8 - Tracing cross-regional diversities

Summary

More than one student of India, confronted by the variety of its regional languages and cultures, has compared the subcontinent, in this respect, to the whole of Europe.

(Bhatt 1980: 43)

A description can give but a generalized picture of a type of social conduct which is ever changing and it is necessary to understand the variety and mode of the changes which are found in each … region … to understand well the implications of a social structure.

(Karve 1965: 378)

Woven through the discussion so far has been the argument that there are marked geographic variations in the incidence and strength of factors which affect women's ability to claim and control land. Here I will seek to systematically examine these variations, drawing upon a number of crossregional tables and maps that I have constructed. This is meant to provide a broad regional gradation of the degree of difficulty women are likely to face in realizing their inheritance claims in arable land and in exercising control over its management. In addition, the cross-regional presentation is meant to serve two purposes: one, to make the general point that there is a marked diversity in women's situation across South Asia, and so to contradict the excessive generalizations about the status of South Asian women that proliferate in the literature; and two, to share with other scholars my ethnographic information base which they could draw upon and perhaps use to answer questions not addressed in this book.