Caste continues to be a scourge

New Delhi: She was a gutsy student leader known for hunger strikes and provocative street theatre at universities across the country, exposing the plight of India's beleaguered lower castes. He was a worldly gadfly with a passion for ending nuclear proliferation and exposing environmental crimes.

They fell in love in Iraq nearly 18 years ago while campaigning for peace before the first Gulf War. Their romance bloomed, and within three months they were engaged.

But their marriage ushered in another war: In tying the knot, they openly defied India's deeply entrenched taboos against inter-caste marriage. Anita Pharti, now 42, came from the Dalit caste, still known as untouchables, the lowest in India's social order. Her husband, Rajeev Singh, 45, is a Rajput, a landholding caste that had for centuries ruled over Pharti's peasant community.

"My family was completely aghast," Singh recalled, sitting with Pharti in their cozy living room, where they have helped clandestine inter-caste couples elope. "My father said he wouldn't let it happen. But were able to fight back. But we were the lucky ones. Many still get murdered for this."

Threat

Even though India legalised inter-caste marriage more than 50 years ago, newlyweds are still threatened by violence, most often from their families. As more young urban and small-town Indians start to rebel and choose mates outside caste commandments, killings of inter-caste couples have increased, according to a study by the All India Democratic Women's Association.

In the past month, seven so-called honour killings have targeted inter-caste couples. In the latest incident, a Hindu youth in Bihar was beaten by villagers this week and thrown under an oncoming train because he sent a love letter to a girl of a different caste.

The attacks continue despite decades of government decrees intended to dismantle the bulwark of caste, which is widely seen as the glue of traditional Indian society but is considered among the most corrosive features of the emerging new India.

"The recent rise in violence actually shows that the younger generation - especially women - are slowly gaining individual freedom in marriage. But the older generation still cling to the old ways where marriage is still a symbol of status, not emotional love," said Shashi Kiran, a lawyer in India's Supreme Court who married outside her caste and is handling several honour-killing cases. "It shows a society still in transition and wrestling with deep change."

As part of a controversial incentive for inter-caste marriages, the government recently began offering $1,000 bonuses. That's nearly a year's salary for the most Indians. "The government is deeply concerned over the low rate of conviction and high rate of acquittal of those people involved in incidents of atrocities on people belonging to lower castes," said Meira Kumar, the minister for social justice and empowerment, who is from a lower caste. "This is not the only way to end the caste discrimination, but one has to start somewhere."

For most Indians, opportunities in education, employment and marriage are still determined by the ancient social hierarchy of caste. Despite economic growth that has helped create a burgeoning middle class, sociologists say the caste system still represents the highest barrier to social mobility. Fewer than five per cent of India's 1.1 billion people are Brahmins, while more than 70 per cent come from lower castes.

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 organise a countrywide discussion on inter-caste marriages. "Caste has to be discussed more openly in modern India. 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."