Thoughbordersare conventionally recognised as real or artificial lines of spatial and political demarcation, there may also be an arbitrariness to them. 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. Rumpus: What do you think is the value of well-crafted literary nonfiction in sustaining conversations about equality and justice? Your email address will not be published. Jawaharlal Nehrus 'Tryst with Destiny'is a speech I have returned to over the past 20 years. 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. I am repeating what I have said before, "Kashmir is Indias greatest moral and political failure. As a Bookshop affiliate, The Rumpus earns a percentage from qualifying purchases. 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. Suchitra Vijayan is the executive director of the Polis Project. It took me 8 years to write the book. Barrister. And, in many cases, they are children of the literary, cultural, or political elite who have long been the beneficiaries of the Indian state. That capacity to be able to go away and then come back profoundly affects how you write because then you are still rooted. Ten years later, you were in Kashmir, where you 'hoped to find answers' by talking to a family that had lost a son. 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. There are some brilliant writers writing on these issuesthe problem is always that these voices dont make it to the mainstream. Suchitra was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, as the daughter of Ramadurai and Padmaja. There are some notable exceptions, but they are an exception. In this podcast, Vijayan discusses with host Alex Woodson her 9,000-mile journey through India's borderlands, which formed the basis of the book, and she discusses the violent and continuing history of the 1947 partition, the stark differences and similarities along South Asia's various borders, and what "citizenship" mean in India in 2021 and Always. Its a hard book to name, and I kept going back and forth. That changes how you write and photograph a place. If you think about communities in resistance to immense violations, theyre all interconnected to climate justice. (Stay up to date on new book releases, reviews, and more with The Hindu On Books newsletter. Itembodied young Indias grand ambitions and aspired to a nation made of men and women equally protected by the law. As I travelled, I was very aware of these inherent power differences. 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. Vasundhara Sirnate Drennan is director of research at the Polis Project. Rumpus: The book derives its emotional strength and narrative energy from the stories of people you encounter at the borders. Updated Date: Our investigation into the Indian medias reporting on the Pulwama attack found that many reports were contradictory, biased, incendiary and uncorroborated. As a trained barrister, I used to believe in the concept of justicebut now I simply call this freedom and dignity. This means that, for the longest time, the depiction of violence and marginalised communities has been problematic. Time to let the diplomats do the hard talk. Subscribe here. 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 . Could you comment on how much our present border security policies have changed in the last few years? Sometimes the news is the story. Qin took charge as Chinese foreign minister in December, succeeding Wang Yi. [1], Suchitra joined Sify for a year, after graduating. I havent spoken or celebrated with my friends in Kashmir or Assam. How do you think this shapes climate justice? Vijayan reserves her own impressions for later, and allows us to know these people intimately. 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. A literary community. Can you write about loss without living? In an interview with Firstpost,Vijayan talks about her book, the militarisation of borders, ethno-nationalism, and the politics of documentation. [3], She started singing after a few years as RJ. Also read: The History Of The Colonial State And The Unmaking Of The Tawaif. 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? 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. At worst, its navel gazing peppered with white guilt, but always politically vacuous. She is the founder and executive director of The Polis Project, and the author of. Husain Haqqani: Pakistan released the Indian pilot. Rumpus: Can we please talk about Priyanka Chopra, and how her rise is seen as a marker of brown achievement? Q: You frequently describe certain borders as porous. These are stories of massive human rights violations committed by the Indian state in the countrys margins. Apart from his long-suffering wife, no one else in the family knows that he is a spy. Vijayan creates a constellation of micro-histories of people who have lived through the violence . Similarly, motherhood changed me; it radicalised me. You dont need a Leni Riefenstahl today. Chopra cleverly uses womens empowerment, diversity, and the immigrant story as a facade to parrot and promote deeply problematic ideologies, takes, and stances. These may not be perfect worlds or even equal worlds, but they strive to be. Its not comparable and should not be compared. Q: What struck me about your work was its immersive style. 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. 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. In Afghanistan, Kashmir, and India, from one dangerous conflict zone to another, she spoke with people, ate with them, and listened to their stories. Do you think the future is borderless? Vijayan: Most Indian American writers, especially many of them who occupy the broad spectrum of literary to punditry, come from immense privilege of caste and class. Vijayan: I wasnt trying to write a hybrid book; I was trying to tell the stories I encountered as a way to think about the moral and political realities of our lives. There is also a lot of deep-seated misogyny, casteism, and anti-Black racism in our communities that need to be addressed. Ali lived right on the edge of the India-Bangladesh border. What do these events have in common? Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. Are you expecting any pushback at all? In the same chapter of the book, Kamal says, "If I am an Indian, then why am I afraid?" Rumpus: In such a climate, what do you think is the responsibility of the diasporic Indian writer? She studied Law, Political Science and International Relations, and was trained as a Barrister-at-Law and called to Bar at the Honourable Society of Inner Temple. The post-Cold War and 90s rhetoric of a borderless world that accompanied globalisation also kick-started massive border fencing projects in India. 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. Also, we shouldn't forget that the border making project is central to capitalist and neoliberal logic. 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? Early on, I was very careful to acknowledge this. 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. " India's intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. [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 book arrived in the middle of a pandemic and a devastating second wave [of COVID-19] in India. It is meant to manufacture an underclass of rightless subjects. All too often, the Indian media portrays Kashmiris as terrorists or human shields, not as a community seeking self-determination. When Vijayan meets him, he is inside his home with all the windows closed and sealed to snuff out light. Feminism In India is an award-winning digital intersectional feminist media organisation to learn, educate and develop a feminist sensibility among the youth. One of the reasons I kept writing was of course all the people I met: their love and time and generosity. A poll asked if its OK to be white. Heres why the phrase is loaded. First, the escalation in the counterinsurgency war within the Kashmir Valley under which hundreds of activists were arrested and several Kashmiri civilians killed in gun battles was grievously underreported. Yes, men who act as petty sovereigns are everywhere. Check posts or bunkers were not part of the landscapes of my home. A: This geopolitical violence is not new, theres a long bloody, brutal history to thisa cyclical, ongoing and never-ending history. And join us by becoming a monthly or yearly Member. I test my practice of writing or being a photographer against this rule. But your book lays bare how differently India's borders are guarded from southern Bengal to the Line of Control. 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. 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. FII Media Private Limited | All rights reserved, "Imagine how it would be for someone coming from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, working class background, who wants to come into thisit is especially difficult if youre a woman coming from these backgrounds. While Nehru was still declaring this victory, the slaughter began. They dont. Book reviews and author interviews with a Southern focus. They are arriving from various cities and people I have never met. She was part of a music band at PSG. So lets be very clear that Indias intellectual literary landscape is deeply problematic, feudal, and alienating," says Suchitra Vijayan to FII, Featured Image Source: Although Vijayan critiques the state and its complicity in violence and erasure of lives, she refrains from villainizing the men who serve the state. Creative . How do you think this inspiration from a variety of genres allowed you to tell underrepresented stories? It is necessary to speak truth to power through our art. 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 achieve empathy in your writing, without the privileged lens that is common in journalistic canon? In retaliation, the Indian Air Force carried out an airstrike on an alleged militant training camp in Balakot in Pakistans Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Midnights Borders: A Peoples History of Modern India ; Suchitra Vijayan, Context/ Westland Books, 699. Accompanied by this globally, democracies are becoming more authoritarian and stripping people of their citizenshipreducing them to subjects, entrenching the fault lines of inequality. Panitars division is as cruel as it is arbitrary: here, the houses on either side of one dusty lane occupy two neighbouring countries. Vijayan began her journey in Kolkata. I came with my privileges, also lets not forget prejudices. Having been trained in law, Suchitra Vijayan initially worked at the United Nations war tribunals in Yugoslavia. Invariably its the writer who is the protagonist. Who gets to travel, tell stories, and, more importantly, publish them are all deeply connected to questions of access, resources, and privilege. There are two quotes I regularly use by Allan Sekula when I teach: "The making of a human likeness on film is a political act. Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitrav) / Twitter Follow Suchitra Vijayan @suchitrav Author: Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India. This discrepancy is just one example of the confusion and misinformation spread to the public by deeply flawed media reports. Suchitra Ramadurai, known by the mononym Suchitra, is an Indian radio jockey, popular playback singer, songwriter, composer, voice artist, dubbing artist and film actress. @narendramodi & his role in the Gujarat Pogrom. March 20, 2021 09:50:40 IST. You need a community of people to support you. Whose Stories Are Told In Indian History? The pandemic showed us that crises and recurrent disasters that annihilate our lives are here to stay. 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. Not everyone lived to see its promises. The mortality of someone you love affects how you write. They both have pregnant daughters, a fact that becomes significant as the novel progresses. Is that a probable solution? The writing grew around the images and the visual memory of the encounters. But for me hope is radical; hope is the last bastion of our defense. I'mdyslexic, but have visual and episodic memory, which means I dream and relive moments. Now, border security policies are linked to domestic politics. Also, a book is an act of community; it has many midwives. I was much younger when I took on this project, so I wanted to prove those people wrong. 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. The failure to forget affects how I use images, and texts; my photographic practice and also how I put everything together. She was part of a music band at PSG. She's a good friend and kindly agreed to take our City Hall wedding photos. Midnight's Bordersis an exceptional read, but one that may make some uncomfortable. Follow our team of columnists and reporters who write about the media. Vijayan began her journey in Kolkata. 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). 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. Say, for instance, do we need a James Nachtwey to fly to war-torn Bosnia? It is here that even the most civilised amongst us begin to make excuses for repression, brutality, and violence. Not mine. 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 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. India shares borders with a host of . 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. Also read: Examining My Caste And Its History Is Eye-Opening: A Personal Essay On Casteism And Ancestry. On Feb. 14, an Indian paramilitary convoy was attacked. 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 now, how do we respond to this? For far too long, they and their progeny have held power to shape the political understanding of our social worlds. The emotional cost is something else altogether. We know that the purpose of borders has kept changing for nations. Vijayan: Its a very generous reading, and thanks for that. Part-time Faculty suchitra@thepolisproject.com. A: I dont agree with this kind of framing, because its not that underrepresented people dont have voices. First, does my work aid the powerful? 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. She has a sister named, Sunitha. Vijayan shows a keen eye for detail as she presents these diverse lives. 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. I have no control over what comes next. This is a challenging task for the writer. I feel very uncomfortable talking about this, or rather I dont know how to discuss this without centering myself. We have already chosen silence and obfuscation even before the pushback has arrived. What moral and political stands we should take in the face of ongoing oppression. We cant continue to see this in neo-liberal terms like stakeholder. I think the usage of this kind of language is ineffectual; its emptied of imagination. 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. Dear reader, this article is free to read and it will remain free but it isnt free to produce. 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. It was not going to be easy as she quickly found out. 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. Then you sit in a room with a mother telling you that she has no idea what happened to her son and has no way of knowing if hes ever coming back. J.G.P. Especially when you can be charged with sedition for a tweet or arrested for the crime of committing comedy while being Muslim. Second, border policies are about "performance and articulations of citizenship". Midnights Borders is part investigation, part meditation on the lines drawn on land or water that separate India from its neighbours. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. The events of 9/11 had profound effects on how border security projects and politics played out. 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. 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. Why dont people see the ground shifting beneath their feet? This is not the violent right wing and their siege; its centrist and liberal media that is also relitigating history, deconstructing the core values of the constitution. She perfectly captured the happiness and the intimacy of the occasion, the warmth of all the people present, and the splendor of the venue. 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 Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. When the book finally came out, India was undergoing the deadly 2nd wave. Its when we lose hope that we believe that we have lost everything. When your investigations in Kashmir came to an end, what changes did you observe in your 'grammar of dissent'? 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. I kept detailed audio notes that I recorded each night when I traveled. In 2020, Suchitra took part in the fourth season of the Tamil reality television show, Bigg Boss Tamil hosted by Kamal Haasan. Vijayan: A writers responsibility above all is to speak the truth and make sense of our social worlds. Later on she moved to Coimbatore for her MBA from PSG Institute of Management. My friend Ritesh Uttamchandani said this once, the lens that elusive distance between the photographer and the photographed is often impossible to bridge. They continue to. 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. We lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers readers already know and love. Q: Since publishing the book last year, what reflections have you hadgiven that its relevance is increasingly ascertained by 2022s interpersonal and geopolitical violence? Suchitra is a BSc graduate from Mar Ivanios College (Trivandrum). What matters is that the book exists. In recent years, the narrative of hate has escalated with the reelection of the right-wing Narendra Modi government in 2019. Love, passion, anger, the desire to make a point about something. 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. She has sung in multiple languages including Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu. Chopra has long been neoliberalisms reluctant feminist, hawking giving a voice and sisterhood while silencing those who question her. I think freedom and dignity enables us to really go beyond in our political imaginationbeyond just electoral politics. The black and white pictures accompanying the chapters add a thousand words more. Many TV newsrooms were transformed into caricatures of military command centers, with anchors assessing military technology and strategy (sometimes incorrectly). 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. Lets start with a very simple statement that everyone can agree on: the way were living right now cannot continue. With the phone armed with a camera, everyone is a photographer; we are all witnesses. Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. In addition, she is an award- winning photographer, the founder, and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization. What connects these messages is deep empathy and a willingness to engage with the books stories, ideas, and arguments. There are so many nonfiction books about India published yearly but few are so important and subversive. I dont want to make this about me. I have never lived under military occupation, curfew, or a looming threat of violence. Perhaps that offers some protection? . What makes these lives so vivid is how Vijayan contextualizes them by placing them in the bigger picture of history. How did you arrive at this stylistic juncture where you manage to tell the stories of these people who are radically less privileged than you without appropriating them? The third thing is: were going back to relitigating everything. 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'. 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.
