Love and resilience in Of Martyrs and Marigolds : Countering the divisive politics of ethnic nationalism

By doing a close reading of Aquila Ismail’s novel Of Martyrs and Marigolds, this essay interrogates the popular (mis)perception of “Biharis” as “collaborators”, which has often been used to justify their victimization. Contrary to ethno-nationalist discourses, which paint the Urdu-speaking Muslims of East Pakistan/Bangladesh as the ethnic other of the Bengali nationalist subject, Ismail’s novel presents an alternate history of love and togetherness through its ethnicity-defying vision and characters. The novel’s subversive potential resides, first, in its evocation of multilingualism as an antidote to the divisive logic of ethno-nationalism of 1971; and secondly, in its central plot-line of an inter-ethnic love story, even when the romance is doomed. By examining the contours of this ethnicity-defying love, which is hopeless yet hopeful, the essay humanizes the notion of political resistance and agency by locating it in the realm of the everyday – empathy, love and care. While the lovers fail to transcend the clutches of ethnicity to exhibit transethnic or unconditional love, the essay evaluates the political significance of their limited agency. The essay also argues that by making its heroine choose survival over love, the novel reconciles the worlds of romance and realism.