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. 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. What are those ethical, moral, and political lines? But also, to be clear in terms of what I wanted to accomplish: as I say in the book, I wasnt bearing witness or giving voice to the voicelessthe people in this book are eloquent and political voices of their lives and realities. . They all have very specific and carefully curated origin/immigrant stories that cleverly exploit the model minority trope. 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. This might not seem like much, but it is absolutely essential. Firstly, when we talk about violence, we often talk about it only as communal violence, as if both communities have equal strength and power. Second, there were times when I ran out of money, when some said that such a book would not be published, when some declared that such a book could not be written. I almost never forget, I remember entire episodes or events since I was six years old. Vijayan: The photographs were the heart of this project. Can you write about loss without living? Suchitra Vijayan. As I travelled, I was very aware of these inherent power differences. One of the ways she upholds the humane in this book is through her interaction with the men in the security forces. More Buying Choices 1,732.00 (16 Used & New offers) Audible Audiobook 0.00 Free with Audible trial 586.00 ( 9 ) So now, how do we respond to this? Suchitra Vijayan and Francesca Recchia In this era when Indian armed forces and the police act with absolute impunity, a handful of local news outlets play an essential role in reporting and. Q: As you wrote this book, you dont hesitate to meditate on how your personal life bidirectionally impacted the book. J.G.P. Rumpus: The book derives its emotional strength and narrative energy from the stories of people you encounter at the borders. Second, as the media continued to promote government positions on the crisis, other critical political issues dropped out of public scrutiny. Q: Speaking about the content of the work, by including under-represented perspectives on the frequently debated partition and border laws you present a novel perspective to journalistic canon. These are stories of massive human rights violations committed by the Indian state in the countrys margins. Ali lived right on the edge of the India-Bangladesh border. Suchitra Vijayan traveled Indias vast land border to explore how these populations live, and document how even places just a few miles apart can feel like entirely different countries.. Accompanied by this globally, democracies are becoming more authoritarian and stripping people of their citizenshipreducing them to subjects, entrenching the fault lines of inequality. You dont need a Leni Riefenstahl today. Yes, men who act as petty sovereigns are everywhere. Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. A lot of travel writing is still written by a particular group of people with immense privilege, and they all tend to center themselves. 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 . She lucidly explains the complicated history of the McMahon Line, how the India-China border is the result of a fabrication perpetuated by the British colonial administration. Along the way, we meet the men and women of TASC, dissenting students, ISIS terrorists and Pakistani military officers. Not everyone lived to see its promises. Copyright 2023, THG PUBLISHING PVT LTD. or its affiliated companies. In these circumstances, the lives of people inhabiting the sketchy borderlands has become all the more vulnerable, and fragile. In Afghanistan, Kashmir, and India, from one dangerous conflict zone to another, she spoke with people, ate with them, and listened to their stories. Suchitra Vijayan, Newspapers in a Kashmiri home In August 2014 I travelled to the border town of Uri while researching my upcoming book, Borderlands. Midnights Borders is part investigation, part meditation on the lines drawn on land or water that separate India from its neighbours. A:I dont think an ethical or moral compass exists nowI dont know if it ever existed. In politics we will have equality, and in social and economic life, we will have inequality. Your email address will not be published. I believe it can teach us to ask these questions again. It has taken me over a decade to get here. Its feudal, entitled, and cannibalistic. Vijayan: Its a very generous reading, and thanks for that. When I left him (the first time), I had a one-year-old daughter. I have two tests. 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. Suchitra is a sought-after performer at corporate and other such stage shows. 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 truly the treason of the intellectuals. We could have attributed this to ignorance even a few years back; now its just silence thats deeply complicit in the Hindutva project. How did writing this book affect you? 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. A: This is a very loaded question. Vijayan: I would say I am hopeful. Suchitra Vijayanis a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. It definitely doesnt help when trying to hold a powerful state accountable. This is a challenging task for the writer. We must realise that its the grassroots media, who represent themselves, document what mainstream media ignores, and bring to notice what is important. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions?". As she travelled 9000 miles over seven years across Indias borders, some drawn so hastily that they cut across fields, homes and courtyards, she met men, women and children, finishing with endless notebooks, over a thousand images and more than 300 hours of recorded conversations. Her quest took her to the farthest ends of the India-Bangladesh/ China/ Myanmar/ Pakistan borders. Second, border policies are about "performance and articulations of citizenship". One of the reasons I kept writing was of course all the people I met: their love and time and generosity. This affects who gets to document, and whom. What changeshave youobserved in the way you treat your subject after finishing your journey and book? They dont. Suchitra Vijayan. There is something deeply flawed in the way we live today. Author In Focus, Celebration, The Literary Journal. Book reviews and author interviews with a Southern focus. Indias intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. I have no formal training as a writer or a photographer, I taught myself and learnt by doing, failing and creating my own grammar. This means that, for the longest time, the depiction of violence and marginalised communities has been problematic. 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. That capacity to be able to go away and then come back profoundly affects how you write because then you are still rooted. This is a profoundly alienating place for anyone without the networks of privilege and resources. The Rumpus is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. You need a community of people to support you. Midnights Borders, a work of narrative reportage, is the fruit of this journey. Q: Since publishing the book last year, what reflections have you hadgiven that its relevance is increasingly ascertained by 2022s interpersonal and geopolitical violence? Nonfiction, Travel, Fiction Member Since February 2021 edit data Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. Is secularism a good thing? This is such an insidious conversation to have; this was even before Adani bought it. In politics, we will be recognising the principle of one man, one vote, and one vote, one value. 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.". 2:16. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. What we can do is attempt micro-histories of events, timelines, or local communities. Empathy is taught by our communities; we are brought up with it. British India was partitioned into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan on the eve of independence in August, 1947. But its also important to constantly take account of who is writing about this India to an Indian and global audience. No one would put themselves through the agony and pain of writing. The emotional cost is something else altogether. Why do you think India has gotten away with this so far? But who gets to speak for so many of us? 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. Many come from immense privileges of caste, class, wealth, access, and resources. Lets take Indias English language media, cultural-artistic elite, and publishing. Chopra cleverly uses womens empowerment, diversity, and the immigrant story as a facade to parrot and promote deeply problematic ideologies, takes, and stances. Thats part of the political imagination that I believe we need for political movements or any sustained acts of resistance. Vijayan: Let me start heregood writing is powerful and political. 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. You become responsible for a human being. Again, in the India-China border, she finds a young army officer closely referring to a book that contradicts the official version of the Indo-China war of 1962, and concludes that perhaps, he recognizes that most of soldiering involved cynical subordination to ideas that no longer made sense.. Jawaharlal Nehrus 'Tryst with Destiny'is a speech I have returned to over the past 20 years. One of the reasons why this book was written was to step back: to say that this violence that you and I listen to and encounter is not new to say that this violence is not new. Suchitra Vijayan talks to FII about Indian politics, communal violence, marginalisation and her book Midnights Borders: A Peoples History of Modern India. We perform rituals of freedom in a right-less societywe dont ask if the rules, laws, and policies that are put in place are fair, just, right or equitable. L.L.B., Law, The University of Leeds, 2004 M.A., International Relation . (Stay up to date on new book releases, reviews, and more with The Hindu On Books newsletter. But your book lays bare how differently India's borders are guarded from southern Bengal to the Line of Control. 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. No one can write a book alone. Gokhale claimed that it struck the biggest camp and that a large number of terrorists were killed. Follow our team of columnists and reporters who write about the media. . They cannot be abusive or personal. Rumpus: Can we please talk about Priyanka Chopra, and how her rise is seen as a marker of brown achievement? Also read: Examining My Caste And Its History Is Eye-Opening: A Personal Essay On Casteism And Ancestry. That changes how you write and photograph a place. I particularly loved the fact that all our couple shots were very natural and came out truly . Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. Updated Date: Already a subscriber? 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. Her work looks at theories of violence, war, and human nature. Sometimes lost. The book arrived in the middle of a pandemic and a devastating second wave [of COVID-19] in India. The book was called ``a genre-bending book of nonfictionmade As a graduate student at Yale, she researched and documented stories along the Af-Pak border and was embedded with the US forces in Afghanistan. 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 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. This is a serious, often funny and deeply revealing book. M, An essential, beautifully written report from the hellish margins of a modern mega-state struggling to be a nation, of people whose lives continue to be shaped by violent political marches across age-old homes and habitats. She was part of a music band at PSG. We are all complicit in upholding and maintaining this fear. In India, that arbitrariness can be seen in how differently we perceive landboundaries with multiple sovereign nations. She is not alone. What I was most concerned about and still am are the people in the book and their safety. These new worlds are already herethey are maps of survival, maps of resistance. The interview has been paraphrased and condensed for clarity, at the interviewers discretion. She has sung in multiple languages including Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu. India has consistently warred against its own citizens; this book is about some of these wars. Instead, she shows the absurdity of the army apparatus that strives to comply with the narrative of patriotism. Our investigation into the Indian medias reporting on the Pulwama attack found that many reports were contradictory, biased, incendiary and uncorroborated. Acted as the General Manager for a day and motivated employees to work for the same purpose to reinforce team . Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. 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 . It took me 8 years to write the book. In an interview with Firstpost,Vijayan talks about her book, the militarisation of borders, ethno-nationalism, and the politics of documentation. Copyright 2023. The credit goes to my agent Lucy Cleland who suggested this title. Its a vicious cycle. By looking beyond maps to create a museum of forgotten stories, Vijayan has given voice to those who live on the fringes like Ali or Sari. As such, very few media establishments in India have been able to stand against the influence of political leaders. How "The Family Man" champions the carceral security state. 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. Rumpus: What do you think is the value of well-crafted literary nonfiction in sustaining conversations about equality and justice? What moral and political stands we should take in the face of ongoing oppression. The public is sold a lie as the attack is framed as a gas leak. Excellent interview, brave insights and critical reflections! It's a disorienting time when your library or what books you read can become evidence of sedition . Husain Haqqani: Pakistan released the Indian pilot. However, at work, Tiwari is in his element. I have never lived under military occupation, curfew, or a looming threat of violence. Time to let the diplomats do the hard talk. Vijayan: Chopra and others like her are a reflection of how popular culture and virality inform discourse and shape it. Another name that came to my mind was 'An Outline of the Republic', only to discover Siddhartha Debs excellent book by the same name. The latter is an act of violence against people whose voice you are appropriating. 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.. Always. It was just a sad moment, and I couldnt celebrate a book when there was so much human tragedy playing out. There is also a lot of deep-seated misogyny, casteism, and anti-Black racism in our communities that need to be addressed. Qin took charge as Chinese foreign minister in December, succeeding Wang Yi. They create cleavages of fear, xenophobia, and insecurity. Legislations such as National Register of Citizens and Citizenship Amendment Act threaten to render millions of people, especially Muslims, stateless. Her writing has appeared in The Citron Review, Dukool Magazine, Cerebration, Feminism in India, Times of India (Spellbound edition), and others. The failure to forget affects how I use images, and texts; my photographic practice and also how I put everything together. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle. But the inclination to still treat India as a democracy remains. Now imagine how it would be for someone from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, or working community to try to make inroads. I was reading a lot of Pessoa when I was in Afghanistan, so another placeholder title was 'Maps/Lines/Cartographies of Disquiet', inspired by the Book of Disquiet. Suchitra is now a singer-songwriter as well, composing music on her own and in collaboration with Singer Ranjith. At the end of it, I felt that I learnt more about myself, more about my home, I had becomeif not a better writer, an infinitely better human being, which is to say that one realises that theres always a Longue dure that one needs to consider, crave out time and space to think, train oneself not to always react. Suchitras account of her journeys across the undefinable and ever-shifting borders between India and its neighbours is gripping, frightening, faithful and beautiful. @narendramodi & his role in the Gujarat Pogrom. Excerpts from the #BBC documentary telecast about PM . RT @project_polis: Writing fiction in a dystopian world - @kiccovich in conversation with @mohammedhanif https://thepolisproject.com/listen/writing-fiction-in-a . 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. Suchitra is a BSc graduate from Mar Ivanios College (Trivandrum). If you want to support the work that goes behind publishing high-quality feminist media content, please consider becoming a FII member. Suchitra Vijayan is the executive director of the Polis Project. 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. At worst, its navel gazing peppered with white guilt, but always politically vacuous. What matters is that the book exists. 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. This discrepancy is just one example of the confusion and misinformation spread to the public by deeply flawed media reports. We also need a fundamental reframing of language. At a time when right-wing nationalism is crescendoing in India and across the world, Suchitra Vijayans Midnights Borders raises pertinent questions about the very foundations of Indias nationalism the cartography of South Asian nation-states defined by arbitrary lines drawn hastily by the British colonial administration. What do these events have in common? 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. Vijayan began her journey in Kolkata. This language drums the idea of the fundamental importance of justice, and such language is inalienable: it can easily be defined and empathetically understood. In 2020, Suchitra took part in the fourth season of the Tamil reality television show, Bigg Boss Tamil hosted by Kamal Haasan. The Author Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. Find him on Twitter at @AruniKashyap. You've mentioned in the text that you've spent your entire adult life thinking about state violence and justice because of a troubling incident in 1994 when your father was attacked. I now think twice about calling friends, worried if this might put them at risk. Who gets to shape these stories, what stories are chosen, what stories then are exiled? Is photographing a woman, who was gang-raped by the Sudanese army and put on the cover of TIMEpractically naked, able to stop the war? 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. All rights reserved. They are also essentially bureaucratic, judicial, and procedural acts of terror. Second, we can no longer have certain conversationsconversations are now impossible. The Indian media must learn to portray the conflict and human rights violations in the region in a more nuanced way, and not reduce Kashmir to a catalogue of death, destruction and emergency laws. Travel to States like Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland in the Northeast which share borders with China and Myanmar required Inner Line Permits, BSF soldiers followed her everywhere on the West Bengal/ Bangladesh border, and in Kashmir she was summoned to meet the local inspector at Uri. We need to think about border practices, policing, and national security policies within the larger historical and political contexts. What it means to photograph, write, report and document is an ongoing process. Also, we shouldn't forget that the border making project is central to capitalist and neoliberal logic. A place to read, on the Internet. Whose Stories Are Told In Indian History? Why is this particular time of the day intrinsic to the book? Yes, Chopra does take a huge share of attention, but the real danger is how people like her whitewash Hindutva, and now increasingly co-opt the language of Hinduphobia to counter any critique of Hindutva. Modi met with senior police officers and ordered them not to intervene as violence raged. Itembodied young Indias grand ambitions and aspired to a nation made of men and women equally protected by the law. More importantly, reporters need to engage with what it means to administer what has been called the worlds most militarized zone. Only then can the country answer a more fundamental question: Just what should be done to create conditions that allow Kashmiris to choose their destiny? What is the function of seeing and documenting? Co-founded the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, Suchitra is also the founder of the Polis Project, a research and journalism organisation. 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? If you think about communities in resistance to immense violations, theyre all interconnected to climate justice. Vijayan is no stranger to stories of violence. It is necessary to speak truth to power through our art. 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. As I say in the book, Kashmir changed me, it gave me political and moral clarity to always stand with those fighting for their peoples freedom and dignity. 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. But for me hope is radical; hope is the last bastion of our defense. She entered the show on day 28 as a new contestant and was evicted on day 49. We dont document violence against the privileged like we would report violence against those without power. Nine years ago, she began documenting stories from her travels along the borders of India. I feel very uncomfortable talking about this, or rather I dont know how to discuss this without centering myself. Later on she moved to Coimbatore for her MBA from PSG Institute of Management. Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitrav) / Twitter Follow Suchitra Vijayan @suchitrav Author: Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India. The events in Hathras did not happen at the border; neither did the murder and gang rape of two teenage girls in the Katra village of Budaun district, Uttar Pradesh. Even those among us who will speak of BLM will not openly challenge Hindutva or the RSS. 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. When I finished writing, I had become much richer in many waysnot in a material waybut through a community. It seems that they have a different eye for these women, who they describe as cunning, deceitful, and in some cases, prostitutes'. Midnight's Borders by Suchitra Vijayan. You can find them on, The #GBVinMedia Campaign: Media Reportage Of Gender-Based Violence, #IndianWomenInHistory: Remembering The Untold Legacies of Indian Women, How To Write About Abortion: A Rights-Based Approach, The Crowdsourced List Of Social Justice Collectives Across Indian Campuses. Her YouTube channel 'Suchislife' has all her updated work. I was much younger when I took on this project, so I wanted to prove those people wrong. If it does, I have failed. 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. The act of recording and documenting cannot be divorced from the inherent question of power. When your investigations in Kashmir came to an end, what changes did you observe in your 'grammar of dissent'? Like you train for a marathon, you train to be hopeful everyday. She is the founder and executive director of The Polis Project, and the author of. The show deals with interesting international happenings. Now imagine how it would be for someone from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, or working community to try to make inroads. In 1971, East Pakistan seceded and became Bangladesh. 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. I fear we are losing that cosmopolitanism of small places. Those notes were raw and immediate. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Rumpus: The book utilizes more than one medium: photography, narrative nonfiction, journalism. Vijayan creates a constellation of micro-histories of people who have lived through the violence . Also, hope is a discipline. Suchitra Vijayan. [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]. Good, honest and non-polemical writing has always forced us to confront the lies we tell ourselves.
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