[sizzle]

last time I checked, these rural villagers do not have running water which affects how they bathe, clean clothes, prepare food etc. Add in religious rituals and you have some powerful persuasion to do things in a way that seems backwards to us.

[ballard]

These are the same areas that unfortunately still have honor killings. Regardless, cultural judgements are not an absolute truth, and so other ways, no matter how extreme or foreign, can be tolerated. The frontier that can be helped is hygiene and self-sufficiency. If can start a sexual equality revolution in India, build a bazillion of these machines. A 3d printer as it were.

[sizzle]

I think you have your facts mixed up. Honor killings are not an Indian ritual by any means and unheard of in even uneducated villages.

[plumenator]

Actually, he is right. Khap panchayats in the state of Haryana act as a parallel government and sanction honor killings. Recently in a village in Bengal a similar village body ordered a woman to be gang-raped by her fellow villagers.

[ballard]

There's likely global (but unprovable given nature of social science) precedent for this and similar in most every culture where fidelity and virginity were absolute sacred values. Another practice for example, rural villagers in South American will kill you no questions asked if you mess with their daughters. In the US, a "shotgun wedding" had its name for a reason. My grandparents can attest that a couple of my great-grandparents were modern comparatively barbaric farmers (Jeff Foxworthy redneck jokes all the way).