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. Rumpus: The book utilizes more than one medium: photography, narrative nonfiction, journalism. 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. 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. I dont have apprehensions. What are those ethical, moral, and political lines? 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. How did you respond to that environment being in an extremely challenging position yourself? Panitars division is as cruel as it is arbitrary: here, the houses on either side of one dusty lane occupy two neighbouring countries. In this stunning work of narrative reportagefeaturing over 40 original photographswe hear from those whose stories are never told: from children playing a cricket match in no-mans-land, to an elderly man living in complete darkness after sealing off his home from the floodlit border; from a woman who fought to keep a military bunker off of her land, to those living abroad who can no longer find their family history in India. 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. She lives in New York. Includes previously unreleased investigation under #JackStraw. Even those among us who will speak of BLM will not openly challenge Hindutva or the RSS. We dont document violence against the privileged like we would report violence against those without power. In retaliation, the Indian Air Force carried out an airstrike on an alleged militant training camp in Balakot in Pakistans Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. 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. The images, however, are not all bereft of hope, as children from both India and Bangladesh use a border pillar as a cricket stump, while men on opposing sides of the war on terror in Afghanistan gather around in a cold evening, smoking and sharing stories. Rumpus: The book derives its emotional strength and narrative energy from the stories of people you encounter at the borders. Ali lived right on the edge of the India-Bangladesh border. These are no longer contradictory; instead, even criticism can be converted to views. We see that more clearly when you decide against photographing children at the India-Bangladesh border. 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. I left a few names out in the acknowledgment, worrying if it might direct more trouble towards them. We need more writers from Indias Northeast, Kashmir, Indigenous, Dalit, and Muslim communities to tell stories that help complete the canvas of narratives about India. 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. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister at law and the author of Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India. Sayantika Mandal is an Indian writer. 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. 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. O. So I dont know if it was empathy so much as just building a relationship with people. 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. You dont need a Leni Riefenstahl today. More Buying Choices 1,732.00 (16 Used & New offers) Audible Audiobook 0.00 Free with Audible trial 586.00 ( 9 ) Are you expecting any pushback at all? For far too long, they and their progeny have held power to shape the political understanding of our social worlds. 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. She also embodies the upwardly mobile, privileged sections of the diaspora. Midnights Borders, a work of narrative reportage, is the fruit of this journey. Qin took charge as Chinese foreign minister in December, succeeding Wang Yi. 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. India and the US are discussing the possibility of jointly developing and manufacturing an extended-range variant of the M777 ultra lightweight howitzer, Qin's first in-person meeting with EAM Jaishankar came on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers conclave in New Delhi amid the over 34-month-long border row in eastern Ladakh. No one is a stakeholder herethese are people, humans, citizens, who have been deprived of what the Ambedkarite constitution promised them. She was part of a music band at PSG. 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. 6,253 Followers, 902 Following, 1,165 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitravijayan) This article was published more than4 years ago. 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. Perhaps thats their victory. A: Writers are very strange creatures. 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 Indian State and the people of this Republic. How "The Family Man" champions the carceral security state. . 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 Then my agent said, Suchitra, you know, I think youre hiding behind your academic language. Vijayan is no stranger to stories of violence. (Stay up to date on new book releases, reviews, and more with The Hindu On Books newsletter. So we might never know the true extent of this loss. Siaan On Being Queer And Being Online, FII Interviews: Journalist Meena Kotwal On Minority Politics, Journalism Today And The Caste Divide. It was not going to be easy as she quickly found out. This means that the capacity to see does not automatically become the capacity for action. 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. Required fields are marked *. My friend Ritesh Uttamchandani said this once, the lens that elusive distance between the photographer and the photographed is often impossible to bridge. Say, for instance, do we need a James Nachtwey to fly to war-torn Bosnia? I still do. 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.. Who is expendable, and the manufacturing of rightlessness to render people expendable. How did writing this book affect you? It is meant to manufacture an underclass of rightless subjects. 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. Like most women, I learnt to navigate this toxic misogyny, the threat of sexual violence, and patriarchy by merely existing as a dark-skinned woman in this country. Feminism In India is an award-winning digital intersectional feminist media organisation to learn, educate and develop a feminist sensibility among the youth. Ten years later, you were in Kashmir, where you 'hoped to find answers' by talking to a family that had lost a son. Whose Stories Are Told In Indian History? 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. But it needs to do more for peace. Suchitra is a BSc graduate from Mar Ivanios College (Trivandrum). Her YouTube channel 'Suchislife' has all her updated work. by Suchitra Vijayan Hardcover 1,759.00 2,023.00 You Save: 264.00 (13%) Usually dispatched in 1 to 3 weeks. 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. I havent spoken or celebrated with my friends in Kashmir or Assam. There are some brilliant writers writing on these issuesthe problem is always that these voices dont make it to the mainstream. 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. We must realise that its the grassroots media, who represent themselves, document what mainstream media ignores, and bring to notice what is important. A: This geopolitical violence is not new, theres a long bloody, brutal history to thisa cyclical, ongoing and never-ending history. This is a profoundly alienating place for anyone without the networks of privilege and resources. Rumpus: Why do you think the ever-growing canon of Indian American literature has barely tried to engage with these conversations through their stories? As such, very few media establishments in India have been able to stand against the influence of political leaders. Apart from his long-suffering wife, no one else in the family knows that he is a spy. Photograph of Suchitra Vijayan courtesy of Suchitra Vijayan. Growing up I was surrounded by people who emphasised the community over anything else. 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. 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. Its a practice. First, does my work aid the powerful? Also, I am an unknown and insignificant entity. Respond to our political present. Is secularism a good thing? This is such an insidious conversation to have; this was even before Adani bought it. The acts of writing, documenting, photographing, and archiving carry privileges of caste and class. 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. It took me 8 years to write the book. Yes, Chopra does take a huge share of attention, but the real danger is how people like her whitewash Hindutva, and now increasingly co-opt the language of Hinduphobia to counter any critique of Hindutva. 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. The first true peoples history of modern India, told through a seven-year, 9,000-mile journey along its many contested borders. As a bedouin who grew up listening to beautiful stories from beautiful storytellers around a fire, I was transported by her storytelling. Midnight's Bordersis an exceptional read, but one that may make some uncomfortable. Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. How did you achieve empathy in your writing, without the privileged lens that is common in journalistic canon? We thank her for her time, patience, and illuminating insights into her work. One of the reasons I kept writing was of course all the people I met: their love and time and generosity. She is currently working on her first novel. Not everyone lived to see its promises. Could you comment on how much our present border security policies have changed in the last few years? Commentary Politics. Second, as the media continued to promote government positions on the crisis, other critical political issues dropped out of public scrutiny. Now imagine how it would be for someone from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, or working community to try to make inroads. Vijayan: I would say I am hopeful. But the inclination to still treat India as a democracy remains. Part of this process is a need to turn the lens back at the powerful. He was arrested based on fabricated evidence in the middle of a global pandemic, and he was denied bail and medical help. As a graduate student at Yale, she researched and documented stories along the Af-Pak border and was embedded with the US forces in Afghanistan. This idea of responsibility gets obfuscated in many ways. Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitrav) / Twitter Follow Suchitra Vijayan @suchitrav Author: Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India. Those notes were raw and immediate. It is here that we subsume all that we otherwise celebrate under the demands of freedom, progress, liberalism, liberty, and secular ideals.". 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. You can carefully craft a narrative of immigrant success but act tone-deaf about the ongoing refugee crisis. We believe that literature builds communityand if reading The Rumpus makes you feel more connected, please show your support! She is actively involved in circulating urgent and underrepresented news from the world through her online platform. In addition, she is an award- winning photographer, the founder, and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization. There are instances when you and some voices in the narrative question their documentation practice. 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. Stallings, Rumpus Original Fiction: The Litany of Invisible Things. In the popular depictions of India circulating in the US, we rarely see the stories that the nations jingoistic governments have shoved under the carpet. Not mine. Also read: Whose Stories Are Told In Indian History? You need a community of people to support you. Vijayan has travelled 9,000 miles over seven 7 across India's borderline remote areas and has collected many bone-chilling, painful, myth-breaking stories of the people caught in between inter-state disputes because of the lines created by colonial powers who ruled over us for . The interview has been paraphrased and condensed for clarity, at the interviewers discretion. 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. 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. You become responsible for a human being. I was reading a lot of Pessoa when I was in Afghanistan, so another placeholder title was 'Maps/Lines/Cartographies of Disquiet', inspired by the Book of Disquiet. Many news channels are not only owned, operated or invested in by politically influential families, but also are sometimes run for the express purpose of advancing party positions. NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Without a political solution, Kashmir will undoubtedly emerge in upcoming news cycles. A consistent ethical framework within the media hasnt existed for a long time. If you think about communities in resistance to immense violations, theyre all interconnected to climate justice. I had to write and rewrite this book so many times. Where does that leave us? I particularly loved the fact that all our couple shots were very natural and came out truly . The Rumpus is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. These may not be perfect worlds or even equal worlds, but they strive to be. We live in a profoundly unequal society, where every day brings news of new devastation. Rumpus: Toni Morrison said that she writes from a place of delight, not disappointment. 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. Once we eliminated the spectacle, we realized that the Indian public got very little information about the Pulwama attack and its aftermath. That was my starting point. 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. A literary community. 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. The controversy surrounding the Rafale deal and allegations of corruption against the government were suddenly sidelined, as was the order for the eviction of more than a million forest dwellers (that was later stayed) and a hearing on the repeal of an important constitutional clause before the Supreme Court. Her career as a playback singer now spans Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam films and she has several hits in all these languages to her credit. March 20, 2021 09:50:40 IST. Suchitra Vijayan is the executive director of the Polis Project. I almost never forget, I remember entire episodes or events since I was six years old. 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. 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. So lets be very clear that Indias intellectual literary landscape is deeply problematic, feudal, and alienating," says Suchitra Vijayan to FII, Featured Image Source: This is a profoundly alienating place for anyone without the networks of privilege and resources. As a trained barrister, I used to believe in the concept of justicebut now I simply call this freedom and dignity. Reports also identified different people as the supposed masterminds of the Pulwama attack at various points without clear sourcing. 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. suchitrav. 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. These new worlds are already herethey are maps of survival, maps of resistance. When I finished writing, I had become much richer in many waysnot in a material waybut through a community. Modi met with senior police officers and ordered them not to intervene as violence raged. 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. The third thing is: were going back to relitigating everything. Theyre screaming all the time, its just that we dont listen to them. The black and white pictures accompanying the chapters add a thousand words more. She has a sister named, Sunitha. As I travelled, I was very aware of these inherent power differences. I wrote the book, but those who have lived through this hell continue to live and navigate this hell. 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. Second, there were times when I ran out of money, when some said that such a book would not be published, when some declared that such a book could not be written. They create cleavages of fear, xenophobia, and insecurity. Suchitra Vijayan's debut book, Midnight's Borders, is a genre-bending book of nonfictionmade of stories, encounters, vignettes, and photographsabout home, belonging, and displacement.The book recounts the author's recent journey across India's land borders covering 9000 miles over a span of seven years. This income helps us keep the magazine alive. India has consistently warred against its own citizens; this book is about some of these wars. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Second, we can no longer have certain conversationsconversations are now impossible. 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. Barrister. Book reviews and author interviews with a Southern focus. Vijayans lens not only captures the people but also the past through objects, such as the picture of Kotwali Gate, the remains of a medieval fort that serves as a border checkpoint rife with weeds and trees growing on it, symbolic of a state bent on rewriting history rather than preserving it. I am repeating what I have said before, "Kashmir is Indias greatest moral and political failure. To repurpose an old sayingall infamy is now good virality. She has sung in multiple languages including Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu. Rumpus: Were you trying to write a hybrid-genre book? What is the function of seeing and documenting? If she wasnt real she would be a marriage between a meme and parody.
George Strait Moody Center,
Godfrey Of Bouillon Descendants,
Truist Park Concessions,
Note 9 Screen Protector Compatible With Otterbox Defender,
Articles S