116 JOURNAL OF THE ASIATIC SOCIETY OF MUMBAI, ISSN: 0972-0766, Vol. XCV, No.39, 2022 A CRITICAL STUDY ON IMAYAM’S THE BEGETTER (2015): VICTIMIZATION OF INDIVIDUALS BY ENFORCING THE CODES OF SOCIAL STRUCTURE R Madhu Bala Research Scholar Ethiraj College for Women Chennai Email: madhuarieslitl@gmail.com Dr Ramana Devika Research supervisor & Assistant Professor Ethiraj College for Women Chennai The social structure of Indian society is constructed by various institutions such as religion, caste, class, gender etc. These institutions maintain this social structure by inculcating individuals' blind submissive codes of conduct. Forcible widowhood, endogamy, and honour-killing are a few examples of these codes of conduct. When individuals blindly follow these codes of conduct, they end up being victimised in various facets of life, and the institutionalised power always controls their activities. Even after years of intense social reform movements in India, this remains the predominant cause of the persisting violence of caste, gender and religion in the society. This is evident in the recent Hindu News report (May 7, 2022) by the Social Justice and Human Rights Unit Public Information Officer, which states, “The police identified 445 villages as atrocity-prone and another 341 villages as dormant- atrocity-prone in Tamil Nadu in 2021”. So it's crucial to understand the mechanism of the social structure in victimising the individuals. For this, the study has chosen the novella The Begetter (2015) by Imayam and tends to delve deep into the characterisation deployed by the author. Explicating the central plot of action and the different characterisations woven around devising Bhakkiyam’s honour - killing, the research aims to show how they are victimised by the various facets of the social structure. Index Terms: Social structure, India, codes, Mechanisms, Victimization, Violence. Religion, caste, class, and gender were the different facets of institutions that shaped the structure of Indian society in various ways. To keep this social order in place, these organisations train the masses with the core beliefs of submission. Weberian stratification states that class, status and power are the three component theories of stratification. In India, the society's stratification is not based on class but primarily based on caste and gender - predetermined by birth for which specific roles and rules are assigned. According to Weber's conception, maintaining the ethnicity of the group and its members is to be politically organised and mobilised around the ethnic identity. In the Indian context, to politically organise the caste hierarchy and maintain the ethnicity of each caste group, those codes of roles were made into religious laws and presented as religious texts such as Manusmriti. Making it religious makes it abstract and unquestionably follows with fear of God. In his detailed research on caste and its genesis, Ambedkar brought out the mechanism of caste as a hierarchical structure in Indian society. The hierarchical structure in society based on caste results in the formation of homogeneous groups within the society. This hierarchy is a structure based on classes such as Brahmins (priestly class), the Kshatriya (military class), the Vaishya (merchant class), and the shudra (menial class). Each of these groups forms a closed structure and prevents socialisation with the others in terms of marriage, dining etc. These prohibitions are to be strictly maintained between the so-called upper caste and lower caste, for which endogamy serves as a tool. According to Dr B R Ambedkar, "superposition of endogamy on exogamy means the creation of caste".To keep the members of each group in control, customs like Sati, enforced widowhood, strict opposition to intercaste marriages and girl marriage were imposed. These seem to be the essential devices to perpetuate endogamy. For Ambedkar, the origin and mechanism of caste is nothing but the origin and mechanism of endogamy. This closed structure of endogamy originates in the class of people called Brahmins, who were strict followers of the customs. Manu is not the lawgiver of caste; instead, he is the one who emphasises the caste system by preaching caste Dharma. Preaching the customs of the caste system through shastras and Puranas made it institutionalised into a religious entity. Originating from the Brahmin caste as a closed structure, endogamy became the fancy principle of