Come on, India! Modernise!

but I guess we have our own, albeit not so widespread or extreme, 'taboos' here... look at all the fuss when a minor royal married an ordinary guy some years back...

I know & know of people in UK and of English heritage who have had huge family rifts because they have married 'below' their class!

There are so many ways in which India needs to modernise. It sounds as if it is becoming more and more divided with the affluent and educated acquiring the trappings of modern life while the poor are as abjectly poor as ever and rely on international aid.
The country is also probably just too damn big. Thank you British empire. It suited their needs to have the whole of the subcontinent under one administration and then Mountbatten et al split it forcibly and insensitively causing horrible bloodshed.
And yes their obsession with "complexion" when assessing other people would be called racism in Europe and N America.