Siva And Her Sisters: Gender, Caste, And Class In Rural South India

I read this book in a college course which studied the cultures and languages of Southeast Asia. A well written, scholar's look at some surprising data concerning cultural differences between Northern and Southern India. I did not find this book to be a feminist work in any extreme sense, it attempts to be a factual and objective study of the role of women throughout India. In that sense, it would serve as an important work to study in a feminist curriculum. The main argument is that in the South women have more power, higher status, and society is more centered around the female (although not a matriarchy in any sense) in comparison to the north. The north is well known to be severely patriarchal. A menstruating woman is considered filthy and is hidden away from the rest of her family; in marriage, a woman always moves to her husbands household, thus ensuring that women are eternal "strangers" or outsiders at home (in the sense that they are not living with their blood relatives). The author notes that the cultural ways of the North are spreading to the South. Other subjects of interest include the caste system and Jatis, N/S superstitions, the modernization of India, the "rambling" Indian male workforce and its effects on society. Also sanskritization, or the adoption of upper-caste norms by lower castes, the fluidity of the caste system, is an important subject here. Its been over year since I read this, but it was worthwhile and very educational, has stuck with me.