My parents had an “inter-Caste “marriage in 1959 which caused quite a furore. Rumour has it that my snobbish Brahmin grandparents refused to drink even the water served by Ma at the initial stages. Soon enough, my Ma’s grace and cooking had them literally eating out of her hands. Forty years later, I went a stage further to marry not only someone from another caste but also another region of the country who did not speak my language. I was amazed to see a multitude of people from relatives to savvy family friends ask me “What caste is the boy?” I had no idea and neither did he. I accused everyone of being a hypocrite and suggested we burn all the intellectual books in the library in a gust of youthful bravado.

It is the same bravery that is beginning to set women free in our country where the national newspapers carry coverage of at least one case of “honour killing” a day. Today’s paper described how the daughter of a whole-sale vegetable dealer and her “cabbie” boyfriend were electrocuted and beaten to death in Delhi last night. The locality could hear the kids who were only 19 years old, screaming for help for three hours. People who tried to intervene were beaten and the good cops arrived in the morning to pick up the corpses and feed the news to the media. We even had a chief minister of an Indian state defend “khap” or “gotra” in the context of marriage. For those who are uninitiated these are sub sects within a caste.

I learnt about this concept when I was a child. The marriage of my beautiful, refined, gentle and rich grandmother to my grandfather did not make logical sense in an arranged marriage context. I asked my father why such an alliance was made. In a moment of weakness and exasperation he explained that if a daughter is married into a family whose sub-caste or "gotra" is higher than her parental home, the parents earn lots of brownie points from heaven and their chances of their souls gaining salvation rise. Such was the barter of my grandmother.

I am constantly asked by foreigners both at work and as a tourist whether the caste system is alive in India. The answer is complex and cannot be answered in the negative or affirmative. Lots of people don’t care and aren’t aware of their caste and yet there are so many who will kill their children or sisters with their bare hands for the sake of it. Aren’t we an amazing country where same sex alliances are legally permissible, unlike many a developed country of the west, and yet the caste system is alive and defended by the powerful?