ABSTRACT
The centrality of women in economic, social, and even political, spheres has defined the foundational characteristics of the matrilineal/matriarchal/matrifocal cultures prevalent in certain parts of Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Mozambique, Comoros, Kenya, and Somalia. There is no conceptual consensus among scholars to identify the convergences and divergences of this social system. Since the mid-nineteenth century, scholars have grappled with varying conceptual names and the history of social anthropology itself has been the one of constant attempts to name and identify this women-centred social system. In this chapter, I explore the “indigenous” names used to re/present the system in order to see the translatability and commensurability. I focus on the Malayalam term marumakkattāyam in relation to its counterpart names in other languages. Marumakkattāyam has been usually translated as matrilineality, which is an insufficient translation, for the connotation of the root-word marumakkaḷ is contested. The inheritance system of the marumakkattayām is designed to exclude children-in-laws from succession, but the ambiguity in the term questions the very foundations of the social system. How do the community engage with these issues, historically and contemporarily? On the basis of their conceptions, how can we understand better the women-centred social systems of the region as well as the wider Indian Ocean littoral?
