But also, to be clear in terms of what I wanted to accomplish: as I say in the book, I wasnt bearing witness or giving voice to the voicelessthe people in this book are eloquent and political voices of their lives and realities. What matters is that the book exists. Apart from his long-suffering wife, no one else in the family knows that he is a spy. The mortality of someone you love affects how you write. Its a vicious cycle. Like you train for a marathon, you train to be hopeful everyday. Its not comparable and should not be compared. She has a sister named, Sunitha. Also, a book is an act of community; it has many midwives. He writes TPS reports for an overbearing boss who calls him the minimum guy. He has replaced eating vada pav at ungodly hours on the streets with overpriced salads. You can find them on, The #GBVinMedia Campaign: Media Reportage Of Gender-Based Violence, #IndianWomenInHistory: Remembering The Untold Legacies of Indian Women, How To Write About Abortion: A Rights-Based Approach, The Crowdsourced List Of Social Justice Collectives Across Indian Campuses. Suchitra Vijayan's new book, Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India, takes a deep look at such stories by prioritizing the experiences of the silenced victims as well as lesser-known accounts from victims of state violence. Chopra cleverly uses womens empowerment, diversity, and the immigrant story as a facade to parrot and promote deeply problematic ideologies, takes, and stances. Many TV newsrooms were transformed into caricatures of military command centers, with anchors assessing military technology and strategy (sometimes incorrectly). We have migrated to a new commenting platform. They both have pregnant daughters, a fact that becomes significant as the novel progresses. RT @project_polis: Writing fiction in a dystopian world - @kiccovich in conversation with @mohammedhanif https://thepolisproject.com/listen/writing-fiction-in-a . A poll asked if its OK to be white. Heres why the phrase is loaded. You will see very little critical commentary or public positions on Hindutva, its corrosive role in India, or how RSS works here in the USfunding and now interfering in US elections. I set out not to give voice to the voiceless, my aim was to put an ear to the ground and listen. Vijayan shows a keen eye for detail as she presents these diverse lives. She is the founder and executive director of The Polis Project, and the author of. 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'. They continue to. Finally, Indias current transformation, the aggressive posturing of an aspiring ethno-nationalist state, will have dire consequences for the people and the region. Suchitra Vijayan talks to FII about Indian politics, communal violence, marginalisation and her book Midnights Borders: A Peoples History of Modern India. To them he is a man who has settled into a job that has no future. 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. Panitars division is as cruel as it is arbitrary: here, the houses on either side of one dusty lane occupy two neighbouring countries. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. Its a practice. Suchitra Vijayan is the executive director of the Polis Project. 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. I feel very uncomfortable talking about this, or rather I dont know how to discuss this without centering myself. The Indian State and the people of this Republic. Thoughbordersare conventionally recognised as real or artificial lines of spatial and political demarcation, there may also be an arbitrariness to them. They all have very specific and carefully curated origin/immigrant stories that cleverly exploit the model minority trope. No one can write a book alone. 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. Theyre screaming all the time, its just that we dont listen to them. The third thing is: were going back to relitigating everything. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. ", "Documentary photography has amassed mountains of evidenceyetthe genre has simultaneously contributed much to spectacle, to retinal excitation, to voyeurism, to terror, envy, and nostalgia, and only a little to the critical understanding of the social world.". We know that the purpose of borders has kept changing for nations. 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 addition, she is an award- winning photographer, the founder, and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. 'Suchitra's account of her journeys across the undefinable and ever-shifting borders between India and its neighbours is gripping, frightening, faithful and beautiful. 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. If she wasnt real she would be a marriage between a meme and parody. 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. Some of the oldest resistances in our nation are those communities who have been fighting for their own homes from militarisation who seek to exploit their mineral rich home land for mining. Subscribe here. 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. 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. In politics we will have equality, and in social and economic life, we will have inequality. Respond to our political present. For far too long, they and their progeny have held power to shape the political understanding of our social worlds. Sari Begum, born of rape during the Partition and married off to a violent, alcoholic man twenty years older than her, is forced to part with her land to make space for an army bunker, while Natasha Javed stumbles upon a piece of family history that reveals her ancestor being killed in the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre of 1919 and the subsequent trauma and loss of having to be forcefully emptied of history when they crossed over to Pakistan, and how talking about this would make them traitors in their homeland. In 2020, Suchitra took part in the fourth season of the Tamil reality television show, Bigg Boss Tamil hosted by Kamal Haasan. I was much younger when I took on this project, so I wanted to prove those people wrong. There are enough stories of people parachuting into communities to do human interest stories. 4 reviews of Suchitra Vijayan Photography "Huge fan of Suchitra Vijayan Photography! Similarly, motherhood changed me; it radicalised me. There is no denying that the American media landscape is deeply racist, and while the past few years have seen more brown people take center stage, its nowhere close to where we need to be. Chopra has long been neoliberalisms reluctant feminist, hawking giving a voice and sisterhood while silencing those who question her. Suchitra was married to actor Karthik Kumar between 2005 and 2017. 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). The two press briefings by the foreign secretary and Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson entertained no questions. [3], She started singing after a few years as RJ. Vijayan: Let me start heregood writing is powerful and political. Are you expecting any pushback at all? After her Twitter page was hacked in 2016, and the pictures and videos released by the hacker went viral under #suchileaks, following a spate of bad press owing to the fact that she only released a statement on Sun News saying she was focused on shutting the page down, Suchitra left for London to pursue culinary arts at Le Cordon Bleu. Another name that came to my mind was 'An Outline of the Republic', only to discover Siddhartha Debs excellent book by the same name. Also, we shouldn't forget that the border making project is central to capitalist and neoliberal logic. The world we know is already being remade in ways we cant fathom. This means that the capacity to see does not automatically become the capacity for action. What it means to photograph, write, report and document is an ongoing process. In these circumstances, the lives of people inhabiting the sketchy borderlands has become all the more vulnerable, and fragile. ""The historical unity of the ruling classes is realized in the state." Antonio Gramsci" But the inclination to still treat India as a democracy remains. Perhaps that offers some protection? 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. 1 author picked Midnight's Borders as one of their favorite books, . This income helps us keep the magazine alive. NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study. 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'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. We play an ever more important role in these times when there is a fascist authoritarian regime in India and a deeply racist police state in the US. What moral and political stands we should take in the face of ongoing oppression. That, perhaps, is the only way to avoid further destruction in the region. Over the past 15 years, small democratisation through social media has enabled challenging these practices. The taxi driver who describes the Egyptian revolution in five minutes to an American columnist (who speaks no Arabic) is sadly where the genre is today. Rumpus: The book derives its emotional strength and narrative energy from the stories of people you encounter at the borders. They are also essentially bureaucratic, judicial, and procedural acts of terror. I kept detailed audio notes that I recorded each night when I traveled. 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. A place to read, on the Internet. Nine years ago, she began documenting stories from her travels along the borders of India. The former is an essential act of dissent, even resistance, especially in these dark times. So the first reflection is this idea of where we are right now: as people, as a society, as a community. Its when we lose hope that we believe that we have lost everything. Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitrav) / Twitter Follow Suchitra Vijayan @suchitrav Author: Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India. Her YouTube channel 'Suchislife' has all her updated work. Its impossible for a writer not to be affected by their personal life. That was my starting point. Its a dangerous moment where the figure of the rights-bearing citizen is being reduced to a consuming subject. I felt the same way when I would prepare legal petitions for my clients. 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. Rumpus: In such a climate, what do you think is the responsibility of the diasporic Indian writer? However, at work, Tiwari is in his element. She never did like my then-husband, which makes her a better judge of character than I was. It is here that we subsume all that we otherwise celebrate under the demands of freedom, progress, liberalism, liberty, and secular ideals.". How do you protect this child? Parts of Pakistan have already been consumed by the water. This is a tightrope that you walk so well. She has sung in multiple languages including Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu. The post-Cold War and 90s rhetoric of a borderless world that accompanied globalisation also kick-started massive border fencing projects in India. The pair experience similar situations in their lives: abuse, the death or absence of a husband, and the longing for a better future. And this is always at the expense of others. Accompanied by this globally, democracies are becoming more authoritarian and stripping people of their citizenshipreducing them to subjects, entrenching the fault lines of inequality. Thank you! Vijayan: Chopra and others like her are a reflection of how popular culture and virality inform discourse and shape it. I cant think in terms of the future being borderless, I can only think in terms of fracturing. There are already about 20 million climate refugees around South Asias borderlands. Rumpus: The book utilizes more than one medium: photography, narrative nonfiction, journalism. 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. Vijayan: The photographs were the heart of this project. No one would put themselves through the agony and pain of writing. [1], Suchitra joined Sify for a year, after graduating. Many come from immense privileges of caste, class, wealth, access, and resources. 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. How did you achieve empathy in your writing, without the privileged lens that is common in journalistic canon? In Midnight's Borders, Suchitra Vijayan meditates on belongingness, freedom and political implications of territorial demarcations 'The border making project is central to the capitalist and neoliberal logic,' Vijayan says. Also, I am an unknown and insignificant entity. She is actively involved in circulating urgent and underrepresented news from the world through her online platform. Suchitra is a BSc graduate from Mar Ivanios College (Trivandrum). It took me 8 years to write the book. If you want to support the work that goes behind publishing high-quality feminist media content, please consider becoming a FII member. You need to write what you seethats why you started this project.. Second, Indias transformation into a nuclear state and the Kargil War is another critical moment of change. The people in this book are eloquent advocates of their history and their struggles. Three hundred million people who had been considered less than subjects under the British rule, divided for years by religion, language, class, and caste, would all be united under one book: the revolutionary Constitution given to India by Babasaheb Ambedkar. Firstpost - All Rights Reserved. 42, Moss Rose Heights, M.M Ali road, WASA Circle, Lalkhan Bazar, Chittogong 4000. Her writing and award-winning photography culminated in Midnights Borders: A Peoples History of Modern India, which was recently shortlisted for the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF book prize. You become responsible for a human being. She digs deep into colonial history to show how years of violence and consequential suffering has shaped these lives across generations. 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. A consistent ethical framework within the media hasnt existed for a long time. India shares borders with a host of . 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. Even the diasporic experience is often told through this limited lens, without taking into account how diverse the immigrant experience in this country is. Thanks to The New India Foundation for sending across a beautiful copy of the Midnights Borders. Now, along with the medias legitimization of an ideology that promotes violence including riots and lynchings its performance after Pulwama leaves severe doubts as to whether it is engaged in journalism or the propagation of Hindu majoritarianism. This idea of responsibility gets obfuscated in many ways. 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. The government, of course, denies this. 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 writes about war, conflict . There are also those who have previously been tacit, if not active, supporters of the right-wing Hindu nationalist Indian state. suchitrav. While Border Pillar No 1 becomes a convenient stump for children playing cricket along the land that India shares with Bangladesh, roughly 2000 kilometers away in Punjab a woman farmer watches on as the army builds a bunker on the few acres of land she owns. I fear we are losing that cosmopolitanism of small places. In the first season, when he and his team are tasked to thwart the terrorist attack Operation Zulfiqar, the plot moves from Mumbai to Kashmir. I think the way that news and mostly disinformation makes its way to us, we think of violence in very particular waysas disjointed. The Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Muhammad soon claimed responsibility. My job was to make sure that their voices were centered. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Your email address will not be published. We are all complicit in upholding and maintaining this fear. Gokhale claimed that it struck the biggest camp and that a large number of terrorists were killed. But it needs to do more for peace. The argument put forward was simple: India, like most countries, had its human rights violations, but these were characterized as the growing pains and maturation of the worlds largest democracy. Its an immense privilege to be able to write and be published. What are those ethical, moral, and political lines? Excellent interview, brave insights and critical reflections! Ananya is a chaotic humanities student with a deep interest in the relationship between art and society, a writing obsession, and way too many bizarre ideas involving their camera. Now imagine how it would be for someone from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, or working community to try to make inroads. I havent spoken or celebrated with my friends in Kashmir or Assam. Your email address will not be published. A lot of travel writing is still written by a particular group of people with immense privilege, and they all tend to center themselves. 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. Rumpus: What do you think is the value of well-crafted literary nonfiction in sustaining conversations about equality and justice? I wanted to make sure that I was writing in a way that was honest and true to my initial reactions, and capture that without centering myself. To repurpose an old sayingall infamy is now good virality. Vijayan creates a constellation of micro-histories of people who have lived through the violence that India has committed in its borderlandsinjustice that has irrigated the glamour and prosperity we witness in what some of us in those borderlands call mainland India. Vijayan, a barrister by profession, is a founding director of Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization in New York. There are so many nonfiction books about India published yearly but few are so important and subversive. Founder & ExecDirector: @project_polis @watchthestate ; Teach @nyugallatin Writer Manhattan, NY linktr.ee/suchitravijayan Born April 14 Joined May 2008 8,013 Following 80.8K Followers Tweets & replies Is photographing a woman, who was gang-raped by the Sudanese army and put on the cover of TIMEpractically naked, able to stop the war? Indian Foreign Secretary V.K. The latter is an act of violence against people whose voice you are appropriating. 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. To make matters worse, between 2013 and 2019, editors of channels and publications have been sacked and replaced, primarily because of their criticism of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. The constant making and remaking of who is a citizen, who is not, is accompanied by a profoundly dehumanising process. The book was called ``a genre-bending book of nonfictionmade Perhaps thats their victory. Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. Listen to Season 3 on Apple, Spotify and Google podcasts. 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. It definitely doesnt help when trying to hold a powerful state accountable. I left a few names out in the acknowledgment, worrying if it might direct more trouble towards them. I had to write and rewrite this book so many times. Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. Also read: The History Of The Colonial State And The Unmaking Of The Tawaif. She perfectly captured the happiness and the intimacy of the occasion, the warmth of all the people present, and the splendor of the venue. The Rumpus: It is shocking how unaware the world is about the violence the Indian government has committed since independence on its border citizens. Our investigation into the Indian medias reporting on the Pulwama attack found that many reports were contradictory, biased, incendiary and uncorroborated. That changes how you write and photograph a place. Who gets to shape these stories, what stories are chosen, what stories then are exiled? While Nehru was still declaring this victory, the slaughter began. As a bedouin who grew up listening to beautiful stories from beautiful storytellers around a fire, I was transported by her storytelling. The book was originally going to be a photographic body of work, which changed when I started writing. A: I lost friends, saw my father go through a transplant, and I gave birth. Sayantika Mandal is an Indian writer. There are enough stories of people parachuting into communities to do human interest stories.. " India's intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. How do you think this shapes climate justice? I think this book will change the global conversation about India and shape what gets written in the future about India. In Afghanistan, Kashmir, and India, from one dangerous conflict zone to another, she spoke with people, ate with them, and listened to their stories. Is that a probable solution? And what does this mean for on-ground communities, governments, armed forces, and other institutional stakeholders? In recent years, the narrative of hate has escalated with the reelection of the right-wing Narendra Modi government in 2019. Now, border security policies are linked to domestic politics. Having been trained in law, Suchitra Vijayan initially worked at the United Nations war tribunals in Yugoslavia. The travel, the people they encounter, and the political events they record quickly become cameos. Find him on Twitter at @AruniKashyap. But, more importantly, I wanted my readers to walk away with a sense of empathy. 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. 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. While that incident had a profound impact on me, my politics, how I think about violence, its relationship to justice, or the lack of it, this is not the same kind of violence Kashmiris have been subjugated to. In Nellie (Assam) too, where over 3,000 Muslims were killed in 1983, people stared at Vijayan in confusion, no one comes here anymore, she was told. 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. This was something I had to resist from the get-go. Get your Rumpus merch in our online store. Midnights Borders perhaps also critiques the widely read body of work available as Indian English Writing (IWE), a literary canon that has so far told the story of India but seldom demonstrated social responsibility by acknowledging the atrocities India has committed silently within its borders. Invariably its the writer who is the protagonist. This might not seem like much, but it is absolutely essential. Where India ends and Bangladesh begins is a question confused by history, family and the border pillars themselves. Panitar has a one-foot-high concrete block on the side of the mighty Ichamati river marked Border Pillar No.1. Vijayan began her journey in Kolkata. Updated Date: . 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. Aruni Kashyap writes in English, and his native language Assamese. On Feb. 14, an Indian paramilitary convoy was attacked. Vijayan: As we have this conversation, Dr. Stan Swamy, the eighty-four-year-old Jesuit priest, Indias oldest political prisoner, was murdered by the Indian state with the complicity of the judiciary.