The concept of ‘Gotra’

When I go to the temple to make an offering, the priest inevitably asks me my ‘gotra’. It seems god will reject my token if I am unable to answer this query.

I sit in front of the holy pyre, with the man I am to wed beside me. The pundit performing the ceremony wants to know our gotra. And then pronounces that from this day hence I take on the gotra of my husband.

Gotra may not form a part of the daily lives of Hindus, but in a highly religious (even blindly religious to quite an extent) country like India, gotra is an integral part of the identity of those following Hinduism. Though made famous because of the innumerable crimes committed in a certain part of the nation under its pretext, the concept is understood by only a few. Gotra is much more than why honor killings have become rampant in India. Till I read about it in college, I too was unaware as to its significance. Like others, I believed it to be the inevitable add-on to my identity.

The Aryans from Central Asia migrated to the subcontinent and became native dwellers. They occupied the Indus plains originally and later moved further to the plains of the Ganges. With their settlement here, agriculture became the major activity and source of livelihood. So did the rearing of animals, especially the cow. Cow, or ‘gau’ in Sanskrit, was the basis of life in this agricultural society.

Each family invariably would own a cow. The animal would provide them with milk, which formed a vital part of the diet. It was a time when people had no distinct identity or surnames to distinguish. The social pattern evolved and grew in a way thus that the cow or gau became the sole mark of identification. The group of people, men, women and children, who occupied the same piece of land and had a common cow, or the single family unit, came to be known by a definite name. This name or the only identity at that point of time is known as gotra, derived from the word gau. Each family now had a gotra name. Those with the same gotra were therefore members of the same family and related by blood.

As families grew in size, they came to own many cows and bigger houses. Joint families got disintegrated into smaller units. Now those of the same gotra did not necessarily live together under a common roof or on same land. This fragmentation took place primarily due to growing population and opportunities. But the fact remained that they were blood relations, belonging to the same lineage and ancestry. So nuptial relations were not permitted and vehemently disallowed between members of the same gotra. To put is simply, the basis of this was the fact that they were siblings.

With time and uncontrollable population expansion, gotra got divided and subdivided. This is how we have various surnames. So people with different surnames can also belong to the same gotra. What we need to understand however, is that the Hindu society is strictly patriarchal. So the boy child in the family takes the family name, the surname and the gotra. The female child is born to the family, but takes on her husband’s name and gotra after marriage.

Gotra was thus the first known social identity of a Hindu family. The reason why it came into existence had little to do with customs, religion or norms. It was born only out of the necessity for identification, so people knew who belonged to which family. This earliest naming system became rigid much later.

Today many of us do not even know our gotra, and only a handful know its history. Like many other unnecessary appendages maybe we should give this up as well. A knowledge that does not exist in society but is only enforced because of redundant social norms acts as a mere deterrent to growth and nothing else.