy to her mother's house 
and the baby bom there, so that the mum could look after her daughter. That is not the case these 
days. Obviously you have hospitals, you have-it just isn't practical. The theory was that you were 
well looked after. She was sent back to her husband's house when it was all over. But my mum 
always says if you don't look after yourself in pregnancy and afterwards, your body is not the same. 
You have difficulties later on. 
What sort of difficulties? 
Things like back pain. Not as fit. You just do not have the energy that you did before. She often 
talks of back problems, they are very concerned about the back. She says I should eat hot foods, 
not like cold sandwiches and stuff. Pregnancy is special, I suppose you are treated like a VIP, not 
quite, but people tend to look after you. She came and made me all this food, to eat different food, 
you know, to make sure you eat well and you eat hot foods. If you have a craving, then you should 
eat it, don't deprive your body of it. 
You should also think good thoughts, and think good things, you know, because it reflects on the 
unborn baby. This was quite interesting because I was watching a TV programme. They say the 
environment around us, what we think, our thoughts, are well implanted in the unborn baby from 
the time of conception. That was interesting because it was what my mother had been saying. 
The belief that thoughts and knowledge are transferred from mother to baby through 
body fluids, both in pregnancy and through breastfeeding, is widespread. Certain foods 
are thought to affect the character and temperament of the child if eaten during 
pregnancy, hot spices are avoided because it is thought they make the child aggressive 
or bad tempered. A diet rich in fruit, vegetables and milk products, foods considered 
pure, is usually advocated. Mala explained that the women push you to eat butter, milk 
188 
and yogurt when you are pregnant, and ghee (clarified butter) is used for cooking, rather 
than oil, which is usually used because it is considered healthier. Women used to be told 
not to wash their hair for the first seven months of pregnancy, for fear of making their 
bodies more vulnerable to evil attack and miscarriage. Most women work today, and 
they say they would feel self-conscious if they did not wash their hair. British Gujarati 
fathers, like their Western counterparts, are taking a more active part than their fathers 
did in supporting their wives during pregnancy and are often present at the birth. They 
may attend antenatal classes and take an interest in the birth process and breastfeeding; 
although, within joint households, it is still the older women who make the decisions as 
to how the baby is fed, as discussed in the next chapter. 
The first life-cycle ritual to be observed in some (but not all) families is carried out in 
the seventh month of the first pregnancy and called kholo bharvo (putting in the lap). 
This may be a small affair with only a few female relatives present, but can be a much 
larger event in a temple hall, with several hundred guests. Some women say they do not 
believe in it; others combine this ritual with one of the other childhood rituals, usually 
that for hair-cutting, and perform it when the child is a year and a quarter. I made 
enquiries about any specific rituals or foods that may help to increase fertility, but no 
answers were forthcoming. After a wedding the bride is encouraged to hold a male 
infant, which is thought to increase her chances of having a male child. Green mug 
beans are kept from the wedding ceremony and cooked for the guests at the seventh 
month ceremony; Meera told me that it important not to lose these beans, for otherwise 
the woman might not become pregnant. I describe later how rice is kept from this 
ceremony until the chhati (sixth day after birth ceremony). The Hindu view on the 
connectedness of life events and the journey of the soul through this life to the next is 
evinced in the way that life-cycle events are linked by virtue of the same priest 
conducting them all, or food being saved from one ritual to be used in the next. 
In life-cycle rituals, kinship relations are manifest and the group's common substance is 
at once constituted and confirmed. The religious observances are similar across caste 
and class, Hindu and Jain, in Harrow and in Ahmedabad. Life-cycle rituals are 
conducted for pregnant women and children when family members call upon the mataji, 
or mother goddesses, to protect them from evil influences that might cause disease or 
misfortune. They mark the Hindu stages of life from pregnancy and birth, through 
childhood and puberty, to student, householder and then, at old age, to renouncer or 
189 
ascetic before death. The way the soul progresses through these stages in its path to 
final emancipation from the cycle of rebirths is the concern of all Hindus. At each stage 
a transformation or rebirth occurs as the person passes through the particular rite of 
passage. Van Gennep's analysis of the way the person goes through a period of 
separation, then a liminal period, followed by incorporation into the new status has been 
applied to similar South Asian life-cycle rituals in Bengal by Inden and Nicholas 
(1977: 35). They argue that during the liminal phase the person being acted on is a 
passive recipient of symbolic action. The ritual establishes new relationships with kin, 
wider society and the ancestors. 
Steven Parish argues from his work with the Newars in Nepal, that `creating a moral 
self is not a natural process, but a ritual process'. He suggests that the samskaras (life- 
cycle rituals) stress interdependency because the individual is acted upon by others, and 
a sense of `self becomes embedded in the `web of relatedness' (Parish 1994: 257). 
In respect to Gujarati practices, I argue that these rituals at once constitute and confirm 
not only the common substance of the household with respect to wider kin, but also 
ideas of sanskar within the ghar (house) itself. Below I outline the life-cycle rituals for 
pregnancy and early childhood using data gathered in Harrow and Ahmedabad, through 
observation of the ceremonies and transcriptions of the interviews. 
Gujaratis have a pragmatic approach to these rituals which may be appropriate at certain 
times but not at others, and apparent rules concerning the age of the child may be 
adapted to fit with the individual family's needs or the time of year. For example it may 
be thought dangerous to cut a child's hair in winter, so the ceremony will be delayed 
until spring. Some families say they believe in one ritual more than another and some 
rituals concerning children are more significant for first-born children or for boys. 
Sometimes families combine several rituals into one gathering of kin, incorporating 
extra Iota (representations of the goddess) for each ritual. 
The ritual for the seventh month of pregnancy. 
Many pregnant women feel that if they have taken all precautions, followed the `family 
rules' and carried out the required rituals, then they themselves cannot be blamed if 
problems arise. By seven months the baby is widely believed to be well formed and not 
190 
in so much danger. The ceremony conducted at this time is concerned firstly with 
washing the pregnant woman's hair and is called the Shrimant; colloquially it may be 
referred to as kholo bharvo or just kholo, meaning `lap'. Many Gujarati families in 
Harrow say that they do not bother with this ceremony, but others do still observe it. For 
some it may be a large social gathering for kin and friends, involving over a hundred 
guests. Some families will delay the ritual and combine it with a future life-cycle event, 
such as the Chhati, the sixth day ceremony after birth, or the Balmovala, the hair-cutting 
ceremony. Some women who have had problems with the birth process or who have 
delivered a child with abnormalities blame the fact that they did not observe the seven- 
month ceremony. One Jain women who has a boy with Down's Syndrome believes that 
this happened because she omitted the ritual. A Brahman woman explained how the 
ceremony is conducted: 
The woman's hair is washed and she is bathed in yogurt, honey, milk and sugar. Her parents come 
and bring her three items of clothes: petticoat, blouse and sari. After the bath, the girl comes down 
the stairs wearing these clothes and on each step her mother puts money [which is afterwards sent 
to a charity]. A woman who has children who are all alive has to perform the ceremony. I couldn't 
do it because I had a miscarriage, so my niece did it for me. We had rice, a coconut and the red 
powder kankoo. The rice is put in the fold of her sari and exchanged seven times with the girl's 
mother. As she goes to her mother's place for the delivery, it comes to her last. Then we invite the 
goddess and do the same ceremony that we do after the birth and at the hair-cutting. The rice is 
kept by the girl's mother and cooked for the six-day ceremony after birth. The rice that is offered to 
Ganesh at the wedding is often kept to use at these ceremonies. 
In many families a small ceremony is conducted around the household shrine and five 
or seven women are invited; there seems to be considerable variation in the way the 
ceremonies are performed. Usha is a Patel woman who was expecting her second baby 
when I visited in May 2000. She told me she did not have a ceremony in her first 
pregnancy, but described one she had attended: 
My cousin had one, well she is not really my cousin, just a friend. They had a little do for her. It was 
quite amusing, because we are quite a close family. Hash, her husband, is considered my brother 
because he is similar age and we grew up together. They needed a younger brother to slap red 
paint on the woman who is pregnant and as they didn't have a younger brother, they borrowed my 
husband for the day. He had to put red kankoo [red powder] on his hand and slap her face. It was 
quite a jovial affair and no one knew why we were doing it. She dressed up in her wedding outfit for 
the day, the white and red sari. She had all her jewellery and it was a really small affair and only 
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our family there. There was rice exchanged between her mother and mother-in-law, and you are 
not allowed to drop a grain of rice. She held it in the fold of her sari and tipped it out seven times. I 
don't think anyone knew what they were doing. My mum was in charge because she was the 
eldest, and they were just piecing things together from what they had heard. 
Usha described this ritual in such a lively way and for her all that mattered was the 
coming together of kin united in a common purpose and having fun together increased 
the feeling of togetherness or `communitas' (Turner 1974). Rituals are processual social 
dramas in which social relations are renewed and new ones established (Turner 1974). 
The practices that define any given ritual have many meanings and physiological 
processes often become attached to moral facts. So, via ritual, a physiological process 
such as pregnancy may attach itself to moral ideas about duties to kin, responsibilities 
and involvement of grandmothers and other women, patriliny and others. The drama of 
the ritual action, in the singing and dancing or, in this case, in the exchange of rice 
between the pregnant woman's natal and patrilineal kin, allows the moral idea to attach 
itself to the physiological experience. 
In this sense ritual symbols are 'multivocal', susceptible of many meanings, but their referents tend 
to polarize between physiological phenomena (blood, sexual organs, coitus, birth, death, 
catabolism, and so on) and normative values of moral facts (kindness to children, reciprocity, 
generosity to kinsman, respect for elders, obedience to political authorities, and the like) (Turner 
1974: 55). 
In other families a priest may be invited along with larger numbers of guests. One 
woman told me that it is good if the priest who conducted the wedding also conducts 
these rituals because there is continuity. McDonald has suggested that, in the ceremony, 
the woman becomes the mata (the mother goddess) and is honoured as such by the other 
women, who in turn become the mata's sisters (McDonald 1987: 60) The exchange of 
rice between the patrilineal and natal families indicates the involvement both will have 
in the child's future. This rice is saved and then cooked and shared between both at the 
Chhati, or sixth day ceremony after birth. 
In August 2000, Shefali, who was then eight months pregnant, described her seven- 
month ceremony, which was held at the Swaminarayan School, opposite the temple. 
Her family is Brahman and is actively involved in the temple. Two hundred and fifty 
guests were invited and her family all gave her presents for the baby. I asked her about 
the exchange of rice and she told me this had occurred, but it seemed that the social 
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occasion and gathering of kin were more important to her. Relatives came from 
Leceister and the north of England. The actual ritual appeared to be secondary to the 
moral implications of the involvement of the unborn child in this wide network of kin. It 
seems that people are compelled to carry out these rituals because they have always 
been done and must continue to be done. The rituals have an explicit religious 
component, but even so, participants often advance no religious or logical reason for 
doing them. Turner (1974) argues that if there were logic attached, the ritual would 
move into the secular world. 
Childbirth -a new responsibility for female kin 
Childbirth begins a period of ritual impurity for the mother and extreme vulnerability 
for the infant. As soon as possible after birth, female relatives tie black threads around 
the baby's wrists; this is thought to ward off the evil eye, as discussed in the previous 
chapter. Most women return to their natal home for the first forty days, sava mahino (a 
month and a quarter), but some women will return to the marital home for a few days, 
so that the husband's family can see the baby. In stricter households, the woman will be 
required to stay in her room and not enter the kitchen during the first two weeks. As her 
blood loss decreases, her level of impurity lessens and she may be allowed to move 
more freely around the house, but will not go out of the house for the first forty days, 
except to visit the clinic or the doctor's surgery. Meera, a Lohana mother and midwife, 
told me: 
You are unclean for the first six weeks after birth, until the bleeding stops. There are customs, 
particularly the older generation believe, that you do not stay in the same room as your husband. 
The woman is fed special foods made by female kin, believed to strengthen the newly 
delivered woman's back, improve her breast milk and rid her body of the impurities of 
giving birth. Her mother or mother-in-law make a sweet food called katlu; eating it is 
said to strengthen a woman's back after giving birth. It is made with maize flour, butter, 
glue or gum, honey, nuts and spices and is cut into two inch squares; at least two of 
these squares should be eaten each day, but some women are reluctant to do this 
because the sweet contains too many calories and is high in fat. Green vegetables and 
aubergines are used in cooking shak (vegetables) and thought to replace minerals lost by 
the mother. Special boiled water with sua (spices) should be the only water drunk by 
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newly delivered women in order to rid the body of impurities. Many women have told 
me they do not like the taste of it, so just pretend that they are drinking it to please their 
mothers. Visitors to a household where a male baby has been born will be offered a 
drink and ladu (a sweet food made from wheat flour) orjalebi (strands of fried, sweet 
wheat); it is considered bad manners to refuse. 
Nikhita, a young Brahman mother told me her views about these foods and drinks, one 
evening when I visited her home: 
Asian women are often very thin and a lot of weight is put on in pregnancy and this can cause 
strain on their backs. Look at English women, they get back to their normal size more quickly, 
because they have to get on with their lives after giving birth, but Asian women don't have to. As a 
result they pile on the weight and are not so active and are not exercising. So they can end up with 
back problems. 
I asked her whether the back is an important site of health and wellbeing, and she 
replied: 
Yes, wellbeing. The food you eat is important, the katlu and the gums make your back stronger. 
The spices too are supposed to make you stronger and get rid of any excess weight that you have 
put on. Most women do not find them tasty, they take them because they know they have to, like 
medicines. I had to have three pieces of katlu a day. 
You should avoid potatoes; they are not good for your stomach and can upset the baby. They also 
make a ram, a syrupy thing. You know the girl you met here, well her mother makes it for her all the 
time, and she makes lots of milk for her baby. It has a lot of ghee in it and energy. You give it to 
anyone who is not well or recovering. 
What about the water she had to drink? 
I couldn't drink the water raw, so I used to have it by the bed and drink it in fistfuls. It was good for 
the baby's colic, but it was vile tasting. It was boiled with gol (unrefined cane sugar) and sua in it. I 
have a bottle sitting there. It is hot, very hot for the body. It clears your digestion and gets rid of any 
wind in your body, and in your baby. 
Chhati - the day the god of fate writes the child's future 
The Chhati, the six-day ceremony after birth, is the first and usually the only ritual 
practised by Gujarati households in the first months of a baby's life and seems to be 
observed by most households. A few families have a ceremony called Suraj pt ja, for 
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the baby to worship the sun at twelve days after birth. I have found no evidence in 
Harrow of a separate name-giving ceremony seen in other parts of South Asia (cf. 
McDonald, 1987, who describes this ceremony in her research in East London). The 
name is chosen by the father's sister, foi orfoiba, or by the parents themselves, usually 
after consultation with an astrologer, or priest, who supplies two suitable letters, at least 
one of which should be incorporated into the name. Most families will consult religious 
leaders, astrologers, or gurus in India to write the child's rasi, which is a piece of paper, 
like a certificate which states the time and date of the child's birth and will be referred 
to when working out the auspicious times for life-cycle and marriage rituals. If the child 
is still in hospital, the chhati may be conducted there by female relatives, or at home on 
the sixth day, in the absence of the mother and baby. In order to establish the auspicious 
time on this date, one must consult an astrologer, or the coghadiya, which are 
auspicious and in auspicious time-periods on a calendar divided into one and a half hour 
time bands showing good and bad times of the day - red being good and green being 
bad times for ceremonies. 
Many women are living in their natal home at the time, and a small ritual involving 
immediate female kin may be all that happens, especially if the baby is a girl. The 
father's sister, the foi, is usually invited to hold the baby and give the name, if this has 
been decided. In other households, the ritual may take place in the patrilineal house and 
large numbers of guests are invited, all of whom bring presents, and a priest conducts 
the ceremony. Some western-educated women will dismiss these rituals as superstitious, 
but say they go through with them to please their families, especially older female 
members. Others have told me that in order to be Gujarati, a child must go through 
these ceremonies and that the child's tie to the ghar and the wider Gujarati community 
begins here. 
Chhati ceremonies I have observed here and in Ahmedabad have common themes, 
which I describe briefly here; the descriptions that follow are taken from my field notes. 
I begin with my observations of one ceremony following the birth of a second daughter 
to a Patel mother; this took place in her natal home in Harrow, on 2l September 1998, 
with her parents and sisters present but her husnand's family were not invited: 
Nita rings me to tell me she had a baby daughter six days ago and is planning to have the chhati 
tonight. She rings me back at 5pm to say that her sister will be home from college at 5.30 pm, and 
the ceremony will take place then, but it must be finished by 6 pm. She says it will be a very small 
195 
affair with only her family present, and they will light the divo (candle) and say some prayers, but I 
am welcome to come if I wish. 
I arrive at 5.25 pm, and am welcomed at the door by Nita and her mother who are both very friendly 
and smiling. I remove my shoes and Nita shows me where to put them. She introduces me to her 
two sisters, aged 14 and 16 years, and says she will tell me what will happen and says that her 
baby daughter has already been bathed and dressed in new white clothes - an embroidered suit 
with a white shawl. She explains that the ritual has to be conducted by a woman who has not lost a 
baby, or had a miscarriage, and who is not menstruating at the time. Her eighteen-year-old sister 
will conduct it because the baby's maternal grandmother, nani, had a miscarriage earlier in her life. 
We both sit down in the living room and the baby lies asleep in Nita's arms, on a sofa that is near to 
the door, as far as possible from the shrine. She explains that a steel tray is prepared [china and 
glass are considered unclean, because of their underground origins) and placed in front of the 
family shrine. There is also a steel tumbler containing water on the tray, with a piece of white paper 
and a red pen. She tells me that red is an auspicious colour used on good occasions. It is with this 
pen that the God of Fate, Vidhata, is thought to write the child's future after the ritual. On the tray is 
a divo (candle) made with cotton wool and ghee (clarified butter), some red powder or kankoo, 
some new baby clothes (one item of which should be white), some money which must not be a 
whole number (here £1.25), and some grains of rice. Some families use green mug beans, betel 
nuts, sugar crystals and salt or any combination of these. 
The baby is picked up by her masi (mothers sister) who takes her to the household shrine and puts 
her down on a chair in front of it. The shrine has the Swaminarayan guru in the centre and the other 
deities around it. She confidently puts a red bhindi (spot) on the foreheads of all the gods and gurus 
in the shrine and then one on the baby. Nita explains that some families paint a red Hindu swastika 
near the baby's heart, but that they do not believe in that. The sister picks the baby up and shows 
her the shrine seven times, being careful that the brightness of the candle does not dazzle the 
baby, and then lies her down in front of the shrine, on a chair. 
An arti (prayer) is then sung by the family and the divo circled on a tray in a clockwise direction. 
Nita is considered unclean and cannot participate, but sits at the side of the room. The tray is left 
for twenty minutes in front of the shrine and then the white paper and red pen is placed under the 
baby's mattress, so that the child's future can be written on it by the god. Nita says that many 
families sing songs afterwards about the baby resting under a banyan tree. 
It is unusual for the masi (mother's sister) to play the main part in the chhati, but in this 
case none of the father's kin were present, so the father's sister could not be asked. 
Sinclair Stevenson (1920), writing about the Brahman caste in Nigara of Kathiawar 
describes how the father's sister conducts the ritual. She begins by sprinkling red 
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turmeric powder and lime on a stool, throwing some grains of wheat on it and placing 
some grains of rice beside it. She describes the stool as being called the `sixth' or 
chathi, and the candle is placed behind it so that it cannot shine in the baby's eyes and 
make him blind or cause him to have a squint. The baby is placed in front of the stool 
and the women sing `Roll, baby, roll; god has given you birth, he will give you food' 
(Sinclair Stevenson 1920: 10). I have found some similar practices in the rituals I have 
observed, especially concerning the protection of the child's eyes and the rolling of the 
baby in front of the shrine. 
Many families tie black threads on the baby at the chhati, if this has not already been 
done. Some Patel families shave the hair off male infants, but this practice is not seen 
very often, and is more likely to be done by Muslim families. There are common themes 
to be found, but there is also considerable variation in practice. The foi is an important 
figure in most life-cycle rituals and plays a more important part when the ritual is 
conducted at the patrilineal home, which was the case in the chhati that I observed in a 
Jain household. 
The Shah family lives in a joint household in a semi-detached house in a tree-lined 
street in the Kenton area of Harrow. Mr Shah senior is retired and he lives with his wife 
and two sons, their wives and four grandchildren. His son Dipesh rang me to tell me 
that he and his wife Hena had their second child the week before and invited me to 
attend the chhati the following evening at 7.15 pm. They already have a little girl who is 
two-years-old and now they have a son. The following is an extract from my fieldnotes 
on 26/6/01: 
I arrive at 7.10 pm, and Mr Shah is in his front garden, dressed in a white safari suit, cutting some 
green leaves from a tree. Dipesh comes down from upstairs and shakes me by the hand, 
welcoming me, and I congratulate him on the birth. He takes me up to the bedroom to see Hena 
and the baby. She is sitting on the bed crossed-legged, looking radiant, wearing a golden brown 
Punjabi suit and breastfeeding her baby. This time she had a water birth, which she found to be a 
good experience. I go downstairs with them at 7.30 pm, just as more visitors are arriving: Hena's 
brother and his wife and two children, Hena's mother, and Dipesh's two brothers, their wives and 
children walk in through the front door and remove their shoes. Dipesh's older brother's daughter is 
eighteen and will act as foi (his sister) for the ceremony because he does not have a sister. 
Mr Shah told me that it is only recently in the UK that men began to observe these rituals, but they 
are not allowed to take part, that is left to the women. His family comes from a village near 
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Jamnagar in Gujarat, which is different from other parts of the state and is more like Kutch. He has 
lived in a joint family since 1954; his sons have always lived with him and four years ago his father 
did too, until he died aged 90 years. Hena's mother is a small woman with thick glasses and wears 
a pale green sad. Her husband is still alive but bed-ridden, and she looks after him. Hena explains 
that she decided not to stay with her after the birth, because she would be too much of a burden for 
her. 
The chhati starts at 7.35 pm in the Iabh (red) time which is auspicious. A red patterned cloth is put 
on the floor, next to a small wooden platform, on which is a simple shrine. One of Dipesh's 
brother's wives draws a swastika shape in the mug beans with a Sainbury's Reward card. A divo is 
placed in the comer, along with a betel nut, almonds and sugar crystals, and the green leaves I 
saw Mr Shah gathering outside. (I am told later that these take the place of betel leaves. ) A green 
patterned cloth is placed behind the red one and a plain green cloth is laid on top of the red 
patterned one. A red pen and a piece of white paper are put on the small, wooden table on Ithe 
green cloth, with the divo that is lit [see photograph]. The children gather round excitedly and Mira, 
Hena's daughter, holds her cousin's hand and sits down on the red-pattered cloth when told to do 
so in Gujarati, which is the only language spoken all evening. The girls sit in front and the boys 
behind without being told to sit in this order [ see photograph]. The young girl acting as foi holds the 
baby for two minutes and then carefully lies him on the green cloth and rolls him in it, covering his 
eyes with it. She turns him seven times towards the divo, being careful that the light does not shine 
in his eyes. Later I ask Mr Shah what is the significance of this and he says: 'it is what we always 
do, we do not have an explanation. It is passed through generations. The god of fate, Vidhata will 
come tonight and we believe will write the child's fate on the white paper'. I ask whether the paper 
is left beside the cot, but he says it will be left by the shrine overnight. 
The prasad (offering to the gods) of almonds and sugar crystals is handed round by the foi and the 
children are told to take one only, I take an almond but am urged by everyone to take sugar too. 
After the ritual, sweets foods of ladu (sweets made of wheat flour) and dates are passed round for 
everyone to eat. Mr Shah tells me that dates are healthier than ladu because a lot of people have 
diabetes and will not eat ladu. I ask whether different foods are given at chhati for girls and boys. 
He replies that today girls and boys are treated equally in rituals, especially by Jains. 
Throughout the ritual, the men stay on the outside around the walls of the room and the women 
and children are actively involved in the centre. The children start pushing each other and Mira 
pushes a male cousin who is about seven years old. She seems to get her way, although only two 
years old. She appears very confident and is in her own home. After the ritual everyone talks and 
moves around the room. Bowls of watermelon are passed around and I am invited to sit at the table 
with other women to eat. 
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The behaviour I observed in these discreet ceremonies followed a distinct pattern and 
although many of the participants say they do not know why particular objects are 
included or paricular acts performed, they say it is the way they can ensure a future for 
the child and offer him or her protection with the blessing of the goddess. Both Hindu 
and Jain households usually call upon the goddess Randalma to protect pregnant women 
and young children. Some households follow variations in this ritual and two described 
an additional follow-up ritual at eleven days, when rice grains from the chhati that are 
kept under the cot are taken into the garden for the birds and the mother takes her baby 
outside for the first time. In this short ritual when the sun is worshipped, the tray from 
the chhati is retained, but the red pen, white paper and white hankerchief are kept 
inside. Eleven piles of lentils are made on the front door frame and a divo is lit at the 
back door. A crisscross pattern is made across the floor from the front to the back door 
with coloured lentils. The mother and baby come back into the house and the mother is 
given khicadi (a dish made from rice and lentils) to eat and given £1.25 in cash. 
I visited Manisha, a young Brahman woman who lives in a modem flat in the centre of 
Harrow on 5/6/01: 
Manisha is looking very happy, sitting on her leather sofa in the living room of her flat, as I visit her 
two weeks after giving birth to her second son. Her mother, Reena, who lives in Birmingham, is 
staying with her for four weeks, to help her with the new baby and her little boy Shaan, who is now 
two years old. Manisha wears a loose T-shirt and trousers, but her mother wears a blue Punjabi 
suit. Manisha was brought up in a Brahman family and had a love marriage to a Brahman. She told 
me that she was educated in this country and sees herself as British, although she speaks to her 
mother and Shaan in Gujarati. Manisha and her mother conducted a small chhati for the new baby 
at 10 pm on the sixth day after birth. They set up a tray with a red pen and some white paper and 
put them in an envelope. They dressed the baby in a white baby suit and drew a red swastika on it. 
They lit a divo, had a bowl of mug beans and called upon the god of fate to write the child's future 
on the paper. When the baby was eleven days old they took him outside on the balcony to see the 
rising sun and worship the sun god. I asked whether they had given him a name and whether they 
had made a rasi, but Manisha says that she does not believe in this because the horoscope may 
give the child difficult letters like gh or kh and you have to make a name with them, so she and her 
husband will choose his name. 
Manisha and her husband decided not to follow the usual pattern of choosing a name 
containing the letters from the horoscope, but the time of their son's birth will be 
carefully recorded and will be consulted when arranging life-cycle rituals, including his 
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marriage. Young couples that have been educated in Britain may decide to follow only 
certain rituals or expected patterns advocated by their parents, and may dismiss some as 
superstition or just say that they do not believe in them. 
The rituals performed for newly born infants are usually done in the mother's natal 
home, but Mala told me that if the husband's family is powerful, it can insist that that 
they are done at their house, which happened in her case. She was married into a 
Lohana household from a Patel family and because of the high status of her husband's 
family, its wishes had to be followed. She felt they wanted to make a show for their 
friends about having a grandson and invited over two hundred guests to the chhati. The 
priest who had conducted their marriage performed the ceremony. Her husband's sister 
played her important role by showing the baby the gods and giving him his name. 
The Hindu and Jain households I have known both here and in Ahmedabad mark the 
end of the stage of ritual impurity after childbirth by a visit to the temple. The woman 
and her baby take a ceremonial bath and put on new clothes before leaving for the 
temple, accompanied by members of the mother's natal kin. Most families will do this 
at the end of forty days, or sava mahino, but this may be shortened if a visit from a guru 
from India is expected and in some cases he will choose the name of the child. If the 
child is male the priest will touch him, but if female, he may give the name without 
touching. After the visit to the temple, the woman and her child are taken back to her 
husband's household. Girls may be given similar rituals in some families, but in others 
they are observed only for boys, depending on the pattern followed by the male line. 
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Figure 21: The Chhati Ritual. Mata talks to foi. 
Figure 22: Foi wraps the baby in a green cloth and turns him towards the shrine. 
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The hair-cutting ceremony in Harrow and Ahmedabad 
In the case of the hair-cutting ceremony, Balmovala, some families will conduct it for 
boys only, but others will do it for girls as well. The child's `birth hair' is usually not 
cut until he or she is one-year and a quarter, sava varshni, because any removal of hair 
before this time may expose him or her to evil attack. The removal of the child's first 
hair is common in many South Asian groups, some shaving the head soon after birth, 
which is usually practised by Muslim families and occasionally by some Hindu groups, 
such as some of the Patels. Removing the hair frees the child from a `burden' or the 
polluting effects of the birth process. Pregnant women and women who have children 
whose hair has not yet been cut must not watch the ritual for the fear that they might be 
polluted. 
Obeyesekere in his Freudian analysis of matted hair in a marginal group of ascetic 
women in Sri Lanka, argues that hair as a symbol articulates the cultural, social and 
psychological dimensions of the existence of his informants (1981: 1). He suggests that 
the head is the locus of Hindu consciousness and its cultural heritage of yoga. The 
centre of psychic energy, the cakra, which controls the vital breath, is situated below the 
skull. He argues that hair represents in ascetic women with matted locks, the sexual 
energy or shakti of the gods, their penises emerging from their heads (Obeyeskere 
1981: 6). No such link made by my informants, but there is no doubt the hair has a 
powerful meaning not only for the individual but also, in an interpersonal context, for 
the wider group. 
The significance of one and a quarter, sava, is thought to be because of the Gujarati 
belief in the inauspiciousness of whole numbers. However many families may delay the 
ceremony until the child is two and a half years old; to leave it longer than that is not 
common. Some families will cut the child's hair by inviting the barber to the house 
without holding a ceremony with invited kin and guests, and other families will cut the 
hair before the ceremony; the cut hair is always retained and treated in a special way. 
Sangita is a Lohana woman with a son aged fourteen months whose hair-cutting 
ceremony had been arranged for the following week. She told me on 12/2 1998, why the 
ritual is important: 
The hair-cutting ceremony or Balmovala Manta, is the removal of a burden for the child by cutting 
the hair. It must be done before the child is one and a quarter years old, or after two and a quarter. 
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It has to be held on a Sunday, not a Saturday because men are not allowed to cut hair on a 
Saturday or put oil on their heads on this day, because it is a special day devoted to Hanuman. It 
must also happen before midday, because of the position of the moon at the moment. During the 
ceremony, the child sits on his foi's (his father's sisters) lap on a green cloth, and his hair is cut by 
a barber. The aunt must catch the hair and not let it touch the ground. The hair is taken to some 
running water and put in it. In India, there are certain rivers that are used and some families will 
take the hair back there. After the ceremony, the family will go to the temple to do darshan [view 
the god] and then return to the parents-in-law's house where they will eat sweet foods and have a 
good time together. 
I returned to Sangita's house the following week and she showed me the video of the 
hair-cutting ceremony. She said they took the hair to the River Thames and put it in the 
water near Chancery Lane, where she used to work. She explained to me what others do 
with the hair: 
Alison, you asked before if there are special rivers in Kenya where people take the hair. The 
special rivers are only in India. The Ganges has the Goddess Ganga and other rivers are also 
religious, but in Kenya, they cannot be. If the goddess really lived there, then we would go and put 
the hair in that river, but we left India so long ago, we don't know, we don't have any relatives and 
that is why we don't go there. But people who have family still there, they take the hair to the river, 
like Savita - you know her, her father-in-law and husband took the hair to the river 
bank. India is 
more important. 
We went to the temple to pray that everything has been done and to say to god, if I had made 
mistakes in the ceremony, to forgive me. Because people take so many short cuts these days, you 
don't know if you have done it right. Just to say that I have done it according to my knowledge. 
I asked Sangita if the ritual is done for all children, and she replied: 
In most families it is the first male child. Like in my family, it was my brother who had one. But in my 
in-law's family, they did both my nephews and they are real brothers, so they do all the boys. Girls 
don't usually have it done. But on my mother-in-law's side, they don't have girls. There is a Hindu 
lady across the road and she did it for her daughter. 
The hair is collected on a green piece of cloth usually by the father's sister, foi, and then 
wrapped carefully in this until, at a later date, it is taken to some running water. Care is 
taken not to drop any hair on the ground because it may get into the wrong hands, 
especially those of a witch. In Harrow and Wembley, some families take the hair to the 
canal in Wembley, or to the River Thames (where there is now a special area for the 
scattering of ashes and hair), or some to the sea. Other families may keep the hair safe 
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and give it to a trusted family member who may be visiting India in the near future, to 
take it to the village of their ancestors, where it is put into running water. When the 
family has come from Africa the hair may be taken to a river there, or left on the beach 
in a safe place, where the birds cannot get it, for the sea to take away. I have asked 
many people why the hair is treated in this way, and have been told that it must be kept 
safe and cannot just be thrown away because a witch might use it. The continuity of life 
between generations is seen through the symbol of running water, a medium with 
supernatural links, receiving funeral ashes and hair, returning them to nature. Some 
twice migrants from Africa feel they have lost links with India, but others still feel 
connected to a town or village where their ancestors lived, and they may return there 
with the child's hair and put it in a river, or even in a well. The child's name may also 
be written on a plaque in the temple in the village or town, alongside his ancestors. 
Below I describe a Balmovala, hair-cutting ceremony in Harrow, in a Brahman family, 
and then compare it with one I observed in Ahmedabad. On both occasions, a barber 
had cut the hair several weeks before the ceremony, although this was of little concern 
to the family, who assured me that it did not affect the ritual. Rohan is the second son in 
his family, and was nearly two years old when the ritual was held. He had not been well 
over the previous winter, suffering from ear infections, so the ritual had been delayed 
until the summer. His mother invited me to attend and suggested I came early on the 
Sunday morning to observe the preparations. The following account comes from my 
field notes on 15/8/99: 
I arrive at 8.30 a. m. and notice the front door is open and decorated with green leaves hanging 
from the top, yellow flowers scattered around the threshold, and a red swastika painted on the 
bottom of the door frame. Rohan, the child for whom the ceremony has been arranged, his mother 
Shital and his paternal grandmother Mrs Butt, whom he calls Dadi, welcome me at the door. Shital 
quickly takes me upstairs where her two sons, Rohan aged nearly two and his brother Sunil, aged 
five are about to have a bath. She tells me that her period has started today, which means she will 
not be able to take part in her son's ceremony, and she wants to check that I am not menstruating. 
That she cannot take part is a nuisance to her, but her mother-in-law does everything, so she is not 
so concerned. Sunil, aged five, is quick to tell me that today is a special day for Rohan. Shital 
washes Rohan's head by pouring a bowl of water over his head, which makes him cough and 
splutter, but he does not seem to mind. The boys are dressed in jhaba, loose Indian tunic tops and 
trousers. Shital chooses a turquoise blue gathered skirt with a gold tunic for herself and selects 
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matching bungli (bracelets) and chandlo (the spot on her forehead). The doorbell rings and I am 
told to go downstairs because the priest has arrived. 
Downstairs the priest is talking to Mr Butt, and Mrs Butt who is wearing a stunning bright pink and 
green sari. She takes me to the back room to look at the temple she has built there with the priest. 
She explains that the four Iota, or dolls, representing the goddess Randalma, have been used - 
two representing the birth and two for the hair-cutting. She explains that Brahman males have to 
follow these rituals in the correct sequence. Each Iota has a face, with a gold chain and a pearl 
necklace, but no body. She has to invite seven virgins for each of the Iota, a total of twenty-eight 
girls. She then returns to the kitchen where she is preparing a cooked rice pudding with saffron, 
which has to be made fresh on the morning of the ceremony. In the same room sits an elderly lady 
crossed-legged on the floor, sorting out two piles of green leaves on a newspaper in front of the 
temple and chanting prayers she reads from a book. She wears a white sari with a blue border, 
which means she is a widow, and has her white hair tied back in a ponytail. Mrs Butt introduces the 
old lady to me as her mother Ba (grandmother) and tells me that her job is to sort out three-leafed 
green plants for the ceremony. 
The guests arrive bringing presents for Rohan, many of which consist of money. The ceremony 
begins after Mrs Butt has put a garland of yellow flowers around the top of the temple and I notice 
there are also vases of yellow flowers either side of the temple and a basket of orange, pink and 
yellow flower petals in front. In front of the Iota is a plate with mug beans, a coconut, a piece of 
turmeric, and £1.25 in coins. Mrs Butt explains that the mug beans represent the Earth and the 
coconut is a holy fruit giving food and milk. Mr Butt is wearing a white dhoti and he joins his wife by 
sifting-crossed legged on cushions in front of the shrine. The priest is wearing a blue shirt and 
trousers and sits on their right hand side. He begins by ringing the bell and chanting, asking for the 
god Vishnu to come. Then puts water in his right hand and rubs it all over his face and head, 
finishing by rubbing his hands and drying them on a paper towel. He puts a red chandlo (red spot) 
then a few grains of rice on the forehead of Mr and Mrs Butt. Sunil then comes to join them and sits 
crossed-legged in front of the shrine, the priest putting a red chandlo and rice on his forehead. The 
priest continues by placing grains of rice and then yellow flowers in their cupped hands. Flower 
petals are then placed in front of the Iota, red first, followed by yellow and then pink, and water is 
spooned over them. 
A Ganesh puja (worship to the god Ganesh) follows. This is an essential beginning to all life-cycle 
rituals. Mr and Mrs Butt wash the figure of Ganesh in honey, milk, yogurt, sugar and ghee, and then 
dry him with a yellow cloth. Threads of different colours, sandalwood powder and the pink, red and 
orange flowers are used. Joss sticks are lit and dried fruit and cashew nuts put in front of Ganesh 
and water is sprinkled all over. Cotton wool is dipped into the ghee and circled around Ganesh's 
head. At this point the priest takes the second coconut out of the box and makes a red chandlo on 
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it as if it were a person's head, and Mr and Mrs Butt hold it in their hands singing 'Randalma ahi 
chhe' (the Goddess is here), and yellow flowers are stuck into it. They bend forwards in prayer and 
the priest rings his bell and chants excitedly. Coins are given to Ganesh by Arun's father, his 
father's brother, both grandparents and his great grandmother. 
A brief Lakshmi puja (worship to the goddess of wealth Lakshmi) follows and flowers are put in a 
bowl and water sprinkled over them. Ba, the child's great grandmother, comes forward and sits in 
front of the shrine offering the green leaves, nuts and fruit. The household kin, Mr and Mrs Butt, 
Rohan, Sunil and Ba (Shital is not allowed in the room with the temple) all hold hands and sing the 
arti, or prayer, circling the tray with the candle on it. The goddess Randalma is invited to join and 
she is offered the special rice pudding prepared for her called khir, she will be fed this again this 
evening. 
The twenty eight young girls arrive, they are daughters of family friends and Mrs Butt washes each 
girl's feet, puts a chandlo spot on her forehead and gives her the special khir which contains five 
important ingredients - milk, ghee, honey, sugar and yogurt - with a small piece of flattened rotli 
(chapatti bread). A silver coin with a picture of Ganesh on one side and an ohm sign on the other is 
given as a present to each of the girls. This part of the ceremony takes an hour and a half. Then 
the guests arrive and lunch is served. The women bring presents of ghee and bungli, bangles for 
Randalma, and ask for long lives for their husband. In the afternoon special songs are sung by the 
older women and the young girls dance, while the men sit in groups and talk. Apart from Rohan's 
grandfather, dada ji, and his father, the men do not have an active role. 
Mrs Butt will sleep all night next to the goddess, making sure the candle keeps burning, and 
treating her like a guest in the household. She tells me that the goddess is like her own mother. 
The room must not be cleaned, until four women remove all the items of the ritual the following day. 
They then say goodbye to Randalma and promise to call her again. 
Mrs Butt tells me later that in the Lohana community, a bhui is often invited. She is a 
lady who becomes possessed by the goddess and shakes all over and some believe that 
the ceremony is not complete without this. 
The hair-cutting ceremony I observed in Ahmedabad was very similar, except there 
were just two Iota present because a Chhati had been done when the child was six days 
old. The little girl Radhika had already had her head shaved a month earlier, at the same 
time as her father, after her great grandfather's death, as a mark of respect. The family 
had to have a special ritual done by the priest to free them from any polluting effects of 
the death. Usually no happy rituals may take place in a household during the first year 
after a death. Inden and Nicholas refer to the `five immortal liquids' (1977: 54), milk, 
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ghee, honey, sugar and yogurt, that must be present at every large ritual to feed the 
gods; these were all present in both rituals that I observed. These are often combined 
into sweet foods that are offered as prasad (offering to the god), and then shared with 
the guests later. There were many common features I observed in both rituals, which 
may be expected, as both were held in Brahman families. Both children were older than 
the normal one and a quarter years for the ritual, and both had their hair cut beforehand. 
The following is an account of the ritual I observed in Ahmedabad on 19/9/99: 
I arrive at the flat, which is on the first floor of a twelve-storey tower block, on the outskirts of the 
city. Radhika and her mother are the first to welcome me. The small living room is packed full of 
people. Women sit together along one side, on chairs and on the floor, dressed in brightly coloured 
saris, in reds, pinks, and greens. They smile warmly at me when I arrive, saying in Gujarati how 
much they have looked forward to meeting me. They greet me with 'namaste' (a formal hello), 
bringing their hands together and bowing their heads forward. The men sit around the outside of 
the room, and on the hindola (swing suspended from the ceiling, a feature in many living rooms in 
Gujarat), some dressed in trousers and open neck shirts and some in white dhoti. They stand up 
individually to shake my hand as I am introduced, and speak to me in English. There are four 
young children playing in the middle of the room, and an older girl and a boy of about eight and ten 
sit on small chairs by their mothers. All the kin present are from the father's side; none of the 
maternal kin are present. 
In the evening the women begin to gather around the mandir (temple), which has been assembled 
earlier in the day, in the adjacent room. There are two Iota (representations of the goddess) draped 
with a red sari; offerings of fresh fruit and mug beans are arranged in front together with yellow 
flowers. The priest arrives and the puja (ritual to the god) starts at 7.30 pm. A Ganesh puja is 
followed by the women singing songs to the goddess Randalma, and inviting her to join the 
occasion, chanting 'Randalma avi (Randalma come). The women start to dance and encourage 
the Radhika and the other children to join in. Then two of the younger men join in, dancing 
enthusiastically. The women loudly chant different songs to the goddess as they dance. After about 
an hour of dancing, food is served and I am invited to eat at the table with the men, while the 
women stand and talk in the kitchen and the children play on the hindola (swing). 
Ba, the grandmother of the girl, tells me she has to sleep all night with the goddess to keep her 
company and keep the divo burning. 
The next morning at 8am, the priest returns to dismantle the shrine but before doing so, he 
conducts a short puja. Radhika sits on her mother's lap, who sits crossed-legged in front of the 
shrine, and listens intently to what the priest has to say. Four other women are present, Radhika's 
grandmother, two paternal aunts and a neighbour. Her mother circles the tray with the divo on it in 
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from of her in a clockwise direction, and chants an arti ( prayer) with the priest to Randalma. 
Radhika stands up with her mother and they walk round the room carrying the divo to everyone 
present, so that they can pass their hands through the smoke and wipe it first over their faces and 
then over their heads. Radhika is fed with the rice prasad (offering) first and then it is offered to 
everyone present. Her mother stands up and moves backwards waving her sari in the direction of 
the door, and everyone chants 'Randalma avi' (Randalma come), inviting the goddess to return on 
another occasion. The women all wave their sans in the direction of the door, symbolically waving 
goodbye to the goddess. A sweet, biscuit-like, food called sukhdi, which is made of ghee, jaggery, 
wheat flour and sugar is offered to everyone present. Then the temple is dismantled by the priest. 
Any food left over from the ritual, is taken by the priest to be distributed to poor people, and grains 
of wheat are given to the priests to make flour and rotli. No food is ever wasted. 
Figure 23: Mandir constructed for the balmovala in Harrow. 
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Figure 24: The Mandir constructed for the balmovala in Ahmedabad. 
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Figure 25: Women worship at the shrine during the balmovala in Ahmedabad. 
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Figure 26: Women and children dance at the balmovala in Ahmedabad. 
The similarities of these two Brahman hair-cutting rituals in Harrow and Ahmedabad 
were marked. The two ba (paternal grandmothers) in each case, treated the goddess like 
a guest in the household who should not be left alone at any time, offered appropriate 
food and drink, and the divo kept burning for her all night. The women appeared to have 
a close affinity with her, and for one night she became part of their kin group. Because 
of their purity, the young girls become like goddesses and were given special attention 
during the ritual. Men, apart from the pujari (priest), remain on the periphery 
throughout, except Mr Butt who sat in front of the shrine for the Ganesh puja and for 
the arti. Four women were involved in both cases, waving the goddess out of the room 
and inviting her back on a future occasion. The main difference seemed to be that in the 
Harrow ritual seven virgins were invited for each Iota, this did not happen in 
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Ahmedabad, perhaps because the Harrow ritual was larger, more elaborate and carried 
out for a boy. Rohan was involved in the household arti but seemed less involved than 
Radhika in Ahmedabad. Perhaps through her gender there was a greater expectation of 
her involvement than there is for a boy. I did not observe the dismantling of the shrine 
the next day in Harrow, so was unaware of any involvement he may have had here. 
The moment a woman becomes pregnant she is instructed by her female kin on how to 
safeguard and nurture the child's physical, emotional, social and spiritual well-being. 
Knowledge of moral values begins to be embodied in the unborn child, through the 
mother's bodily fluids and emotions. Any potentially dangerous or polluting situations 
have to be avoided and special precautions taken. After the birth, both the mother and 
child enter a stage of transition in which the mother is in a state of ritual impurity, 
during which she is a danger to her household if she enters the kitchen, and to the 
outside world if she leaves the house, or if someone visiting sits on her bed. Over time 
she poses less of a risk to others and at the end of the sava mahino (month and a 
quarter) she and the baby can leave the house and visit the temple. 
Victor Turner's (1969) analysis of `life crisis' ritual suggests that the ritual subject 
passing through the rite de passage, is conveyed irreversibly from a lower to a higher 
position, following defined stages (1974: 37). It begins with a breach of normal social 
relations that widens as the ritual progresses and normal social order is challenged. The 
novice (or in this case the infant or child) passes through a liminal period where he or 
she is humbled or put down in some way and experiences a status reversal. Redessive 
action then occurs during which a public ritual is performed, which in this case is 
religious in nature. The final phase is the re-integration of the ritual subject into his or 
her newly elevated status. Turner argues that during the liminal period, status reversal is 
essential, so that the stronger are made weaker and the weak act as if they were strong. 
Liminality implies that the high could not be high unless the low existed, and he who is high must 
experience what it is like to be low (Turner 1969: 97). 
The attributes of liminality are necessarily ambiguous, status and rank disappear and the 
passivity, humility and near-nakedness of the individual being acted upon is symbolic of 
the grave or womb. In the case of the hair-cutting ritual, the child is humiliated by 
having his or her head shaved and this is often accompanied by distress. The removal of 
the birth-hair, however elevates him or her to a higher level by being freed of the burden 
of the connection this hair had to previous incarnations. 
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The symbolism of life-cycle rituals suggests that the body is acted upon to become a 
body replete with meaning. Continuity of moral and religious understanding is 
transferred to the next generation and kinship relations are reaffirmed and transformed. 
Young British Gujaratis may dismiss these practices as old fashioned and superstitious, 
but many follow them to please their female relatives. It is difficult to predict whether 
these rituals will continue, but at this point in history most families seem to be 
following them in Harrow. 
The meaning of ritual is never quite the same for different people, although certainly 
people tend to believe that they are united in giving the same meaning to any particular 
ceremony. From my observations of the two hair-cutting rituals, the physical presence 
of the participants and their actions marked their involvement. The priests in each case 
performed their religious rites, which they conducted to bring the blessings of the 
goddess on the children and the family. The elderly women prepared the offerings and 
the objects necessary for the ritual and ensured that it was conducted in correct 
sequence, following the family rules of the oldest male in the household and making 
sure of the purity of the occasion. These women told me that during the ritual they have 
a close relationship with the mataji, treating her like their own mother and guest. The 
children who were being acted upon seemed to enjoy the extra attention and the 
presents they received, although they were also made to enter into the seriousness of the 
religious rite, Arun during the household arti, and Radhika in the ceremonies in front of 
the shrine, the dancing and the dismantling of the shrine on the following day. Radhika 
was at no time forced to be involved, she did so at her own volition, as she did in other 
household rituals. Rohan preferred to run around and play in the garden. The mothers of 
these children appeared rather detached and Shital was not too concerned that she could 
not take part because she was menstruating, as her mother-in-law was leading it and she 
had little to do anyway. The young girls who had been invited to add aupiciousness and 
purity to the occasion performed the duties expected of them, but once they were 
completed they had fun and met their friends. The female guests observed some of the 
ritual and some said prayers in front of the shrine, covering their heads with their saris 
in a respectful manner. The male guests appeared uninterested in the religious aspects of 
the ritual, but enjoyed meeting friends and kin and in the Harrow hair-cutting ceremony, 
sat in the garden and talked. The father of the child and his brother joined in the arti, 
however, holding hands with the father's parents and grandmother, symbolising the 
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unity of the household. Everyone present had different levels of involvement of the 
process of the ritual, but they were all united in a common aim to continue a practice 
that has always been done and by these means retain a link with their heritage. 
I discussed the idea of sanskar at the beginning of the chapter, where Inden and 
Nicholas' saniskara or life-cycle rituals had parallels here with this Gujarati concept. 
They suggested that these rituals acted on the living body, by removing defects and 
infusing positive qualities into it. I argue that the sanskar of the household is embodied 
within the living bodies of its members and expressed in their behaviour towards others. 
It will affect the way the household is viewed within the wider community, which in 
turn affects its suitability for providing marriage partners. During life-cycle rituals the 
putting on of new clothes, the recitation of special words, the anointing of substances 
and feeding with special foods affect the whole body of the child, not just his or her 
spiritual life. Through the ritual act the child learns through the kin around him or her, 
about the world and the relationships in it. Life-cycle rituals are never individual acts 
and through the close inter-connectedness of the members of the household, the sanskar 
of the ghar is transformed, together with its moral standing within the Gujarati 
community. 
In the final chapter I discuss how, because the process of making meaning at once 
preserves ideas and practices and transforms them, it is inevitable that shifts in both 
ritual practices and the meanings accorded them occur over time. For the moment I wish 
just to point out that my informants in general hold that the life-cycle and other rituals 
discussed above are performed because they have to be, because they have always been 
done, and because they provide a link with the ancestors. Children experience ritual 
from an early age and ritual activity becomes an everyday part of their existence - at 
once normal and compelling. The process through which they come to understand 
ritual, to render it meaningful, is not however apparent to them, but it is in this process 
(rather than just in any given ritual itself) that the power of ritual lies -a matter I 
discuss further in the final chapter. It may be argued too that even small, domestic 
rituals such as that for the sixth day after birth described above, implicate virtually 
every aspect of what it is to be Gujarati in the broadest sense - ideas about political, 
economic, kin and gender relations are at once expressed in ritual practices and 
constituted there. It is not necessary, however, that people be conscious of these ideas 
when performing a ritual or that there be any rational or logical explanation for the 
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performance beyond the idea that it must be performed; at each repetition, perhaps 
especially when a large group of people is involved, feelings of communitas (Turner 
1974) are reinforced and the compelling nature of the ritual (compelling because of the 
childhood experience that makes its performance mandatory) is re-experienced. Like 
every other aspect of human practice, rituals are transformed over time and their 
performance is adapted to varying conditions of existence; inevitably their details and 
the meaning accorded them vary both within and across groups of people, even where 
these people have much else in common and where, therefore, many common threads in 
ritual practice are to be found. Life-cycle rituals are times for kin to gather together, 
when certain religious rites are observed and people are united in a perceived shared 
purpose. The ritual objects and practices may vary from one caste to another, or from 
one household to another, but by virtue of their very performance rituals arouse in the 
participant the sense of belonging to a certain group and thus, in this process, invoke the 
idea of that group itself the sanskar of the ghar for example, or the wider group of kin, 
or the caste, or even the group that is Gujarati. In invoking in the participant a sense of 
belonging to a certain group, the rituals at once bring that particular idea of the group 
into being for each participant, and reinforce and transform a particular idea of what one 
belongs to and what it means to belong. 
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Chapter 8 Childhood: The Beginnings Of Interdependency 
The birth of a child is a time of celebration for the household, wider kin, and also the 
wider community. It is a new life to be nurtured within the web of interconnectedness 
and interdependence so as to become a person within the wider Gujarati community. A 
child finds himself or herself in continuing close association with others in which, over 
time, he or she constitutes ideas about the world that include specific values about self 
and others. This is a world in which the patrifocal family and the extended network of 
kin take precedence over that of the nuclear father/mother unit. Children actively 
embody experiences through their relations with others. They constitute worlds in 
which religious observances and ritual become everyday activities, of the same order as, 
say eating a meal or riding a bike. In chapter two, when I asked eleven-year-old Reshma 
to tell me about her family, she started off by telling me about how her grandmother had 
taught her about religion. Religion had become a central concern of hers, which she had 
embodied, and at her age, had begun to make her own logical sense of it. 
Below I examine the way in which, from the time a baby is born, wider kin assume 
certain responsibilities and become involved in the care and decision-making 
concerning the child. Rituals conducted in pregnancy and childhood at once create and 
confirm both the child's relationships with others and his or her sanskar (moral standing 
in the world) so creating a good person who will be suitable for a good marriage and 
eventually a good death. Western-trained health professionals often find this strange, 
because from the time a child is born, they expect the parents to assume their role as 
main carers and guardians of the child. Through poor understanding of the complexities 
of kin ties, these professionals may view a couple's relatives as interfering or too 
dominant, and even as undermining of the parents. It is through these relationships, 
however, that special bonds are formed within the household initially and then beyond. 
The interdependency that develops is central to the way a person is constituted, sees him 
or herself within his or her history, and is connected to others. 
This chapter looks at different aspects of family life with children and the ways in 
which children participate in social and religious activities. I begin with the effect the 
birth of a child has on the family hierarchies and the way different members of the joint 
family assume responsibilities and decisions concerning infant feeding and childcare in 
general. I also examine the way in which other female kin become involved in the 
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child's life, how a child joins in social and religious activities and, finally, some of the 
strategies parents use to discipline children. 
Childcare and decision-making 
Relationships in the joint family change on the birth of a first child. With the 
confirmation of her fertility, the woman's status rises within the ghar, joint household. 
The birth of a boy may still be celebrated more than that of a girl, not because of the 
perceived superiority of males, but because boys ensure the continuation of the ghar 
and will remain close to their parents for the rest of their lives. The sons will have 
responsibility to care for their parents in old age and conduct their funerals, so enabling 
their transition to the next life. There is some evidence, however, that girls are now 
taking on more responsibility for their parents in old age. Although, when they marry, 
girls are required to perform the rituals advocated by their husbands' families. Although 
they live apart from their natal families, the ties remain strong and important to them, 
especially around the births of their children. Most families observe more life-cycle 
rituals for boys than for girls because it is important to establish in childhood the boy's 
sanskar, or way of seeing the world, so that he follows the beliefs proper to his family 
and thus ensures continuity to the next generation. A girl however, will be joining the 
sanskar of her husband's family, so early life-cycle rituals will be not so important for 
her. The move to more equality between girls and boys has resulted in a few families 
carrying out for girls some of the rituals that have traditionally been reserved for boys, 
such as the hair-cutting ritual. These rituals have been examined in more detail in the 
previous chapter. 
An elderly Brahman woman explained to me why it is more important to observe life- 
cycle rituals for boys: 
If we have a boy, we call on Mataji, our goddess. It is a rule that we have to celebrate and do the 
ceremony if it is a boy. If it is a girl, we don't do that. It is not that we don't like the girls, but because 
the girl goes to another family. Then the other family will have a different god or goddess. So that is 
why we don't do it for girls. 
Savita, a mother of three daughters and explained why many families still have a 
preference for boys. 
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I was upset after the birth of my second daughter. My husband is the only son of his parents and 
there will be no one to carry on the family name. This is the reason why people want boys. Today it 
is not because of the dowry that is expected with girls. 
For women, the birth of the first child, especially if it is a boy, represents the beginning 
of a transformation from the low status of the new daughter-in-law to that of the 
respected status of mother, to be venerated like a goddess, which is reflected in the 
name mata or ma meaning both goddess and mother. A woman's transition to this new 
role is not without hazards and potential dangers, both to her and to her infant, in the 
first few weeks, during which she must be guided by her own mother and protected by 
rituals. These were discussed in the last chapter, as were the special foods her mother 
prepares for her to rid her body of the toxic effects of labour, protect her future health, 
and maintain her strong back, which is thought to be particularly vulnerable after 
childbirth. Her mother will also guide her in the care and protection of the baby from 
evil influences, tying black threads around the baby's wrists and sometimes neck and 
placing black kohl marks around the eyes or feet and hands. She will probably become 
actively involved in the baby's care. She may swaddle and rock the baby and massage 
him or her daily with oil. In some families, other close female kin will visit and wish to 
give the baby a small amount of honey on the tip of their fingers, to welcome him or her 
to the wider kin network. Although the majority of women still wish to return to their 
natal kin for the first forty days, or sava mahino (month and a quarter) after birth, there 
is considerable variation here, both in Harrow and Ahmedabad, with some women 
returning to their husband's family first for a few days after the birth. 
Whatever practice is followed, there is intense interest and involvement of female kin 
on both sides of the family. When a new baby is born, older women (initially the 
maternal and then the paternal grandmother) expect not only to guide the mother in her 
care of the infant, but also to assume some of the care themselves. If the new child is the 
second or subsequent one in the family, they may focus their attentions on the older 
child or children. If co-sleeping has not already been occurring then this may be adopted 
now, and the child may be taken to the grandmother's bed or aunt's bed at night, to 
enable the mother to care for and breastfeed the new infant. 
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Feeding relationships 
South Asian women in Britain today are still more likely to breastfeed and continue 
doing so for longer than their Western counterparts (Hamlyn et al 2002). Katbamna 
pointed out the strong preference Gujarati women in the UK have for breastfeeding that 
contrasted with that of Bangladeshi women, who were more likely to introduce 
bottlefeeds (Katbamna 2000: 103). There is evidence from a local breastfeeding audit in 
Harrow that although South Asian (mostly Gujarati) women are more likely to 
breastfeed initially, by the time the infant is six weeks, many introduce occasional bottle 
feeds (Harrow PCT Audit, 2002). The reasons for this will be explored below, but the 
influence of other women in the household may be a factor. The child has close contact 
with the mother through breastfeeding and most Gujarati women believe strongly that 
this is important for the baby. The transference of body fluid in the form of white, 
sacred milk, serves to link the child to wider kin and give him or her knowledge of the 
culture (Spiro 1994). Many women in the UK, however, experience interference in the 
breastfeeding process when their mothers and then their mothers-in-law begin to 
demand a share in the feeding of their infants. A seemingly safe alternative to breast 
milk, bottle-feeding with formula milk, is seen as a way other women can be involved at 
an earlier stage in the child's life, than was ever possible in India. This may indicate a 
change in practice and the initial indulgence a mother has in demand breastfeeding her 
child, as described previously by many writers on South Asia, (Kurtz 1992; Mintern and 
Lambert 1964; Kakar 1981) may be changing in Britain and urban India. Mothers-in- 
law have considerable power in any decision concerning the feeding of children in the 
ghar. 
Women have also suggested that although breastfeeding is the ideal way to feed infants, 
in this country there is no time for it. There are also pressures to return to work. Ba will 
probably care for her grandchild and may think that it is easier to introduce a bottle 
early to make this transition easier. The indigenous society has a strong bottlefeeding 
tradition and there may be pressures from peers to conform to this. Grandmothers who 
migrated to Britain in the 1960s and 1970s were probably exposed to advertisements for 
formula milk showing chubby babies and may think that Indian babies are thinner 
because they were breastfed. 
Meera, a Lohana mother and midwife told me how she thought attitudes to 
breastfeeding in the older generation had changed recently: 
219 
Some families still believe that colostrum, the first milk in the first three days, is not an option for the 
baby, and should be expressed and thrown away. The baby is not put on the breast at all for the 
first three days, and only fed on the fourth or fifth day, when the milk gets in. In the first three days, 
they are very happy for their babies to have bottled milk. Especially the girls who come from India, 
by the time they come here, they have seen many white women who give bottles. These women 
actually believe that if the native women are doing it, it must be fine, and really good, and this is 
why their babies are big and chubby. 
The women who came from India, especially from the villages are often little, quite small compared 
with women in this country; and their husbands are also of small frame. The mother-in-law believes 
that this is because of breast milk, having seen babies in this country, which are much bigger, and 
they think it is because of the bottle. With their experience of breastfeeding, they think it is the 
better option to bottlefeed. They couldn't bottlefeed because they were not rich enough to do it. 
I asked Meera if bottlefeeding is seen as a way of making babies bigger. 
Making babies bigger and healthier. Asian women who were bom and brought up here are much 
bigger than Indian women who were born and brought up in India. Because their babies are bigger 
too, they think it must be the bottle. 
Nikhita, a Brahman mother with a six-month-old baby she is breastfeeding made a 
similar comment: 
Asian mothers believe that formula milk makes babies heavier. They compare Asian babies with 
white babies of the same age and the white children are always bigger. Breastfeeding is more 
common in the Indian culture than it is in the Western culture. There is an assumption that they are 
formula fed and that is why they are bigger. If you have ten babies, then the white ones will always 
be bigger. The other thing in our community is that if anyone makes a comment about me not 
producing enough milk, it really rattles me. I feel like saying that I am feeding him, he is not going 
hungry. First of all you fight it and then you say, I've had enough, and pack it in. It depends how 
strong you are, you might pack it in, or just keep going. 
Did Meera think that advertising of formula milk had influenced women? 
Yes, definitely. You know, a good 15 years ago, when I was a newly qualified midwife, we sent 
bottled milk to our relatives in Africa. They are very wealthy and have two sons. They came here on 
holiday for the first time in the 1970s, and saw all the lovely, lovely, chubby babies and they 
couldn't get over it. So when they had a daughter after the two sons, they actually decided they 
wanted to bottle feed her. We sent bottles of milk from here. They wanted a nice, healthy, chubby 
baby. Her mother is 4 foot 10 inches and her father 6 foot 2 inches. The girl is now 17 years old 
and overweight, she is so chubby they now want her to come to England to do all the exercises. 
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The family thinks they would now like her to be like me and my daughter, because they see us as 
slim and lovely and we go to aerobics and the health club. We also eat healthily, so they want to 
send her here to lose weight. I think the whole thing is so sad. In India it is only the well-to-do who 
can bottlefeed and the mothers have a lot of pressure from the older generation to do so. 
I asked why she this is so and she answered: 
I think the older women feel they can be part of it, if their daughter or daughter-in-law is 
bottlefeeding. They think that if they have the money, then why not. The daughter-in-law can get on 
with the other chores in the house. She doesn't have to sit there all day breastfeeding. It is also a 
Western concept that you can go and do some work outside. These women need not work, the 
family probably has a business of its own, but these women are prompted to go and look after the 
business. These women like to do this because they see it as being Western to leave the baby with 
the mother-in-law, or have a nanny staying to look after the baby, so they can go out to work. It is a 
very Western concept. 
When I was in India one family showed me a musical bottle they had. As soon as you lift the bottle 
it starts playing music. This is lovely for Indians who really attach this type of musical bottle with 
money and status. These wealthy families have workers in the house, cleaners and someone to 
help with the food. It is not just one person doing things, you have many people doing the things 
women don't like doing. These workers are watching the baby having the bottle, a musical bottle, 
and it looks so lovely. I have heard workers sit down and say that I would love to use that bottle if I 
was only that well off. It is very sad and tragic. But you can't blame. The Indians have always seen 
Britain as some sort of superior country. Because they are a Third World country, many other 
countries are seen as so well off. They would much rather follow their footsteps than think for 
themselves. 
Meera described how the bottle represents a Western way of feeding babies that makes 
them chubby, and she reflects a perceived association with being healthier in the short 
term. An over-weight older child or adult may not seem so attractive, although ideas of 
body size and obesity appear to be different in Britain from those in India. The women 
who star in Indian-made Hindi movies tend to be heavier than their Western 
counterparts. Thinness still appears to be associated with poverty and this seems to be 
most acute in children but obesity in adults, on the other hand, is becoming more of a 
problem with increased wealth in India and Britain and is linked with chronic disease 
such as diabetes and heart disease. In some families, bottle-feeding infants may still be 
linked with status and progress and thought of as more reliable, but probably more 
importantly it is an activity that can be shared by other women in the household. This 
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sharing of infant feeding enables all female kin in the household to nurture the child and 
thus to build up an emotional bond with him or her, tying the child in to the network of 
female kin in the household. 
Bottlefeeding not only offers women the freedom to return to work, but also makes it 
easer for grandmothers to take control and make decisions about the next generation. 
The close bond that develops as a result ties the child to wider kin with its associated 
obligations. Meera saw bottlefeeding also as a representation of status and wealth, and 
breastfeeding as linked to small stature and poverty. Observations in Harrow and 
Ahmedabad suggest that women often give older children up to the age of five years 
bottles of cows' milk. This practice lessens their appetites for solid foods and may 
deprive them of essential minerals, especially iron, and may lead to anaemia. In an 
earlier chapter I suggested that this might be related to the purity of milk, making it an 
attractive and safe food for children. 
Breastfeeding should be promoted in hospitals in line with the Department of Health 
guidance (Hamlyn et al: 2002), but women are often given confused messages as to 
whether this is indeed the case. The availability of formula and bottles from birth in 
Britain makes bottlefeeding appear reliable and convenient, and the messages conveyed 
by the medical and midwifery staff might initially influence some families to use this 
method. Unfortunately bottles given at this early stage may be detrimental to 
breastfeeding and might confuse both mothers and infants. Despite the fact that most of 
the grandmothers in this study, breastfed their own children and have a strong belief that 
it is a way of transmitting knowledge and emotions to the next generation (Spiro 1994), 
they may encourage their daughters or daughters-in-law to use bottles or may give them 
themselves. The sasu (mother-in-law) can make decisions, in some households, about 
her grandchildren with very little discussion with the child's mother, as the following 
scenario suggests. 
Ameeta, a Lohana mother of a two-year-old son, came directly from India following an 
arranged marriage two years before in 2000. Her husband's family came to the UK from 
Uganda in 1972 so he was educated in the UK. Relationships with her mother and 
father-in-law had been strained from the beginning and they now live separately. She 
explained to me why she had to stop breastfeeding: 
I was living in my mother-in-law's house. She wanted me to stop breastfeeding, so that she could 
feed my son. She just took him away and bottlefed him. I was left with milk pouring out of my 
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breasts and I didn't know what to do, because I couldn't disagree with her. I was like a guest in her 
house. 
This grandmother appeared to be making a statement about her power over her 
daughter-in-law, who saw herself as a guest in the house and thus unable to assert 
herself, even when it came to feeding her own child. It seems clear that for both Ameeta 
and her mother-in-law, feeding the child not only manifested their love, but also 
entailed the child's future attachment and obligations to themselves and perhaps Ameeta 
was resisting the child becoming attached to his paternal grandmother. On the face of it 
the conflict between Ameeta and her mother-in-law was focused on the new baby, but it 
seems equally possible that the two women's disagreement had everything to do with 
Ameeta's relationship with her husband, who did not support her against his mother. 
The close involvement of female kin with the new infant and, in the UK, the availability 
of a safe alternative to breastfeeding, may have allowed grandmothers to extend their 
care into feeding and initiate the child's dependence on wider kin. My observations 
indicate that this may be more important than the pull of wider society to bottlefeed. 
The mother may be left feeling undermined and unable to assert herself. Some women 
may accept this as an inevitable aspect of the household hierarchy and shared roles and 
responsibilities. To feed another is to bring into being a relationship with that other 
and/or to confirm it; the form taken by the feeding tells us not only what that 
relationship is meant to be, but in so far as the feeding is an aspect of day to day life, 
actually makes it be what it is meant to be. So perhaps it is unsurprising that mothers-in- 
law in many cases try to take over the feeding of their grandchildren - not so much 
because they want to rule over their daughters-in-law, but because they want at once to 
be able to show their love for their grandchildren and to claim those children for 
themselves and for the ghar to which their own sons belong. 
Co-sleeping 
Infants may not only be fed and massaged daily by their ba, but when breastfeeding at 
night finishes or a new baby is born, the child may also sleep in the same bed as the 
grandmother. Co-sleeping is seen as an important aspect of caring for children, and 
close relationships are likely to develop as a result. The mothers may initially breastfeed 
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the baby at night and sleep in the same bed, but after weaning the children may sleep 
with their ba or dadi (paternal grandmother) or aunt. 
In 1999 Mrs Purohit, a Brahman grandmother told me about her care of her eighteen- 
month-old grandson: 
Shiv stays with me every afternoon when his mother is at work and sleeps with me on Thursday 
nights. 
During my frequent visits to the household, I noticed how attached Shiv was to his 
grandmother and how upset he was when she left the room. On one occasion his mother 
called him into another room and although he looked confused initially, he stayed with 
his grandmother. 
In 2001, when Shiv was three years old, Mrs Purohit told me how their relationship had 
continued to be close, even though he lived with his parents and his brother in another 
house a mile away: 
Shiv sleeps with me every Thursday. It makes us very close. My husband goes to the box room. I 
can teach him so much, and read him the Gayatri slok [worship to the Mataji Gayatri] in the 
morning. My daughter-in-law says to me, 'What magic have you done to Shiv? ' My other 
grandson, who is now six, comes to our house every afternoon after school and he sleeps with me 
on Saturday nights. He says to me'When I put my head on your lap, all my worries disappear. ' 
I asked Mrs Purohit whether sleeping together with grandchildren is important and she 
answered: 
It is for many grandmothers, it is how they get close. 
The expectation is that children will sleep in the same bed as their parents until weaning 
from the breast or until the arrival of the next child, or beyond. Many parents to whom I 
have spoken view the idea of leaving children on their own at night as unacceptable. 
During my stay in a household in Ahmedabad, the two-year-old girl slept with her 
parents at night, but during the day slept in the afternoon with her grandmother. She had 
no bed of her own and was never on her own during the day or night. Many households 
follow the same practice, which can meet with disapproval from western-educated 
health professionals, who hold the view that children should learn independent sleeping 
patterns from an early age. 
Close relationships with kin develop through co-sleeping and patterns of inter- 
dependence and inter-reliance are fostered. Children learn through close interaction with 
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their grandmothers about religious beliefs, language and kin relations, but above all they 
gain the security that women in the household will always be there to offer them 
support. This relationship of inter-dependency and co-sleeping may extend into adult 
life, as one Brahman mother told me: 
My husband was so close to his grandmother and shared her bed until he was twenty years old. 
When she died he went into a deep depression, from which he took a long time to recover. 
In Western societies sharing a bed with a person of the opposite sex after puberty may 
be viewed as abusive or imply incest. The bed in the West is linked with sexual 
intercourse so the presence of a child with one or both parents, or a grandmother, is 
likely to meet with disapproval. In South Asia, however, co-sleeping is an accepted and 
important aspect of family life that may continue after puberty. 
The special relationship with ba (paternal grandmother) 
The paternal grandmother, or occasionally the maternal grandmother (both may be 
called ba) often takes on much of the care of the child. The following account is taken 
from my fieldnotes: 
A paternal grandmother, Ba, proudly carried her four-week-old grandson into the clinic one day to 
be weighed. She was closely followed by the baby's mother, who was also smiling. She announced 
loudly to everyone in the hall: Our baby is lucky, he has three mothers! He has me, my husband 
and his mother. ' 
This relationship with ba begins at an early stage, once the sava mahino has passed and 
the mother and child return to the patrilineal household. A nursery rhyme sung to 
children extols the virtues of ba to children. 
Mothers tend to discipline children and be stricter with them than is ba, who may be 
more indulgent. My visit to Manisha, her mother Reena, and two-year-old Shaan in 
May 2001, shows the nature of relations between the three generations. Manisha and her 
husband are both Brahmans. They had a `love marriage' and live in a flat in Harrow 
with their son. Manisha's husband's brother lives in another flat in the same block, but 
their parents live in America. Reena lives in Birmingham in a joint household with her 
husband, three sons and their wives, and visits her daughter and grandson once a month. 
I visited them a week before Manisha's second child was due and Reena had come to 
stay for four weeks for the birth. Manisha told me how Shaan speaks Gujarati and 
225 
English and knows which language to use. I do not look like someone who would speak 
Gujarati so perhaps it is not surprising that, when I addressed him in Gujarati, Shaan at 
first looked confused and answered me in English. After about an hour, he began to say 
some words in Gujarati to me, with a smile on his face. I asked his grandmother, Reena, 
about her relationship with Shaan and she answered: 
I love Shaan so much. I miss him when he is not with me. When he was eight months I had him to 
stay for a week when Manisha went to Switzerland. He was so happy, he never looked for his 
mummy. When she came back, I was just sitting outside in the garden with him, he was so happy. 
Manisha said, 'What about when I went to the wedding? Tell her about that. ' 
Reena went on, 'He was here all day and not even once did he ask me where's mummy. He was at 
my house in Birmingham then. Even at bedtime, 9 o'clock, he had his milk, cleaned his teeth and I 
changed him into his pyjamas. He said goodnight to dada, mama, and mami, my daughter-in-law. 
He said goodnight to everyone and then we went to sleep together. When he woke up at night he 
just said ba, ba. 
Manisha said, 'Tell her where he sleeps. ' 
At which Shaan answered for Reena, saying, 'ba, ba, ba. ' 
Reena laughed and agreed, 'Yes, he sleeps next to me, of course. ' 
I asked Reena where Shaan sleeps when she stays with them in her daughter's flat in Harrow. She 
answered, 'He sleeps in his room. But the day before yesterday he cried and cried for an hour, one 
whole hour. ' 
Manisha: 'But what was he saying? 
Reena: 'Ba, ba. I want to play with ba. Masti, which is playing around, throw a pillow around, 
jumping and chasing each other, like hide and seek. ' 
Shaan suddenly looked excited and shouted, 'Masti, masti. ' 
Reena asked him: 'Where do you do masti with ba? ' 
Shaan replied: 'Bed! ' 
Manisha and her mother clapped this response and Reena gave Shaan kisses and he and his 
grandmother started to play together, she pretended to be a chutli (sparrow) that pecks his nose. 
Reena always speaks Gujarati to Shaan, but Manisha speaks a mixture of both languages. The 
play became noisy so Manisha tried to stop him running around: 
'Shaan don't do that. Dudh pivo? [Do you want to drink milk? ]' 
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Manisha then spoke about the different way her mother related to Shaan compared with her more 
Western attempts to discipline, control and stick to routines. 
'You know that night when he cried, all he said was ba. Because we put the mattress out for her. At 
7 o'clock he had his dinner, at quarter to nine he had his milk. Then at nine o'clock it is brush your 
teeth, wash your face, you know, read a book, that sort of routine. That day, all they had done was 
play, and all my mum has to do is to go boo, and he is crazy. He just changes in the different 
atmosphere and goes mad. He is a different person with my mum. There is a very, very special 
bond between them. It is not that my mum is here all the time. So that night when we put him in his 
cot, we had people over, we weren't in our pyjamas, we normally get changed and lie down. That 
day we didn't, we just put him in his cot. He just called ba, masti, all the time. I couldn't take him 
out, because once I have put him in his room, he stays there. I am a bit scared because I know that 
he is in a routine, he may know that he can come out, so I just stayed with it. He was crying and 
crying and I went every five minutes, I know it is supposed to be every ten minutes, but I couldn't 
leave him so long. I thought he is going to be sick, I know he is, and he did actually throw up, 
through all the crying you see. It was OK, I cleaned him up and ba came in and all he said was ba, 
ba. Every night I say to him Mummy loves you, Daddy loves you and ba loves you. If I miss one out 
he will tell me which one. I don't think he minds the order, but we all have to be there. 
Reena's approach of dependence on kin and close physical contact day and night differs 
from her daughter Manisha's insistence on separation and independence, as advocated 
in Western childcare manuals. Shaan's behaviour described above shows his confusion 
with these two approaches, when both women are present and give him different 
messages. There may be an assumption made by Western-trained health professionals, 
that parents wish their children to become less dependent on them and inappropriate 
advice may be given by them on childrearing. Parents, who have been educated in 
Britain and live away from their families, may be confused by the contradictory 
messages they are receiving from relatives and health professionals. 
Manisha is very happy and proud of the close relationship that has developed between 
her son and her mother and actively encourages it. The situation described earlier in the 
chapter, where Sita's son Shiv stays with her mother-in-law every week is not so 
relaxed. She is concerned about the influence she is having on him through co-sleeping 
and asks `what magic' she has been doing on him. The relationship children develop 
with their natal kin may differ from the one they have with their father's kin. When in 
Ahmedabad, I observed Radhika every weekday being cared for by her ba and dadaji. 
She joined with them in their daily activities, enjoyed trips to the shops with her dadaji 
227 
and went to the mandir (temple) with him most days. Perhaps because this was an 
everyday relationship that was expected and routine, it differed from the occasional 
meeting between Shaan and his ba, which was special. Radhika enjoyed a more relaxed 
relationship with her masi (mother's sister) and her nani (mother's mother). It is likely 
that the relationship children enjoy with their mother's kin is more relaxed than with the 
father's kin and this is reflected in the more informal kinship terms used. 
Involvement of other kin 
Grandparents often care for grandchildren when their mothers return to work, and see 
this as an important part of their duties within the joint family. I remarked above how an 
elderly grandfather in Ahmedabad told me that now he was retired he would like to 
spend time going on religious pilgrimages and become more involved in temple life, but 
he was obliged to look after his youngest son's two-year-old daughter while her parents 
were at work. In Ahmedabad I was able to make some detailed observations of 
grandparents caring for their grandchildren. This involved everyday activities in the 
home and visits to temples, shops, friends' and relatives' houses. 
The children shared their midday meal with their grandparents often of rotli (chapati), 
khurdi, (vegetable soup), dahl (lentils) rice, shak (vegetable curry), and dahi (yogurt); 
not all these items would be offered at one time and sometimes only one or two of these 
foods would be given. In the early afternoon the grandparents and the children would 
sleep; this was the hottest time of day and any activities outside were discouraged. In 
the early evening the front doors were opened and people would visit freely without 
prior arrangement and the children might be taken off to play with other children or 
teenage girls, and be away from their families for several hours. At times I voiced my 
concern for their safety, but was always reassured that they were well known in the area 
and would be looked after. 
In Harrow women have told me how they miss this involvement that the rest of the 
community have in children's care. Deepa, a member of the Patel community and a 
mother of two teenage children, explained to me: 
What happens in India, the children grow up and you don't even realise. The family, neighbours 
and everyone, they just look after them. But here it is so difficult because they are in the house all 
228 
the time. My parents always say, we don't know how you grew up, but look at this now, it is so 
different. 
Children as young as six months are included in the daily puja, worship at the family 
shrine in the home, and taken regularly to the temple and as toddlers they may take part 
in preparing materials for the rituals. I observed children in Ahmedabad helping their ba 
fashion the soft wax used for making divo (candles) and preparing the prasad (offering 
to the gods). They sit with their hands together with ba and wave their hands through 
the smoke of the candle, wiping it over their eyes and then heads, as she does. They 
appear to enter into the solemnity of the occasion. One little two year old girl, Radhika, 
in the household where I was staying, understood very quickly that I was interested in 
ritual observance and used to come and take my hand and lead me to the shrine and 
show me where to sit when one was being prepared. 
I visited local temples with Radhika and her grandparents ba and dadaji (paternal 
grandfather). A favourite one to visit was a local Shiva temple. We travelled by 
rickshaw and Radhika excitedly chanted `mandire' (to the temple). When we arrived, 
she would remove her shoes and run over to the large bell suspended from the roof, 
which everyone should ring on arrival to inform the god of their presence, and there she 
waited until an adult came to lift her up so that she could ring it. She would copy the 
poses of the other women and often sit crossed-legged on the floor while the arli 
(hymn) was sung. The tray with the diva (candles) was passed round and she would join 
the others in putting her hands through the smoke and wiping it over her eyes and head. 
After the devotional part was finished she would go to look for the prasad (offering), 
which had now been blessed by the god and become a symbol of the presence of god to 
take, back to the ghar. She was just two years old, but she participated in the solemnity 
of the occasion. Adults told me that when children participate in religious activities it is 
seen as a good omen for a family. Because of their relative purity, children are seen as 
closer to the gods and in some circumstances may be thought to embody a goddess and 
be worshipped by others. These ideas have been expressed to me in both Ahmedabad 
and Harrow. 
In Harrow, children are encouraged by their grandparents to participate in daily pr ja 
(worship) at the family shrine. Visits to the temple may not be so frequent because of 
the distances one has to travel, but many families may take children several times a 
month and on special occasions. Grandmothers encourage children in appropriate and 
229 
respectful greetings to both kin and the gods. A Brahman grandmother, Mrs Desai, 
proudly told me what her seven-month-old grandson, Yogesh, could do and invited me 
round to her house to watch him. She said: 
Yogesh can put his hands together and bow his head when someone says jay Swaminarayan 
[blessings of Swaminarayan -a common greeting used by members of the sect]. He claps his 
hands in tune to the arti [hymn] and puts his hands out to the photo of the Swaminarayan guru on 
the wall in the living room, saying Bapa [honoured father]. 
Figure 27. Seven-month old boy clapping to the anti with his ba. 
230 
Figure 28: Seven-month old boy and his ba, looking at the photograph of the Swaminarayan 
Guru. 
I saw Yogesh to do all these things and watched him clapping in a similar manner to his 
ba to the Swaminarayan arti. It may be unusual to see a child as young as seven months 
participating so actively, but it is also apparent that the grandmother's excitement and 
enthusiasm encouraged the child's responses. The reader will recall that Deepa's 
eleven-year-old daughter Reshma told me how her ba had taught her about the gods and 
how this built up a special, long-term closeness between them. I asked her whether this 
closeness with grandmothers stays and her mother Deepa answered: 
It does, and with the Masi (aunties). It's like they have many mothers. 
In the evenings in Ahmedabad, after the evening meal, many parents and other family 
members take their children outside to talk with neighbours, family and friends. They sit 
on walls or benches in the street. The older men often dressed in cool, white dhotis, the 
women in Punjabi dresses and the children in shorts and T-shirts. The evening is the 
coolest time of day and the women have told me that it is their `break time', when the 
daily chores have been done. Some wealthier families may have scooters and often 
enough one may see both parents, together with one to three children, riding on one 
scooter in the direction of a floodlit local park. The grandparents usually stay with their 
friends near their home. When they arrive at the park, parents may buy balloons for the 
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children and then sit in groups on the grass to watch them play. Some sing songs or 
nursery rhymes for their children and others just sit and talk while the children run on 
the grass. The parks usually close at 1 Ipm when a warden rings a loud bell and families 
begin slowly to move towards the gates. 
Parents I spoke to in Ahmedabad, told me that the evening is a special time for families 
with children. They would always take their children with them in the evenings 
wherever they went and would never leave a child at home. In Harrow, despite the 
cooler weather, parents and children are sometimes seen walking in the evening in 
summer. Visiting friends' and relatives' houses together with one's children does 
happen in the evenings, and here there is also an expectation that children will sleep in 
the afternoon, so they can eat and socialise with the family. 
That children should be included in family activities and cared for by many women 
does not fit with the advice showered by health workers on Gujarati mothers in the UK. 
Pregnant women are bombarded with information, often via Western style antenatal 
classes that are based on the psychoanalytic model of the primacy of the mother-child 
bond and attachment theory. Most Gujarati children in India and the UK and others of 
South Asian origin begin multiple attachments from birth. 
Susan Seymour working in Orissa, observed similar child-rearing practices there to 
those I have seen in Harrow, where the child forms a close bond with many women: 
Love as it is found in the Western romantic tradition that assumes an emotionally laden pair-bond 
that is intense, exclusive, and highly individualised, is not what is inculcated. In fact, the Indian 
cultural model views such love as dangerous, individualistic emotion. Instead, a concept of love 
that is based upon familial interdependence and a sense of duty (dharma) to one's own relatives is 
encouraged. Initially it is communicated to the child by various persons through constant physical 
contact - holding, feeding, carrying, and co-sleeping (Seymour 1999: 85). 
The child may call other female kin ma or mata, and may show more intense attachment 
to them than to his or her biological mother. I was speaking recently to a mother 
expecting her second baby, who was voicing her concerns about how she would cope 
with two children and how her two-tear-old son would react. She said he would be 
jealous of the attention his grandmother may give to the new baby; he had such a close 
relationship with her mother he would find it difficult to share her with a baby. She was 
unconcerned however, about how her son would react to her giving the baby attention 
and breastfeeding. 
232 
Deepa, a Patel women living in central Harrow, supports her younger sister Puja with 
her family. They have a sister who has learning difficulties and their mother has little 
spare time to help her. Neither of them lives in a joint family and both are wealthy 
enough to have their own homes. Deepa's children are now teenagers and she is not in 
paid employment, so she more time to offer her sister whom she tells me is very 
important. Puja's children are small: Mita is two years and Raj one month old. Deepa 
told me about the relationship she has with her sister's daughter Mita. 
When Mita is here in the house, she is mine, she is a child of the whole family. She calls me 'mum' 
and we are very close. I will not do anything to the exclusion of Puja's children. When Mita is here, 
she spends the day with me and sleeps with me at night. 
Several theorists have tried to apply Western, psychoanalytic models to aid 
understanding of the South Asian psyche. Kakar (1981) uses a psychoanalytic model to 
explore the `inner world' of the Indian, through his own psyche as an Indian living in 
Europe and the USA. He begins by discussing the development of the ego through 
multiple attachments with many caregivers. He acknowledges that the roots of culture 
and a person's sense of identity are determined by that person's experiences of earliest 
care as an infant, his argument then shifts to a Western model of childcare. He takes a 
Freudian stance, which appears to contradict his own Indian childcare practices. He 
explores in great detail the primacy of the mother-child bond and a male child's 
obsession with his mother's sexual body. Any observations he may have experienced or 
observed of Hindu joint family childcare practices appear to be ignored. Kakar uses the 
Hindu ideals of moksha (salvation), dharma (duty) and karma (the cycle of births and 
deaths), as well as interesting examples of myth and epic, to explain the psychological 
make-up of an Indian person, but I find his individualistic, psychoanalytic precepts 
unconvincing. 
Kurtz on the other hand has tried to devise a theory of Hindu child rearing by re-shaping 
Western psychoanalytic theory through emphasising the link between motherhood and 
the great Goddesses and their interchangeable nature, which he argues can also be 
applied to multiple human mothers. He concentrates on the relation between human and 
divine mothering by interpreting data on childrearing and, later in the book, on 
pathological case histories. His aims are to establish a new psychoanalytic approach in 
line with the structure of Hindu divinity (Kurtz 1992: 7). 
233 
Kurtz argues that Western child rearing patterns should be used as standards against 
which Hindu patterns can be measured and criticises others for not taking 
psychoanalytic theory into account. He admits that Susan Seymour's work in Orissa 
gives interesting insights and observations, but says that like Minturn she fails to apply 
a Freudian analysis. The family group and not the mother is at the core of his model of 
Hindu childrearing. The mother pushes the child towards the wider family and the 
members pull the child away from the exclusive attachment to the mother. 
In response to subtle prompting by adults, the Hindu child, seemingly without being forced to do so, 
abandons the intense early attachment to infantile forms of pleasure, i. e., unrestricted oral, anal, 
and phallic gratification. This contrasts with the Western case, in which the child is gradually, but 
forcibly, made to abandon exclusive attachments to love objects and immature pleasures in return 
for the mature, approving love of the parents (Kurtz 1992: 61). 
Within a Western context it is difficult to argue that a Hindu child has unrestricted oral, 
anal or phallic gratification. Breastfeeding by the mother may be quickly replaced by 
bottlefeeding by the grandmother, the child will wear disposable nappies, and there is 
no evidence to suggest any unrestricted phallic gratification. My observations would 
confirm the push away from the intense mother-child bond towards the wider female 
kin, as well as the corresponding pull by them, but I find the psychoanalytic argument 
employed here unconvincing. From birth the grandmothers are involved in the care of 
the infants. In a local hospital's neonatal unit the grandmothers sit with their daughters 
or daughters-in-law by their premature infants in the incubators; most Western mothers 
sit on their own, occasionally accompanied by the infant's father. When I asked a 
grandmother from a Shah family why this might be, she replied: 
She has just had her first baby, she will not know what to do. I have to be with her to help. 
My observations suggest that the intense relationship between a newly born infant and 
his or her mother that Kurtz describes does not occur, the infant is part of the wider 
group from birth. Although he does admit the indulgence of grandmothers he sees it as 
similar to that of their Western counterparts (Kurtz 1992: 83), without recognising the 
major role they play in caring for the child. Weaning and toilet training are addressed 
and Kurtz describes a relaxed child-led approach that does not differ greatly from that 
now advocated by Western childcare specialists. The relaxed, gradual way these are 
instigated is unlikely to involve any traumatic psychological split between the child and 
234 
the mother as he suggests; there is more likely to be a gradual identification with the 
group, through participation in social activities. 
Seymour saw that children were socialised to identify with the family as a whole and to 
value the collective unit above their own individual interests. She sees problems in the 
application of Western theories of child development that focus upon individuation in 
societies where group attachment is stronger than that to a single caretaker. Her 
descriptions of other women in the household caring for children are similar to those I 
observed in Harrow and Ahmedabad. 
While nursing, a mother responds physically to her child but withholds empathic attention thus 
encouraging the child to seek emotional satisfaction in relationships with others, not in an exclusive 
relationship with her (Seymourl 999: 82). 
Seymour predicts that changes may happen as western-style educational achievement 
and professional goals may encourage a move away from a culturally ideal 
interdependent self toward a more independent and autonomous self (1999: 270). 
The second generation of Gujarati people in the UK have experienced the education 
system in this country and many moved into professional careers, but many in Harrow 
still choose to live in joint families until after the birth of their first child. The education 
a child receives at school or college, or living in a Western country, in my observations 
has not yet moved many young Gujarati people away from the joint family and the close 
bonds of interdependence they have experienced from infancy. The sense of clharma 
(family loyalty, or duty) is central in their lives. Many educated young people want to 
carry this through to the next generation by marrying someone who holds similar ideals 
of the sense of family. 
Through experiences of being cared for and nurtured by women within the family, a 
child learns to depend on wider kin. This is a common experience for children in South 
Asian families, as reported by Wadley (1999) in Central and West India and Seymour 
(1999) in Orissa. Wadley, like Kurtz, sees the Indian symbolic connection between 
mothers and goddesses. She sees the words mata and ma connoting warmth, protection 
and life-giving power, and ideally all Hindu children should honour their mothers. She 
also argues that there is a link with the cow here, which is sacred and the producer of 
white fluid, milk, and is known as the mother-cow, gao mata, in Hindi (Seymour 1999: 
59), or gai mata in Gujarati. Cows need to be nurtured and protected by the whole 
235 
community and as I observed in Ahmedabad, and they are fed with rotli, every night. If 
the cow comes to eat these, it is considered a good omen for the family, as if they are in 
some way sharing of the family substance. To kill a cow in India is considered an even 
worse crime than killing a Brahman. The sacred nature and purity of cows' milk and its 
value for children was examined in the chapter five. 
Comparisons with Western patterns of childrearing are difficult and artificial because of 
the very different kin responsibilities that are established from this early stage of 
childhood. Minturn undertook a research project that tried to establish pancultural 
factors in child-training practices and to use them to describe the similarities and 
differences in six cultures (Mintern 1964: 43). She took as her standards Western 
concepts of various aspects of childcare, such as maternal warmth, and tested these out 
in various cultures across the World, including one Indian, Rajput village in Uttar 
Pradesh. Although some anthropological data was given, she did not to do an in-depth 
kinship study, so the complexities of the interactions between women and children were 
difficult to see. She concluded, however, that when there are other women in the family 
to help, that mothers do less of caring for young children. The disciplining techniques 
she describes are similar to those I have seen, such as threatening and frightening 
behaviour from the mothers, to make the children do what they were told. 
Discipline or teasing? 
The disciplining strategies used by parents here may appear sometimes inconsistent and 
confusing for children. I saw similar behaviour in the UK and in India, where threats of 
witches or bhago are commonly used. One three year old Lohana child told me of her 
fears about noises coming from the next flat, which sounded to me like furniture being 
moved around. She said to me with a frightened expression on her face: 
8hago is coming to get me. I have not been a good girl. 
Her mother often threatens her with this witch and has herself a fear of witches, which 
she expressed to me at Halloween. She had become suspicious of a neighbour who had 
the figure of a witch suspended in her window and she interpreted this as a threatening 
act towards her. 
In Ahmedabad, elders greet children by squeezing their cheeks, hard enough to leave 
marks, yet they respond with pleasure and not pain. I have no evidence of this greeting 
236 
being used here and parents have told me that this would be unacceptable here and 
might be considered as child abuse. A teasing game is more common here, when a 
parent or grandparent pretends to be angry with the child, and then smiles or laughs. 
This can continue several times, so the message of whether the child has misbehaved or 
not is difficult to gauge. 
In general `pancultural' aspects of childrearing, as suggested by Minturn (1964), are 
unhelpful because within every country or community the meaning of being a parent or 
a child will differ within the complex web of kinship interactions. Children make their 
own sense of their lives and the network of interdependence in which they find 
themselves. 
The lives of children in Ahmedabad and Harrow have in common the way they 
integrate themselves into the family group from birth, through the experience of being 
cared for by several female kin. The personality development of the Hindu child has 
been described extensively by Carstairs (1968): the way a child goes through conscious 
and unconscious processes to understand the world, and comes to relate initially to his 
or her mother and then the wider group. He identifies problems the child has in coming 
to terms with the personality of the mother as warm and indulgent on one hand but a 
terrible, bloodthirsty goddess on the other. Rivalry with the father for the mother's 
attention is a concern for the child, especially when the father at weaning, takes his or 
her place in the bed. Carstairs does not discuss how the child at this point move into the 
aunt's or grandmother's bed, as my study suggests, and gain warmth and security from 
this closeness. 
The exclusive relationship the child has with his or her mother has also been over-stated 
by Kakar (1981), which I discussed earlier. I have found here a sharing of the caring of 
children among women, who can at times, be competitive. Seymour's findings in Orissa 
are similar: 
..... 
the love between a mother and her infant- like other potential dyadic love relationships- should 
be contained so as not to threaten the interdependence and cooperation of the larger group. Not 
only are mothers too busy to devote themselves exclusively to an infant's care, but they are not 
supposed to do so. Besides, in joint households there are many caretakers assisting the mother 
and vying for the child's attention (Seymourl 999: 279). 
The pull away from an intense, love-laden relationship with their mother by the 
household, towards a warm one with their ba (grandmother), masi (mother's sister), or 
237 
kaki (father's brother's wife), continues in Harrow as well as Ahmedabad. In some 
households a child may have a closer attachment to his or her ba or masi than to his or 
her own mother, who may see her role more as disciplinarian or educationalist. These 
multiple early relationships make a foundation for continuing interdependency within 
the joint household and wider kin networks, and also as a child grows and experiences 
the wider interconnectiveness and belonging within the caste or community, and with 
the whole Gujarati-speaking world. 
Conclusion: the child in ritual 
In the introduction I described a two-year-old child, Yogesh, who's Grandmother was 
proud of the way he was becoming a proper Gujarati. She saw his first years at school 
as important and said it would be worth paying for a private school where he would 
learn to respect adults, speak and write Gujarati, eat proper vegetarian food and learn 
about religion. In this conclusion, I examine some of the insights into the issues 
highlighted by Yogesh's grandmother that emerge from this study and how they throw 
light on the process of becoming Gujarati in Britain today. 
From birth onwards children are engaged in relations with others and for any given 
child the process of making sense of the world and other people is mediated by those 
relationships. To explain this process Toren argues for 
'a unified model of how we become who we are in which mind and body are aspects of one another 
(rather than separable systems) and, from birth to death, each one of us humans makes sense of 
the world by making meaning out of meanings that others have made and are making -a process 
in which knowledge is at once maintained and transformed. In this perspective, what we call history 
is an analytical artefact of the more fundamental embodied history that makes each one of us what 
we are and in the process provides us with our ideas about the world' (personal comunication 
2002). 
She has also argued that the whole person is implicated in this process and `any act is at 
once affective, symbolic and material i. e. intentional' and `particular forms of' 
intentionality constitute and are constituted by the politico-economic processes that 
describe collective relations' (Toren 1999: 111). She insists that anthropologists need to 
study children in order to understand relations between adults. Athough this study has 
not been entirely focused on children, it has been looking at households with small 
238 
children and the interactions between adults and children of different ages in everyday 
activities, rituals, food and kinship. 
From birth (or even before birth) Gujarati children have contact with other members of 
the household kin and wider kin network at meals, rituals and festivals. My informants 
have emphasised verbally and through their actions, the importance of ritual practice 
within the household and outside, and how it becomes an integral part of their lives. 
Rituals begin before birth in the household, with certain family rules being followed 
concerning special foods and conduct of the pregnant woman; then in some families 
there is a more formal gathering of kin in the seventh month of pregnancy. I have been 
told that an unborn child gains knowledge about his or her mother - her emotions and 
religion - and of kinship through her bodily fluids. If the mother thinks good thoughts 
in pregnancy and when breastfeeding, her child will grow to be a good person. As a 
child grows his or her experiences come initially through contact with the mother's 
body and then after birth through multiple contacts with kin. More formal rituals may be 
performed around life-cycle events, which have to be conducted at certain auspicious 
times on the Gujarati calendar, or as directed by the astrologer. Everyday rituals take 
place at the household shrine and ritualised behaviour is often seen, for example putting 
the red spot, chandlo, on the forehead is always done with the right ring finger; rotli are 
broken with the right hand and twisted around the vegetables in the shak (vegetables); 
and rice is eaten by rolling it into a small ball between the thumb and the first two 
fingers. Family rules determine how and when rituals take place and these follow the 
male line; so a woman moving into a household will have to follow the rules of her 
father-in-law. The meaning of the ritual is often not known, the most important thing is 
that the rule is followed. 
Yogesh's mother had a ritual for him in the seventh month of her pregnancy because her 
father-in-law believed in it and she was following the family rules. She considered this a 
particularly auspicious occasion, because a leading Swaminarayan guru who happened 
to be visiting Britain at the time conducted it and she invited two hundred guests. Other 
people have told me that their family does not believe in it, so they will not do it. There 
can be anxieties attached to not doing rituals: a Jain woman told me her baby was 
abnormal because she had not done the pregnancy ritual. 
239 
Levi-Strauss has argued that rituals are a response not to existential, but to 
epistemological anxiety; his argument is both subtle and convincing but it does not 
entirely rule out Turner's. 
When Turner [in The Drums of Affliction, 1968] states that religious rites 'create or actualize the 
categories by means of which man apprehends reality, the axioms underlying social structure and 
the laws of moral or natural order', he is not fundamentally wrong, since ritual does, of course, refer 
to these categories, laws and axioms. But ritual does not create them, and endeavours, rather, if 
not to deny them, at least to obliterate, temporarily, the distinctions and oppositions they lay 
down.... (Levi-Strauss 1971: 680). 
Levi-Strauss maintained that ritual is concerned not to create ideas but rather to 
obliterate the distinctions and oppositions that arise in discourse, especially in mythical 
discourse. Levi-Strauss stressed that rituals are created in response to the anxieties 
provoked by conscious reflection, which separates humans from their experience. 
Ritual is not a reaction to life; it is a reaction to what thought has made of life ... 
it is a response to 
the way man thinks of the world (Levi-Strauss 1971: 680). 
This may indeed be the case, but even so I have found Turner's analysis of ritual to be 
especially applicable to my own findings. Turner had gone beyond the structural- 
functionalist view of ritual held by anthropologists such as Radcliffe-Brown and 
introduced history and time into his methods and analysis. He suggested that human 
social life is the producer and product of time and advocated a `processual view of 
society'. 
The social world is a world in becoming, not a world in being (except so far as 'being' is a 
description of the static atemporal models men have in their heads), and for this reason studies of 
social structure as such are irrelevant (Turner 1974: 24). 
In The Ritual Process (1969) and in later essays (1982,1986) Turner applied the 
`processual view' to his analysis of ritual in which there are social rhythms and flows, 
in a similar vein to biological, climatic and ecological rhythms and flows. Rituals are 
performances and enactments, which flow from one stage to the next, the order and 
character being of secondary importance to the experience of the participants. 
The experience of subjective and intersubjective flow in ritual performance, whatever its 
sociobiological or personalogical concomitants may be, often convinces performers that the ritual 
situation is indeed informed with powers both transcendental and immanent (Turner 1982: 80) 
240 
For Turner, ritual is `richly textured', in which all the senses of the participants and 
performers are engaged: they hear music and prayers, see visual symbols, taste 
consecrated foods, smell incense, and touch sacred persons or objects (ibid: 81). Ritual, 
he argues is capable of societal change, which emerges through creative modification at 
all or any levels, and communicates in groups at the deepest levels of values. 
Turner drew on van Gennep's (1960) analysis of rites de passage in which he argued 
that there are clearly defined stages of rites of separation, threshold rites, and rites of re- 
aggregation for which he used the terms: preliminal, liminal and postliminal. Novices 
are separated from society and pre-ritual ties are broken and new relationships 
afterwards are compulsory. Van Gennep had also emphasised that almost all rituals 
were associated with transition from one situation to another and Turner extended his 
argument to suggest that `ceremony indicates and ritual transforms' (Turner 1982: 80). 
The pre-liminal stage of the rite involves the novice being secluded or separated in 
some way. The process continues into a liminal phase through which the status of the 
participants is reversed and the weak become strong, the strong become weak and there 
is social levelling. Within life-cycle rites the novice may be subjected to humbling, 
stripping or pain accompanied by mockery. The attributes of liminality are always 
ambiguous, they are betwixt and between and neither here nor there. Rank and status 
disappear and passivity, humility and nakedness are apparent. Communitas emerges 
from liminality, when social structure appears to be no more, and feelings of common 
humanity are expressed. For Turner, communitas has `an existential quality; it involves 
the whole man in his relation to other whole men' (Turner 1969: 127). Communitas is 
expressed through liminality, marginality, inferiority and can be speculative and 
generate imagery and philosophical ideas; as opposed to structure which is this-worldly 
and pragmatic (ibid 133). During the ritual process marginal people may appear who are 
poor or deformed and symbolise the moral values of communitas as against the political 
views (ibid 110). 1 came across an example of this while visiting Vadodra in Gujarat 
during Navratri, when we met two transvestites. My informant explained to me 
afterwards that they were `important people' or hijra, who belonged to a certain 
religious sect and would often appear at religious gatherings and life-cycle rituals, 
where they would sing and dance and expect to be given money. He explained the 
importance of giving them money, or they would inflict a curse on the child or the 
241 
family. I have no evidence of marginal people appearing in rituals in this way in Britain, 
although I have been told of the existence of hUra groups. 
The final phase of the ritual process is the reintegration of the disturbed social group or 
the social recognition of a transformation. When applied to the life-cycle rituals 
described in the last chapter, this could be the group's acceptance of the child's new 
transformed status within the kinship network. 
Religious gatherings, whether during Navratri, Diwali, bhajan or satsang engender 
feelings of social levelling through liminality and communitas, the experience of the 
ritual link the participants with each other and with the divine energies. Turner's work 
has given insights into the ritual process and society in general that other 
anthropologists before him were unable to do. 
Society (societas) seems to be a process rather than a thing-a dialectical process with 
successive phases of structure and communitas. There would seem to be - if one can use 
such a controversial term -a human `need' to participate 
in both modalities. Persons 
starved of one in their functional day-to-day activities seek it in ritual liminality. The 
structurally inferior aspire to symbolic structural superiority in ritual; the structurally 
superior aspire to symbolic communitas and undergo penance to achieve it (Turner 
1969: 203). The women participating in Navratri, as described in chapter 3, 
demonstrated their female energies, breaking down the barriers of caste, class and 
wealth on these special days. Through the liminality of the ritual, they experienced the 
strength of communitas they had with each other and celebrated their femininity and 
fertility. 
Before Turner's introduction of the idea of communitas, Durkheim had recognised the 
importance of the collective as making possible an `effervescence' that contributes to 
man's creation of an ideal world `above the real world where his profane life passes' 
(Durkheim 1976: 422). Durkheim's study of religious ideas and experience moved the 
emphasis away from the individual to the group and produced the idea of `collective 
representations', but in his endeavours to find a positivistic method in social science, he 
was unable to move from the synchronic to the diachronic (Bloch 1989: 21). Durkheim 
242 
acknowledged the importance of history but was unable to incorporate it in his methods 
or analysis. In attempts to make anthropology a science, functionalism rejected history 
and studied social and cultural processes without consideration of history. It is worth 
noting here, in passing, that Levi-Strauss (1971) in his exhaustive volumes on myth 
found a method of creating an anthropological conception of history by analysing 
synchronic transformations in a particular myth over a wide geographical area. His 
ideas about ritual, especially as set out in The Naked Man (1971: 667-684) were a direct 
response to his understanding of mythical discourse as speculative epistemology. 
Here it is interesting to note that ritual tends to be talked about by my informants not in 
terms of meaning, but in terms of who should do what, when, and how, which connects 
with both Levi-Strauss's position and with an argument made by Toren (drawing on 
Lewis 1980) that most, if not all, behaviours have a ritualized aspect - an aspect that 
can be rendered explicit as `a rule'. She points out that 
'adults are usually capable of ascribing a meaning to ritualized behaviours, but from the child's 
point of view that meaning cannot be obvious; it does not declare itself. For the child, the 
significance of the behaviour may be simply that'this is how you do X (Toren 1999: 119). 
She argues further that the childhood experience of learning a ritual behaviour or series 
of behaviours is crucial for the process through which, over time, they come to ascribe 
meaning to that behaviour such that its performance becomes symbolic of that meaning. 
Her Fijian ethnography shows how, in rendering meaningful the ritual and ritualised 
behaviours enjoined on them by their elders, children eventually come to hold the idea 
that such rituals and ritual behaviours are mandatory: that they must be performed and 
their practice enjoined too on others because their meaning makes them so. Her analysis 
builds on observations made by Levi-Strauss and Bloch to show that 
... 
its manifestation as 'rule' is the fundamental raison d'etre of ritual and for this reason its meaning 
aspect is bound to be always and inevitably secondary (Toren 1999: 122). 
Turner argues that the rules of the ritual `frame' the ritual process, but the ritual process 
`transcends its frame', as a flowing `performance and enactment', not confined by `rules 
or rubrics' (Turner 1982: 79). The particular family rules about rituals to be practised, 
foods to be eaten, gods to be worshipped and whom one should marry, are the concerns 
of most Gujarati families. It is in the performance that meaning arises through liminality 
and communitas, and this is transformed through the enactment. In my research I found 
that what matters to my informants is following the rules and that, indeed, the meanings 
243 
made of these rules are always secondary. When I have pressed people for reasons for 
ritual action, I have been given answers such as: 
It is what we have always done. We do not have an explanation. It is passed through generations. 
and, 
We do not understand it ourselves, we just follow. 
Ritual has been a central theme in this thesis and this model gives insights into the 
process whereby Gujaratis in Harrow continue to see themselves as different from other 
South Asian groups and the rest of the encompassing society. Within a diaspora there 
may be a strong desire to retain rituals and practices and perhaps adhere more closely to 
detail than was thought necessary in the country of origin. Calendrical and life-cycle 
rituals are practised widely. Turner's argument here is that rituals are performances that 
have to follow in precise order. The religious sect or household will dictate the order 
according to the priest in the temple or the oldest woman in the kin group. Turner 
argues that life crisis events occur at birth, puberty, marriage and death and tend to be 
performed on individuals. Calendrical rites almost always refer to larger groups and 
often to whole societies, at seasonal moments such as harvest festivals. In the case of 
the Gujaratis these tend to bebased around the birthdays of the gods or specific religious 
festivals. 
Returning to Yogesh and his experience of ritual and visits to the temple. At the age of 
two, he already greets the priest in an appropriate manner. Where has this behaviour 
come from? My observations of Yogesh at home since he was a small infant suggest 
that children's active involvement in ritual may begin as early as in the first year of life. 
At seven months old, Yogesh could sit on his own on the floor of the family home and 
point to the photo of Bapuji, the Swaminarayan Guru on the wall when requested to do 
so by his ba. When she sung the arti (prayer) he joined in by clapping his hands like she 
did, receiving considerable approval from her. Yogesh has a close relationship with his 
parents, his dadaji, but especially with his ba. 
Earlier in this chapter, I showed how the intense relationship between grandmother and 
grandchild involves not only caring for the child's physical needs and co-sleeping, but 
involving the child in ritual. When Nikhita asked her mother-in-law `what sort of 
magic' she had been teaching her son when he spent the night with her, she was asking 
244 
about what rituals they had done and what religious stories they had read. Reshma, as I 
described in chapter three, told me how she learnt about religion through the close 
relationship she had with her grandmother. This was the first thing that came to her 
mind when I asked about her family. 
Through these experiences of ritual, a child comes to know that there is a certain way of 
doing things and that things must be done in that way, but attaches no meaning to the 
particular practices other than (perhaps) `this is what we do in our family'. Children 
under six years may know, for example, that girls sit in the front and boys behind them 
at rituals. Children copy and imitate adult behaviour and make sense of it in their play. 
For example three-year-old Bina had two Barbie dolls, one dressed in Western clothes 
she called Helen and one dressed in a sari she called Kirti. In Bina's imaginary play, 
Barbie Helen watched TV and listened to pop music and Barbie Kirti lit diva (candles), 
said prayers to the god and made rotli (chappati bread). Bina was very aware of the 
differences between these two dolls and how ritual was important for Barbie Kirti. In 
like fashion, on one of my visits to her house during Diwali, she pointed to her nextdoor 
neighbour's house and said, `They do not have Diwali'. I asked her mother why she said 
so and she explained that her neighbours were West Indian and Bina had already 
worked out that they would not be celebrating Diwali. Toren (1999) has suggested that 
children up to the age of 6 or 7 imitate adult behavour and follow rules of behaviour 
enjoined on them by adults because they have the idea that these rules must indeed be 
followed and/or because they may get into trouble if they do not. They do not advance 
any other reason for such practices beyond the sheer doing of them. Bina was beginning 
to understand difference and through her dolls had demonstrated the importance of 
ritual for her Indian doll. She had also worked out that her neighbours look different 
from her family and relatives, and that only people who look like her family celebrate 
Diwali. Her behaviour and what she says shows us how she is making sense of her 
world. Although she as yet had no rationale for the family rituals, she knew they were 
important in her household and for people who looked like her family. Toren (1999) 
argued that by the age of 6-9 years children are beginning to realise that ritual behaviour 
has a meaning beyond itself and that they are also differentiating between those who are 
`like us' and `not like us' (Toren 1999: 119). Toren's observations here are conjectural; 
my own observations of three-year-old Bina suggest that she had already constituted an 
idea of difference and had already begun to articulate this with an idea about the 
245 
significance of ritual - at least in the sense that she was matching the observance of 
Diwali with people's appearance. The processual nature of this kind of awareness is not 
the same in all children and some may develop this at earlier stages than others as a 
function of their particular experience. 
Ritual and ritualised behaviour vary across households and I was often told in response 
to my questions about specific rituals that; `My family does not believe in it', or `In the 
olden days it was done .... 
but it is not practical now', or `Our family only does it for 
boys'. Each household has its own particular variation of a common theme of how a 
ritual is done and the oldest female member of the kinship group is expected to offer 
guidance to the others on the details. 
Collective action at festivals and large gatherings of kin and friends especially when 
singing and dancing take place are important for group cohesion and continuity. For 
Turner (1974) rituals create reality and humans come to understand the world through 
living through it, participating in collective action, moving through phases of liminality 
social levelling and communitas. It is through the performance of ritual that kin 
relations and those in the wider sociality network are cemented, renewed and 
tranformed. The rites performed give continuity, reassurance and stability and tend to be 
conducted in a similar fashion whether they are Navratri or Diwali celebrations in 
Harrow or Ahmedabad. 
Turner argues that ritual symbols have many meanings, but referents tend to polarise 
between physiological phenomena, such as blood, sexual organs, birth, death and so on 
and a normative or ideological pole of meaning which includes kindness to children, 
reciprocity, generosity to kinsmen, and respect for elders. He suggests that if there is a 
high level of communitas in the society, then individuals will see no conflict between 
themselves and society. This, he argues fits in with Durkheim's notion of morality as 
being an essentially social phenomenon (Turner 1974: 55-56). 
I would disagree with Vertovec's argument that these ritual practices have been 
`truncated' or `refashioned' in line with social change or popularised to make them 
attractive to diaspora-born Hindus (Vertovec 2000: 17). On the contrary, I found the 
rituals practised in Britain, even by younger people, closely follow the same lines as 
they did forty years ago. Recently, I have found myself explaining to a professional, 
Brahman grandmother from Mumbai about the chhati ritual (six-day ritual) because her 
246 
relatives in India have been telling her she should perform it for her new grandson, but 
she did not know what to do. She thought this discussion with me was very amusing, 
but told me it was not uncommon for women in urban India to ask their British relatives 
about the correct way to perform rituals. 
Moral continuity is achieved through ritual action, which is constituted within a 
specific, historical and economic context. Children experience ritual through the social 
relations they have with their kin beginning at birth (or before), through which they 
constitute their own ideas of self and others and specific ideas of the world. Through 
multiple caregivers, children constitute a world of relationships in which 
interdependency is an integral part of kinship. Transformations occur in ritual practice 
and ritualised behaviour in different ways in different households. Meanings may be 
attached to rituals by certain older children and adults but are largely unimportant 
because ritual is primarily `just what we always do'. Gujarati people (Hindus and Jains) 
in Britain continue to share a specific sense of difference that separates them from other 
South Asian groups and the indigenous population. 
247 
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Glossary 
The following are words used in the Gujarati vernacular. Diacritics have not been used 
in the main text, but have been included here for clarity of pronounciation. 
ahimsa or ahinsa- a Sanskrit term implying non-violence to living creatures. An ethical 
principal of Jainism and adopted by some Hindus. Taken to extremes, it could mean the 
avoidance of green-leafed vegetables for fear of eating small creatures and covering 
one's mouth when outside. 
Ambäji-one of the mataji (goddesses). Worshipped during Navratri. A large, beautiful 
temple is devoted to her in the North of Gujarat, near the Rajasthan border. She is 
portrayed riding on her `vehicle' a lion. 
art! - a ritual act of worship. 
bä- grandmother, mother's or father's mother or grandmother. Implies a relationship of 
warmth from an elderly woman. 
bhabhi- sister-in-law. 
balmof'alä- the hair-cutting ceremony to remove the `birth hair', done at one and a 
quarter years, or at two and a half years. 
Baniya- or Bania, trader or merchant, also known as Vaniya or Vania. 
bahen-sister, including cousins and close friends. 
bhai- brother, including cousins and close friends. 
bhai-by- the day after Diwali when bhai visits bahen's house. She cooks him a meal 
and he gives her a present. 
bhakti- devotion usually involving emotion and ferver. 
bhajan- gathering of people to sing hymns and worship a god or saint. 
bhut- ghost that can be beneficent or malevolent. 
cha- tea is boiled with milk. Marsala cha is spiced tea. 
chandlo- red mark made on forehead before religious rites, sometimes called bhindi. 
char-rasta- crossroad, literally four roads. 
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chhati- the ceremony done six days after birth when Vidhata, the god of fate writes the 
child's future. 
choghadiya- auspicious and inauspicious time-periods on a calendar for performing 
rituals. 
dädd- paternal grandfather. 
ääi- paternal grandmother. 
phi- home-made yogurt or curd, eaten with most meals. 
äahl- lentils cooked in various spices. Eaten with rice. 
darshan- the viewing of a god, and being seen by that god. Demands a level of purity 
and the wearing of certain clothes, usually made of silk. 
deva/devi- male/female deity. 
dharma- religious duty or the way of truth. 
diksh-a- Jain or Hindu religious initiation into asceticism. 
divo - or Diva plural- candle made of ghee and moulded around a wick, used 
in pi jas. 
ditivali- or a pan-Indian term, or `deepavali'- the Festival of Light in October/November. 
foi- father's sister, who plays an important part in life-cycle rituals. 
gai-mar- the cow-goddess. Cows are venerated and cared for by local people in India. 
To kill a cow is a worse sin than killing a Brahman. 
Ganesh- the elephant god, the first and most important god to be worshipped on any 
auspicious occasion-moving house, getting married, going to university or any journey. 
A Ganesh puja takes place at the beginning of life-cycle rituals. Ganpati celebrations 
take place in September, when effigies of him are carried on open carts through the 
streets. In Mumbai, he is taken to the sea and submerged in the water. In Britain people 
may fill troughs with water in public halls and submerg images of Ganesh in them. 
garbo- earthenware pot used for puja at Navratri. 
Gayatri- one of the mataji, who rides on her `vehicle' a swan. 
garbä- dances done at Navratri. 
ghar- house, joint household or home. 
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ghee- clarified butter used in cooking and for making diva. 
ghol- sugar beet. 
gnäti- Sanskrit for caste, from the root gnan, Gujarati term usually used is nat or najat. 
gnan-knowledge. 
gotra- clan-like unit from one of the seven Rishis. Important when arranging marriages. 
guruji- a male spiritual leader who may travel to Britain from India several times a year. 
Female spiritual leaders are usually called mataji. 
Holi- spring Hindu festival when bonfires are lit and coloured powders thrown. 
Jäti- A colloquial term meaning caste but can also refer generally to a variety or type- 
such as a plant. 
Jalebi- strands of sweet, fried wheat eaten on special occasions such as New Year's 
Day. 
Janoi- sacred thread tied during ceremony for boys over 7 years in the Brahman and 
Lohana castes. After the tying of the thread they are sent to study and when they return 
they are considered to be men. The thread consists of many single theads twisted 
together, each one reminding the man of his obligations- to his god, his parents, his 
teachers etc. He cannot get married without it because he is not considered a man. 
Occasionally the thread is tied before the wedding. 
Jiv- the souls of microscopic organisms living on roots and green vegetables, which 
must not be killed, especially observed by Jains. 
Oka-- father's brother. 
Rjal- soot mixed with castor oil, used for putting around infant's eyes. 
kankoo- red vermillion powder used for making chandlo. 
karma- action which accumulates and attaches itself to the soul, so determining a 
person's fate after death and whether he or she is fit for reincarnation. 
kntlu- a sweet food made of nuts, glue, honey and ghee, given to mothers after birth. 
khir- a rice pudding made for the mataji at life-cycle rituals, but can be consumed at 
other times as well. 
257 
khichdi- a rice dish that is easy to digest and is given to children and convalescent 
people. 
kul- `root' or common ancestor. 
kuldevi- lineage goddess. 
kutumb- family or lineage. 
kholo bharvo- literally `putting in the lap', referring to the rice exchanged between the 
woman's mother and mother-in-law at the 7 `h month of pregnancy ceremony. 
Krishnä- worshipped as the incarnation of Vishnu. He is very important god in Gujarat. 
Jayshe Krishna being one of the main greetings. 
ladu- sweet food given at very special occasions, such as after the birth of a boy. 
Iota-the utensil on which a doll-like picture, or a coconut with a picture pinned to it of 
the mataji in life-cycle rituals-see photograph. 
1yo- take. 
mandir- temple devoted to one god or religious movement. 
mantra- chant or reading of Sanskrit, which produces positive energy and 
auspiciousness. 
mama- mother's brother. 
mami- mother's brother's wife. 
masü- mother's sister's husband. 
mast- mother's sister. 
mataji- a pantheon of female deities which have varying levels of purity attached to 
them. People often refer to Mataji as one goddess as well as many. 
melu- unclean or impure. 
mug beans-green lentils used in many rituals. 
murti- sacred Hindu or Jain idol. 
masti- mischief or horseplay. 
nano- maternal grandfather. 
258 
näni- maternal grandmother. 
najar-rage- the evil eye, a glance or look, the eye of jealousy, inflicted by someone 
known to the person, but not kin. 
nät or najat- caste. 
Navratri- festival of nine nights. Garbas are held in open spaces in Gujarat and inside 
in halls in Harrow. 
pani- water. 
parothä- fried wheat bread, which is flat, but thicker than rotli. 
Paryushan- Jain eight-day festival held in September. Women may fast for 6-16 days. 
prasäd- offerings of fruit, sugar and nuts to the gods. Occasionally cooked foods are 
given. 
puja- ritual worship of the gods at the household shrine or in a temple. It usually 
involves the giving of prasad. 
pt jari- a Brahman priest who conducts rituals. 
purl- puffed up fried, wheat bread. 
Fakhi- coloured threads tied around bhai's wrist by bahen at Rakshabandhan. 
Rändalmä- one of the mataji, who is evoked during life-cycle rituals. She is thought to 
protect pregnant women and young children. 
rangoli- coloured powders mixed with water and thrown at Holi also used to make floor 
decorations at Diwali and on other special occasions. 
rodi - flat bread made of wheat, which is eaten daily as a staple food. 
rotlo or rotra (plural) a thick bread made from millet rather than wheat flour. 
sädhu- a temple priest, sometimes called `saints' in the Swaminarayan movement. 
samaj- caste association. 
sansOr- the moral identity of the household. Similar to the Hindi word samskara 
meaning life-cycle rituals. Rituals transform the living body removing deficits and 
infusing positive qualities. 
säsu- mother-in-law. 
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savä-mahino- a month and a quarter- the time a woman should stay in the house after 
having a baby. 
sava-varshni- a year and a quarter-the usual time for a hair-cutting ceremony. 
sei -action on behalf of others-no expectation of return. 
shäk- vegetables. 
shakti- female, divine energy. `Shakti points' in Gujarat are places where the goddesses 
are thought to have left parts of themselves, as divine concentrations of energy- Now 
they have become pilgrimage sites. 
shrimant- pregnancy or referring to the seven month of pregnancy ritual. 
sidhu- raw food given to the Brahman from a ritual. 
slok- songs of praise or hymns to the gods. 
sua- spices put in water for women to drink after childbirth. 
Tirthankara- ford builder-one who founded and re-founds the Jain tradition. 
tulsi- sacred basil leaves used in ritual. 
varsna- attachment to the house and worldly goods, which has to be released after 
death. 
vidhy- knowledge, which can be sacred. 
260