Yes one of the reasons Ghandi had to speak out against the Kama sutra. People would eventually draw a connection to Manu and extrapolate, leading to disasterous results. Religous or Cultural? Occult, indeed. Profound indeed. Manusmriti is unquestionably the missing owners manual to the occult sciences. I learned about it by mistake coming across something called the freemasons encyclopedia. I know, as bad as Freemasonry is, I sat down and read the entire thing. I took notes. The sections on Hinduism, Buddhism and the Laws of manu and the Stupha form of the tattvas was interesting. The freemasons secretly credit the vedas as the origin of all religon. "The river by which all religons flow". They made a mistake in the text. It says the Hinduism is a exoteric faith and that Brahmanism is esoteric. Its the other way around, nevertheless, its a thought provoking revelation.
What happened is when the vedas were translated into english, those who were members of "royal" secret societys were stunned that they were finding secret doctrines in the sacred tradition. They found out why. So like the brahmin, they conceal this knowlege from the general public (the lay) and from low level masons.
Check youtube and watch a video by John Ankerburg on Freemasonry. I know, its bad but watch the whole thing. Try to to fall out of your chair when the freemason guy mentions the vedas and what he says. As far as the encyclopedia, its free online with google and you can do a keyword search.
When someone says read between the lines, this is what should be there. Put Manu Smriti together with the 25 gunas, and the Puranas, esp Brahma Purana and symbolic logic and you have a lot to work with. Keep in mind that Lewis Caroll was a freemason... Yes I put it lower case on purpose.