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. 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. Vijayan undertakes a seven-year long, 9,000-mile . 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. Rumpus: The book utilizes more than one medium: photography, narrative nonfiction, journalism. 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). Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. A relatively small group of people runs it. Theyre screaming all the time, its just that we dont listen to them. 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. Another name that came to my mind was 'An Outline of the Republic', only to discover Siddhartha Debs excellent book by the same name. India shares borders with a host of . With sharp political analyses, dense historical research and lyrical, image-rich prose, Vijayans journalism displays an inspiring ethic, one that is invested in the micro-histories of the small man, the one existing on the fringes of history and the one that most requires urgent representation. B, A book that will enlighten every citizen of every nation. You dont need a Leni Riefenstahl today. When the book finally came out, India was undergoing the deadly 2nd wave. From the epoch of Empire to the nation-state, border making is fundamentally a political project that creates, sustains, and reinforces inequality. The Indian government bears some responsibility for this: Amid this brinkmanship between the two nuclear powers, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not address the nation directly. 6,253 Followers, 902 Following, 1,165 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitravijayan) You can carefully craft a narrative of immigrant success but act tone-deaf about the ongoing refugee crisis. The public is sold a lie as the attack is framed as a gas leak. They are also essentially bureaucratic, judicial, and procedural acts of terror. I think its the other way round, these communities have always been speaking, writing, documenting, teachingwe must simply listen rather than represent them in any way. She has sung in multiple languages including Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu. So I dont know if it was empathy so much as just building a relationship with people. Modi met with senior police officers and ordered them not to intervene as violence raged. I think these are fundamental questions of freedom and dignity. It was just a sad moment, and I couldnt celebrate a book when there was so much human tragedy playing out. I had to cut those out, as my editor felt this might not work. But its also important to constantly take account of who is writing about this India to an Indian and global audience. Its feudal, entitled, and cannibalistic. Your email address will not be published. To them he is a man who has settled into a job that has no future. Rumpus: Can we please talk about Priyanka Chopra, and how her rise is seen as a marker of brown achievement? You can claim to be patriotic but not political, you can claim to support the troops but ignore the ongoing civilian casualty. The word terrorism, for instance, is used almost exclusively to refer to a particular communitybut fails to refer to state-enabled terror or the terror deployed by majority communities. But it needs to do more for peace. In another essay from 2019, I write about the banality of bearing witness as an excuse to produce extractive work. These questions about documentation practices started long before I started this book project, and I learnt along the way. Ten years later, you were in Kashmir, where you 'hoped to find answers' by talking to a family that had lost a son. L.L.B., Law, The University of Leeds, 2004 M.A., International Relation . This was something I had to resist from the get-go. This Life Draws Attention to Life Behind Bars and the Transcendent Power of Rap, Wrestling with Reality in The Big Door Prize. This is the backdrop against which we map how border practices and policies have played out in India. by Suchitra Vijayan Hardcover 1,759.00 2,023.00 You Save: 264.00 (13%) Usually dispatched in 1 to 3 weeks. How did you respond to that environment being in an extremely challenging position yourself? One of the reasons why this book was written was to step back: to say that this violence that you and I listen to and encounter is not new to say that this violence is not new. 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. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. The show deals with interesting international happenings. Despite the failures in investigation and prosecution related to criminal trials arising out of the pogrom, the judiciary has projected itself as an able and willing neutral arbiter of justice that is not complicit with the deep structures of Hindutvas anti-Muslim prejudice https://t.co/EFf5bxYEBt, True societal change has always emerged from the ground-up, with communities fighting for their own freedom and dignity. Where does that leave us? I left my 18-month-old daughter to travel and finish this book. Its about what people like me should do. But for me hope is radical; hope is the last bastion of our defense. Instead, we need to ask what fate awaits us. There is a lot to learn and unlearn, and a writer and a photographer should respond to a political moment, and the work should be a reflection of those practices. Acted as the General Manager for a day and motivated employees to work for the same purpose to reinforce team . So now, how do we respond to this? I have two tests. The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy, Supreme Court forms expert panel to probe any regulatory failure on Adani issue, India makes renewed push for consensus at G20 Foreign Ministers meeting, Hindenburg Research report on Adani Group | Supreme Court verdict on expert committee on March 2, High debt on Vedanta books puts investors on tenterhooks, Employees Provident Fund: How to activate UAN online, 1947: Madras Devadasis (Prevention of Dedication) Act passed, RMA 0-1 FCB, El Clasico highlights: Barcelona leads on aggregate after beating Real Madrid courtesy of a Militao own goal. But eventually we need all kinds of stories and arguments to emerge from what is now considered Indian American writing. Some even dressed for the occasion in combat gear. Who is expendable, and the manufacturing of rightlessness to render people expendable. Indian Foreign Secretary V.K. The result is a gripping, urgent dispatch from a modern India in crisis, and the full and vivid portrait of the country weve long been missing. 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. These are stories of massive human rights violations committed by the Indian state in the countrys margins. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. Be it the teenager who is offered guns, money, and M&M candies to fight the Taliban in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, or Ali, who seeks solace in darkness as the floodlights installed on his plot of land along the India-Bangladesh border leaves him traumatized, or the nonagenarian Johinder Singh Suj from Sindh (a province in present-day Pakistan), who still cherishes his school geography textbook that shows a map of undivided British India the people are captured with deep empathy and come alive in her narration with the adept use of dialogue. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. I find that profoundly inspiring. According to a new World Health Organization report, we lost as many as 4.7 million people in India. India and its Borderlands: Suchitra Vijayan in Conversation with Sharjeel Usmani, Book talk with Suchitra Vijayan, author of Midnights Borders, Crisis at the Border: Contestation, Sovereignty, and Statelessness. I believe it can teach us to ask these questions again. 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. Sometimes lost. [4] She also worked as a dubbing artist for popular heroines like Shriya Saran and Lakshmi Rai.[5]. 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. Includes previously unreleased investigation under #JackStraw. They are arriving from various cities and people I have never met. The post-Cold War and 90s rhetoric of a borderless world that accompanied globalisation also kick-started massive border fencing projects in India. This means that the capacity to see does not automatically become the capacity for action. It definitely doesnt help when trying to hold a powerful state accountable. Second, we can no longer have certain conversationsconversations are now impossible. The travel, the people they encounter, and the political events they record quickly become cameos. Also read: Book Review: Looking Through Dalit Sahitya And Ambedkar. Founded in 2009, The Rumpus is one of the longest running independent online literary and culture magazines. The acts of writing, documenting, photographing, and archiving carry privileges of caste and class. I think the way that news and mostly disinformation makes its way to us, we think of violence in very particular waysas disjointed. A t a time when right-wing nationalism is crescendoing in India and across the world, Suchitra Vijayan's Midnight's Borders raises pertinent questions about the very foundations of India's nationalism the cartography of South Asian nation-states defined by arbitrary lines drawn hastily by the British colonial administration. A: I dont agree with this kind of framing, because its not that underrepresented people dont have voices. Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. Our borders had become a spectacle, and we the cheering mob, she says, as she calls for purging hatred for the sake of posterity. In retaliation, the Indian Air Force carried out an airstrike on an alleged militant training camp in Balakot in Pakistans Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Q: What was your goal with writing the book in the beginning and how did it change and drive you throughout those 8 years? [6], She wrote a short story, a graphic illustration of an episode in the life of a black peppercorn called Kuru-Milaku, called "The Runaway Peppercorn".[7]. After being detained at one of the checkpoints for over two hours, I made my way to one of the villages closest to the Line of Control. Suchitra Vijayan traveled Indias vast land border to explore how these populations live, and document how even places just a few miles apart can feel like entirely different countries.. Zoya, a young female officer, is now confined to her wheelchair, and Milind, who also makes it out alive, is seen at home with drawn curtains, battling trauma. A:I dont think an ethical or moral compass exists nowI dont know if it ever existed. How "The Family Man" champions the carceral security state. You need a community of people to support you. The Rumpus is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. I can see how religious Hindu fanaticism has started to spread its tentacles in both the Democratic and the Republican parties, and this is primarily because of an absence of balanced stories about India. 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. 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. Good, honest and non-polemical writing has always forced us to confront the lies we tell ourselves. Dear reader, this article is free to read and it will remain free but it isnt free to produce. Conversations With Writers Braver Than Me, Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India, FUNNY WOMEN: Excerpts from George Eliots, Rumpus Original Poetry: Two Poems by John A. Nieves, RUMPUS POETRY BOOK CLUB EXCERPT: WHY I WRITE LOVE POETRY IN A BURNING WORLD by Katie Farris, The Freedom of Form & Re-Entering Myths: An interview with A.E. 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. These are no longer contradictory; instead, even criticism can be converted to views. Barkha Dutt: India has made its point in Pakistan. Vijayan reserves her own impressions for later, and allows us to know these people intimately. And this is always at the expense of others. Siaan On Being Queer And Being Online, FII Interviews: Journalist Meena Kotwal On Minority Politics, Journalism Today And The Caste Divide. Second, there is a clear distinction between speaking against the powerful and claiming to speak on behalf of the "voiceless". As Sari Begum's story [in the book] illustrates, 'A life where the violence of the border is not at the fence, or in the trenches, but at the center of 'their' and our 'universe'. These instances are also about border practices because modern states, especially liberal democracies, expend immense energy in creating and maintaining identity categories: who belongs, and where. 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. I fear we are losing that cosmopolitanism of small places. We see that more clearly when you decide against photographing children at the India-Bangladesh border. (Stay up to date on new book releases, reviews, and more with The Hindu On Books newsletter. As a trained barrister, I used to believe in the concept of justicebut now I simply call this freedom and dignity. The latter is an act of violence against people whose voice you are appropriating. The events in Hathras did not happen at the border; neither did the murder and gang rape of two teenage girls in the Katra village of Budaun district, Uttar Pradesh. Can you write about loss without living? Her writing has appeared in The Citron Review, Dukool Magazine, Cerebration, Feminism in India, Times of India (Spellbound edition), and others. It is meant to manufacture an underclass of rightless subjects. Her YouTube channel 'Suchislife' has all her updated work. We need more such books. 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. Vasundhara Sirnate Drennan is director of research at the Polis Project. You can find them onYouTube&Linkedin,and can also check out their websitehere. [8] On 7 March 2017, she applied for divorce. Vijayan began her journey in Kolkata. We perform rituals of freedom in a right-less societywe dont ask if the rules, laws, and policies that are put in place are fair, just, right or equitable. With profound empathy and a novelistic eye for detail, Vijayan brings us face to face with the brutal legacy of colonialism, state violence, and government corruption. It seems that they have a different eye for these women, who they describe as cunning, deceitful, and in some cases, prostitutes'. The mortality of someone you love affects how you write. What changeshave youobserved in the way you treat your subject after finishing your journey and book? Respond to our political present. If it does, I have failed. So I try to learn and listen, and again, as I say in this book, "It is not my goal to 'bear witness' or 'give voice to the voiceless'. I still do. The two press briefings by the foreign secretary and Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson entertained no questions. Because you are constantly thinking about the ethical universe you are bringing this child into What values do you teach this child? We believe that literature builds communityand if reading The Rumpus makes you feel more connected, please show your support! March 20, 2021 09:50:40 IST. I particularly loved the fact that all our couple shots were very natural and came out truly . 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. You need to write what you seethats why you started this project.. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Also, we shouldn't forget that the border making project is central to capitalist and neoliberal logic. 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. NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study. 'Music I Like', an album of Suchitra's renditions of Mahakavi Bharatiyaar's poetry, set to contemporary tunes and music, released by Universal Music, was a turning point in her career. Indias intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. In the same chapter of the book, Kamal says, "If I am an Indian, then why am I afraid?" In this podcast, Vijayan discusses with host Alex Woodson her 9,000-mile journey through India's borderlands, which formed the basis of the book, and she discusses the violent and continuing history of the 1947 partition, the stark differences and similarities along South Asia's various borders, and what "citizenship" mean in India in 2021 and How does one think of violence, how does one make sense of all this, how does one retain a sense ofnot exactly humanity, but ratherempathy for the other? What matters is that the book exists. Suchitra Vijayan is the executive director of the Polis Project. [1], Suchitra joined Sify for a year, after graduating. The events of 9/11 had profound effects on how border security projects and politics played out. Not mine. As a spy working for TASC, Tiwari has to juggle being an underpaid government employee as well as an absent husband and a perpetually late and distracted father. "Fighting for justice and human rights in India is a long and lonely battle" Nishrin Jafri Hussain, the daughter of Ehsan Jafri (from 2019)
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