On October 11th, the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy welcomed Dr. Sidharthan Maunaguru, a scholar of anthropology from the National University of Singapore, to present his forthcoming book as part of a talk series in collaboration with the Centre for South Asian Studies and the Department of Anthropology. Dr. Maunaguru’s book, titled “Marrying for a future: Transnational Sri Lankan Tamil Marriages in the Shadow of War”, examines the role of transnational marriage as it relates to migration within the Tamil community during the years of displacement by the Sri Lankan civil war.
The event was chaired by Dr. Francis Cody, an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology and in the Asian Institute at the University of Toronto. Dr. Cody remarked on the extensive work that has gone into Dr. Maunaguru’s book through the years of his doctoral thesis at John Hopkins university and his post-doctorate degree at the University of Edinburgh. Dr. Cody called it a “ground-breaking book” that the field of South Asian studies “has been waiting for, for a long time.”
Dr. Maunaguru began his presentation by guiding the attentive audience of students and scholars through the objectives of his research. He explained that Jaffna Tamils have large diaspora communities spread across all corners of the globe, especially in Canada, Europe, the UK, Australia, and India. His study focused on the connection between these communities and Jaffna Tamils from Sri Lanka through marriage. During the Sri Lankan civil war leading up to 2009, he was interested in “how people live with hope and an imagined future of a better life in a time of war”. Having been born in Sri Lanka, “a nation thick with uncertainty, instability, and the despair of war”, Dr. Maunaguru found himself wondering how people envision a future and try to materially live it.
By analyzing transnational marriage, he has found the answer. He defines ‘transnational marriage’ as a marriage that connects communities between countries of origin and diaspora communities around the world. His research question was: “How the transnational marriage process not only relates these two types of communities, but also works out an uncertain future/s?” Dr. Maunaguru elaborated that he was curious about how people within the marriage migration process imagine, live, and relive notions of future and learn to live with both uncertainty and certainty of the transnational process. Finally, he explored how transnational marriage processes become spaces through which dispersed communities reunite, if only for a brief moment in third party countries like India, especially during the Sri Lankan war, to imagine a future together.
Dr. Maunaguru focused on five main themes of the transnational marriage process: the arrangement of marriage, the use of brokers in order to facilitate a marriage across borders, the visual documents, such as photos and videos, that capture the wedding, the transit countries where the actual marriages take place and diaspora community unite, and the law and court divisions that handle cases of spousal immigration in destination country courts.
Over the course of several readings from his book, Dr. Maunaguru focused on the stories of Jaffna Tamils who partake in the transnational marriage process. He shared firsthand accounts of Tamils who have crossed oceans and arranged for marriages in transit countries like India, to imagine a better future. One of the stories he shared was the relationship between his friend Gnani and a woman named Sujatha. Falling in love in a war-torn Sri Lanka drove Gnani to imagine a fuller life somewhere else – in trying to migrate to the UK, Gnani found himself imprisoned in Hong Kong due to a lack of proper documentation for a full year. On his next migration attempt, he got as far as South Africa, but not all the way to England. Finally, on his third attempt, he arrived successfully in the UK, where he was able to reside as a refugee. During this journey Gnani and Sujatha wrote love letters to each other, overflowing with their desires, and feelings of hope and joy. However, those letters often did not reach the other, but the writing process kept the relationship going. Sujatha embarked on her own migration journey trying to join him. She went against the wishes of her family, who objected to their marriage as strongly as Ghani’s did, and moved to Australia. Several years later, once she had obtained citizenship, the two were able to meet when Sujatha finally made it to the UK to settle. Even then, once united and out of Sri Lanka, their marriage did not guarantee a certain future. The next step was proving to the British immigration authorities that their marriage was genuine – a gruelling process that was at last successful.
Towards the end of the event, Dr. Cody noted that every step in Dr. Maunaguru’s five themes becomes ritualized as they examine the broader process of creating and delivering a transnational marriage. As the Chair further remarks, Dr. Maunaguru’s book thematizes life against a backdrop of war. In closing, Dr. Maunaguru, drawing from his own childhood experiences of a war-torn Sri Lanka, explained that looking at moments of hope and joy for a future is the foreground to the background of war. His book tells the stories of Jaffna Tamils who envision not something outside the idea of violence, but within it to move towards a future beyond the shadow of war.
Anushka Kurian is a fourth year student majoring in International Relations and Ethics, Society and Law. She is an Event Reporter and Contributor for Synergy: The Journal of Contemporary Asian Studies, South Asia section. Her research interests include migration and forced displacement, mass atrocities and human rights, and international development.
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