Add to ORKGKinship is an important organizing principle in human societies. In the cross-cultural perspective, it varies in its range and significance. Impressed by its pivotal position in many simple societies which were the subject of rigorous and penetrating synchronic studies, anthropologists have tended to grant an unusual degree of autonomy to kinship. Its applicability needs to be examined carefully in the context of India. The country’s many religious communities, castes, and tribes in different cultural regions present an extraordinary variety. The system of kinship is itself a ‘sub-structure’ or an internal structure within the social structure. Kinship relations are streamlined through ‘cultural mechanism’ which give expression to multidime...