Why is North-Central India more Conservative?
“Where are the women?”, you may wonder, while walking down small streets in Jaipur. Patna’s hair salons are similarly staffed: entirely male. This tracks labour market data. Bihar and Rajasthan’s urban female labour force participation are 5% and 12% - the lowest in the world. “Has a woman ever left this village for work?” - I asked my hosts in Bihari villages. No. Quant data attests, labour migration is overwhelmingly male. Right across the Indo-Gangetic Plain, rural women tend to veil and remain close to the home. Sons may be celebrated like kings, scions of the family line, and perennially pampered - so called ‘Raja Beta’. Across the north, men eat first.
Karnataka was culturally different. When I arrived in a village, both men and women came out to meet me, eager to chat. The most vocal, assertive interlocutor was actually female: she had a lot to say! My host in Bangalore ran her own factory. Touring around, instructing workers, she was a commanding authority.
My observations from my two months of qualitative research across six states, staying with Indian families, are consistent with nationally representative data. Geography really matters.
An Indian woman with the exact same household wealth/ caste/ religion will likely have more autonomy if she lives in the South or North East. She is also more likely to survive infancy, become literate, eat alongside men, choose her own husband, marry later, exercise control over her dowry, socialise with friends, move more freely in her community, and work alongside men.
Caste and Hindu nationalism have traditionally been more salient up north. Southerners are half as likely to expressively oppose inter-caste marriages. They are also half as likely to say that only Hindus can be truly Indian. Religion is relatively less important for Southerners, and they seldom meditate. Opposition to inter-religious marriage is also drastically lower.
In 1990 the Government of India introduced affirmative action for lower castes, threatening Brahmans’ status. This catalysed a surge of votes for the right, especially up North.
Untouchability is also much higher in the North.
Why is North-Central India more conservative?
North-Central India thus appears to be especially conservative - concerning controls over women, Hindu nationalism and casteism.
A year ago, I assessed six contending hypotheses:
Wealth
Colonialism
Matriliny
Cousin marriage
Rice versus wheat
Central Asian invasions and rule, in 2nd millennium CE.
1-5 fail to explain India’s subnational cultural heterogeneity. 6 is possible. Attacks came from the north-west and Mughal rule was concentrated along the Indo-Gangetic plain. Muslims also idealised female seclusion, which may have spawned prestige bias. But that’s still unsatisfactory. Would remote villagers really have idealised Mughal overlords faraway? [Interested readers may consult my original essay, which lays out this evidence].
Anjali Verma’s excellent book on Early Medieval India rocked my priors. Even before Mughal rule, North India appears to have been more patriarchal. In the North, Hindu smrti commentators (idealising wifely devotion) exercised great authority, while in the South they were resisted. Jainism began in the Ganges basin, but during the Gupta dynasty this religious community migrated to Karnata and Tamil Nadu, where they attracted far greater support and royal patronage. Jains permitted women’s spiritual growth. The Bhakti movement (more successful in the south) encouraged women of all classes to preach. Southern territories were sometimes ruled in collaboration with female kin.
1-6 cannot explain this variation.
So what are the deeper roots of North-Central India’s conservatism?
I had overlooked something I already knew was extremely transformative…
Indo-European migration
Some human populations were especially patriarchal. When they conquered new territories, they imposed more patriarchal institutions and ideas.
Come, let’s time-travel and evaluate this evidence.
After 3300 BCE, Yamnaya pastoralists erupted out of the Pontic Steppe, armed with wagons and battle axes. They glorified brutish masculinity, butchered indigenous men, reproduced with the women, and imposed patrilineal clans. From Spain to Korea, the male line harks back to the steppe. Genetic evidence is clear: five thousand years ago, some male lineages had enormous reproductive success.
Conquest is a major driver of cultural change
European societies with the exact same geography, technology and socio-economic complexity differed enormously on gender.
The Minoans and Etruscans predated the Ancient Greeks and Romans. The Minoans mastered engineering, flood defences, terraced agriculture, large scale manufacturing, metal armour and maritime trade networks. Minoan paintings show women occupying prominent social positions in outdoor assemblies, fraternising freely with men. Women are depicted driving chariots, not caring for children indoors. The Gortyn code dating from 500 years after the Minoans provides further clues. Legally, women could choose their husbands, inherit property, and divorce unilaterally. Rapists were punished, but adulterous females were not. This suggests weak policing of female sexuality. Citizenship was also inherited bilaterally: if a free woman married a serf, her children would be free.
The Etruscan civilisation was also technologically advanced, oligarchic, and socially stratified (between citizens and slaves). Tombs depict women mingling in public: dining with men, excelling in athletics, blessing new kings in their roles as priestesses.
After these places were conquered by the Mycenaeans (Ancient Greeks) and Romans (with genetic roots and cultural assimilation from Indo-Europeans), female freedoms radically diminished.
Ancient Greeks were deeply concerned about paternity, inheritance, and citizernship. Wealthy families secluded female kin; statues of mortal women are often veiled. Women’s names were not uttered in public; they were only recognised as appendages to husbands and fathers. Patrilineal kinship was imperative: a woman without brothers was obliged to marry her nearest paternal relative. As Aristotle remarked, “A man is naturally superior to women and so the man should rule and the woman should be ruled”.
Son preference persisted in Greece in the 20th century, as shown by acute sex ratios.
India’s Four Ancestral Populations
India has four main population groups:
Ancestral North Indians
Ancestral South Indians
Ancestral Austro-Asiatic
Ancestral Tibeto-Burman
These emerged through migration and were reinforced through strict endogamy.
The Indus Valley Population (3300 – 1300 BCE) was formed by Iranian hunter-gatherers and Ancestral Ancient South Asians. This Bronze Age civilisation showed great complexity, but seems to have been very egalitarian. Archaeological research reveals no evidence of a ruling class or managerial elite.
In the second millennium BCE, Sintashta Steppe people travelled towards South Asia - harnessing their superior military technology of war chariots. Reproducing with the Indus Valley people, they created ‘Ancestral North Indians’.
South Asian steppe ancestry largely comes from males. Steppe men reproduced with local women. Steppe ancestry is highest among Brahmins and Bhumihars. However, non-Indo European y haplogroups are also found among upper caste groups today, indicating a degree of synthesis between local males and Indo-Europeans to produce upper caste groups.
Ancestral South Indians had virtually no steppe ancestry, some Indus Valley Civilisation, but mostly Ancient Ancestral South Indian.
Genetic data on four ancestral populations is perfectly consistent with linguistics: India has four main languages.
In the early Vedic period, diverse populations may have intermixed. The Rigveda (1500-1000 BCE) includes elements from Dravidian and Austro-Asiatic languages. Genetic evidence backs this up: India may have previously been more exogamous.
Upper caste populations in the north became much more endogamous around 1600 years ago, estimate Basu et al. That’s when the powerful Gupta Empire enforced moral strictures, under the age of Vedic Brahminism!
Basu and colleagues note,
“Males from dominant populations, possibly upper castes, with high ANI [Ancestral North Indian] component, mated outside of their caste, but their offspring were not allowed to be inducted into the caste”.
Outside the Gupta empire, there was still admixture (especially among tribals).
Why is North-Central India more Conservative?
India’s linguistic and cultural heterogeneity go way back. In the early medieval period, Hindu smriti commentators decreed that women and lower castes could not achieve spiritual enlightenment. Conservative ideals were strongest in the north, and more contested in the south (where women also co-ruled).
This geographical diversity cannot be explained by colonialism, matriliny, cousin marriage, crops or 2nd millennium invasions. Instead, we might look to earlier population movements.
The Indus Valley Civilisation was remarkably egalitarian, but then came Sintashta Steppe men - charging on war chariots. Reproducing with local women, they formed Ancestral North Indians. Centuries later, the Gupta Empire enforced caste endogamy. Smriti commentators also extolled pre-pubescent marriage and widow chastity.
Imperial rulers empowered religious authorities, who preached that spiritual growth and liberation were contingent on casteist patriarchy. Purity and pollution became more widely embraced. Social norms may have persisted for millennia, just like Indo-Aryan languages.
If Rajput honour was contingent on female chastity, subsequent invasions may have catalysed cultural tightening and even stricter controls. That would explain why the first recorded sati was in 9th century Rajasthan.
Culture is never static, it’s always contested. But 20th century anti-casteist movements have been more successful in the South, where there is less Indo-Aryan ancestry.
Very interesting post Alice, if you were to discuss these issues with Razib Khan on a podcast it could make for a great conversation.
Very interesting to see Odisha standing out very negatively on the first two parameters. Culturally and anecdotally though, the difference with Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and South Bengal could not be that different since though these are geographically different states, it forms a cultural unity in terms of social practices.