Setting aside the Hindu-Muslim thing, the core issue behind families wanting to control marriages in India is about caste, about closed access to opportunities, and an unfair socio-economic base.

In a weak state, with an highly stratified society marriages are the key to power.

We are born into an unfair system, divided not just by wealth but also things like generational educational opportunity, land ownership, businesses, and - most importantly - contacts that allow some to navigate the system while others flounder outside of it.

Marriages within elite groups allows these groups to contain these opportunities within a small circle.

This is not unique to India.

The fraternities and sororities in American universities were originally designed so that the "right" people married each other.

The entrance of "outsiders" into core family groups not only leads to outsiders getting access to rare resources (closed networks) it exposes the unfairness of how opportunity is distributed, thus the enormous social censure against both "love marriages" and divorces.

Both these things destabilise power structures that exist not because they are efficient or just, and are therefore extremely fragile.

People may wrap it up in words like "honour" (and even partially believe it) but it is frankly all about wealth and (unearned) power.

That these structures penalise individual desire, that they punish women and limit innovation and growth is a price such societies are willing to pay.

They would rather have a larger part of a smaller pie than a bigger pie.

In the end who marries whom - and who gets to decide that - is not a debate about conservatism or liberalism.

It is about justice, thus one of the reasons why Gandhi so strongly backed inter-caste marriages in his later years.