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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. What makes these lives so vivid is how Vijayan contextualizes them by placing them in the bigger picture of history. Why is this particular time of the day intrinsic to the book? How did you achieve empathy in your writing, without the privileged lens that is common in journalistic canon? Those notes were raw and immediate. As a trained barrister, I used to believe in the concept of justicebut now I simply call this freedom and dignity. NONFICTIONMidnights BordersBy Suchitra VijayanMelville HousePublished May 25, 2021. 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. They are also essentially bureaucratic, judicial, and procedural acts of terror. Over the past 15 years, small democratisation through social media has enabled challenging these practices. Lets take Indias English language media, cultural-artistic elite, and publishing. Midnight's Borders by Suchitra Vijayan falls in both categories. These are stories of massive human rights violations committed by the Indian state in the countrys margins. No one is a stakeholder herethese are people, humans, citizens, who have been deprived of what the Ambedkarite constitution promised them. You become responsible for a human being. But your book lays bare how differently India's borders are guarded from southern Bengal to the Line of Control. Good, honest and non-polemical writing has always forced us to confront the lies we tell ourselves. 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? 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. Part-time Faculty suchitra@thepolisproject.com. But who gets to speak for so many of us? 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. This might not seem like much, but it is absolutely essential. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. 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. 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. Although Vijayan critiques the state and its complicity in violence and erasure of lives, she refrains from villainizing the men who serve the state. "Fighting for justice and human rights in India is a long and lonely battle" Nishrin Jafri Hussain, the daughter of Ehsan Jafri (from 2019) This also decides who gets access, awards and accolades. Aruni Kashyap writes in English, and his native language Assamese. We still argue if something should be a massacre, a pogrom, or a riot. Suchitra is a sought-after performer at corporate and other such stage shows. Its about what people like me should do. So lets be very clear that Indias intellectual literary landscape is deeply problematic, feudal, and alienating," says Suchitra Vijayan to FII, Featured Image Source: ). I was also trying to tell these stories from a repertoire of skills I had, and some I acquired. The Author Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. 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. It is the fragility of human lives that remains at the very center of the book. I fear we are losing that cosmopolitanism of small places. Later on she moved to Coimbatore for her MBA from PSG Institute of Management. When fires burn down large swathes of what were peoples homeswhat borders will you impose when climate change will fundamentally remake them? And that violence is often abetted by the state and goes unpunished. I am repeating what I have said before, "Kashmir is Indias greatest moral and political failure. This language drums the idea of the fundamental importance of justice, and such language is inalienable: it can easily be defined and empathetically understood. This means that, for the longest time, the depiction of violence and marginalised communities has been problematic. (Stay up to date on new book releases, reviews, and more with The Hindu On Books newsletter. 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. Suchitra Vijayan. This contributed to the long-running, brutal silencing of Kashmiris and their struggle for self-determination. This affects who gets to document, and whom. The second season of The Family Man begins with Srikant Tiwari, a former intelligence officer of TASCa fictitious intelligence agency akin to the Research & Analysis Wingworking at an IT company. Acted as the General Manager for a day and motivated employees to work for the same purpose to reinforce team . A: I dont agree with this kind of framing, because its not that underrepresented people dont have voices. To repurpose an old sayingall infamy is now good virality. In recent years, the narrative of hate has escalated with the reelection of the right-wing Narendra Modi government in 2019. The public is sold a lie as the attack is framed as a gas leak. 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. 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. He was arrested based on fabricated evidence in the middle of a global pandemic, and he was denied bail and medical help. Bigotry is also big business. They create cleavages of fear, xenophobia, and insecurity. 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. How did you respond to that environment being in an extremely challenging position yourself? 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. Panitars division is as cruel as it is arbitrary: here, the houses on either side of one dusty lane occupy two neighbouring countries. Growing up I was surrounded by people who emphasised the community over anything else. Suchitra was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, as the daughter of Ramadurai and Padmaja. Apart from his long-suffering wife, no one else in the family knows that he is a spy. Last edited on 23 February 2023, at 09:35, Filmfare Award for Best Female Playback Singer Telugu, 2nd South Indian International Movie Awards, "Suchitra going through certain emotional condition: Husband Karthik on her tweets", "Will Trisha sound like Trisha in Mankatha? We live in a surveillance economy where we are constantly just bearing witness we are record keepers, unwitting spies, and voyeurs. The argument put forward was simple: India, like most countries, had its human rights violations, but these were characterized as the growing pains and maturation of the worlds largest democracy. 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. I think the way that news and mostly disinformation makes its way to us, we think of violence in very particular waysas disjointed. In Midnight's Borders (Westland Publications, 2021), author and photographer Suchitra Vijayan travels the 9,000 miles of India's borders to understand what Partition did to individual lives and . And join us by becoming a monthly or yearly Member. The show deals with interesting international happenings. Feminism In India is an award-winning digital intersectional feminist media organisation to learn, educate and develop a feminist sensibility among the youth. Thoughbordersare conventionally recognised as real or artificial lines of spatial and political demarcation, there may also be an arbitrariness to them. No one would put themselves through the agony and pain of writing. Also read: The History Of The Colonial State And The Unmaking Of The Tawaif. The book was called ``a genre- bending book of nonfictionmade of stories, encounters, vignettes, and photographsabout home, belonging, and displacement.`` Her essays, photographs, and interviews have appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Nation, The Boston Review, Foreign Policy, Lit Hub, Rumpus, Electric literature, NPR, NBC, and BBC. Q: What was your goal with writing the book in the beginning and how did it change and drive you throughout those 8 years? In another essay from 2019, I write about the banality of bearing witness as an excuse to produce extractive work. These questions about documentation practices started long before I started this book project, and I learnt along the way. 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. L.L.B., Law, The University of Leeds, 2004 M.A., International Relation . Suchitra Vijayan is the executive director of the Polis Project. 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. I wrote a book along with it comes love, scorn, and sometimes even ridicule. 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. Also, we shouldn't forget that the border making project is central to capitalist and neoliberal logic. 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. What connects these messages is deep empathy and a willingness to engage with the books stories, ideas, and arguments. None of this helps in telling richer, more textured stories. She responded to an ad for the post of an RJ in Radio Mirchi. British India was partitioned into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan on the eve of independence in August, 1947. 4 reviews of Suchitra Vijayan Photography "Huge fan of Suchitra Vijayan Photography! [4] She also worked as a dubbing artist for popular heroines like Shriya Saran and Lakshmi Rai.[5]. In addition, she is an award- winning photographer, the founder, and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization. Vijayan is no stranger to stories of violence. What do these events have in common? Some even dressed for the occasion in combat gear. 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. If you want to support the work that goes behind publishing high-quality feminist media content, please consider becoming a FII member. 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. The Family Man has found tremendous success as a slick and funny espionage drama, particularly for its treatment of the protagonist, and even for humanising terrorists. 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. As a Bookshop affiliate, The Rumpus earns a percentage from qualifying purchases. But for me hope is radical; hope is the last bastion of our defense. So I dont know if it was empathy so much as just building a relationship with people. I have no formal training as a writer or a photographer, I taught myself and learnt by doing, failing and creating my own grammar. RT @project_polis: Writing fiction in a dystopian world - @kiccovich in conversation with @mohammedhanif https://thepolisproject.com/listen/writing-fiction-in-a . Suchitra Vijayan is the executive director of the Polis Project. Vijayan: Let me start heregood writing is powerful and political. Nine years ago, she began documenting stories from her travels along the borders of India. Who is expendable, and the manufacturing of rightlessness to render people expendable. In an interview with Firstpost,Vijayan talks about her book, the militarisation of borders, ethno-nationalism, and the politics of documentation. Suchitra Vijayan. I havent spoken or celebrated with my friends in Kashmir or Assam. I set out not to give voice to the voiceless, my aim was to put an ear to the ground and listen. 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. [1], Suchitra joined Sify for a year, after graduating. Rumpus: Toni Morrison said that she writes from a place of delight, not disappointment. This idea of responsibility gets obfuscated in many ways. The Indian government bears some responsibility for this: Amid this brinkmanship between the two nuclear powers, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not address the nation directly. I have never lived under military occupation, curfew, or a looming threat of violence. Chopra cleverly uses womens empowerment, diversity, and the immigrant story as a facade to parrot and promote deeply problematic ideologies, takes, and stances. When I left him (the first time), I had a one-year-old daughter. All too often, the Indian media portrays Kashmiris as terrorists or human shields, not as a community seeking self-determination. Through these real histories of the people, she gives readers another perspective on old wounds like Partition and new divisionary tactics like the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. 'Music I Like', an album of Suchitra's renditions of Mahakavi Bharatiyaar's poetry, set to contemporary tunes and music, released by Universal Music, was a turning point in her career. Respond to our political present. This income helps us keep the magazine alive. Q: You had to deal with a lot of ethical considerations as a writer and photographer, which echo throughout your and your fellow journalists work, as evaluated in your book. And yet, the research and the history never overpowers the flow of the narrative. ""The historical unity of the ruling classes is realized in the state." Antonio Gramsci" 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. 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. MacAdam reviews Suchitra Vijayan's book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India Read More. The complexities of the Naga peace process were apparent on a visit to remote villages of Tuensang district where many of the women remained silent with others admitting they had never encountered an outsider, except Indian soldiers. We lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers readers already know and love. Not everyone lived to see its promises. Second, as the media continued to promote government positions on the crisis, other critical political issues dropped out of public scrutiny. This article was published more than4 years ago. 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. Accompanied by this globally, democracies are becoming more authoritarian and stripping people of their citizenshipreducing them to subjects, entrenching the fault lines of inequality. I almost never forget, I remember entire episodes or events since I was six years old. Vijayan: Its a very generous reading, and thanks for that. 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. A: This geopolitical violence is not new, theres a long bloody, brutal history to thisa cyclical, ongoing and never-ending history. You need to write what you seethats why you started this project.. 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.. Vasundhara Sirnate Drennan is director of research at the Polis Project. Listen to Season 3 on Apple, Spotify and Google podcasts. She has a sister named, Sunitha. 2:16. by Suchitra Vijayan Hardcover 1,759.00 2,023.00 You Save: 264.00 (13%) Usually dispatched in 1 to 3 weeks. Its feudal, entitled, and cannibalistic. The constant making and remaking of who is a citizen, who is not, is accompanied by a profoundly dehumanising process. What changeshave youobserved in the way you treat your subject after finishing your journey and book? Ali lived right on the edge of the India-Bangladesh border. Midnights Borders , Suchitra Vijayan includes a photo of the pillar, which becomes a cricket stump for boys on either side of the border most days. These are edited excerpts from the interview: 'Midnight' seems to be a metaphor for multiple things both freeing and frightening. 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 think freedom and dignity enables us to really go beyond in our political imaginationbeyond just electoral politics. 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. One feedback I often got was that I had to put more of myself in this book. Firstly, when we talk about violence, we often talk about it only as communal violence, as if both communities have equal strength and power. Dear reader, this article is free to read and it will remain free but it isnt free to produce. Do you think the future is borderless? Worse, we have been disciplined to accept injustice and inequality as given. 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. . Sharing borders with six countries and spanning a geography that extends from Pakistan to Myanmar, India is the worlds largest democracy and second most populous country. Vijayan: There is an elusive distance between the photographer and the photographed that cant be bridged. We removed an image just before the printing to make sure the person was protected. Get your Rumpus merch in our online store. We need to think about border practices, policing, and national security policies within the larger historical and political contexts. 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. Rumpus: Why do you think the ever-growing canon of Indian American literature has barely tried to engage with these conversations through their stories? Now, border security policies are linked to domestic politics. The credit goes to my agent Lucy Cleland who suggested this title. Three hundred million people who had been considered less than subjects under the British rule, divided for years by religion, language, class, and caste, would all be united under one book: the revolutionary Constitution given to India by Babasaheb Ambedkar. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. She also embodies the upwardly mobile, privileged sections of the diaspora. 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. Suchitra is a BSc graduate from Mar Ivanios College (Trivandrum). Her distinct and bold voice made her very popular with the younger crowd. Co-founded the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, Suchitra is also the founder of the Polis Project, a research and journalism organisation. ( I hate this word, voiceless, by the way). On Feb. 14, an Indian paramilitary convoy was attacked. Stallings, Rumpus Original Fiction: The Litany of Invisible Things. Required fields are marked *. Also read: Examining My Caste And Its History Is Eye-Opening: A Personal Essay On Casteism And Ancestry. The first true peoples history of modern India, told through a seven-year, 9,000-mile journey along its many contested borders. A: I lost friends, saw my father go through a transplant, and I gave birth. Find him on Twitter at @AruniKashyap. Also, a book is an act of community; it has many midwives. Midnights Borders is part investigation, part meditation on the lines drawn on land or water that separate India from its neighbours. Empathy is taught by our communities; we are brought up with it. That changes how you write and photograph a place. This is a tightrope that you walk so well. Many come from immense privileges of caste, class, wealth, access, and resources. After Pulwama, the Indian media proves it is the BJPs propaganda machine, Sign up for a weekly roundup of thought-provoking ideas and debates, Fox News bosses scolded reporters who challenged false election claims, To fight defamation suit, Fox News cites election conspiracy theories. J.G.P. You can speak of confidence and body positivity and defend selling skin-lightening creams. What do you think the future holds? 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. Another name that came to my mind was 'An Outline of the Republic', only to discover Siddhartha Debs excellent book by the same name. Husain Haqqani: Pakistan released the Indian pilot. Suchitra Vijayanis a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. The former is an essential act of dissent, even resistance, especially in these dark times. A place to read, on the Internet. Yes, men who act as petty sovereigns are everywhere. [8] On 7 March 2017, she applied for divorce. Vijayan undertakes a seven-year long, 9,000-mile journey along the borders of India, and interviews people living in these liminal spaces. I feel very uncomfortable talking about this, or rather I dont know how to discuss this without centering myself. She is the executive director of the Polis Project . 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. I dont want to make this about me. March 06, 2021 04:50 pm | Updated March 07, 2021 08:05 am IST. [2] She became known as Rj Suchi, with her popular morning show Hello Chennai. Vijayan: The photographs were the heart of this project. But who carries the responsibility of that fear? Book reviews and author interviews with a Southern focus. This Life Draws Attention to Life Behind Bars and the Transcendent Power of Rap, Wrestling with Reality in The Big Door Prize. 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. There are so many nonfiction books about India published yearly but few are so important and subversive. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Your email address will not be published. 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. Thank you! A consistent ethical framework within the media hasnt existed for a long time. Siaan On Being Queer And Being Online, FII Interviews: Journalist Meena Kotwal On Minority Politics, Journalism Today And The Caste Divide. From the epoch of Empire to the nation-state, border making is fundamentally a political project that creates, sustains, and reinforces inequality. Speculation and conjecture were repeated ad infinitum, and several journalists even took to Twitter to encourage the Indian army. is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. Second, there is a clear distinction between speaking against the powerful and claiming to speak on behalf of the "voiceless". 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. Its impossible for a writer not to be affected by their personal life. Perhaps there are lessons to learn from that. Similarly, motherhood changed me; it radicalised me. They are arriving from various cities and people I have never met. 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. It was not going to be easy as she quickly found out. That, perhaps, is the only way to avoid further destruction in the region. The book was originally going to be a photographic body of work, which changed when I started writing. Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, photographer, lawyer, political essayist, and a lecturer. In 1971, East Pakistan seceded and became Bangladesh. Time to let the diplomats do the hard talk. She writes about war, conflict . Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. Can you write about loss without living? According to a new World Health Organization report, we lost as many as 4.7 million people in India. One of the reasons I kept writing was of course all the people I met: their love and time and generosity. 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. The emotional cost is something else altogether.