Madras Presidency - Culture and Society

Culture and Society

Hindus, Muslims and Christians generally followed a joint family system. The society was largely patriarchal with the eldest male member the leader of the family. Most of the presidency followed a patrilineal system of inheritance. The only exceptions were the district of Malabar and the princely states of Travancore and Cochin which practised the marumakkathayam system.

Women were expected to confine themselves to indoor activities and the maintenance of the household. Muslims and high-caste Hindu women observed purdah. The daughter in the family rarely received an education and usually helped her mother with household chores. Upon marrying, she moved to the house of her in-laws where she was expected to serve her husband and the elder members of his family. There have been recorded instances of torture and ill treatment of daughter-in-laws. A Brahmin widow was expected to shave her head and was subjected to numerous indignities.

Rural society comprised villages where people of different communities lived together. Brahmins lived in separate streets called agraharams. Untouchables lived outside village limits in small hamlets called cheris and were strictly forbidden from having houses in the village. They were also forbidden from entering important Hindu temples or approaching high-caste Hindus.

With the influx of Western education starting from the middle of the 19th century, social reforms were introduced to remove the problems of traditional Indian society. The Malabar Marriage Act of 1896 recognized sambandham contracts as legal marriages while the marmakkathayam system was abolished by the Marmakkathayam Law of 1933. Numerous measures were taken to improve the lot of Dalit outcasts. The Thirumala Tirupathi Devasthanams Act (1933), included Dalits in the devasthanams administration. The presidemcy's Temple Entry Authorization Act (1939) and its Temple Entry Proclamation (1936) of Travancore were aimed at elevating the status of Dalit and other low castes to a position equal to that of high-caste Hindus. In 1872, T. Muthuswamy Iyer established the Widow Remarriage Association in Madras and advocated the re-marriage of Brahmin widows. The devadasi system was regulated in 1927 and completely abolished on November 26, 1947. The Widow Re-marriage movement was spearheaded in the Godavari district by Kandukuri Veeresalingam. Most of the pioneers of social reform were Indian nationalists.

Traditional pastimes and forms of recreation in rural areas were cock-fighting, bull-fighting, village fairs and plays. Men in urban areas indulged in social and communistic activities at recreational clubs, music concerts or sabhas, dramas and welfare organizations. Carnatic music and bharatanatyam were especially patronized by the upper and upper-middle class Madras society. Of the sports introduced by the British in the presidency, cricket, tennis, football and hockey were the most popular. An annual cricket tournament, known as the Madras Presidency Matches, was held between Indians and Europeans during Pongal.

The presidency's first newspaper, the Madras Courier, was started on October 12, 1785 by Richard Johnston, a printer employed by the British East India Company. The first Indian-owned English-language newspaper was The Madras Crescent which was established by freedom-fighter Gazulu Lakshminarasu Chetty in October 1844. Lakshminarasu Chetty is also credited with the foundation of the Madras Presidency Association which was a forerunner of the Indian National Congress. The number of newspapers and periodicals published in the presidency totalled 821 in 1948. The two most popular English-language newspapers were The Hindu established by G. Subramania Iyer in 1878, and The Mail, established as the Madras Times by the Gantz family in 1868.

Regular radio service in the presidency commenced in 1938 when All India Radio established a station in Madras. Cinemas became popular in the 1930s and 1940s with the first film in a South Indian language, R. Nataraja Mudaliar's Tamil film Keechaka Vadham, released in 1916. The first sound films in Tamil and Telugu were made in 1931 while the first Kannada talkie Sati Sulochana was made in 1934 and the first Malayalam talkie Balan in 1938. There were film studios at Coimbatore, Salem, Madras and Karaikudi. Most early films were made in Coimbatore and Salem but from the 1940s onwards, Madras began to emerge as the principal center of film production. Until the 1950s, most films in Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam were made in Madras.