Can Love Conquer Caste?

Rajeev Singh, left, is a Rajput, a landholding caste. His wife, Anita Pharti, comes from the Dalit caste, still known as untouchables. They have helped other inter-caste couples elope. (By Emily Wax -- The Washington Post)
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Some of the most recent honor killings are being investigated in small towns outside New Delhi. Several involve runaways from different castes who were slain for eloping. This summer, a father turned himself in to police after using a knife to kill his 19-year-old daughter for marrying a Dalit factory worker.

There have even been cases overseas. In January, Subhash Chander, 57, an Indian immigrant living in Chicago, set a fire that killed his pregnant daughter, his son-in-law and his 3-year-old grandson. He told investigators that his daughter had married a man from a lower caste without permission. Similar cases have been reported in England and Australia.

Encouraging inter-caste marriages would break down discrimination and weave together millions of caste-segregated families, creating a new generation of "India's version of Obama," said Prem Chowdhry, author of the book "Contentious Marriages, Eloping Couples."

But rather than pay inter-caste couples, she believes the government should help organize a countrywide discussion on inter-caste marriages. Popular culture should be the venue, she said, with soap opera plots, Bollywood actors and famous cricket stars used to start a dialogue. "Caste has to be discussed more openly in modern India. We shouldn't be so arrogant as to deny one of our main weaknesses. Helping inter-caste marriage take off in India would be a major attack on the caste system," Chowdhry said. "For the future of India, it could mean much more time and energy to focus on lifting the majority of the country out of poverty."

Internet matchmaking sites in India allow those searching for love to list their caste, along with skin color and educational background. Most women still prefer to marry within their caste, according to a survey by popular online matrimony site Shaadi.com.

Some interpretations of Hindu scripture appear to support the caste system, which dovetails with the idea of karma, in which one's birth is either high or low as a reward or punishment for behavior in a previous life.

But sociologists say ideas about ambition and social mobility in India's new economy are slowly crumbling support for the caste system. The system has also taken hits from a program of preferences for lower-caste Indians that has started to bring members of different castes together on college campuses and at work. In addition, there is a tiny but steadily growing number of young, urban Indians who are rejecting caste-based marriages arranged by parents, opting instead to find a person they are attracted to, regardless of caste. Pharti and Singh say they worry about young couples going through the same struggles they faced. They counsel skeptical parents about their children's inter-caste unions, and they help those in hiding get married and start a home.

When Pharti told her parents she would marry a Rajput, her Dalit family was terrified. "My family worried that I would spend a lifetime of being abused for being Dalit," she said. "And because I was educated, I wouldn't be able to bear it. Even my Dalit activist friends said, 'You are marrying a Rajput? Are your fellow Dalits not good enough for you?' "

There were other tensions. At their wedding, Singh's father refused to participate in the ceremony, a slight against the bride's family that still makes them bristle with anger.

"To me, caste is Hindu terrorism," said Singh, looking over at the couple's two young sons playing nearby. "We just wish for a better future for India. And that can't include such obvious discrimination."