ruling dynasties, culminating with the overthrow of the south Indian Hindu. Vijayanagara Empire in 1565 (Thapar, 1986; Spear, 1986; Stein, 1998). Especially.
J. biosoc. Sci. (2000) 32, 433–442 2000 Cambridge University Press
Printed in the United Kingdom
SOCIODEMOGRAPHIC CORRELATES OF CONSANGUINEOUS MARRIAGE IN THE MUSLIM POPULATION OF INDIA R. HUSSAIN* A. H. BITTLES† *The University of New England, Armidale and †Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia Summary. Using data derived from the 1992–1993 National Family Health Survey, the sociodemographic characteristics of consanguineous marriage were determined in the Muslim population of India. In this nationally representative sample of 8436 women, consanguineous marriages accounted for 22·0% of the total. No differences between the consanguineous and non-consanguineous groups were observed in terms of mean age at marriage or mean age at cohabitation. The study confirmed the negative association between consanguineous marriage and maternal education but also indicated that women in consanguineous unions were more likely to be employed, albeit mainly in agricultural work on behalf of the family. Consanguineous couples more frequently lived in smaller towns and in an extended family environment. Somewhat conflicting results were obtained with indicators of socioeconomic status, but the overall picture suggested that consanguineous households had greater access to consumer goods because of their larger number of co-resident persons.
Introduction The Muslim communities of India have a long historical tradition, dating from the early trading links established by Arab merchants who settled on the Malabar coast of south–west India, the present-day state of Kerala, during the 8th century AD (Thapar, 1986). A Muslim Arab army briefly conquered Sind and parts of Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat in the 8th century, and following the increasingly successful incursions into the sub-continent by Turkic Mamluk, Afghan and finally Mughal armies from the 12th century onwards, Islam gradually became the religion of the ruling dynasties, culminating with the overthrow of the south Indian Hindu Vijayanagara Empire in 1565 (Thapar, 1986; Spear, 1986; Stein, 1998). Especially during the period of Mughal rule, from 1526 to 1858, it is believed that the conversion of Hindus to Islam occurred on a substantial scale. 433
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Recent estimates indicate that there are some 100 to 120 million Muslims in India (Office of Registrar General and Census Commission, 1995), and both in absolute and proportional terms their numbers have increased since Independence, from 9·9% of the population of 361 million in 1951 (Davies, 1976) to approximately 12·0% of the 1991 population of 844 million (Bhasin & Bhasin, 1994). In common with Muslim populations throughout North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia (Bittles, 1994; Khlat, 1997), a significant proportion of Muslim marriages in India are between close biological relatives, i.e. second cousins or closer (Bittles & Hussain, 2000). Within South Asia, the highest levels of consanguineous marriage generally have been reported in rural areas and among communities of low socioeconomic status (Rao, Inbaraj & Jesudian, 1972; Rao & Inbaraj, 1977; Reddy, 1988; Bittles et al., 1991). Further, women in consanguineous unions tend to have a lower level of education, and they are more likely both to be married and to start childbearing at an earlier age (Bittles, Grant & Shami, 1993; Hussain & Bittles, 1998, 1999). Since sociodemographic factors of this nature are known to exert a significant influence on early survival, especially in childhood (Bittles, 1994; Hussain & Bittles, 1998), the aim of the present study was to assess the sociodemographic correlates of consanguineous unions in the Muslim population of India, as it has been clearly demonstrated that failure to control for such variables may significantly compromise estimates of the biological consequences of human inbreeding (Grant & Bittles, 1997). Subjects and methods The investigation was based on a secondary analysis of the Indian National Family Health Survey (NFHS) which was conducted during the years 1992 and 1993 (IIPS, 1995). The NFHS was a nationally representative, cross-sectional, demographic and health survey similar in design to the general format adopted by the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) series. The interview schedules were based on the DHS Model B Questionnaire, designed primarily for use in countries with a low contraceptive prevalence rate, supplemented with a number of additional questions specific to the Indian context. All interviews were conducted by trained female staff in the respondents’ own language. For the analysis, data on the Muslim population surveyed by the NFHS were first abstracted. The total NFHS survey sample was based on 89,777 ever-married women aged 13 to 49 years, of which the Muslim sub-sample contributed 9485 cases. A number of exclusion criteria were applied and, where appropriate, entries were discarded from the analysis sample. The categories excluded were: women who reported having contracted more than one marriage (n=301); women who were recorded as visitors and not usual residents of the household interviewed (n=739); cases reporting a consanguineous union between couples related beyond second cousin (n=301); and nine cases which had to be excluded because information on their consanguinity status was incomplete. The rationale for the exclusion of women who were married more than once was to remove any response errors that could occur in questions on age and duration of marriage, as well as questions pertaining to socioeconomic status. The exclusion of women who were visitors to the interviewed household was inevitable due to a
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consequent lack of information on some of the household-level variables. Finally, those couples who reported a consanguineous marriage beyond second cousin, equivalent to a coefficient of inbreeding F
