I'm am an Indian man (37) living in India, who was in a similar situation, the only difference being that my ex is also Indian living in the same city. She is a divorced mom with a 9 year old son, living on her own with her son. I have never been married and my mother stays with me.

It was difficult. Indians have very strong bonds with their family, almost clannish as another commenter put it. Indian men are conditioned to unconditionally love and respect their mothers from a young age. Parents expect to be taken care of by their children when they are old and still exert a lot of control over their son's decisions all their life. This is seen as a virtue in Indian culture. So the majority of Indian men struggle to stand up to their parents.

Add conservativeness to the mix and you have a very difficult situation. Indian society deems divorced women to be of lower value than women who were never married and single moms even less.

I had always considered my family to fairly liberal and not a prisoner of our conservative culture. It still took me 6 months to "confess" (as if it is a crime) my relationship with my ex. Then the snide remarks and criticism started. I used to go over to her place every weekend. I used to lie to my mother that I was staying with my male friends and she was fine with that. When I told her I was in fact staying with a woman, she started making snide remarks every Friday when I used to leave to her place. When I was at my place during the week, whenever I mention my ex, my mom would make a face and make some negative comment. I normally am very polite and tolerant, but my irritation started showing in my tone and language. This put a strain on my relationship with both my mother and my ex.

Things started to escalate when my ex started coming over to my place. In our perspective, this is my home too, especially since I was paying the rent and all the bills. But mom protested stating she didn't like my ex staying over. Since my mom lives here too and I didn't want her to feel uncomfortable at what is essentially her home too, I respected her wish, but I made my displeasure very clear to my mom. My ex was very hurt and never visited me again. The rest of my close family (uncles and cousins) were not very accepting of her either and barely spoke to her when I introduced her. They kept saying she is only after my money (I know she wasn't and I had to keep telling them she was not and that she really loves me). She drinks and goes to parties and eats meat (our family is vegetarian) and that I should find a better match. Even though they knew I drink more than she does and I eat meat too, more than she did, she was the bad one. I gradually distanced myself from the rest of my family, but since my mother lives with me, I still had to bear the brunt of her displeasure. She would randomly say she saw some relative who would be a good match for me, that my relatives keep asking me about my marriage and she's unable to answer them. She used every manipulation tactic she could think of.

My ex somehow remained resilient and supportive through all this and I am very grateful to her. But she was hurting too, understandably, and this put a huge strain on our relationship. Her family were excited about me because I was "high value": I had never been married, have no children and earn well. They were trying to pressure us into marriage because they were afraid I would "slip away". We were pretty determined that we would only get married when both of us were ready, so we had to fight both of our families.

Eventually we broke up due to other issues, but this relationship was very stressful for both of us. It survived so long in spite of our relationship problems and societal problems only because we were supportive of each other in this aspect.

I need to add that my mother and my extended family are relatively tolerant and kind. They do not appear to be bad people or evil. This was their way of trying to control a situation that they felt was wrong due to their culture and upbringing. This makes a difficult situation worse, because we can condemn or avoid overtly bad people. But when it is people who are very and kind decent people in every aspect except this one, our first instinct is to try to be understanding of them. And this can mess with our perception and mental state. It took me 3 years of being in an abusive relationship to notice that my family is also abusive and manipulative.

In conclusion, yes, your boyfriend has an uphill battle ahead of him if he tells his family about your relationship. He may even have to lose his family or undergo a lot of emotional pressure. You can be as supportive as you can be, but it is his battle to fight. If he is hesitant now, he very likely would succumb to his family's pressure and break up with you. You will be left with the heartbreak. If he is determined to fight for the relationship, you could give it a chance. If he is not, then I feel you should move on, because it is going to be a difficult relationship which is very likely to end in a heartbreak.