In 1896, the government of

Madras Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

passed the Malabar Marriage Act in response to the recommendations of the Malabar Marriage Commission of 1891. This allowed members of any caste practising ''

marumakkatayam Marumakkathayam was a system of matrilineal inheritance prevalent in regions what now form part of the southern Indian state Kerala. Descent and the inheritance of property was traced through females. It was followed by all Nair castes, Ambal ...

'' ( matriliny) in Malabar to register a '' sambandham'' as a

marriage Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognized union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children, and between ...

. It was permissive rather than restrictive law: whether or not a relationship was registered was entirely the decision of the people involved in that relationship. Initiated by the work of Sir C. Sankaran Nair, the measure was largely a failure, with Panikkar noting that in the 20 years following introduction of the Act only six such relationships were registered and that all of those involved family members of Nair himself.

Sambandham and marumakkatayam

''Sambandham'' was a form of relationship practiced by the

Nair The Nair , also known as Nayar, are a group of Indian Hindu castes, described by anthropologist Kathleen Gough as "not a unitary group but a named category of castes". The Nair include several castes and many subdivisions, not all of whom hist ...

caste. Anthropologist Christopher Fuller has said that, "The Nayars' marriage system has made them one of the most famous of all communities in anthropological circles". Thomas Nossiter has commented that their system, which included the pre-pubertal '' thalikettu kalyanam'' rite and permitted both hypergamy and a form of

polyandry Polyandry (; ) is a form of polygamy in which a woman takes two or more husbands at the same time. Polyandry is contrasted with polygyny, involving one male and two or more females. If a marriage involves a plural number of "husbands and wives" ...

, "was so loosely arranged as to raise doubts as to whether 'marriage' existed at all." Men and women could both have several partners, and they could both break away from those partners and take other partners with a minimum of effort. The ''sambandham'' relationship was not recognised by the British colonial government, who saw it as akin to concubinage. The civil courts refused jurisdiction, principally because the relationship could so easily be dissolved by either party to it and because there were no rights of property connected to it. ''Marumakkatayam'' was also a source of angst among the colonial administrators. Expressions of dissatisfaction with ''marumakkatayam'' became prominent in newspapers of the 1870s and 1880s, and were also voiced by the colonial administrator William Logan in an official report of that period. Matters came to a head in 1890 when Nair introduced a bill seeking legitimisation of the customs in the Madras Legislative Council, causing the administration to establish the Malabar Marriage Commission in 1891. This was to investigate matrilineal customs and was also charged with recommending whether or not legal measures should be used to effect changes to the traditional practices for marriage, family organisation and inheritance.

References

{{Reflist 1896 in India Kerala state legislation Indian family law Social history of India Marriage law in India