Thank you for your considered reply, Sriram. And thank you for not stereotyping me. I am not a member of the "let's knock India" brigade. In my quarter century as a lecturer in higher education I have associated with - as students and colleagues - people from many ethnic and cultural backgrounds as well as people of all sexual orientations. They have enriched my life.
I have never been to India (though have flown over it - but since there was total cloud cover at the time, I cannot even claim to have seen India). I welcome your observations about life in your homeland.
A couple of points.
The tv programme related tales of fathers killing their own daughters, husbands killing their own wives to save them from the indignations (understatement) they believed they would receive. Women killed themselves for the same reasons. I was not commenting on the funny habits of primitive natives - which I think appeared to be your interpretation of my post. I was distressed by the thought of it happening and the unimaginable despair that caused it.
There is a sizable Hindu population in Britain and in some places, Leicester and Wembley come to mind, they have developed significant communities. Many of these people are second, third even fourth generation inhabitants. The original immigrants may well have arrived with firm attitudes about caste which they have passed on to their children. In schools, teachers have noted - among some children of Indian origin - signs of bullying in which caste is being invoked. You mention elsewhere suicides among school children - being bullied has been mentioned as a prime cause for this. Bullies will always look for a potential weakness and position in a social hierarchy plays into their hands.
And in India, the effects and influence of traditional social ordering may have been outlawed at the administrative and organisational levels, but it probably lingers on in individuals particularly in remote rural locations.
And then there is the effect of subculture, and the arbitrary rules and mores used to enforce conformity within the group. In Britain, we are seeing cases of literally hundreds of children and adolescent girls - almost all of whom are in care - being used as sex objects and prosititutes by men. Virtually all the men involved appear to have come from Moslem communities - possibly seeing the girls as having no value as human beings because they are not Moslems. That is one example of the influences of a subculture. There is a second subculture at work here - the "social worker" subculture (riddled with political correctness) which forbids any intimation at all that the perpetrators of this evil may come from a particular ethnic and religious background.
So you see, it isn't just India ....
