One of my female colleagues had a breakup recently. Reason? After more than 5 years of serious dating the guy thinks that his parents won’t agree to the relationship BECAUSE the girl is from a lower caste, so he thought it’s wise that they part their ways in mutual understanding. She was sulking all the time this week, so I told her it’s good that you just wasted 5 years on a guy who couldn’t even stand for you, a lifetime would have been a very costly affair.

On the other side, my first cousin who is a Newar got married to a Rai girl. No family hiccups, they just had one condition that the wedding should be fulfilled in Kirati rituals. It was perfectly fine with our family. Honestly the wedding was interesting as it was a mix of both traditions. First we did everything with the Rai culture and when we came home, we continued with the Newari culture.

Later at night that same day, when we all cousins gathered for some drinks, everyone was talking about intercaste marriages and its pros and cons. It all depends on person to person whether you like it, you accept it or you don’t. We came to a conclusion that we are lucky to have a family who believe in humanity than caste system but it might not be the same story in other families. Even in our family it took years to change the same caste marriage. The first person who took this bold step had to go through a lot of $#!t. He infact had to elope to get married.

Anyway, Looks like Nepal is much more liberal than other South Asian Countries. India has more criminal cases regarding disappearance and murder of people because of inter caste marriages. In Pakistan and Bangladesh it is still a taboo and kids get killed even if they get married to someone out of their tribe.

Maybe it is only in the urban areas of Nepal that intercaste marriages are socially accepted. In villages if you want to get married to a guy out of your caste, you have to elope with him and live in the cities for a while, have a baby and maybe when you return to your village, your family will accept you or maybe not. There are cases where parents have not accepted their child back in the family for marrying outside the caste and they have died with it.

I don’t know if it’s good or bad. Some argue that when someone different from the caste comes in the family who is from a different culture; it is obvious that she will practice her own rituals. That way the family values are going to disappear with time. The caste system which is in practice from the time of Jayastithi Malla, had differentiated the society into class. So most of the time nobody wants their family member to get married to someone from a lower class. Then there is Pani nachalne jaat, the untouchables, who are not suppose to come inside the houses at any cost of the so called upper caste families.

On the contrary, there are families, who accept the value of the person and believe in humanity. They feel it is fine as long as the person is good enough to be a part of the family. We all are human after all and we are belong to the family of God. Scientifically it is proven that the offspring of cross genetics have beautiful features and have sharp and intelligent mind ( Pardon me if I am wrong here, I am just a layman when it comes to science and what I wrote is mere observation and researches I have read). They have stronger immunity and healthier life in majority cases.

But yea if you have a rigid family and you feel you can’t go against your family, there is no point getting into a relationship which you can’t live upto it and you gonna chicken out at the end of the day. So it is upto you if you want a Big Fat Intercaste Marriage, a Flying Marriage, an Arrange Marriage or a Gandharva Marriage….Marriage are surely made in heaven, but you got to live it on Earth.