Suchitra Vijayan (Author of Midnight's Borders) - Goodreads She is actively involved in circulating urgent and underrepresented news from the world through her online platform. The acts of writing, documenting, photographing, and archiving carry privileges of caste and class. Can you write about loss without living? 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. 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 . Acted as the General Manager for a day and motivated employees to work for the same purpose to reinforce team . Growing up I was surrounded by people who emphasised the community over anything else. Opinion | After Pulwama, the Indian media proves it is the BJP's [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]. I have two tests. 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. You can claim to be patriotic but not political, you can claim to support the troops but ignore the ongoing civilian casualty. Once we eliminated the spectacle, we realized that the Indian public got very little information about the Pulwama attack and its aftermath. 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. I spoke with Suchitra by email in July about Midnights Borders, the power of literary nonfiction, new possibilities of Indian American literature, neoliberal politics, and the importance of supporting underrepresented stories. 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. 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? What do you think the future holds? He was arrested based on fabricated evidence in the middle of a global pandemic, and he was denied bail and medical help. I wrote the book, but those who have lived through this hell continue to live and navigate this hell. NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions?". Rumpus: The book derives its emotional strength and narrative energy from the stories of people you encounter at the borders. 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. Suchitra was married to actor Karthik Kumar between 2005 and 2017. Along the way, we meet the men and women of TASC, dissenting students, ISIS terrorists and Pakistani military officers. These are stories of massive human rights violations committed by the Indian state in the countrys margins. O. Q: You frequently describe certain borders as porous. By Suchitra Vijayan, Why should I read it? So I dont know if it was empathy so much as just building a relationship with people. What we can do is attempt micro-histories of events, timelines, or local communities. 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. Theyre screaming all the time, its just that we dont listen to them. 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. The pair experience similar situations in their lives: abuse, the death or absence of a husband, and the longing for a better future. 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. I think freedom and dignity enables us to really go beyond in our political imaginationbeyond just electoral politics. What do words like democracy, freedom, and citizenship mean? How "The Family Man" champions the carceral security state. No one can write a book alone. He writes about how when the Constitution was adopted, "We are going to enter into a life of contradictions. NONFICTIONMidnights BordersBy Suchitra VijayanMelville HousePublished May 25, 2021. The public is sold a lie as the attack is framed as a gas leak. Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitrav) / Twitter Follow Suchitra Vijayan @suchitrav Author: Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India. A:I dont think an ethical or moral compass exists nowI dont know if it ever existed. I test my practice of writing or being a photographer against this rule. Empathy is taught by our communities; we are brought up with it. But, more importantly, I wanted my readers to walk away with a sense of empathy. The act of recording and documenting cannot be divorced from the inherent question of power. How did you respond to that environment being in an extremely challenging position yourself? Professor Nandita Sharmas work is an excellent way to engage with this history. Its impossible for a writer not to be affected by their personal life. I now think twice about calling friends, worried if this might put them at risk. As a Bookshop affiliate, The Rumpus earns a percentage from qualifying purchases. My role, then, and this books role, is to find in their articulations a critique of the nation-state, its violence and the arbitrariness of territorial sovereignty.". 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. In Afghanistan, Kashmir, and India, from one dangerous conflict zone to another, she spoke with people, ate with them, and listened to their stories. I dont have apprehensions. So now, how do we respond to this? Is secularism a good thing? This is such an insidious conversation to have; this was even before Adani bought it. What it means to photograph, write, report and document is an ongoing process. If you think about communities in resistance to immense violations, theyre all interconnected to climate justice. Vijayan began her journey in Kolkata. In politics, we will be recognising the principle of one man, one vote, and one vote, one value. Vijayan reserves her own impressions for later, and allows us to know these people intimately. 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. Aruni Kashyap writes in English, and his native language Assamese. A: This is a very loaded question. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. Later on she moved to Coimbatore for her MBA from PSG Institute of Management. So the first reflection is this idea of where we are right now: as people, as a society, as a community. The black and white pictures accompanying the chapters add a thousand words more. The former is an essential act of dissent, even resistance, especially in these dark times. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. The taxi driver who describes the Egyptian revolution in five minutes to an American columnist (who speaks no Arabic) is sadly where the genre is today. Not everyone rejoiced in these new freedoms. In the same chapter of the book, Kamal says, "If I am an Indian, then why am I afraid?" This also decides who gets access, awards and accolades. It's a disorienting time when your library or what books you read can become evidence of sedition . Where does that leave us? British India was partitioned into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan on the eve of independence in August, 1947. I fear we are losing that cosmopolitanism of small places. They dont. Updated Date: Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. How do you think your book contributes to the larger conversation about India? 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. Her work looks at theories of violence, war, and human nature. So the question is not: will the future be borderless? March 06, 2021 04:50 pm | Updated March 07, 2021 08:05 am IST. Vijayan: The photographs were the heart of this project. These instances are also about border practices because modern states, especially liberal democracies, expend immense energy in creating and maintaining identity categories: who belongs, and where. As Sari Begum's story [in the book] illustrates, 'A life where the violence of the border is not at the fence, or in the trenches, but at the center of 'their' and our 'universe'. What are those ethical, moral, and political lines? 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. And our language helps us imagine a vision that is truly just, beautiful and ethical. Legislations such as National Register of Citizens and Citizenship Amendment Act threaten to render millions of people, especially Muslims, stateless. No one would put themselves through the agony and pain of writing. SUCHITRA VIJAYAN PHOTOGRAPHY - 42 Photos - Manhatan, NY - Yelp 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). She has a sister named, Sunitha. As such, very few media establishments in India have been able to stand against the influence of political leaders. It was just a sad moment, and I couldnt celebrate a book when there was so much human tragedy playing out. 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. A literary community. You dont need a Leni Riefenstahl today. We see that during the journey, in a number of places, people stood in lines to speak with you, to show their paperwork to youhow did you negotiate the weight ofthose expectations, which might not have been explicit, but were still very much present? It took a long time to get the voice right. There are also those who have previously been tacit, if not active, supporters of the right-wing Hindu nationalist Indian state. 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. 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. Many TV newsrooms were transformed into caricatures of military command centers, with anchors assessing military technology and strategy (sometimes incorrectly). . They continue to. The stories were a way to understand how people struggled and survived. Not everyone lived to see its promises. We know that the purpose of borders has kept changing for nations. This might not seem like much, but it is absolutely essential. Not mine. I think the way that news and mostly disinformation makes its way to us, we think of violence in very particular waysas disjointed. @narendramodi & his role in the Gujarat Pogrom. I feel very uncomfortable talking about this, or rather I dont know how to discuss this without centering myself. These are edited excerpts from the interview: 'Midnight' seems to be a metaphor for multiple things both freeing and frightening. I am repeating what I have said before, "Kashmir is Indias greatest moral and political failure. Suchitra Vijayan Unreliable Witnesses - Boston Review 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. They are arriving from various cities and people I have never met. Its feudal, entitled, and cannibalistic. Without a political solution, Kashmir will undoubtedly emerge in upcoming news cycles. " India's intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. Thoughbordersare conventionally recognised as real or artificial lines of spatial and political demarcation, there may also be an arbitrariness to them. She is the founder and executive director of The Polis Project, and the author of. In these circumstances, the lives of people inhabiting the sketchy borderlands has become all the more vulnerable, and fragile. Its a vicious cycle. A: This geopolitical violence is not new, theres a long bloody, brutal history to thisa cyclical, ongoing and never-ending history. 10 books like The Home and the World (picked by 7,000+ authors) Who gets to shape these stories, what stories are chosen, what stories then are exiled? Part of this process is a need to turn the lens back at the powerful. We have already chosen silence and obfuscation even before the pushback has arrived. A lot of travel writing is still written by a particular group of people with immense privilege, and they all tend to center themselves. Also read: The History Of The Colonial State And The Unmaking Of The Tawaif. Vijayan creates a constellation of micro-histories of people who have lived through the violence . She was part of a music band at PSG. But who gets to speak for so many of us? 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. 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. Find him on Twitter at @AruniKashyap. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Your email address will not be published. She writes about war, conflict . 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. @suchitrav. Categories. 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. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle. 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). Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. The people in this book are eloquent advocates of their history and their struggles. Contributions for the charitable purposes ofThe Rumpus must be made payable to Fractured Atlas only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. In the first season, when he and his team are tasked to thwart the terrorist attack Operation Zulfiqar, the plot moves from Mumbai to Kashmir. How do you protect this child? This media blitzkrieg resulted in the erasure of two important political trends. If she wasnt real she would be a marriage between a meme and parody. Suchitra Vijayan | The Caravan Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. 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. 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. I was much younger when I took on this project, so I wanted to prove those people wrong. Were there times when you doubted your own ability to record and document these people's stories? 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. Without any official statement on the number of casualties by the Indian government, the Indian news media reported that 300 terrorists were killed, citing government sources. 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. suchitrav. You become responsible for a human being. As a lawyer, journalist, and human rights activist who has worked in conflict-ridden territories of Kosovo, Egypt, Rwanda, and elsewhere, she has often met people scrambling for bare existence, caught in a no-mans land. Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. 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. Say, for instance, do we need a James Nachtwey to fly to war-torn Bosnia? 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. 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. The mask is off. The arrest of Khurram Parvez shows that India is no Midnight's Borders by Suchitra Vijayan. There are so many nonfiction books about India published yearly but few are so important and subversive. Her YouTube channel 'Suchislife' has all her updated work. 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. Could you comment on how much our present border security policies have changed in the last few years? 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. 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. Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, photographer, lawyer, political essayist, and a lecturer. 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.
