  Discriminatory caste attitudes currently stigmatize millions of Indians,
subjecting individuals to prejudice in all aspects of life. Governmental
incentives and societal movements have attempted to counter these attitudes,
yet accurate measurements of public opinions on caste are not yet available for
understanding whether progress is being made. Here, we introduce a novel
approach to measure public attitudes of caste through an indicator variable:
openness to intercaste marriage. Using a massive dataset of over 313K profiles
from a major Indian matrimonial site, we precisely quantify public attitudes,
along with differences between generations and between Indian residents and
diaspora. We show that younger generations are more open to intercaste
marriage, yet attitudes are based on a complex function of social status beyond
their own caste. In examining the desired qualities in a spouse, we find that
individuals open to intercaste marriage are more individualistic in the
qualities they desire, rather than favoring family-related qualities, which
mirrors larger societal trends away from collectivism. Finally, we show that
attitudes in diaspora are significantly less open, suggesting a bi-cultural
model of integration. Our research provides the first empirical evidence
identifying how various intersections of identity shape attitudes toward
intercaste marriage in India and among the Indian diaspora in the US.
