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Many of the stories didnt make it to the book because it became dangerous to identify people. Its easy for Indian Americans and diaspora Desis to become tokens who speak of diversity but not equity or representation, talk of caste as culture and whitewash Hindutva. 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. Vijayan: A writers responsibility above all is to speak the truth and make sense of our social worlds. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Barkha Dutt: India has made its point in Pakistan. History and memory is localwhich means its almost impossible to write about India. There are also those who have previously been tacit, if not active, supporters of the right-wing Hindu nationalist Indian state. They are arriving from various cities and people I have never met. India shares borders with a host of . ", "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.". Why the Modi government lies. The Rumpus is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. There are enough stories of people parachuting into communities to do human interest stories. Rohini Menon for Feminism in India, FII Interviews: Suchitra Vijayan Talks About Marginalisation, Institutional Violence & Political Imagination, 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. Tamil Movie Articles Trisha | Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya | Tamannah | Anniyan | Aishwarya Rai", "Bigg Boss Awards for each contestant in Bigg Boss Tamil 4", Suchitra: I can sound sweet, sexy, bold or sensual, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Suchitra&oldid=1141096550, Crossover episode with Bigg Boss Tamil; Fearless Award, Nominated: Filmfare Award for Best Female Playback Singer Telugu for the song 'Nijamena' from, Nominated: SIIMA Award for Best Female Playback Singer|Best Female Playback Singer for the song 'Sir Osthara' from, This page was last edited on 23 February 2023, at 09:35. Not everyone lived to see its promises. 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. Later on she moved to Coimbatore for her MBA from PSG Institute of Management. Your email address will not be published. She responded to an ad for the post of an RJ in Radio Mirchi. A: Writers are very strange creatures. News organizations such as India Today, NDTV, News 18, the Indian Express, First Post, Mumbai Mirror, ANI and others routinely attributed their information to anonymous government sources, forensic experts, police officers and intelligence officers. No independent investigations were conducted, and serious questions about intelligence failures were left unanswered. 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. Vijayan reserves her own impressions for later, and allows us to know these people intimately. I havent spoken or celebrated with my friends in Kashmir or Assam. 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. Indian Foreign Secretary V.K. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. What changeshave youobserved in the way you treat your subject after finishing your journey and book? You can claim to be patriotic but not political, you can claim to support the troops but ignore the ongoing civilian casualty. A:I dont think an ethical or moral compass exists nowI dont know if it ever existed. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments. The border runs through him, his friend Jamshed had told Vijayan, He is almost gone, but I dont want his story to be gone too.. It was not going to be easy as she quickly found out. Its feudal, entitled, and cannibalistic. The nation-state and its ruling class view borders as very different from the people who inhabit these liminal spaces or communities that have been affected by border making and policing practices. The revolutionary Constitution not only created a social world made of contradictions, but it very soon became the tool of suppressing dissent, deployed laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), and Public Safety Act (PSA) in Kashmir. More than two weeks after the attack, our analysis finds that no news site had rectified the errors in their reporting, leaving these misleading facts as a matter of public record. RT @project_polis: Writing fiction in a dystopian world - @kiccovich in conversation with @mohammedhanif https://thepolisproject.com/listen/writing-fiction-in-a . This article was published more than4 years ago. 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. This contributed to the long-running, brutal silencing of Kashmiris and their struggle for self-determination. Her work looks at theories of violence, war, and human nature. 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. Sometimes lost. Part-time Faculty suchitra@thepolisproject.com. Perhaps thats their victory. The mortality of someone you love affects how you write. One of the reasons I kept writing was of course all the people I met: their love and time and generosity. 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. Theyre screaming all the time, its just that we dont listen to them. You need a community of people to support you. Our borders had become a spectacle, and we the cheering mob, she says, as she calls for purging hatred for the sake of posterity. A literary community. 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. 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. 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. 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. Book reviews and author interviews with a Southern focus. Her distinct and bold voice made her very popular with the younger crowd. At worst, its navel gazing peppered with white guilt, but always politically vacuous. She digs deep into colonial history to show how years of violence and consequential suffering has shaped these lives across generations. Vijayan undertakes a seven-year long, 9,000-mile . Examining My Caste And Its History Is Eye-Opening: A Personal Essay On Casteism And Ancestry, The History Of The Colonial State And The Unmaking Of The Tawaif, Book Review: Looking Through Dalit Sahitya And Ambedkar, These Are The 15 Women Who Helped Draft The Indian Constitution, Gender Roles And Stereotyping In To Kill A Mockingbird, A Brief Summary Of The Second Wave Of Feminism, A Brief Summary Of The First Wave Of Feminism, Kamala Das The Mother Of Modern Indian English Poetry | #IndianWomenInHistory, A Brief Summary Of The Third Wave Of Feminism, The Life And Times Of Dnyanjyoti Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule | #IndianWomenInHistory, FII Interviews: Charlotte Munch Bengtsen Talks About Women In Filmmaking, FII Interviews: Drag King And Influencer Mx. Without a political solution, Kashmir will undoubtedly emerge in upcoming news cycles. Now, border security policies are linked to domestic politics. 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. More importantly, as Babasaheb would argue, the political revolution was never accompanied by a social revolution. ""The historical unity of the ruling classes is realized in the state." Antonio Gramsci" The pandemic showed us that crises and recurrent disasters that annihilate our lives are here to stay. Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. This book ate into so much of my life. How do you think this shapes climate justice? 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. Do you think the future is borderless? An unprecedented militarisation of these spaces accompanied this. Fearful of the future he asked quietly, Where did all this hate come from, where is it going to take us? echoing what many residents had told her. It is always Bollywood, the ascent of Priyanka Chopra, or the diasporic loneliness. And were there any apprehensions since you began working on this book? 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. ( I hate this word, voiceless, by the way). 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. 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. 6,253 Followers, 902 Following, 1,165 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitravijayan) A consistent ethical framework within the media hasnt existed for a long time. Can you write about loss without living? They all have very specific and carefully curated origin/immigrant stories that cleverly exploit the model minority trope. Pushback is such a benign word, isnt it? It is also the site of the worlds biggest crisis of statelessness, as it strips citizenship from hundreds of thousands of its peopleespecially those living in disputed border regions. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. I had to write and rewrite this book so many times. Anvisha Manral March 20, 2021 09:50:40 IST How do you think this inspiration from a variety of genres allowed you to tell underrepresented stories? Also, we shouldn't forget that the border making project is central to capitalist and neoliberal logic. Love, passion, anger, the desire to make a point about something. Vijayan: I would say I am hopeful. NONFICTIONMidnights BordersBy Suchitra VijayanMelville HousePublished May 25, 2021. That changes how you write and photograph a place. [1], Suchitra joined Sify for a year, after graduating. Why dont people see the ground shifting beneath their feet? March 06, 2021 04:50 pm | Updated March 07, 2021 08:05 am IST. The photographs add another dimension to the book, and could have been used more. And, in many cases, they are children of the literary, cultural, or political elite who have long been the beneficiaries of the Indian state. IWE is a body of work where the voices of Indias marginalized are still kept on the fringes; Midnights Borders is anarrative nonfiction book depicting a world that novels from mainland India have failed to depict. 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. The Indian State and the people of this Republic. India has consistently warred against its own citizens; this book is about some of these wars. I have no control over what comes next. Siaan On Being Queer And Being Online, FII Interviews: Journalist Meena Kotwal On Minority Politics, Journalism Today And The Caste Divide. Then my agent said, Suchitra, you know, I think youre hiding behind your academic language. Thoughbordersare conventionally recognised as real or artificial lines of spatial and political demarcation, there may also be an arbitrariness to them. He was arrested based on fabricated evidence in the middle of a global pandemic, and he was denied bail and medical help. Suchitra Vijayan complicates and expands our understanding of the South Asian American experience, urging readers to consider stories that cast dark eyes at India, a strategic ally of many Western nations. These new worlds are already herethey are maps of survival, maps of resistance. Suchitra Vijayan. Barrister. What do you think the future holds? I particularly loved the fact that all our couple shots were very natural and came out truly . 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. During the initial search, the BSF troops recovered a black coloured drone - DJI Matrice (made in China), in partially damaged condition, lying near Dhussi Bundh near Shahjada village. Already a subscriber? These may not be perfect worlds or even equal worlds, but they strive to be. Also read: The History Of The Colonial State And The Unmaking Of The Tawaif. Required fields are marked *. But it needs to do more for peace. Speculation and conjecture were repeated ad infinitum, and several journalists even took to Twitter to encourage the Indian army. Its feudal, entitled, and cannibalistic. Its when we lose hope that we believe that we have lost everything. This is where I believe literary nonfiction becomes a powerful tool. Those notes were raw and immediate. A place to read, on the Internet. What moral and political stands we should take in the face of ongoing oppression. The book was called ``a genre-bending book of nonfictionmade Professor Nandita Sharmas work is an excellent way to engage with this history. Yes, men who act as petty sovereigns are everywhere. Even those among us who will speak of BLM will not openly challenge Hindutva or the RSS. Also, hope is a discipline. The Rumpus: It is shocking how unaware the world is about the violence the Indian government has committed since independence on its border citizens. Second, border policies are about "performance and articulations of citizenship". Why is this particular time of the day intrinsic to the book? I felt the same way when I would prepare legal petitions for my clients. 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. 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. 42, Moss Rose Heights, M.M Ali road, WASA Circle, Lalkhan Bazar, Chittogong 4000. [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]. The act of recording and documenting cannot be divorced from the inherent question of power. 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. Vijayan began her journey in Kolkata. Its a practice. Suchitra Vijayan, Newspapers in a Kashmiri home In August 2014 I travelled to the border town of Uri while researching my upcoming book, Borderlands. Early on, the idea of bearing witness as a rhetorical tool and as a literary device became deeply problematic. Updated Date: 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. But who gets to speak for so many of us? 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. We need more such books. The Author Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. Instead, we need to ask what fate awaits us. She is currently working on her first novel. Over the span of seven years, Suchitra Vijayan interviewed scores of individuals, jotted countless notes, snapped hundreds of photographs, and altogether made herself witness to the manifold absurdities (and atrocities) of who gets to say where one nation ends and another begins. Chopra has long been neoliberalisms reluctant feminist, hawking giving a voice and sisterhood while silencing those who question her. Apart from his long-suffering wife, no one else in the family knows that he is a spy.