Persistence and Change: Marriage and Family Among the Overseas Indians in the Caribbean

Abstract

Indians came to the Caribbean under the system of indenture to augment the labour shortage in the plantations around the middle of the nineteenth century. Rather than returning after the contractual period, many Indians stayed on, accepting the Caribbean as their new found home. Thus began a symbiotic relationship of the Indian culture with the Caribbean society in the new habitat. This paper outlines the lives of the overseas Indians with reference to aspects of marriage, including the selection of spouses, different kinds of marriage and its dissolution. The paper also discusses the institution of family and its internal mechanisms in terms of patterns of authority, inheritance, conflicts, the position of women and the system of kinship. The overseas Indians moved from tradition to modernity, and from custom to legality. There was also resistance to change and deviations as some values struggled to be reinforced, while others were discarded. On the whole, kinship relations remained of vital importance for the sake of mutual cooperation and social intercourse in a foreign land. Interpersonal relations helped to regulate and standardize behaviour. In providing these accounts, this paper seeks to portray the persistence and change of traditional Indian social intuitions and customs among the overseas community in the Caribbean.