In this section I will reflects on a central aspect of the society in eastern Sri Lanka. Fuglerud writes that “[…] marriage, and the transfer of property with which is it connected, is the main mechanism through which traditional society as a social formation was, and to some extent still is, reproduced.” (Fulgerud 1999:142) Marriage is highly connected to the reproduction of
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the family line. I will return to the importance of marriage further down, but I believe that his statement can support an argument that the family is of great importance in the social world for people on the east coast of Sri Lanka. To understand the connection between migration and kinship on Sri Lanka, it is vital to be aware of the connection between family, marriage and dowry. The women in this thesis migrate to earn money for dowry. This could therefore be understood as a means towards securing the future of the family and maintaining family relations. Here I will look mainly at the family and its structures.
In the east and north of Sri Lanka they have a matrilineal system which means that the daughter inherits from her mother. The matrilineal kinship pattern in the Batticaloan region has much in common with matrilineal castes in Kerala, India, but differs distinctly in its performance. The similarities support a common history, but show a contemporary disparity.
The Batticaloan developments has according to McGilvray led to the contemporary matrilocal residence and dowry system, giving Tamil and Moorish women more domestic influence and economic security than in most traditional South Asian family systems. (McGilvray 2008:16) That the family structures and the matrilineal system have made women more influential in the home is not agreed upon by other scholars. Particularly Thiruchrandran argues that despite the notion of the female power, Shakti, which exist in the Hindu society in Southern India and Sri Lanka, women are subjected to subordination “by a common ideology” (Thirucherandan 1997:xi) one that also applies in the Batticaloan context.
The people in Batticaloa have also developed a system of uxorilocal marriage which means that it is very common for the husband to move into his new wife´s residence, which is also quite often the old house of the wife´s parents or a newly built house on the parent‟s yard or as close as possible. The matrilocality is connected to the cross-cousin marriage because the understanding is not that the daughter is given away through marriage, rather that the man is reunited with his mother‟s kin. (Fuglerud 1999:147) In the family where I stayed during fieldwork the mother‟s sister was married with her cross-cousin, which is either her mother´s brother´s son, or her father´s sister´s son. One could say that this system puts greater emphasis on the importance of the extended family. The mother´s sister´s children and father´s
brother‟s children would be called brothers or sisters and are not considered acceptable for marriage, but the traditional cross-cousin marriage would be defined as the preferred arranged marriage. […] marriage is seen as reproducing the already existing kindred. That is the
explicit reason to why cross-cousin marriage is valued. (Fuglerud 1999:147)
63 Sri Lanka has a national law which applies to everyone, but at the same time there are other local laws and customary laws which also need to be taken in consideration, for example when buying or inheriting land. In Batticaloa the society is widely acknowledged to be more matrilineal than in the Northern Province, and because the Batticaloan Mukkuwar customary law is not codified and the land categories that exist in the north of Sri Lanka do not in Batticaloa the result is often that most of the land and assets are given as dowry, leaving little or nothing to inherit. These local customs and laws have many implications on women and are therefore important to consider in relation to migration.
Eastern Tamils and Muslims have deep and longstanding cultural ties, particularly in the neighbouring Batticaloa and Ampara districts. The two communities share the same matrilineal clan structures and marriage patterns, as well as other cultural and religious patterns. These are specific east coast cultural patterns that have helped to reinforce the distinction between eastern Tamils and Tamils from the Jaffna Peninsula whose high caste leadership generally looked down on Batticaloa Tamils for their lower caste and inferior Sanskrit Hindu rituals. (ICG 2008:7)
The matrilocal structure in the area has been weakened because of the vast resettling of people, where this process has transformed the landowning patterns in the area. Although some of the women encountered lived in coconut fibre houses or houses with tin walls, many had received new houses from different aid organizations, the UN or the government as a consequence of the conflict or the Tsunami. Some who had not received houses had managed to build one, and some had not. When people received new houses from different
organizations the local traditions were not respected, and many men ended up being the owners. (Maunaguru & Emmanuel 2010) The report of Maunaguru and Emmanuel focuses on the Post-Tsunami resettlement and acknowledges the effect the disaster had on women´s rights to land and failures by the government in recognizing local customs regarding
matrilineal inheritance. This emerged again in the course of the research done for this thesis, where several women said that they had been legally the owners of their house, but the new house was either written in both the husband and the wife‟s name, or only in the name of the husband. Logically the inheritance system should keep the mother and father comfortable until death but dowry, functioning as a pre-mortem inheritance, is so important that the assets are given away before such time.
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