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The following forms and causes of exogamy are found in India!
Forms of Exogamy
(i) Gotra Exogamy:
Among the Hindus the prevailing practice is to marry outside the ‘gotra’. People of the same ‘gotra’ are believed to have similar blood and so their inter-marriage is prohibited.
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(ii) Pravar Exogamy:
Marriage between persons belonging to the same pravar is also forbidden among the Hindus especially Brahmins. Pravar is a kind of religious and spiritual bond. People who utter the name of a common saint at religious functions are believed to belong to the same pravar.
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The Hindu Marriage Disabilities Removal Act, 1949 has removed all restrictions regarding gotra and pravar exogamy.
(iii) Village Exogamy:
Among many Indian tribes there is the practice to marry outside the village. This restriction is prevalent in the Munda and other tribes of Chhota Nagpur of Madhya Pradesh. The Naga tribe of Assam is divided into khels. Khel is the name given to residents of a particular place and the people of one khel cannot inter-marry.
(iv) Pinda Exogamy:
In Hindu society marriage within the pinda is prohibited. Pinda means common parentage. According to Brahaspati, off spring from five maternal generations and seven paternal generations are sapinda and they cannot inter-marry.
Causes of Exogamy:
According to Westermark, the most important cause of exogamy is the absence of the erotic feeling or the presence of sexual indifference between near related persons. But there are cases of people longing for incest which cannot be explained on the basis of theory advocated by Westermark. According to Davis, incest taboos exist because they are essential to and form part of the family structure.
In the absence of incest taboos, the different statuses and relationships in the family would become confused and thereby the organisational and functional efficiency of the family would be lost. If, for example, brothers and sisters are allowed to marry with each other, it would develop not only the sexual rivalry between brothers and between sisters but confusion would also result in the family relationships.
The brother would not only be the father of his child but also his ‘uncle’ and the sister would be not only his ‘mother’, but also his ‘aunt’. There would arise a family within a family. If sexual relations are permitted between parent and child, not only would sexual rivalry arise between mother and daughter and between father and son, the confusion of statuses would be phenomenal.
The child born of a father-daughter union would be a brother of his own mother, a brother of his own uncle and a grandson of his own father. There would be thus a confusion of generations. Marriage functions not so much to permit sexual relations as to control and channelize them.
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Thus prohibition of incest is absolutely indispensable to the existence of family as a part of social organisation and that is why taboos on incest are everywhere imposed. It is not an act of passion but one of duty, an obligation to the group. George Murdock writes, “No form of conflict is more disruptive than sexual competition and jealousy.
The reduction of sexual rivalry between parents and children and between siblings consolidates the family as a co-operative social group, promotes the efficiency of its societal services, and thus strengthens the society as a whole.” In India till recently ‘sagotra’ marriages were held invalid, which were made legal in 1948. It seems that in ancient time people living in one household were not permitted to intermarry; but when the household broke up, the prohibited range of marriage was also contracted.