CHENNAI, India — India can be sparkling white and deadly black. While it brags about its scientific achievements, including space exploration and nuclear arms, fancy cars and elite educational institutions, it must hang its head in shame over some heinous, dark-age practices.

Honor killing, brazenly sanctioned by social institutions and community elders, is one such practice, which neither the judiciary nor the executive has been able to stop.

Recently, Nirupama Pathak, a young journalist working for a leading Indian English-language business daily, was found murdered in her house. She was, according to newspaper reports, smothered to death by her own mother, who has since been arrested.

The reason for this hatred was love. Pathak was in a relationship with a man from a different caste. Her family disapproved, and violently. Even more shocking, the gory act was committed in India's capital city, New Delhi.

Contrary to a widely held view, honor killings are not confined to Islam. It cuts across faiths, social strata and economic status. A United Nations report says there are 5,000 honor killings every year across the globe. The crime is rampant in West and Southeast Asia. Even in the United Kingdom, the police contend there is at least one such murder every month among Asian communities.

Avanti Hair's award-winning film, "Land, Gold, Women," gives a graphic picture of how a young Muslim girl in Britain is stabbed to death by her own uncle — on the explicit orders of her father — because she falls in love with a white boy.

Pathak was a Hindu girl. As a journalist, she was professionally and socially well connected, and came from a well-to-do family. But her love was unacceptable to her parents, and the reason for their objection seems absolutely silly in the world we live in today.

Honor killings in India are widespread, though no accurate figures are available. A study conducted by the New Delhi- based Indian Population Statistics Survey a few years ago revealed that there were about 700 such deaths every year in India. This figure could be far higher, women's groups and social organizations say.

Many such incidents are hushed up, because they are a blot on the reputation of the family concerned or the village or town. But some families would rather live with the blemish and the guilt of killing their own than face the social stigma and ire that an intercaste or interreligious marriage brings.

Pathak's tragic end raises several issues. Caste and religion still dominate Indian life. They translate as foremost identifications of an individual in a society driven by insular considerations. Hundreds of matrimonial advertisements appearing in the media invariably harp on caste preferences. Sadly, these are merrily exploited by some of India's most renowned and well established political parties, including the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party.

There are nonpolitical social groups that encourage liaisons only between members of the same caste, while others forbid any kind of relationship within the same caste or subcaste. India's civil society is torn between traditional beliefs such as male dominance, and modern ideas that, among other things, empower women. In a country where men wield the power, both at home and outside, some men find it hard to accept a freethinking woman. If a woman asserts herself by choosing her partner, there is risk of conflict.

Honor killings and other atrocities against women can only be addressed through greater awareness and education. We can hope to set aside archaic beliefs only through the proper spread of information. Political parties have a vital role in preventing honor killings by refusing to discriminate against electoral candidates because of caste lines.

Behind such cruelty is the might of money. Usually the village councils who sentence offending couples to death comprise rich landlords and upper-caste men who have a stake in suppressing the poor and the lower castes.

As one writer commented, "in perpetuating and reinforcing cultural obsessions with masculinity and the purity of their blood, the unsanctioned councils are virtually compelling the younger generation to rebel. And, thanks to the skewed sex ratio stemming from female feticide, marriageable women are few and far between."

The police and the judiciary must be ruthlessly firm in tackling this dreadful crime.

Gautaman Bhaskaran is a Chennai, India-based journalist who writes for several newspapers across the world.