Caste and Kinship in Kangra (An Old and Rare Book)

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This report on fieldwork carried out between October 1966 and December 1968 is a revised version of a PhD thesis submitted to the University of Cambridge in 1971. Though my stay was very brief, I was fortunate to be able to revisit Kangra in 1974, and this provided me with an opportunity to check on various points of detailed ethnography.

My original plan when I went to the field was to study local-level politics. Though I did in fact devote a good deal of time to this interest throughout the fieldwork, I found myself becoming increasingly interested in the classic topics of caste and kinship, and it is on this aspect of my material that the present study is focussed.

Throughout the period of fieldwork my headquarters were located in mauza Chadhiar in Palampur sub-division, though I also stayed for some weeks in mauza Khera (also in Palampur) and in mauza Indaura in Nurpur subdivision. In addition I made a series of more cursory visits to various other parts of the district, and became quite familiar with much of Palampur sub-division. But I write primarily about the locality I know well, and cannot claim with confidence that all my data are equally valid for the whole district. When I speak of this or that as Kangra custom, I ask the reader to bear this qualification in mind.

I am also conscious that the view of Kangra society I present is one seen through the eyes of the higher castes. In Chadhiar I lived with a Brahman family; and this fact has undoubtedly had a good deal of influence on the nature of my material since it tended to restrict my contacts with people of the very lowest castes. Though a significant proportion of my closest friends and best informants were Kolis an untouchable though not one of the most polluting castes it was otherwise the case that my freest contacts were with people of 'clean caste.

In the interests of the general reader I employ English equivalents of those caste names which denote a specific occupation; and I have taken the liberty of pluralizing Indian terms in English fashion by adding an 's'. I do so with apologies to the Indian reader who finds this as ludicrous as chevals would be to a Frenchman reading a monograph on the Provençal horse-trade; and on the plea that some of the most eminent Indian anthropologists adopt the same expedient. Throughout the text I use the real names of places but (generally) pseudonyms for people. At various points in the text I use the conventional shorthand for kinship relations:

B brother

C child

D daughter

e elder

F father

H husband

M mother

S son

W wife

y younger

Z sister

Thus eBWM denotes the elder brother's wife's mother; HyZS, the husband's younger sister's son, etc.

During the period of fieldwork an enormous number of Kangra people went out of their way to help me with my research, and received me with kindness and hospitality. Since it is impossible to list them all, and would be invidious to list a few, I must thank them collectively for their generosity and forbearance. I cannot, however, avoid a special mention of Pt Kesho Ram Vaid, Smt Beasan Devi and Prito Devi, who gave me a home in Chadhiar and who paid me the honour of treating me as a member of their family. Shri Om Prakash Vedwe, who worked as my assistant throughout the second year of fieldwork, also has a very special claim on my gratitude.