The rapid infrastructural and technological advancements are fast revamping to the face of India. The classic Indian joint family, with 3 or more generations stuffed in one house, how could it stay aloof from these changes?
The Indian family system has always fascinated the sociologists around the globe. They define Indian joint family as a group of people living under one roof, eat food cooked at one hearth, hold property in common and participate in common worship and are related to each other in any kindred.
Talk to an elderly NRI about his family back in India, he will fondly recall his long lost childhood spent amongst the warmth of parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, siblings and countless cousins... listening to granny's fairy tales and mythological stories, sharing and eating from the same platter, sleeping under the studded sky on the terrace after playing pranks on the most gullible of all... the house resonating the cheers and laughter would go quiet for only 6 hours in the night and again with the rising sun, the hustle and bustle resumed to"
Today, rarely you will find anything of the sort in towns at least, though the countryside will surely delight you with some such illustrations.
Any Indian cultural fanatic, considering it an evidence of the death of the family system and Indian culture altogether, will begin to shed tears and write a long eulogy.
HOLD ON! Before you join the bandwagon, bring the sensible you to the fore and recall the simple law of nature, CHANGE.
Structurally, yes, the Indian family system has definitely changed because India has changed. The agrarian immobile India is metamorphosing into increasingly non-agrarian and mobile. The waves of modernization and urbanization and growth of individualism have made Indians realise their untapped potential. The aspirational Indian, willingly or unwillingly, migrates in search of greener pastures and the parents and elders in the family are no longer the shackles on his/her feet.
As they say 'distances make the heart grow fonder', their ties with the parental house grow stronger. The parents and elders are still the spine of their life, the fountain-head of all wisdom and moral values navigating them through the sea of life. Come any festival or special day, the whole family gets united to celebrate the occasion with the same zeal and fervor. Who can better relate to this than the Indian diaspora itself, dispersed across the world?
The functional or psychological ~jointness at between the parental family and its ~subset at, wherever it is located, is still very much intact. Not bound by meaningless customs, new cultural conditions in the family have led to the decline in authoritarian patriarchal setup and making it more egalitarian. There are some heartening examples of married girls supporting their parents in old age. It is not impossible to find parents or a widow mother staying with a married daughter. Bilateral kinship relations are more and more recognized and accepted in any nuclear household in towns and cities. In fact, it is this new age Indian family, that has enabled India to grow and prosper at an incredible pace.
I am in no way going gaga over the rise of the nuclear household, nor am I wallowing in the past extolling the traditional joint family. I am just celebrating the dynamism of a society once notorious for being orthodox and immutable.
Deep familial relations are the most beautiful and reliable ones. They add hues and colours to the spectrum of life. If nurtured, treasured and kept close to the heart, no physical distance matters. This is what the Indian family system has come to epitomize.
