In that process, her reportage unravels the cultural and political implicationsof our bordersonour 'collective conscience', as capricious as that might be, and on the lives of those sandwiched between two warring nations. Q: What struck me about your work was its immersive style. Sayantika Mandal is an Indian writer. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions?". Even as 70% of the border with Bangladesh has been fenced, "smugglers, drug couriers, human traffickers and cattle rustlers continue to cross to ply their. The publishing landscape, including Indian publishing, is deeply flawedit is upper class, upper caste, and deeply alienating for anyone who doesnt come from already established and existing networks of privilege. Its easy for Indian Americans and diaspora Desis to become tokens who speak of diversity but not equity or representation, talk of caste as culture and whitewash Hindutva. This affects who gets to document, and whom. In her new book There are some brilliant writers writing on these issuesthe problem is always that these voices dont make it to the mainstream. So the question is not: will the future be borderless? Suchitra Vijayan. I think this book will change the global conversation about India and shape what gets written in the future about India. She completed her MFA in Writing (Fiction) from the University of San Francisco where she was awarded the Jan Zivic Fellowship and is about to begin her PhD in English with a Creative Dissertation from the University of Georgia, Athens. As a trained barrister, I used to believe in the concept of justicebut now I simply call this freedom and dignity. Because you are constantly thinking about the ethical universe you are bringing this child into What values do you teach this child? We need to think about border practices, policing, and national security policies within the larger historical and political contexts. He drops and picks up his kids from school, pines for his old job and is concerned about the newly-formed government in Pakistanall the while trying to salvage his crumbling marriage. We also need a fundamental reframing of language. Also, a book is an act of community; it has many midwives. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle. RT @project_polis: Writing fiction in a dystopian world - @kiccovich in conversation with @mohammedhanif https://thepolisproject.com/listen/writing-fiction-in-a . I dont want to make this about me. What makes these lives so vivid is how Vijayan contextualizes them by placing them in the bigger picture of history. IWE is a body of work where the voices of Indias marginalized are still kept on the fringes; Midnights Borders is anarrative nonfiction book depicting a world that novels from mainland India have failed to depict. After Pulwama, the Indian media proves it is the BJPs propaganda machine, Sign up for a weekly roundup of thought-provoking ideas and debates, Fox News bosses scolded reporters who challenged false election claims, To fight defamation suit, Fox News cites election conspiracy theories. They both have pregnant daughters, a fact that becomes significant as the novel progresses. Suchitra tweets @suchitrav. A Barrister by training, she previously worked for the United Nations war crimes tribunals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda before co-founding the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, which gives legal aid to . The second season of The Family Man begins with Srikant Tiwari, a former intelligence officer of TASCa fictitious intelligence agency akin to the Research & Analysis Wingworking at an IT company. These are no longer contradictory; instead, even criticism can be converted to views. First, does my work aid the powerful? I think these are fundamental questions of freedom and dignity. This was something I had to resist from the get-go. Acted as the General Manager for a day and motivated employees to work for the same purpose to reinforce team . In an interview with Firstpost,Vijayan talks about her book, the militarisation of borders, ethno-nationalism, and the politics of documentation. This book ate into so much of my life. At the end of it, I felt that I learnt more about myself, more about my home, I had becomeif not a better writer, an infinitely better human being, which is to say that one realises that theres always a Longue dure that one needs to consider, crave out time and space to think, train oneself not to always react. She has a sister named, Sunitha. Each of these subscription programs along with tax-deductible donations made to The Rumpus through our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas, helps keep us going and brings us closer to sustainability. There are some notable exceptions, but they are an exception. More importantly, reporters need to engage with what it means to administer what has been called the worlds most militarized zone. Only then can the country answer a more fundamental question: Just what should be done to create conditions that allow Kashmiris to choose their destiny? There are enough stories of people parachuting into communities to do human interest stories.. What moral and political stands we should take in the face of ongoing oppression. In her book, she makes her intention clear at the very beginning, claiming that this endeavor is not to give voice to the voiceless but to critique the nation-state, its violence, and the arbitrariness of territorial sovereignty. She acknowledges that a book in its limited scope cannot really encapsulate the entirety of this journey, and it will remain more of a scrapbook, a collection of images, texts, poetry, and maps. by Suchitra Vijayan Hardcover 1,759.00 2,023.00 You Save: 264.00 (13%) Usually dispatched in 1 to 3 weeks. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. She's a good friend and kindly agreed to take our City Hall wedding photos. A lot of travel writing is still written by a particular group of people with immense privilege, and they all tend to center themselves. How do you think this shapes climate justice? The world we know is already being remade in ways we cant fathom. We cant continue to see this in neo-liberal terms like stakeholder. I think the usage of this kind of language is ineffectual; its emptied of imagination. Could you comment on how much our present border security policies have changed in the last few years? I am repeating what I have said before, "Kashmir is Indias greatest moral and political failure. Vasundhara Sirnate Drennan is director of research at the Polis Project. Midnights Borders: A Peoples History of Modern India ; Suchitra Vijayan, Context/ Westland Books, 699. I want to flag two essays where I engage with this in an in-depth manner, Disaster Ruins Everything, on my work in Haiti, and what it means to photograph disaster, especially when it is Brown and Black bodies. In Midnight's Borders (Westland Publications, 2021), author and photographer Suchitra Vijayan travels the 9,000 miles of India's borders to understand what Partition did to individual lives and . In Assam, Vijayan met people devastated by the National Register of Citizens process, with names of long-time residents missing from the final list, and in Kashmir she spent time with a family mourning the loss of their son in an encounter. MacAdam reviews Suchitra Vijayan's book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India Read More. We thank her for her time, patience, and illuminating insights into her work. In her15,000-kilometre journey, spread over seven years, Vijayan mulls over the meaning of freedom, belongingness in a land of imagined communities, created by territorial demarcations. More from this author , Tags: Aruni Kashyap, Asian American, bollywood, Brahmanism, caste system, democracy, Hindu, Hinduism, Hinduphobia, Hindutva, immigrants, immigration, India, Indian American, Indian American literature, Leni Riefenstahl, Midnight's Borders, Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India, model minority, Modi, Narendra Damodardas Modi, Narendra Modi, neoliberalism, photographs, photography, Polis Project, Politics, Priyanka Chopra, south asian, South Asian American, South Asian diaspora, Stan Swamy, Suchitra Vijayan, travel writing, Filed Under: Features & Reviews, Rumpus Original. On Feb. 14, an Indian paramilitary convoy was attacked in Pulwama in India-administered Kashmir, resulting in the death of 40 Indian officers. The credit goes to my agent Lucy Cleland who suggested this title. She never did like my then-husband, which makes her a better judge of character than I was. The people whose lives are not just materials for the book, who are, in some ways, your co-conspirators in trying to make sense of the social reality. [2] She became known as Rj Suchi, with her popular morning show Hello Chennai. But for me hope is radical; hope is the last bastion of our defense. We need more such books. The Family Man has found tremendous success as a slick and funny espionage drama, particularly for its treatment of the protagonist, and even for humanising terrorists. All too often, the Indian media portrays Kashmiris as terrorists or human shields, not as a community seeking self-determination. I find that profoundly inspiring. In Afghanistan, Kashmir, and India, from one dangerous conflict zone to another, she spoke with people, ate with them, and listened to their stories. Abrogation Of Article 370 Jammu And Kashmir Statehood, BSF foils another Pakistan plot, shoots down drone in Punjab's Amritsar, Light on weight, heavy on damage: India will be able to hit deep inside Pakistan with THIS ultralightweight howitzer, Put issues related to border in 'proper place', work for its early normalisation: Chinese FM Qin to Jaishankar, In Midnight's Borders, Suchitra Vijayan meditates on belongingness, freedom and political implications of territorial demarcations. Francesca Recchia, a researcher and writer and former director of the Institute for Afghan Arts and Architecture, is the editor and creative director of The Polis Project.. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister, researcher and the author of "Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India." She is the executive director of the Polis Project. So I dont know if it was empathy so much as just building a relationship with people. If you think about communities in resistance to immense violations, theyre all interconnected to climate justice. Reports also identified different people as the supposed masterminds of the Pulwama attack at various points without clear sourcing. Photograph of Suchitra Vijayan courtesy of Suchitra Vijayan. If she wasnt real she would be a marriage between a meme and parody. Suchitra Vijayan is the executive director of the Polis Project. Its feudal, entitled, and cannibalistic. Co-founded the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, Suchitra is also the founder of the Polis Project, a research and journalism organisation. In an early chapter of the book, you talk about how new worlds are created by the people at Indias borders. The book is a prelude to what was coming, and is also a impassioned plea to my readers to ask some fundamental questions of what it means to live in a country like Indiawhat is the function of a state when its primary preoccupation is no longer the citizen but a performance of an ideology? How do you think your book contributes to the larger conversation about India? Rumpus: I believe your book contributes to an important conversation about India we must have right now in the United States, for its own sake. Born and raised in Madras, India, she is the author of the critically acclaimed book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India (Melville House, New York). In recent years, the narrative of hate has escalated with the reelection of the right-wing Narendra Modi government in 2019. The Rumpus is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Follow our team of columnists and reporters who write about the media. As a spy working for TASC, Srikant Tiwari, played by Manoj Bajpayee, has to juggle being an underpaid government employee as well as an absent husband and a perpetually late and distracted father. This is where I believe literary nonfiction becomes a powerful tool. He is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Georgia and is the author of The House With a Thousand Stories, His Fathers Disease, and There Is No Good Time for Bad News. How did you arrive at this stylistic juncture where you manage to tell the stories of these people who are radically less privileged than you without appropriating them? How do you protect this child? March 20, 2021 09:50:40 IST. It definitely doesnt help when trying to hold a powerful state accountable. This might not seem like much, but it is absolutely essential. This media blitzkrieg resulted in the erasure of two important political trends. NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study. What do words like democracy, freedom, and citizenship mean? If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. . The book arrived in the middle of a pandemic and a devastating second wave [of COVID-19] in India. So now, how do we respond to this? He writes about how when the Constitution was adopted, "We are going to enter into a life of contradictions. As I say in the book, Kashmir changed me, it gave me political and moral clarity to always stand with those fighting for their peoples freedom and dignity. Suchitra was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, as the daughter of Ramadurai and Padmaja. Fearful of the future he asked quietly, Where did all this hate come from, where is it going to take us? echoing what many residents had told her. Even as 70% of the border with Bangladesh has been fenced, smugglers, drug couriers, human traffickers and cattle rustlers continue to cross to ply their trades. All along the border, the common refrain is, It feels like Partition is still alive., A story from near Jalpaiguri in north Bengal, that of a man named Ali, is heartbreaking. You can claim to be patriotic but not political, you can claim to support the troops but ignore the ongoing civilian casualty. A place to read, on the Internet. Whose Stories Are Told In Indian History? Its a hard book to name, and I kept going back and forth. Subscribe here. More than two weeks after the attack, our analysis finds that no news site had rectified the errors in their reporting, leaving these misleading facts as a matter of public record. You've mentioned in the text that you've spent your entire adult life thinking about state violence and justice because of a troubling incident in 1994 when your father was attacked. Subscribe to the Rumpus Book Clubs (poetry, prose, or both) and Letters in the Mail from authors (for adults and kids). The people in this book are eloquent advocates of their history and their struggles. But it needs to do more for peace. A literary community. As an attorney, she previously worked for the United Nations war crimes tribunals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda before co-founding the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, which gives legal aid to Iraqi refugees. Suchitra Vijayan and Francesca Recchia In this era when Indian armed forces and the police act with absolute impunity, a handful of local news outlets play an essential role in reporting and. This contributed to the long-running, brutal silencing of Kashmiris and their struggle for self-determination. First, the escalation in the counterinsurgency war within the Kashmir Valley under which hundreds of activists were arrested and several Kashmiri civilians killed in gun battles was grievously underreported. Heartbreaking, and still, something we must all notice and understand. M, Unique and ambitious, Vijayans project gains urgency and significance from our moment of resurgent nationalisms, when borders are being aggressively reasserted, in India and across the globe. G, An intervention like no other when it comes to thinking through not just the history of India but for reflections on borders, migration, the elusory nature of nations. Once we eliminated the spectacle, we realized that the Indian public got very little information about the Pulwama attack and its aftermath. Although Vijayan critiques the state and its complicity in violence and erasure of lives, she refrains from villainizing the men who serve the state. Suchitra Vijayan undertook a 9000 mile journey over seven years to India's borderlands to write Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India. It's a disorienting time when your library or what books you read can become evidence of sedition . In Midnight's Borders, barrister, political analyst, and writer Suchitra Vijayan documentsmany such telling accounts of lives both growing and barely getting by alongIndian borderlands. We still argue if something should be a massacre, a pogrom, or a riot. She is the founder and executive director of The Polis Project, and the author of Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India, recently published by Context, Westland. The interview has been paraphrased and condensed for clarity, at the interviewers discretion. She entered the show on day 28 as a new contestant and was evicted on day 49. Sharing borders with six countries and spanning a geography that extends from Pakistan to Myanmar, India is the worlds largest democracy and second most populous country. Travel to States like Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland in the Northeast which share borders with China and Myanmar required Inner Line Permits, BSF soldiers followed her everywhere on the West Bengal/ Bangladesh border, and in Kashmir she was summoned to meet the local inspector at Uri. . One of the reasons I kept writing was of course all the people I met: their love and time and generosity. Who is expendable, and the manufacturing of rightlessness to render people expendable. This discrepancy is just one example of the confusion and misinformation spread to the public by deeply flawed media reports. 42, Moss Rose Heights, M.M Ali road, WASA Circle, Lalkhan Bazar, Chittogong 4000. What do these events have in common? How violence against women and girlsand even how sexual violence against men and boys (something we dont even talk about enough) is depictedis all seriously problematic. Time to let the diplomats do the hard talk. It is truly the treason of the intellectuals. We could have attributed this to ignorance even a few years back; now its just silence thats deeply complicit in the Hindutva project. One feedback I often got was that I had to put more of myself in this book. Why do you think India has gotten away with this so far? It is always Bollywood, the ascent of Priyanka Chopra, or the diasporic loneliness. More Buying Choices 1,732.00 (16 Used & New offers) Audible Audiobook 0.00 Free with Audible trial 586.00 ( 9 ) Barkha Dutt: India has made its point in Pakistan. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. This is the age of erosion of citizenship rights, a kind of ongoing attrition against human rights, civil liberties, and in the case of India, an accelerated dilution of fundamental rights. And this is always at the expense of others. But eventually we need all kinds of stories and arguments to emerge from what is now considered Indian American writing. A: I dont agree with this kind of framing, because its not that underrepresented people dont have voices. [3], She started singing after a few years as RJ. Rumpus: How hard was it to write nonfiction about such a violent contemporary history? We have migrated to a new commenting platform. We're back with our flagship podcast 'Intersectional FeminismDesi Style!' It is here that even the most civilised amongst us begin to make excuses for repression, brutality, and violence. Creative . It offers brief historical notes on how the nations current borders came into force alongside accounts of increasing militarisation, disputes, little massacres and forgotten pogroms, no-mans-lands, and the people through whom the border runs like barbed wire. Suchitra Vijayan: The Indian state has always used excessive and extrajudicial violence on communities that resist, whether its the borderlands, peripheries, or mainland Now the international viewfor instance while the Gujarat riots of 2002 brought critical international media attention and criticism, and [current Prime Minister] Modi was banned from entering the US, India was able to effectively manage global public opinion. Vijayan: I wasnt trying to write a hybrid book; I was trying to tell the stories I encountered as a way to think about the moral and political realities of our lives. Midnight's Borders by Suchitra Vijayan falls in both categories. It was not going to be easy as she quickly found out. Part of this learning was also why photographer Asim Rafiqui and I created the free UN/DO Photography workshops to think about image-making in relationship to power. Now imagine how it would be for someone from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, or working community to try to make inroads. But the number of anonymous sources willing to disclose classified and conflicting information to reporters who cited them without corroboration points to a serious crisis in how information is reported to the public. Keywords: LTTE love jihad Beef politics Hindu Nationalism Kashmir Find him on Twitter at @AruniKashyap. To them he is a man who has settled into a job that has no future. And yet, the research and the history never overpowers the flow of the narrative. Its been a little over a week since the book came out, and every day this week, I have woken up to emails, messages, and DMs from readers. She has also been appreciated for her honest and positive-humour-filled judging at reality shows like Vijay TV's Airtel Super Singer, Sun TV's Sun Singer, Asianet's Music India, and Bol Baby Bol on Gemini TV and Surya TV. I had to write and rewrite this book so many times. On Feb. 14, an Indian paramilitary convoy was attacked. Atmany points in Midnight's Borders, we see several men in positions of power view the women, who cross over from the 'other' side, as violable. Our investigation into the Indian medias reporting on the Pulwama attack found that many reports were contradictory, biased, incendiary and uncorroborated. 4 reviews of Suchitra Vijayan Photography "Huge fan of Suchitra Vijayan Photography! For instance, a border security personnel tells her how he failed to capture a photograph of a porcupine after spending half an hour trying to fit a helmet on its head, because he is bored and lonely. Copyright 2023, THG PUBLISHING PVT LTD. or its affiliated companies. Vijayan shows a keen eye for detail as she presents these diverse lives. A relatively small group of people runs it. When your investigations in Kashmir came to an end, what changes did you observe in your 'grammar of dissent'? It was just a sad moment, and I couldnt celebrate a book when there was so much human tragedy playing out. And, in many cases, they are children of the literary, cultural, or political elite who have long been the beneficiaries of the Indian state. Suchitra Vijayan. You dont need a Leni Riefenstahl today. Thank you! It took a long time to get the voice right. Her distinct and bold voice made her very popular with the younger crowd. Suchitra Vijayanis a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. Like you train for a marathon, you train to be hopeful everyday. Some even dressed for the occasion in combat gear. This is a serious, often funny and deeply revealing book. M, An essential, beautifully written report from the hellish margins of a modern mega-state struggling to be a nation, of people whose lives continue to be shaped by violent political marches across age-old homes and habitats. The people in the text fear statelessness, unknown violence, and being forgotten. This language drums the idea of the fundamental importance of justice, and such language is inalienable: it can easily be defined and empathetically understood. The public is sold a lie as the attack is framed as a gas leak. The book was called ``a genre- bending book of nonfictionmade of stories, encounters, vignettes, and photographsabout home, belonging, and displacement.`` Her essays, photographs, and interviews have appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Nation, The Boston Review, Foreign Policy, Lit Hub, Rumpus, Electric literature, NPR, NBC, and BBC.
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