Hey guys, Aradhana, now known as Rosa is back with some great content for all of you. I’ve been on a detour for five years, managing the page Karutthu Kannammaa. It has been taken down by Facebook and I suspect it’s due to reports from clueless Tamil Nadu men. Facebook is a lousy platform to continue my activism so I am back to Retamil.com.
I am going to talk about endogamy, the practice of marrying within the family. In our Tamil community, it’s acceptable if not normal to marry cousins, *(mother’s brother’s children, father’s sister’s children) and maternal uncle.
Endogamy was widely practiced in royalty – from the ancient Egyptians to the Habsburg dynasty and many European royalties. They believed that by marrying their own sister and cousins will result in a purebred blue-blood, that is a royal hybrid. Many European royalties believed in that and the belief basically screwed their ass and resulted in their own doom. Many were grievously ill, died early deaths and suffered from mental illnesses.
Enter science = natural and sexual selection.
I will simplify it for you. If you have children with a person who is of your consanguinity, there will be little gene pool to select from to create a strong, fit offspring via natural selection. Defective recessive genes from both parents many a time combine in the child causing genetic diseases and congenital defects. This is why marrying within the family is discouraged today by health experts.
The royalties didn’t know better back then – the discovery of genes and DNA weren’t yet made during their time. So, their ignorance can be forgiven. If you didn’t know, Queen Elizabeth’s husband is her third cousin. But, the British royalty rectified their mistake from Prince Charles’ marriage to Lady Diana Spencer to Prince Harry marrying Meghan Markle – they learned their lesson after recurring hemophilia within the family, characterised by the lack of blood-clotting factors – on second thoughts, it’s love particularly in Prince Harry’s case. Endogamous procreation is the cause of that in the royal families. Hemophilia’s moniker is ‘the royal disease.’
Harry & Meghan
Our Tamil/South Indian community, particularly, is yet to learn the important lesson sanctioned by science. This is especially true in India due to the caste system. They discourage intercaste marriage because then they feel that their caste purity diminishes and that their honor is besmirched. They encourage marrying within their caste which is close consanguinity and think that they are doing their community a great favor when they are heading straight to their own downfall. Whenever I hear these caste leaders from India, or more specifically, Tamil Nadu going on and on saying that “I am protecting my caste by opposing intercaste marriage,” I am only reminded of Dr. Shalini’s quote, “Yov, main matter laye kotta vuttuta. Nee ennatha kapaatha pora?” Pakistani Muslims practice endogamy in the UK and it resulted in an upsurge of horrible genetic diseases in the community. Watch the documentary below:
Yes, main matter as in healthy offspring as a result of parents being of different genetic makeup so that a wide gene pool is present where natural selection has a lot of genes to choose from, averting the defective genes. The longer the genetic makeup distance of parents, the better.
Another reason endogamy is practiced in South Indian communities is so that riches and property don’t go out from the family. Preferably, adults should build their own wealth. Relying on ancestral wealth is indignity. Above all, property laws are in place – the fear of wealth going out in this day is the height of cretinism.
I would have loved it if the movie Hey Nee Romba Azhaga Irukke ended up with Raji rejecting Hari outright and not endorse cousin marriage. I hope such a Tamil movie is made to educate all the caste purity, obsessed people.
This issue of endogamy is personal for me
I have a genetic disease (I do not wish to disclose its name) and although my parents’ endogamous relationship (my dad was my mom’s maternal uncle) isn’t entirely to blame, it has to take some blame. My half-siblings from my dad’s first marriage (his first wife is my mother’s eldest birth sister, also his niece – if you are having a WTF moment, I completely understand) and my birth sister don’t have any genetic diseases. I am the runt of the litter and I got the end of a bad deal. On why my dad, who was ironically a medical officer married 2 of his nieces, it was his mother’s death bed wish.
It’s the norm for our grandparents and elders to ruin our lives by these seemingly innocuous wishes. Just because they are dying, they can’t tell us to marry or who to marry. They will die peacefully. It’s us who have to die while living daily due to their inane and intrusive wishes.
But, that’s not the end of the story of endogamy in my family, albeit with a twist
My cousins, my youngest aunt’s son and my 3rd uncle’s daughter were in love. Not naturally of course. It’s due to brainwashing. Nature prevents these kinds of unions – that’s why lionesses chase out teen male lions out from the pride. It’s to prevent inbreeding. We wouldn’t even like the smell of those who share blood relations with us, what more be sexually attracted to them. Don’t believe the deal in the Game of Thrones – the incest of Cersei. Personally, for me, that type of sex is fine but not children from that type of sex.
Now, coming back to my cousins, they broke up due to not only them finding themselves incompatible with each other but also because it’s unhealthy to have an endogamous relationship. My male cousin married a Chinese lady and has 2 kids while my female cousin married a guy from Chennai, India and has a son named Trishwa whom I always mistakenly call as “Trisha.” Both unions are very, very, very healthy and that’s how we should choose our partners esp if we want to have children with them.
Another notable and recommended incident in my family is my female cousin and the youngest brother of our youngest uncle’s wife falling in love. In the murai angle, they will be brother and sister and initially, the love was opposed. But, since they were of different castes, everyone eventually gave the green light. Today, they are happily married and blessed with 4 healthy, intelligent and beautiful children.
The Conclusion
So, by wanting to marry within caste and wanting to kill own daughters because they are pregnant with other caste men’s child in the name of honor and dignity is nengale ungalku vechikra aapu. The worst part of this is parents not letting daughters to go for a job because then the women will get so empowered, they will decide who to marry. This is true in the upper castes in South India where the % of women working is dropping and the age of girls being married off gets younger.
Nature is always more powerful and smarter than us human beings and we are all bound to nature’s laws. Outsmarting nature in this aspect is futile. I’ll leave y’all with a prediction on how your caste purity obsession will end by a lesson of the history of Charles 2 of Spain who bore the full brunt of generations of inbreeding. Read. Be horrified. Rectify your mistake. There’s nothing purer and honorable than life. If you aren’t alive, who will be there to uphold purity and honor?
Charles 2 of Spain and the Habsburg jaw
This poor king’s autopsy, who was infamously ugly and of poor intellect and died at the age of 39 revealed the following:
“The physician who carried out the autopsy of the king’s body reportedly noted that the corpse “did not contain a single drop of blood; his heart was the size of a peppercorn; his lungs corroded; his intestines rotten and gangrenous; he had a single testicle, black as coal, and his head was full of water.”
This is the trajectory you’re heading slowly but surely by allowing the manifestation of endogamy for whatever reason, ignoring all the medical caveats.
One Comment
Vasuki
Brilliant write-up on this issue , still nobody is ready to listen !!!