The Indian Oedipus myth inverts the European structure into a mother-son couple

Evidence

A. K. Ramanujan, in his more recent study of the Indian Oedipus, has argued along rather similar lines; the deep structure of the myth is the same but the narrative viewpoint which governs the unfolding of the plot is that of the mother/son. In so far as a father figure is involved at all the conflict is enacted through surrogates. The usual pattern here is for the son to submit to the father’s authority and then to be allowed access to the mother’s desire. In other words we are dealing with a reversed or negative Oedipal structure where mother/son form a mutually seductive couple and the father is jealous of the son’s erotic attachment to Mum. The daughter equivalently has a strong identification with her father and takes her mother’s place in the field of paternal desire. This structure of feeling and fantasy therefore underwrites the rules of the Indian caste system which both demands the absolute submission of the son to the father and uses the bond with the mother to tie him into loyalty to the family. Here once again we have a version that does not conform to the European norm. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1362

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to cross-cultural variants of Oedipal structures and how family norms shape psychological templates, adjacent to the kinship/material analysis in The Namesake and Things Fall Apart.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how much of the ‘reversed Oedipus’ pattern is genuinely Indian versus Ramanujan’s construction — the claim that caste hierarchy is ‘underwritten’ by the mother-son bond is striking but unverified.