If caste only came up in a mutual interest decision like a wedding where there aren't power imbalances, isn't that fine? Who someone chooses to marry seems like an unreasonable place to intervene to resolve disparities.
If someone was interested in marrying me until they found out I was Jewish (the closest analogy to my own experience), I would not think that was "fine". Even if I don't know any way to "intervene" in it, certainly not if you mean legally, governments should not be in the business of telling people who to marry.
But if you told me that there aren't power imbalances in marriage decisions so it's "fine" and what am I getting upset about, why is it even worth talking about or commenting upon, I'd think you were an asshole.
“Caste is a huge problem. To substantiate this, let me tell you about the story of a person who didn’t seem to care about caste at all, but later decided to not marry someone over it.”
That is not a story which substantiates the claim that caste is a huge problem. I agree that someone who made a marriage decision based on caste isn’t someone I’d want to marry in the first place.
My comment about power imbalances can be read in two ways: there are no power imbalances in marriage or conditioned on there not being power imbalances in that particular decision. I meant the latter, but you seem to be attacking the former.
I don't understand how a person could manage to only care about "caste" when getting married and never care about it any other time. Maybe I just don't understand what you were trying to get at with your original comment, because the statement doesn't really make any sense to me either.
I only want to marry people of a particular gender, but that doesn’t make me problematically sexist. Religion is a similar desiderata. Perhaps you can argue that people can convert, but as a Jew who seriously dated a Catholic for almost two years, I’d argue that boundary isn’t particularly fluid.
As an example, what if they decided against the marriage not because they cared personally but because their family did, and satisfying their family’s preferences was important to them? What’s the harm? Nobody has an obligation to marry you.
Not OP - every caste has its own unique cultural aspects. So a person could disregard caste in most avenues of life, but still give it a thought while considering a prospective spouse to find an affinity through shared cultural values. That's one reason that came to mind.
I agree that caste preference in marriage can have bad effects, similar to many other filter bubble mechanics in society. It’s also probably a symptom of other problematic concepts of value.
If someone was interested in marrying me until they found out I was Jewish (the closest analogy to my own experience), I would not think that was "fine". Even if I don't know any way to "intervene" in it, certainly not if you mean legally, governments should not be in the business of telling people who to marry.
But if you told me that there aren't power imbalances in marriage decisions so it's "fine" and what am I getting upset about, why is it even worth talking about or commenting upon, I'd think you were an asshole.