ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on upwardly mobile groups within the middle-ranking Muthurajah caste. Upward class mobility and changing caste status are resulting in a radical change in gender relations. Historically an impoverished agriculturist caste, the rising class position of its upwardly mobile families is closely linked to their aspirations for higher social status. An examination of traditional marriage preferences reveals important differences between Non-Brahmin and Brahmin kinship discourses. All kinship preferences have a strong moral content, and so the obvious preference for non-kin espoused so widely in the survey suggests that the new moral order has arrived in Aruloor. Brahmins formally state a strong preference for patrilateral marriage, in keeping with their patrilineal and male-centered ethos. Non-Brahmin Tamils formally and equally strongly prefer matrilateral marriage. The chapter argues that Trautmann bemoans the lack of ethnographic data establishing correlations between marriage rules and caste in “the Dravidian kinship region”.
