You are correct.
When my husband and I visited India some 25 years ago, we went to where the Farsis lived. The Farsis were thrown out of Persia and went to India. India accepts any faith, no matter what.
So Mehta was Indian/Farsi.
I saw the "towers of silence" were the dead bodies of people are put. The top of the tower is open for the carrion birds who eat the corpses. That way, the human bodies "go back" to nature.
It was a grisly reminder of some human behavior, sanctioned heartily by their culture and tradition, that still appalls me.
As we drove down the street we SAW the crossed-eyed people, a definite demonstration of in-breeding. One DIDN'T see the heart problems that also come with inbreeding.
One only has to look at the Saudi royal family to see the wandering eyes. Old Fat Fahad had one eye pointing northwest and the other eye facing front,sometimes. The family has suffered from heart problems ever since they were in the public eye...that's why WE know. It ain't subtle.
In one book I read, the author called the Saudi royal family, “an unmatchable laboratory of genetic defects.”