[dkarl]

For a contrasting anecdote, just to illustrate the range of beliefs, I knew a couple who met in the U.S. and agonized over the impact their marriage would have on their families in India because she was Brahmin and he was Kshatriya. They thought it would be problematic, especially for her parents, if their parents' friends, neighbors, etc. knew they had a daughter married to a Kshatriya. After dreading for months the task of sharing the news with their parents, finally they did it, and... it wasn't a big deal at all. Her parents said, "It would be a big problem for us if you were coming back here to live, but you're not. Everybody knows it doesn't matter in the U.S. Nobody will care." They did not think having a daughter married to a Kshatriya in the U.S. would bring them the same stigma as having a daughter married to a Kshatriya in India would. And not because they were hiding the marriage: they had a big wedding in India with both families and hundreds of guests from each side.

I don't know if their expectation turned out to be true, and obviously there are a lot of people who don't share their thinking, but I found it striking that they would even expect people feel differently based on where their daughter was living. In the U.S. we learn that caste rules are "religious," and our idea of religion is like Christianity, something that is either true everywhere or true nowhere. The idea that your judgmental neighbors would say "oh, it's fine because they're living in a country where nobody believes in that stuff" was a new one for me.

[newen]

Ultra religious Brahmins have a rule where they don’t allow non-Brahmins to enter their house. I think the parent’s problem might be due to having non-Brahmins enter their house often if the couple were living in India. While if the couple were living in the US, that wouldn’t be such an issue for them.

I have a Brahmin friend in her 30s living in Bangalore who married a non-Brahmin and while she and her child were allowed into her parent’s house, her husband wasn’t. Obviously she is not happy about it but she visits her parents every so often and...her parents are what they are I guess. I had a hard time imagining such a situation.