Arranged Marriages and the Caste System

So today I was educated about the history of arranged marriages and how it works in the caste system. The want ads for both brides and grooms are arranged by caste in many of the major newspapers and it was very unclear how the whole thing worked. The caste system has different names and categories in different states of India. All of the paricipants in the workshop are marrried by the arrangements made by their parents, including my friend Nallasivan. He told me that there was a time 30-40 years ago that the husband and wife were not to meet each other prior to the wedding. In fact if it occurred they would be punished severely. Nowadays things are a little more lenient and he admitted to making arrangements with Meena to meet her before their arranged marriage. He did say that int eh more traditional states this practice was still quite serious. When parents go to choose a wife they look for good health, level of fitness, mental health and if they are homely...which has a completely different meaning in the Western world. Here homely means that they have strong domestic characteristics, so it is really good to be homely. Another quality was a good singing voice..at this point I was thinking that I would have been unmarried for a very long time if I was raised in India :)
The highest level of caste is the Brahmins. Another caste is the Pillays and at the lowest is something called the Scheduls (I am trying to remember all of this so it may be a wrong in some parts) I was amazed to find out that it is okay change legions (Hindu, Christian, Muslim) but it not okay to marry from another caste. In fact a Hindu Pillay can marry a Christian Pillay but they cannot marry a Brahmin from either legion (or we would say religion) The untouchables ( scheduls) have since changed their lowly positions in some ways. They at one time were only allowed to the worst jobs and now there are Scheduls holding political positions.
However even within each caste their is a hierarchy. It is very complex.
Nallasivan was trying to explain some of it to me, and he promises to make a visual for our next India Education session. He confused me with names of participants: he said that by their names you can tell what caste they belong to. If they have a pre-fix in their name it indicates Brahmin status... but depending on the look of a person their name determines their legion or their caste: for example there are two men with the last name Singh. To an untrained eye the name looks the same and we may assume some sort of relation. I was informed that for one man it indicates legion to the Sheiks and the other man it is the evidence of the Singh caste that exists.
I did sit down with Kamola and he shared his Brahmin status and we also were introduce to a bride while she sat fully decorated in an elaborate bhindi and with hair and special sari... the bride can haven as many as 5 different saris during the wedding days...
Love marriages are only about 1 percent in India and the rest are arranged. The culture is changing with moe global influence, but the mentality behind marriage is very different than Canada. I will write more about the Brahmin ceremonies when I have time.
And I am still learning about the caste system... there is a lot to learn,

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