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Mandira Banerjee

Despite contrasting cultures and familial resistance, there is a large number of Asians married to Americans. And that number is rising.

Meena Sonea, an Indian, met American Daniel Hewett in graduate school. "We were classmates and used to spend a lot of time together. The fact that I could fall in love with him never crossed my mind. But one day, I realised that I was in love with my best friend and he was not an Indian," recalls Sonea. For months, Sonea struggled with her feelings for Hewett. His not being an Indian was a big obstacle. "It was not until my parents met him and liked him that I felt comfortable. In a strange way, I was feeling guilty. I didn't know how to be fair to both him and my family."

Sonea's dilemma is common among Asian men and women (both first and second generation), who fall in love with Americans and plan marriage. Dr Patricia Campbell, a marriage therapist in Boston, says, "Asian families who immigrate try to maintain their ties with their cultural past. While they know that their children will not go back, they want them to marry within their own community and race to preserve their identity."

Parul and Shane met at her aunt's store, where Parul worked part-time. "When I first told my mother about Shane on the phone, she said, `I am going to shoot myself'. It took months of persuasion, and, I even went to India to convince my parents. It was a coincidence that one of my friends' arranged marriage failed and my family softened towards my choice," says Parul.

Anil, a software consultant, went through a similar struggle. "My parents were against my marrying Susan, a foreigner. I did not speak to them for six months. It was only when they came for my graduation, met Susan and knew that our relationship would last, that they said `yes'," he recalls.

Despite initial objections from their families, many Asian Indians are marrying Americans. Since the 1960s, the number of inter-racial marriages in the US has increased more than 10-fold (1.6 million), including marriages involving Hispanics. According to the 2000 Census data, there are about 7.1 per cent Asian Indian men and 7.4 per cent Asian Indian women married to Americans.

"Things have changed radically over the past few years and yet they have not," says Randall Kennedy, Professor of Law at Harvard University and author of the acclaimed book, Inter-racial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption. According to him, the inter-racial marriages between White Americans and Asians, especially Indians, have increased dramatically, while marriages between African Americans and Caucasians is still a rarity. "One should not forget that before the 1967 Supreme Court decision, it was a crime to marry a person from another race in 16 States of the US," he added.

Do such marriages work? Sonea and Hewett's children speak Hindi at home and Hewett too has picked up the language a bit. They feel their marriage has helped them understand other cultures, customs and social structures and made them communicate easily across groups. "Nothing in our marriage is taken for granted because we both come from different backgrounds. This is what makes it fun and interesting," says Hewett.

Shraddha, a Ph. D student in New York, married Dennis, a Norwegian settled in America, thrice over. "First I got married here in America. Six months later, we went to Norway to get married because his parents insisted, and last December we went to India to get married according to the Indian tradition. It has become a running joke in our family — three marriages and that too to the same person," she says.

Elfriede Furscish, an assistant professor at Boston College, met C.B. Bhattacharya, when both were students. They too had three wedding ceremonies, one in India, one in Atlanta and another in Germany.

Interestingly, among some of these couples, there is a distinction between how the man or the woman perceived or approached the relationship before marriage. Furscish says for her it was not love at first sight when she met Bhattacharya. They were dating for a year before they got closer and wanted to settle for a more long term commitment. Hewett felt the same. "We had been going out for over a year, but our approaches were different. Sonea took it for granted that we would get married, largely due to her cultural past, whereas I was still not sure. It took me some more time to realise that I want to spend the rest of my life with her," Hewett remembers.

One of the delicate issues in such marriages is how to raise children. When Furscish and Bhattacharya were expecting their first child, they even agonised over the baby's name. "We wanted a name that reflected the multi-cultural identity of the child." They decided that the child would have a Western first name, an Indian middle name and the husband's Bengali last name. "We have been discussing if we should teach the child different languages. But the issue is quite complicated. Since we are living in the US, the child will be influenced by the culture here too. But, I hope we bring up the child in a very international atmosphere that instils tolerance and openness," adds Furscish.

While inter-racial marriages continue to have their conflict areas, Kennedy observes that in the past three or four decades, many people of colour have preferred to champion group pluralism over individualistic integration. "Furthermore, people of colour are generally more self-confident and demanding than they once were." Marrying outside their race is a manifestation of this confidence.

(Names of some couples have been changed on request.)

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