INTERRACIAL AND INTERFAITH MARRIAGE: READING ON

RAM GOVARDHAN’S THE TWO HOURS AND MACARIO

D.TIU’S NANKING STORE
Kristiawan Indriyanto
Gadjah Mada University
[email protected]

ABSTRACT
Asian literature in English have received greater exposure among world English
literature nowadays. By writing in English, Asian writers can present their local concerns
for a global audience in mind. One prevalent issues shared by several Asian writers are
interracial and interfaith marriage. As a melting pot for diverse ethnicities and religions,
marriage among the aforementioned groups are common. This paper is interested in
analyzing how the issue of interracial and interfaith marriage are depicted as the main
theme of two short stories coming from Asia, Ram Govardhan’s the Two Hours and Macario
D.Tiu’s Nanking Store.
The analysis mainly concerns which how interfaith and interracial marriage are
narrated in the selected stories through the construction of storyworld. Storyworld, a
narratological terminology is defined as a mental state of context and environment within
which a narrative’s character function. By reading literature, readers are transported into the
fictional storyworld through the narrator/focalizer’s textual cues. Therefore, analyzing
storyworld offers a subjective understanding of the perspective of a particular
narrator/focalizer as the primary presenter of the story. This paper concludes that although
interfaith and interracial marriage are becoming global concern, how it is perceived in
different places differs, which is the focal aspect of the discussion.
Key words: Asian literature, interfaith and interracial marriage, storyworld

INTRODUCTION
Interracial and interfaith marriage have become more common among people in
Asia nowadays. The 3rd Bishops’ Institute of Theological Animation (BITA)’s conference
entitled “Inter-Faith Marriages in the Pluralistic Context of Asia” (2006, p.3) practically
admits that “Inter-faith marriages is a reality in a pluralistic context of Asia.” The
conference concluded that un Asia’s distinctive cultures, religions, and ethnicity, it is
inevitable that close co-existence among differing social, racial, and religious will lead to
marriage among their members. One example of the increasing number of interracial and
interfaith marriage is in Southeast Asia, as proven by a research by Jones et all (2009). Their
research found out that marriage in Southeast Asia now occurs “across boundaries of
various kinds –including the boundaries of nation states, of ethnic groups, and of different
religions.” (Jones, Leng, Mohamad 2009, p. vii)
Besides in Southeast Asia, interfaith and interracial marriage are also becoming
more commonplace in South Asia, especially India. In many ways, India is rather tolerant
with the idea of marriage across differing socio-cultural-religious group. Marriage in India is
controlled by the Special Marriage Act 1954 which provides for civil marriage, including civil
marriage between people of different religion. Persons governed by this Act can specifically
register marriage under the said Act even though they are of different religious faith (2011).
It can be seen how lenient the Indian government is towards the issue of mixed marriage.
Even if that is the case, the restrictive Hindu caste system becomes a barrier regarding
more open road for interfaith and interracial marriage. The Indian caste system is like a
bane on the path of India’s progress. (Singh and Goli, 2011, p. 3)

121 | The 10th International Conference

Revisiting English Teaching, Literature, and Translation in the Borderless World:
My World, Your World, Whose World?
While the more traditional and lower-classes Indian social group still do not embrace mixed
marriage, mixed marriage have become a typical feature of those who are, by and large,
economically. educationally and culturally advanced. (Singh and Goli, 2011, p. 10) It implies
that the reception towards interracial and interfaith marriage in India remains mixed.
To illustrate how the issue of interracial and interfaith marriage are depicted in
literary works, this paper analyses two short stories, the Two Hours by Ram Govardhan and
Macario D.Tiu’s Nanking Store. Both writers exemplify the aforementioned issues of
marriage as key concern and prevailing theme in their literature, how interracial and
interfaith interaction among multiple ethnicities can lead to marriage between members of
their cultural group. Although the overarching theme of marriage between two distinctive
races and religions is shared by both writers, it is interesting to explore how Govardhan
and Tiu have different perception about interracial and interfaith marriage. It is primarily
seen through the differing storyworld in these different literature works, one is more
acceptable towards marriage between different race/faith, while the other is not as tolerant
and accepting. Relating with the wider contexts of the writers’ origin, it reflects how the
differing social and historical background of India and Philippines influence the different
portrayal of interracial and interfaith marriage in the Two Hours and Nanking Store.
In the Two Hours Govardhan depicts the issue of marriage between the two largest
religions in India, Islam and Hinduism. Anita as a Hindu falls in love with Salim Abbas, a
Muslim. The obstacle in their marriage is the strong resistance from Anita’s father, Subbu
who is a Hindu priest. At first Subbu disapproves for her daughter’s choice to marry Salim.
Yet after he visits the Abbas’ household he is touched with the Abbas’ respect toward
Hindu customs and their humble manner even though the Abbas are a rich family. In the
end the marriage is able to be conducted by both Hindu and Islam fashions to shows the
diversity of the bride and the groom’s religious outlook.
Different with Govardhan, the way D. Tiu portrays interracial marriage in the Nanking Store
is more complex. Dealing with a Chinese family, Peter and Linda as the main characters,
conflict arises when Linda is unable to bear children even after a long marriage. Due to the
fact that the continuation of family bloodline is a focal issue in Chinese household, Peter secretly marries a
Bisayan bar girl, whom later borne him two sons. Linda is accused of being barren and
socially harassed by her in-laws. Yet after Peter dies after a car-crash, it is later found out
that Linda is not barren, she is pregnant with the child of her driver.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The emphasis of this paper is to compare the reception of interfaith and interracial
marriage as depicted in Ram Govardhan’s the Two Hours and Macario D.Tiu’s Nanking Store.
To analyze the different portrayal of interfaith and interracial marriage in Ram Govardhan’s
the Two Hours and Macario D. Tiu’s Nanking Store, narratology is used as the approach.
Several narratological terminologies are used as the framework of the analysis, mainly
connected with cognitive and contextualist branches of narrative analysis. As a brief
outline, this paper aims at analyzing the mental representation of the storyworld through
the textual cues given by the narrator/focalizer which is the domain of cognitive
narratology. Furthermore, as a story is always narrated and mediated through a particular
narrator or focalizer, narratological concept of focalization is also used to better understand
the filtering of information through the perspective of a given narrator/focalizer.
The first theoretical concept is storyworld. Storyworld is the fictional world which
is represented in the story. It is defined by Herman et al (2012) as “the narrative worlds
that storytellers, using many different kinds of symbol systems (written or spoken language,
static or moving images, world-image combinations, etc) (p.15), prompts interpreters to
engage in the process of co-creating”. This passage exemplifies how interpreters construct,
or co-creates this fictional world through “many different kinds of symbol systems.”
Regarding written narratives such as novel or short stories, the symbol systems are textual,
i.e. words, phrases, and sentences. The process of co-creating is further explored by

122 | Faculty of Language and Arts, Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana

Caracciolo (2011) in his elaboration of R. A. Zwaan’s immersed experienced framework
(IEF):

According to Zwaan’s immersed experienced framework, in order to comprehend narrative

texts, we need to construe them –that is, to process them so that they can be mentally
represented (or simulated). A “construal” typically includes a continuous period of time, a
spatial region, a perspective, some referents, and those referents’ feature. (p. 121)

Further elaboration about perspective in narrative texts, questioning the persona

who narrates the story from his/her position and perspective is explored through
narratological terminology of focalization. Narratology gives a demarcation between the
narrator and the character. Manfred Jahn states that focalization is the submission of
(potentially limitless) narrative information to a perspectival filter (2007, p.94). As
previously explored, story is always narrated by someone –or something if the genre is sci-
fi or fantasy-, hence the one who focalizes can be the narrator or a character. Rimmon-
Kenan (1983) [2005] illustrates the differences between narrator-focalizer (external) and
character-focalizer (internal) (p. 79-82). In her view, narrator-focalizer possesses bird’s eye
vision and also the power of omniscience. (p. 79-80) As the narrator is located outside the
represented events (heterodiegetic), s/he has total knowledge about the storyworld. On the
contrary, character-focalizer is more limited, as s/he only has the limited perception (p.79).
The reader will only be able to see the events from a particular character’s perspective, as
the character is not omniscient and omnipresent. Regarding the matter of how the story is
narrated, it can be seen how distinctive a story narrated by a narrator-focalizer compared to
a character-focalizer as will later be seen in the analysis.
In the analysis, this paper does not only give concern towards the fictional
storyworld and its representation in the story, but also on the storyworld is actually
contextualized in specific socio-cultural-historical contexts. Previously, the relationship
between the text and the wider context outside it is neglected during the
“classical/structuralist narratology”, as stated by Herman (2005) Classical narratology
proposes that narrative is structurally self-sufficient, the meaning of the text is located
inside the system itself, hence there is no need to take into account any references to the
world outside the text. This paradigm shifts in the contemporary era, especially through
contextualist narratology. It is aptly summarized by Nunning (2003) as:

The development of narratology has followed a course away from the identification and
systematization of the ‘properties’ of narrative texts in the direction of a growing awareness of
the complex interplay that exists between both texts and their cultural contexts and between
textual features and the interpretive choices and strategies involved in the reading process
(p.245)

It can be seen how the “complex interplay” between texts and the contexts of its
production is also becoming an avenue for narratological literary analysis. Hence, the
emphasis of this paper is analyzing both the textual aspects of the text, and linking it with
the specific matter surrounding the production of the literary works.

FINDING AND DISCUSSIONS

This section deals with the analysis of Ram Govardhan’s the Two Hours and Macario
D. Tiu’s Nanking Store. The analysis is divided into two parts. Firstly, this paper explores the
construction of storyworld through Zwaan’s immersed experienced framework (IEF). The
aim is to compare the different storyworld being constructed which is caused by both the
differing spatio-temporal-historical background of the story, and also by the different
perception of narrator-focalizer in the Two Hours compared to the character-focalizer in
Macario D.Tiu’s Nanking Store. It will be seen how the fictional representation of the
123 | The 10th International Conference
Revisiting English Teaching, Literature, and Translation in the Borderless World:
My World, Your World, Whose World?
storyworld which deals with interracial and interfaith marriage is connected also to the
situation both author faces.

Storyworld in the Two Hours

In the first part of the analysis, this paper illustrates the process relating with the
construction of storyworld. Storyworld is the mental models constructed by the readers of
narratives –not just literary- based on the textual cues given by the narrator/focalizer. It is
further elaborated by Caracciolo that in order to understand narratives texts, readers need
to construe them in order to be able to make a mental representation of the spatio-
temporal depiction of the story. As exemplified in the previous section, a construal consists
of several features.
Analysis of the storyworld in the Two Hours reveals the construal elements of the story. The
spatial construal is in Mylapore (p. 2), a district in Chennai, India. More specifically, the two
prominent places are Anita’s unnamed neighborhood and the Abbasses’ Abbas Villa, the
grandiose residence of Salim’s family.

Abbas Villa was an astounding marble marvel and nothing short of a grand palace…. The rich
tapestry replete with French allegory on the walls, the Burmese rosewood cabinets were
exquisite. In contrast, he wondered, as to how his family of ten lived for so long inside the
lacklustre walls of his dilapidated, tiled, rented house; dying for a coat of paint for years and
ready to die altogether, anytime. Abbas Villa's imperial grandeur was inbuilt in the edifice and it
had no earthly air about it; it could only have been stolen from heaven, a Muslim heaven at
that. (p. 6)

Analyzing the temporality of the story, the story time advances around three years – from
Salim’s courting to Anita which takes place “within a few months” (p.4), Subbu’s vehement
refusal and his eventual submission to his daughter’s decision, Anita and Salim’s marriage
and ended in Anita’s daughter and Salim’s granddaughter second birthday–. The passage of
time symbolizes the turmoil of Anita and Salim’s relationship, there is a long way they have
to pass before they are able to marry and have children.
Moreover, regarding the manner of perspective, this story is narrated from external
focalizer or narratorial view, as exemplifies in this passage:

Anita was fiddling with a jewel-studded tiara by dangling it between her hairline and where the
third eye would have been in the middle of forehead. She was kneeling as the thinning amalgam
had left a lucent space on the upper half of the age-old mirror. It was as old as her father,
Subbu, could name their oldest ancestor but recollection never went beyond his great-
grandfather; making it easier for guests to guess its age. (p.1)

Instead of being narrated from a singular perspective, Anita’s, the use of narrator focalizer
allows the story to employs multiple perspective. As the narrator is omniscient and the
omnipresent, the narrator is free to shift the perspective form one character into another.
The narrator employs other characters, such as Subbu, Anita’s father to narrate the story
from their distinct paradigm. While Anita is more open minded towards marrying someone
not from her own caste, or even her own religion as shown by how she accepts Salim’s
advances, Subbu illustrates a traditionalist view of inter-Hindu marriage. Authoritarian and
patriarchal in his outlook, as seen by how “for several decades, Subbu's sway over all
domestic matters was complete and unquestioned” (p.5), Subbu vehemently refuses the
idea of interfaith marriage, as

[a] devout Hindu priest's daughter seeing a Muslim man was too unfathomable. In the whole of
Subbu's family, no one has ever married anyone outside their caste and sub-caste leave alone
marrying outside their religion (p.4)

124 | Faculty of Language and Arts, Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana

Furthermore, marrying his daughter into a Muslim family is unfathomable for Subbu, he
considers to commit suicide due to this event places deep marks in his honor, though he
later changes his mind:

“This family is doomed; let us all poison ourselves." Without further ado, he furiously walked
out, reached the temple, knelt, prayed Lord Murugan fasting all day and fainted just short of
sunset (p.4)

A research by Doel among the so called “honor killing” in India states that honor killing is
homicide of the female member of a family or her paramour or both of them by the family
members of the girl, due to the belief of the perpetrators that the deceased had brought
dishonor upon the family or community (2011). The believers of this concept acclaim that
the deep shame and dishonor can only be remedied by the killing of the offending party. In
the story, it can be seen how Subbu considers that marrying her daughter to a Muslim is a
blemish for his family honor.
The preceding paragraphs has analyzed the construal of the storyworld in the Two
Hours from spatio-temporal and also the question of who is the one narrates the story or
perspective. It can be seen how Mylapore, a district in Chennai, India is the central location
of the story. Further exploring the spatio-construal, the contrasting depiction of the
grandiose Abbas Villa and the dilapidated condition of Anita’s household illustrates the
differing social status between Anita’s and Salim’s family. Analyzing from the temporal
situation, the progressive time period which ranges three years symbolizes the hardship to
establishing interracial and interfaith marriage in India is rather difficult, especially in the
face of traditionalist Hindu patriarch which is Subbu, Anita’s father. It took persuasion and
mediation for Subbu to changes his mind. Regarding the shifting perspective of the story,
from Anita’s side into Subbu’s side it illustrates the contrasting perspective regarding
interfaith marriage, while one is more accepting, the other is less open towards this idea.

Storyworld in Nanking Store

As Nanking Store has its own distinctive contrual elements compared to the Two
Hours, there are several differences in the construction of the storyworld. Analyzing the
spatial aspect of the construal, the primary action of Nanking Store occurs in the district of
Santa Ana, in Davao where the titular Nanking Store is located. Previously, Linda and Peter
lived in Bajada, three kilometers from Santa Ana. Three years after their marriage, Linda
begins to live in Nanking Store in Santa Ana where her husband remains in Bajada. It is
interesting to note how the distance “three kilometers” is included as a textual cue. It
symbolizes the beginning of the couple’s strained relationship, as Linda prefers to live
separately from Peter though only a mere three kilometers away.
Similar to the temporal arrangement of the Two Hours, the time of Nanking Hours is
also progressive. In truth, time progresses even farther in the story than in the Two Hours.
While the Two Hours spans around three years from the start of Anita’s courting by Salim
and ended by Anita and Salim’s daughter second birthday, around one-decade story-time
passed in Nanking Hours. This passage of time is noted by the growing up of the character-
focalizer of this story, a boy nicknamed Tua Poy (fatso). He is there at the very beginning
of Linda and Peter’s marriage, until the ending of the story where Linda is pregnant with
her driver’s child. Narrating in more limited perspective compared to the previous narrator-
focalizer in the Two Hours, in the beginning of the story Tua Poy remarks that “I was only
three years old then, but I have vivid memories of Peter and Linda’s wedding.” (p.1) And
in the end of the story, this conversation between Linda and Tua Poy reveals just how
many years have passed:

125 | The 10th International Conference

Revisiting English Teaching, Literature, and Translation in the Borderless World:
My World, Your World, Whose World?
 One night, I arrived home to find Linda talking with Mother.
"Hoa, Tua Poya! You're so tall!" she greeted me. "Here are some oranges. I know you like
them."
I said my thanks. How heavy with child she was!
"How old are you now?"
"Twelve," I said. (p. 12)

Regarding the matter of perspective, as mentioned previously the use of character-

focalizer causes the presentation of the story to differ from narrator-focalizer point of
view. The breaking up of Linda and Peter’s marriage, Peter’s infidelity and his marriage to a
local Bisayan woman until Linda is revealed not to have been barren all along, as she is
pregnant in the ending is all told from Tua Pov’s perspective. As a homodiegetic narrator,
Tua Pov is located in the story-level (diegesis) itself, as he is only one of the many
characters in the story. It indicates his limitation, he is unable to grasp what is in the other
character’s mind and he is unable to know certain information unless he is able to hear it,
either first-hand or from second-hard sources. One example is how the information of the
going-on in Peter and Linda’s family is from conversation among people in the
neighborhood. It deals with how Peter is suspected to be infertile, “a bad stock” during
gossiping in New Canton Barbershop:

"A bad stock," the toothless man said, shaking his head. "Ah Kong has no bones. But Peter is
a bad stock. A pity. After four years, still no son. Not even a daughter."
"It's the woman, not Peter," said a man from a neighboring table. "I heard they tried
everything. She even had regular massage by a Bisayan medicine woman."
"It's sad. It's very sad," the toothless man said. "His parents want him to junk her, but he loves
her." (p. 4)

Having children –preferably male- is a major concern in Chinese family. Tua Pov –and by
extension the reader- knows this issue from his conversation with First Brother:

Peter's father was the sole survivor of the Zhin family. He had a brother but he died when still
young. The family name was therefore in danger of dying out. It was the worst thing that
could happen to a Chinese family, for the bloodline to vanish from the world. Who would pay
respects to the ancestors? It was unthinkable. Peter was the family's only hope to carry on the
family name, and he still remained childless. (p.5)

Continuing the family names so that it will not die out due to having no lineage is a job for
the male-line of Chinese descend. Peter faces this situation, having marries Linda for so
long and remained childless. Besides shaming his familial bloodline, it is also a major stain
for his masculinity. He is even considered as “a bad seed”, a laughing stock among the
neighborhood. It even affects his personality and social life:

But while everybody agreed that it was Linda's fault, some people also doubted Peter's virility.
At the New Canton Barbershop, it was the subject of drunken bantering. He was aware that
people were talking behind his back. From a very gregarious man, he became withdrawn and
no longer socialized. (p.5)

Tua Pov realizes that Peter is torn apart by two opposing principles, his filial duty
towards his parents, and his love towards Linda. In the end, Tua Pov concludes that his
filial duty prevails against his marriage, he remarks how “I think at that time he still loved
Linda, but he always deferred to the wishes of his parents”. Peter begins an affair with a bar
girl in Matina, secretly marries her and keeps her “in a house in a subdivision in Mandug.”
(p.6) She eventually gives birth to Peter’s two sons. Though Peter’s family are happy for
having a continuation in family line, the fact that Peter does not choose a Chinese remain a
blemish. This is seen in how:

126 | Faculty of Language and Arts, Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana

 As for his parents, they acted as if nothing had happened. Perhaps they knew about the
scandal, but pretended not to know. They were caught in a dilemma. On one hand, it should
make them happy that Peter finally produced a son. On the other hand, they did not relish the
idea of having a half-breed for a grandson, the old generation Chinese being conscious of
racial purity. (p.6)

While interfaith marriage in the Two Hours is caused by the sincere love between the
bride and the groom, a bond that unite the Muslim and Hindu family, interracial marriage
in Nanking Store is driven by circumstances. As the marriage between Linda and Peter
remains childless after years of marriage, Peter has to continue his family name by marrying
another woman. Although from his second marriage he has two sons, further complication
arises by how his tradition minded family dislike having “half-breed” grandsons. It implies
how in Nanking Store the issue of interracial marriage is viewed in a negative perspective, as
the focal point of the story is Peter and his traditionalist family.

CONCLUSION
To conclude, the analysis of the storyworld in the Two Hours and Nanking Store
proves the distinctiveness of both literary works. Both short stories contextualize their
story within their local socio-cultural-historical context. As an Indian writer, Ram
Govardhan places the marriage of two of Indians’ largest religion, Hindu and Muslim as a
focal point. Through the depiction of Subbu, he symbolizes the traditionalist view of
Hindu who prefers that marriage remains inter-caste and inter-Hindu. Subbu’s prejudice
and distain towards Muslim is emphasized due to his lack of knowledge about Muslim
tradition, as he only keeps within his social and religious group only. In the end, the
marriage between Anita and Salim are able to be consummated.
Differing with what Ram Govardhan portrays, Macario D.Tiu offers a darker and
saddening depiction of interracial marriage. While Anita and Salim’s marriage is based on
love, Peter’s second marriage is based on his desire to have a son to continue his family
bloodline. His marriage between Peter and Linda collapsed due to the fact that the couple
remain childless. Having a continuation in family line is a major concern among Chinese
family, which motivates Peter to find another wife. It remains unclear whether he really
loves his second wife, as she is not even named and quite possibly it is caused by lust alone.
Becoming a laughing stock in his community due to his infertility, Peter proves that this
gossip is false by impregnating his second wife. Although he has two sons, the fact that
they are half-breed remain a blemish in his family.

REFERENCES
Caracciolo, M. (2011) The Reader’s Virtual Body: Narrative Space and Its Reconstruction.
Storyworlds : A Journal of Narrative Studies. Vol. 3 (1)
Doel, Satnam Singh. (2014) “Honour Killing in India: A Study of the Punjab State.”
International Research Journal of Social Sciences. Vol. 3.6
FABC Papers no 118. (2006) Inter-Faith Marriages in the Pluralistic Context of Asia. Hong Kong
: FABC
Herman, D. et al (2012) Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates. Columbus: The
Ohio State University Press
Govardhan, R. The Two Hours. Web, 11 December 2015.
(http://www.qlrs.com/story.asp?id=776)
Tiu, M.D. Nanking Store (1999)
Herman, D., Jahn, M., and Ryan M.L (2005) Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory.
London: Routledge Taylor and Francis Group.
Jahn, M. (2007). Focalization. The Cambridge Companion to Narrative. Ed. David Herman.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

127 | The 10th International Conference

Revisiting English Teaching, Literature, and Translation in the Borderless World:
My World, Your World, Whose World?
Jones, G.W., Leng C.H., & Mohamad M (2009). Muslim-Non-Muslim Marriage: Political and
Cultural Contestations in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian
Studies.
Nunning, A. (2003) “Narratology of Narratologies? Taking Stock of Recent Developments,
Critique and Modest Proposals for Future Uses of the Term” What is Narratology?
Questions and Answers Regarding the Status of a Theory. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter
Personal Law, National Portal of India. Retrieved from
https://india.gov.in/citizen/lawnorder.php?id=16
Rimmon-Kenan, S. (1983) [2005] Narrative Fiction Contemporary Poetics. London: Routledge
Taylor and Francis Group.
Singh, D., & Goli, S. (2011) Exploring the Concept of Mixed Marriages in Indian and
selected states: First Time Evidences from Large Scale Survey. Population Association
of America 2011 Annual Meeting Program

128 | Faculty of Language and Arts, Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana