Global Ethics Review: Midnight's Borders, with Suchitra Vijayan 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. Pushback is such a benign word, isnt it? 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. The book was called ``a genre-bending book of nonfictionmade 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. She was part of a music band at PSG. SUCHITRA VIJAYAN PHOTOGRAPHY - 42 Photos - Manhatan, NY - Yelp Why the Modi government lies. Many come from immense privileges of caste, class, wealth, access, and resources. When fires burn down large swathes of what were peoples homeswhat borders will you impose when climate change will fundamentally remake them? History and memory is localwhich means its almost impossible to write about India. The photographs add another dimension to the book, and could have been used more. Suchitra Vijayan talks to FII about Indian politics, communal violence, marginalisation and her book Midnights Borders: A Peoples History of Modern India. A poll asked if its OK to be white. Heres why the phrase is loaded. A British lawyer, Cyril Radcliffe set foot in India for the first time in July, 1947 to draw the borders and completed the task within seven weeks, engendering communal riots, a heavily militarized border, four wars and seven decades of violence and hatred between the two countries. Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. They are arriving from various cities and people I have never met. The writing grew around the images and the visual memory of the encounters. 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. What do these events have in common? Vijayan shows a keen eye for detail as she presents these diverse lives. Hope Is the Last Bastion: Talking with Suchitra Vijayan MacAdam reviews Suchitra Vijayan's book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India Read More. I have no control over what comes next. Nine years ago, she began documenting stories from her travels along the borders of India. I am repeating what I have said before, "Kashmir is Indias greatest moral and political failure. It has taken me over a decade to get here. Suchitra Vijayan | The Nation . She writes about war, conflict . The people in this book are eloquent advocates of their history and their struggles. I dont want to make this about me. 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. Rumpus: What do you think is the value of well-crafted literary nonfiction in sustaining conversations about equality and justice? This affects who gets to document, and whom. Vijayan: There is an elusive distance between the photographer and the photographed that cant be bridged. Suchitra Vijayan | The Caravan Anvisha Manral March 20, 2021 09:50:40 IST But Pakistan responded by rejecting these claims and told the Associated Press that the area was mostly deserted wooded area and that there were no casualties or damage on the ground. On the C-SPAN Networks: Suchitra Vijayan is a Founder and Executive Director for the Project Polis, The with one video in the C-SPAN Video Library; the first appearance was a . Chopra cleverly uses womens empowerment, diversity, and the immigrant story as a facade to parrot and promote deeply problematic ideologies, takes, and stances. We have already chosen silence and obfuscation even before the pushback has arrived. 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. 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. It is the fragility of human lives that remains at the very center of the book. Along the way, we meet the men and women of TASC, dissenting students, ISIS terrorists and Pakistani military officers. Suchitra Vijayan is the executive director of the Polis Project. So here, 'Midnight' functions as a moment of violent birth, but also perhaps the foundational violence that becomes codified in various ways, especially in the bodies of people farthest away from power. She responded to an ad for the post of an RJ in Radio Mirchi. I still do. I left a few names out in the acknowledgment, worrying if it might direct more trouble towards them. A: Writers are very strange creatures. Subscribe here. 'Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India' review: A These are no longer contradictory; instead, even criticism can be converted to views. In Midnight's Borders, Suchitra Vijayan meditates on belongingness 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). Her YouTube channel 'Suchislife' has all her updated work. 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. The act of recording and documenting cannot be divorced from the inherent question of power. Suchitra is a BSc graduate from Mar Ivanios College (Trivandrum). Say, for instance, do we need a James Nachtwey to fly to war-torn Bosnia? Worse, we have been disciplined to accept injustice and inequality as given. He writes about how when the Constitution was adopted, "We are going to enter into a life of contradictions. Instead, she shows the absurdity of the army apparatus that strives to comply with the narrative of patriotism. The two press briefings by the foreign secretary and Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson entertained no questions. Midnight's Borders by Suchitra Vijayan - The Bangalore Review Midnights Borders , Suchitra Vijayan includes a photo of the pillar, which becomes a cricket stump for boys on either side of the border most days. The Indian media must learn to portray the conflict and human rights violations in the region in a more nuanced way, and not reduce Kashmir to a catalogue of death, destruction and emergency laws. Often, we settle comfortably into describing things as communal riots instead of saying that it was a state-abetted violence, a pogrom, or a brutal massacre. They took my land, they stole my life, they stole my future, they took my nightmares and they stole my dreams too. Ali went missing in 2018. As the author notes, here, beauty and violence coexist, but never as a binary. A. Midnights Borders is fascinating, eloquent in its insights, and unflinching in its depiction of the dark side of nation-building. How did writing this book affect you? In an interview with Firstpost,Vijayan talks about her book, the militarisation of borders, ethno-nationalism, and the politics of documentation. Suchitra Vijayan (Author of Midnight's Borders) - Goodreads She is currently working on her first novel. 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. Our borders had become a spectacle, and we the cheering mob, she says, as she calls for purging hatred for the sake of posterity. As she travelled 9000 miles over seven years across Indias borders, some drawn so hastily that they cut across fields, homes and courtyards, she met men, women and children, finishing with endless notebooks, over a thousand images and more than 300 hours of recorded conversations. Her quest took her to the farthest ends of the India-Bangladesh/ China/ Myanmar/ Pakistan borders. 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? Midnight's Borders by Suchitra Vijayan falls in both categories. We know that the purpose of borders has kept changing for nations. Perhaps there are lessons to learn from that. Its about what people like me should do. These are stories of massive human rights violations committed by the Indian state in the countrys margins. Take a look at theseevents: The vast infrastructure of detention centers being built in Assam and outside; a politician from a ruling party incites violence by saying, goli maaro saalon ko, and remains free; a minister, a Harvard educated technocrat, garlands and celebrates men for the grave crime of lynching; Dr Teltumbde and other BK 16 [the 16 arrests made in the Bhima Koregaon case] political prisoners remain incarcerated with little, no or manufactured evidence for being dissenting subjects; and a standup comic is arrested for the crime of existing as a Muslim. Creative . Bhawan Singh, who photographed the Nellie massacre, said he had never seen anything like it. This is a tightrope that you walk so well. Who gets to shape these stories, what stories are chosen, what stories then are exiled? And yet, the research and the history never overpowers the flow of the narrative. But the inclination to still treat India as a democracy remains. Also, a book is an act of community; it has many midwives. I kept detailed audio notes that I recorded each night when I traveled. Having been trained in law, Suchitra Vijayan initially worked at the United Nations war tribunals in Yugoslavia. Christopher Clary: India and Pakistan resort to the diplomacy of violence and flirt with catastrophe, Hafsa Kanjwal: As India beats its war drums over Pulwama, its occupation of Kashmir is being ignored. Already a subscriber? Many of the stories didnt make it to the book because it became dangerous to identify people. Midnight's Bordersis an exceptional read, but one that may make some uncomfortable. 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. 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. 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. March 20, 2021 09:50:40 IST. Book reviews and author interviews with a Southern focus. When your investigations in Kashmir came to an end, what changes did you observe in your 'grammar of dissent'? Ten years later, you were in Kashmir, where you 'hoped to find answers' by talking to a family that had lost a son. In politics we will have equality, and in social and economic life, we will have inequality. Sometimes lost. I almost never forget, I remember entire episodes or events since I was six years old. So the first reflection is this idea of where we are right now: as people, as a society, as a community. 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. Like you train for a marathon, you train to be hopeful everyday. First, does my work aid the powerful? I test my practice of writing or being a photographer against this rule. Suchitra Vijayan, Newspapers in a Kashmiri home In August 2014 I travelled to the border town of Uri while researching my upcoming book, Borderlands. She is the founder and executive director of The Polis Project, and the author of Midnights Borders: A Peoples History of Modern India, recently published by Context, Westland. We believe that literature builds communityand if reading The Rumpus makes you feel more connected, please show your support! Barrister. This discrepancy is just one example of the confusion and misinformation spread to the public by deeply flawed media reports. There was an NDTV programme, where somebody said Should Indias constitution be secularist? Although Vijayan critiques the state and its complicity in violence and erasure of lives, she refrains from villainizing the men who serve the state. Fear seems to be a constant motif in the book we see versions and types of it. You can carefully craft a narrative of immigrant success but act tone-deaf about the ongoing refugee crisis. 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. Sometimes the news is the story. 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. Chopra is popular because she satisfies a certain need for validationthe trope of brown representation where the mere act of being represented is seen as a singular virtue worth applauding. What do you think the future holds? Its a dangerous moment where the figure of the rights-bearing citizen is being reduced to a consuming subject. Over the past 15 years, small democratisation through social media has enabled challenging these practices. Through these real histories of the people, she gives readers another perspective on old wounds like Partition and new divisionary tactics like the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. Are you expecting any pushback at all? Rumpus: Why do you think the ever-growing canon of Indian American literature has barely tried to engage with these conversations through their stories? 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. She has a sister named, Sunitha. The Author Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. Propaganda and poison work in far more sophisticated ways. It took a long time to get the voice right. 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. I was also trying to tell these stories from a repertoire of skills I had, and some I acquired. I feel very uncomfortable talking about this, or rather I dont know how to discuss this without centering myself. Now imagine how it would be for someone from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, or working community to try to make inroads. O. You need to write what you seethats why you started this project.. 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. If you want to support the work that goes behind publishing high-quality feminist media content, please consider becoming a FII member. 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. How do you think the media ought to responsibly report on peoples lives and experiences? We live in a profoundly unequal society, where every day brings news of new devastation. Suchitra - Wikipedia I particularly loved the fact that all our couple shots were very natural and came out truly . 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. Rumpus: Were you trying to write a hybrid-genre book? Author, lawyer and journalist, Suchitra Vijayan in conversation with Cerebration editor Smita Maitra on her book Midnight's Borders, maps, fragmented identities and postcolonial nation-states. What moral and political stands we should take in the face of ongoing oppression. Vijayan creates a constellation of micro-histories of people who have lived through the violence . 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. They are also essentially bureaucratic, judicial, and procedural acts of terror. I felt the same way when I would prepare legal petitions for my clients. 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. Those notes were raw and immediate. Now imagine how it would be for someone from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, or working community to try to make inroads. 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 was something I had to resist from the get-go. Stallings, Rumpus Original Fiction: The Litany of Invisible Things. 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.. This article was published more than4 years ago. Even the diasporic experience is often told through this limited lens, without taking into account how diverse the immigrant experience in this country is. I had to cut those out, as my editor felt this might not work. 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. 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. As such, very few media establishments in India have been able to stand against the influence of political leaders. 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 The emotional cost is something else altogether. She sang her first song for the movie, Lesa Lesa under the composition of Harris Jayaraj and her co-singer was the legendary, K. S. Chitra. Rumpus: The book utilizes more than one medium: photography, narrative nonfiction, journalism. Good, honest and non-polemical writing has always forced us to confront the lies we tell ourselves. What it means to photograph, write, report and document is an ongoing process. [1] Career [ edit] Find him on Twitter at @AruniKashyap. 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. You can claim to be patriotic but not political, you can claim to support the troops but ignore the ongoing civilian casualty. With the phone armed with a camera, everyone is a photographer; we are all witnesses. Later on she moved to Coimbatore for her MBA from PSG Institute of Management. Thank you! 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. As I travelled, I was very aware of these inherent power differences. I had to write and rewrite this book so many times. 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. Its impossible for a writer not to be affected by their personal life. Early on, I was very careful to acknowledge this. Rumpus: In such a climate, what do you think is the responsibility of the diasporic Indian writer? There is something deeply flawed in the way we live today. It was not going to be easy as she quickly found out. 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. 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? Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. When Vijayan meets him, he is inside his home with all the windows closed and sealed to snuff out light. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. Why is this particular time of the day intrinsic to the book? In her new book Required fields are marked *. It is always Bollywood, the ascent of Priyanka Chopra, or the diasporic loneliness. Love, passion, anger, the desire to make a point about something. Yes, men who act as petty sovereigns are everywhere. According to a new World Health Organization report, we lost as many as 4.7 million people in India. Many TV newsrooms were transformed into caricatures of military command centers, with anchors assessing military technology and strategy (sometimes incorrectly). Q: Since publishing the book last year, what reflections have you hadgiven that its relevance is increasingly ascertained by 2022s interpersonal and geopolitical violence? 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. The public is sold a lie as the attack is framed as a gas leak. All too often, the Indian media portrays Kashmiris as terrorists or human shields, not as a community seeking self-determination. Lets take Indias English language media, cultural-artistic elite, and publishing. One feedback I often got was that I had to put more of myself in this book. Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. To them he is a man who has settled into a job that has no future. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions?". Beyond the confusion over the death tolls at Balakot, news organizations variously reported that between 25 and 350 kilograms of the explosive RDX was used in the attack, when no such information was officially released. Siaan On Being Queer And Being Online, FII Interviews: Journalist Meena Kotwal On Minority Politics, Journalism Today And The Caste Divide. Growing up I was surrounded by people who emphasised the community over anything else. Apart from his long-suffering wife, no one else in the family knows that he is a spy. There are also those who have previously been tacit, if not active, supporters of the right-wing Hindu nationalist Indian state. March 06, 2021 04:50 pm | Updated March 07, 2021 08:05 am IST. She also embodies the upwardly mobile, privileged sections of the diaspora. At Fazilka near the Pakistan border, she ran into Sari Begum, who had a bunker on her land but had a darker story of pain and violence from the days of Partition. How did you respond to that environment being in an extremely challenging position yourself? Suchitra Acharjee - Graduate Assistant - The University of Texas Rio Is secularism a good thing? This is such an insidious conversation to have; this was even before Adani bought it. I have two tests. Check posts or bunkers were not part of the landscapes of my home. They both have pregnant daughters, a fact that becomes significant as the novel progresses. She lives in New York. 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. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. Vijayan: Chopra and others like her are a reflection of how popular culture and virality inform discourse and shape it. Firstpost - All Rights Reserved. Such writings have long been implicated in the history of colonial ethnographic practices, where native informants are poised to become the voices of the empire. As a trained barrister, I used to believe in the concept of justicebut now I simply call this freedom and dignity. 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. While Nehru was still declaring this victory, the slaughter began. 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. The stories were a way to understand how people struggled and survived. How "The Family Man" champions the carceral security state All rights reserved. We're back with our flagship podcast 'Intersectional FeminismDesi Style!' The book arrived in the middle of a pandemic and a devastating second wave [of COVID-19] in India. This might not seem like much, but it is absolutely essential. 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. How do you think your book contributes to the larger conversation about India? Can you write about loss without living? 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? Time to let the diplomats do the hard talk. But its also important to constantly take account of who is writing about this India to an Indian and global audience. I think the way that news and mostly disinformation makes its way to us, we think of violence in very particular waysas disjointed. Vijayan: I would say I am hopeful. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister at law and the author of Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India. Keywords: LTTE love jihad Beef politics Hindu Nationalism Kashmir What do words like democracy, freedom, and citizenship mean? We have migrated to a new commenting platform. Panitars division is as cruel as it is arbitrary: here, the houses on either side of one dusty lane occupy two neighbouring countries. She has a sister named, Sunitha. Even those among us who will speak of BLM will not openly challenge Hindutva or the RSS.
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