Decolonizing marriage and the family: The lives and letters of Ida, benoy, and Indira sarkar

This article takes up the issue of interracial marriage and interracial families during the time of decolonization to argue that, despite continued knowledge production on interracial social formations, interracial subjects continue to be obscured and marginalized in histories of decolonization, anticolonialism, and postcolonial nation making. Working with subjects from India and Austria, this article follows the trajectories of one family-in-the-making as the wars in Europe and anticolonial agitation in South Asia pushed them to come together in transit to the United States, marry in Germany, have a daughter in Italy, and settle in Calcutta. This article argues that in order to delink these subjects from the gender, racial, and caste norms of their historical time period, we need to take a decolonial approach that deconstructs coloniality and prioritizes the “pluriverse,” or ability to transcend state-based and colonial categories.

Duke Scholars

Author Jessica Namakkal International Comparative Studies