Love Marriage by V. V. Ganeshanathan

     The story is narrated by Yalini who was born in the USA but “could not forget that each of her bones had emerged from a Tamil womb. Into a place and family that was Tamil” (97). However, she is willing to be friends with the Tamil-Sinhalese hybrid Rajani. Moreover, there are references to two inter-racial marriages in the novel. Yalini says her maternal uncle Neelan had “Married the Enemy … the Enemy only by an ethnic definition … [which] are always ugly: Sinhalese intruder in a Tamil family” (176). Similarly, Lalitha, a Sinhalese woman, had also married the Enemy for which she had been “disowned” by her family (146).

     According to Yalini, the answer to how far the ethnic conflict goes back depends on whom one is asking. “None of the stories will be absolutely complete, but their tellers will be absolutely certain. This is how we make war,” says Yalini (119). Yet, as does her aunt Kalyani, Yalini clearly believes that, “Sri Lankan Tamils are not a violent people; they are a people who have had violence imposed upon them” by the Sinhalese (155). Her father as “a member of Sri Lanka’s ethnic Tamil minority,” according to the narrator, “had to score even higher” than the Sinhalese to enter the medical college (80). “He was required to take yet another test to be placed in a government hospital. It was a proficiency test in Sinhalese, which was the official language of the island” (87). And this is what drives Murali away from the country, finally, according to the narrator. 

     July 23, 1983 is repeatedly referred to in the novel. According to Yalini’s aunt Kalyani, “it all started like this … there are the Tamil Tigers who want to separate the north, the boys in Jaffna set up a landmine, right, which kills thirteen Sri Lankan army officers in Jaffna, ceriya? … They were all Sinhalese. That sparked the riots. It was July 23, 1983” (127).  Yalini says, “Tamil separatist groups would rise, newly powerful, from the ashes of these riots - their ranks strengthened by the young people whose families had been hurt in 1983 and before” (5).

      When one is in such a situation one “think[s] that the only way out is to leave, but the war just moves with you,” says Yalini (171-2). Therefore, the Tamil Diaspora supports the LTTE who, as they say, are fighting their battle for them. Thus, dying Kumaran, as a member of the LTTE is someone to be honoured, a martyr: “Men come, bringing their sons; wives waited respectfully outside the room where he lay. Daughters read books … Some of the men, even those who were older than he, called him Anna, which meant respected older brother” (139).

     The narrator identifies the war as “our war” and asks whether it is “easy to blame these people [those who join the LTTE], when they lost so much” (28, 92). Nonetheless, her cousin Janani, an LTTE cadre, puts down Yalini’s claim of solidarity with the LTTE cause cuttingly by stating, “‘You barely understand me,’ she said. ‘How could you know about the war? You grew up without speaking Tamil? The war is like Tamil for you’” (42).

      At the end of the day, in Love Marriage the term “Sri Lankans” stands for “Sri Lankan Tamils”, which exclude the other ethnicities from the term pointing to an extreme limitedness in the narrative perspective. In “A Conversation with V V Ganeshanathan”, the writer admits this shortcoming partly when she states, “The family in the book is a Jaffna Tamil family, and so there isn’t, for example, really the voice of the Sri Lankan Muslims in the novel” (298). Still, as Shelton Guneratne in his web article “Love Marriage by V V Ganeshanathan - A Book Review” states, “The book … fails to explicate the Sinhalese perspective on the ethnic conflict. [And Yalini] appears to believe that the Tamil Diaspora was the outcome of systematic discrimination by the Sinhalese”. For instance, the novel treats the University Standardization Act as a move towards ethnic discrimination ignoring the fact that it was basically an effort to allow those from the most underdeveloped provinces access to higher education.  The language proficiency test for government servants, which is actually a job requirement, too, is looked at as purely a discriminatory measure.

     Still, the novel records violence committed by Tamil militant groups as well. Though it is not explicitly stated, it is the killing of Yalini’s maternal grandfather, a retired government servant, by an unknown assassin that drives her mother away from the country. Similarly Kalyani’s son Haran’s schoolmaster “Arun … a gentleman, a scholar, an athlete” was killed by “a Tamil rebel … for arranging for a Tamil school to have a match with the Sri Lankan Army (131-2). Rajani’s father “a [Tamil] politician, was killed by them for daring to disagree with them. For daring to say that they did not speak for all Tamils, that they did not speak for him” (142). Her mother Lalitha would not visit Kumaran who was dying, for “[t]he Tigers killed her father about ten years ago. My grandfather. I never met him,” says Rajani (146). According to the narrator, Yalini’s LTTE mastermind uncle considered, “Women. Children. People … [as] the only real weapons” (163). For Kumaran, even Suthan’s drug cartel is acceptable, for it is done in the name of the cause. He even allows his daughter to marry Suthan. Yet, unlike the repeated and lengthy references to the inequities the Tamils supposed to have suffered at the hands of the Sinhalese, these incidents are limited to brief asides that require a careful study in order to unearth them. 

     However, within her chosen sample of emigrant Tamils, Ganeshanathan presents several opinions on the war. Talking to S. Mehta in “A Conversation with V.V. Ganeshanathan”, the writer acknowledges a sense of vocation to write about the war: “The more I learnt about the war the more I felt that I was compelled to say something about it, not in the voice of an activist, but in the voice of an artist” (Love Marriage 298). This attitude, however, hints at a premeditated didactic-ness or a political agenda that transcends mere story telling. In her book, Ganeshanathan points at two reasons for the tragic situation of some of the Tamils who are forced to leave the country. However, when it comes to naming and blaming, the narrator and other characters are quite prompt in pointing fingers at the Sinhalese as causing a Tamil exodus. Yet, the same eagerness is not displayed when it is a result of Tamil militancy. Moreover, the fact that Murali, Lakshman, and Rajani readily forgive Kumaran and the care and admiration they shower on him hints at the martyr concept promoted by the LTTE. Similarly, on the issue of a resolution, Yalini says, “Some day I will be able to walk into that country again, because they [her parents] walked out of it. When I do it will be a different place than the one they knew” (183). However, she is not explicit about in what way the country would be different. Hence, though there are fleeting moments of “cultural self-criticism” in the novel, they are largely beset by the atmosphere of “ethno-nationalism” permeating the entire narrative fabric of the novel.

Love Marriage, for it lacks the voice of the Other, can generally be called “ethno-nationalistic” in its standpoint.