Sign in. When I left him (the first time), I had a one-year-old daughter. 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. It is necessary to speak truth to power through our art. The book was called ``a genre-bending book of nonfictionmade 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 Can any of theTIMEsubscribers who loved that cover tell us now whats happening in South Sudan today? Author In Focus, Celebration, The Literary Journal. That was my starting point. 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. Co-founded the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, Suchitra is also the founder of the Polis Project, a research and journalism organisation. Suchitra was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, as the daughter of Ramadurai and Padmaja. 4 reviews of Suchitra Vijayan Photography "Huge fan of Suchitra Vijayan Photography! I almost never forget, I remember entire episodes or events since I was six years old. 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. Copyright 2023. A: Writers are very strange creatures. The pair experience similar situations in their lives: abuse, the death or absence of a husband, and the longing for a better future. And this is always at the expense of others. 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. Second, Indias transformation into a nuclear state and the Kargil War is another critical moment of change. Rumpus: Were you trying to write a hybrid-genre book? Many news channels are not only owned, operated or invested in by politically influential families, but also are sometimes run for the express purpose of advancing party positions. The black and white pictures accompanying the chapters add a thousand words more. 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.. 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. Also, hope is a discipline. India's Press Crackdown: The Silencing of Journalists in Kashmir Its when we lose hope that we believe that we have lost everything. Now imagine how it would be for someone from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, or working community to try to make inroads. I want to clarify that what I witnessed or the violence inflicted on my father is not the same as what over eight million Kashmiris have endured. As a bedouin who grew up listening to beautiful stories from beautiful storytellers around a fire, I was transported by her storytelling. It is meant to manufacture an underclass of rightless subjects. It is always Bollywood, the ascent of Priyanka Chopra, or the diasporic loneliness. Vijayan: Chopra and others like her are a reflection of how popular culture and virality inform discourse and shape it. 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. 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. So now, how do we respond to this? Her career as a playback singer now spans Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam films and she has several hits in all these languages to her credit. I wrote the book, but those who have lived through this hell continue to live and navigate this hell. Sometimes lost. 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? Many TV newsrooms were transformed into caricatures of military command centers, with anchors assessing military technology and strategy (sometimes incorrectly). Suchitra Vijayan | The Caravan They continue to. What are those ethical, moral, and political lines? Husain Haqqani: Pakistan released the Indian pilot. You can find them onYouTube&Linkedin,and can also check out their websitehere. Ali lived right on the edge of the India-Bangladesh border. 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. Suchitra is a BSc graduate from Mar Ivanios College (Trivandrum). Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. ""The historical unity of the ruling classes is realized in the state." Antonio Gramsci" 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. 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. When fencing began, he became trapped in a no-mans land, his marriage to a girl from Bangladesh ended with each being stranded on either side and he never got out of the cycle of debt and struggle, finally losing the ability to dream. Suchitra Vijayan - New Lines Institute Itembodied young Indias grand ambitions and aspired to a nation made of men and women equally protected by the law. Vijayan: Its a very generous reading, and thanks for that. On Feb. 14, an Indian paramilitary convoy was attacked in Pulwama in India-administered Kashmir, resulting in the death of 40 Indian officers. Love, passion, anger, the desire to make a point about something. These are edited excerpts from the interview: 'Midnight' seems to be a metaphor for multiple things both freeing and frightening. J.G.P. Vijayan researches meticulously into official documents and conducts a series of interviews in an effort to uncover the murky truths behind the death of Hilal Ahmed Mir, a supposed militant killed by the military in an encounter in the disputed territory of Kashmir, or Felani Khatun, a 15-year-old girl who was shot when trying to cross the barbed wire at the porous India-Bangladesh border. Firstpost - All Rights Reserved. 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. [4] She also worked as a dubbing artist for popular heroines like Shriya Saran and Lakshmi Rai.[5]. A literary community. This income helps us keep the magazine alive. Anvisha Manral March 20, 2021 09:50:40 IST These are no longer contradictory; instead, even criticism can be converted to views. Her work looks at theories of violence, war, and human nature. He was arrested based on fabricated evidence in the middle of a global pandemic, and he was denied bail and medical help. Why is this particular time of the day intrinsic to the book? By Suchitra Vijayan, Why should I read it? This book ate into so much of my life. When the book finally came out, India was undergoing the deadly 2nd wave. 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. Is secularism a good thing? This is such an insidious conversation to have; this was even before Adani bought it. Reports also identified different people as the supposed masterminds of the Pulwama attack at various points without clear sourcing. 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. We live in a surveillance economy where we are constantly just bearing witness we are record keepers, unwitting spies, and voyeurs. Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India: Vijayan India has consistently warred against its own citizens; this book is about some of these wars. Is that a probable solution? The act of recording and documenting cannot be divorced from the inherent question of power. " India's intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. Looking Beyond the Lines: Suchitra Vijayan's "Midnight's Borders" At worst, its navel gazing peppered with white guilt, but always politically vacuous. We need more such books. The word terrorism, for instance, is used almost exclusively to refer to a particular communitybut fails to refer to state-enabled terror or the terror deployed by majority communities. In an interview with Firstpost,Vijayan talks about her book, the militarisation of borders, ethno-nationalism, and the politics of documentation. 2:16. Jawaharlal Nehrus 'Tryst with Destiny'is a speech I have returned to over the past 20 years. One of the ways she upholds the humane in this book is through her interaction with the men in the security forces. Professor Nandita Sharmas work is an excellent way to engage with this history. '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. Ananya is a chaotic humanities student with a deep interest in the relationship between art and society, a writing obsession, and way too many bizarre ideas involving their camera. I havent spoken or celebrated with my friends in Kashmir or Assam. Vijayan: As we have this conversation, Dr. Stan Swamy, the eighty-four-year-old Jesuit priest, Indias oldest political prisoner, was murdered by the Indian state with the complicity of the judiciary. The 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. Suchitra Vijayan on Twitter: ""Fighting for justice and human rights in What do you think the future holds? Suchitra Vijayan (Author of Midnight's Borders) - Goodreads The Author Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. 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 . 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. This contributed to the long-running, brutal silencing of Kashmiris and their struggle for self-determination. Her writing has appeared in The Citron Review, Dukool Magazine, Cerebration, Feminism in India, Times of India (Spellbound edition), and others. He is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Georgia and is the author of The House With a Thousand Stories, His Fathers Disease, and There Is No Good Time for Bad News. But it needs to do more for peace. As a trained barrister, I used to believe in the concept of justicebut now I simply call this freedom and dignity. Suchitra is a sought-after performer at corporate and other such stage shows. As a Bookshop affiliate, The Rumpus earns a percentage from qualifying purchases. Rumpus: Can we please talk about Priyanka Chopra, and how her rise is seen as a marker of brown achievement? She is currently working on her first novel. Along the way, we meet the men and women of TASC, dissenting students, ISIS terrorists and Pakistani military officers. The constant making and remaking of who is a citizen, who is not, is accompanied by a profoundly dehumanising process. 'Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India' review: A He drops and picks up his kids from school, pines for his old job and is concerned about the newly-formed government in Pakistanall the while trying to salvage his crumbling marriage. Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. The emotional cost is something else altogether. Vijayan creates a constellation of micro-histories of people who have lived through the violence that India has committed in its borderlandsinjustice that has irrigated the glamour and prosperity we witness in what some of us in those borderlands call mainland India. Vijayan, a barrister by profession, is a founding director of Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization in New York. These are stories of massive human rights violations committed by the Indian state in the countrys margins. 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. 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. Later on she moved to Coimbatore for her MBA from PSG Institute of Management. Vijayan: There is an elusive distance between the photographer and the photographed that cant be bridged. Its impossible for a writer not to be affected by their personal life. 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. I have two tests. 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. We no longer ask if this will lead to a better society, if it will benefit the vast majority of those farthest away from power. ( I hate this word, voiceless, by the way). And what does this mean for on-ground communities, governments, armed forces, and other institutional stakeholders? 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India and its Borderlands: Suchitra Vijayan in Conversation with Sharjeel Usmani, Book talk with Suchitra Vijayan, author of Midnights Borders, Crisis at the Border: Contestation, Sovereignty, and Statelessness. The people in the text fear statelessness, unknown violence, and being forgotten. I have no formal training as a writer or a photographer, I taught myself and learnt by doing, failing and creating my own grammar. The government, of course, denies this. 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. 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. 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. Later on she moved to Coimbatore for her MBA from PSG Institute of Management. 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. Vijayan: I would say I am hopeful. Indias intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. Subscribe here. There are enough stories of people parachuting into communities to do human interest stories. Creative . But your book lays bare how differently India's borders are guarded from southern Bengal to the Line of Control. To them he is a man who has settled into a job that has no future. Why I Grew Up Wishing My Mother Were Dead - The Bangalore Review Barrister. 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. Perhaps thats their victory. A British lawyer, Cyril Radcliffe set foot in India for the first time in July, 1947 to draw the borders and completed the task within seven weeks, engendering communal riots, a heavily militarized border, four wars and seven decades of violence and hatred between the two countries. They create cleavages of fear, xenophobia, and insecurity. You can speak of confidence and body positivity and defend selling skin-lightening creams. Qin took charge as Chinese foreign minister in December, succeeding Wang Yi. The failure to forget affects how I use images, and texts; my photographic practice and also how I put everything together. You become responsible for a human being. 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. That changes how you write and photograph a place. 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. 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. 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. This affects who gets to document, and whom. The people whose lives are not just materials for the book, who are, in some ways, your co-conspirators in trying to make sense of the social reality. We know that the purpose of borders has kept changing for nations. It was just a sad moment, and I couldnt celebrate a book when there was so much human tragedy playing out. What is the function of seeing and documenting? ). So the question is not: will the future be borderless? 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'. 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. Not mine. Propaganda and poison work in far more sophisticated ways. Co-founded the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, Suchitra is also the founder of the Polis Project, a research and journalism organisation. 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. When your investigations in Kashmir came to an end, what changes did you observe in your 'grammar of dissent'? Its feudal, entitled, and cannibalistic. 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. We believe that literature builds communityand if reading The Rumpus makes you feel more connected, please show your support! To repurpose an old sayingall infamy is now good virality. 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. 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. The latter is an act of violence against people whose voice you are appropriating. In the middle of significant change, this fraught system cannot exist as it is. She responded to an ad for the post of an RJ in Radio Mirchi. This is a tightrope that you walk so well. 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. I can see small cracks beginning to appear. What connects these messages is deep empathy and a willingness to engage with the books stories, ideas, and arguments. Vijayan undertakes a seven-year long, 9,000-mile journey along the borders of India, and interviews people living in these liminal spaces. Includes previously unreleased investigation under #JackStraw. 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? There is no denying that the American media landscape is deeply racist, and while the past few years have seen more brown people take center stage, its nowhere close to where we need to be. Already a subscriber? I want to flag two essays where I engage with this in an in-depth manner, Disaster Ruins Everything, on my work in Haiti, and what it means to photograph disaster, especially when it is Brown and Black bodies. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Lets start with a very simple statement that everyone can agree on: the way were living right now cannot continue. A: I lost friends, saw my father go through a transplant, and I gave birth. Its a practice. Siaan On Being Queer And Being Online, FII Interviews: Journalist Meena Kotwal On Minority Politics, Journalism Today And The Caste Divide. It is here that we subsume all that we otherwise celebrate under the demands of freedom, progress, liberalism, liberty, and secular ideals.". So we might never know the true extent of this loss. In recent years, the narrative of hate has escalated with the reelection of the right-wing Narendra Modi government in 2019. 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. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. How did you achieve empathy in your writing, without the privileged lens that is common in journalistic canon? Midnights Borders is part investigation, part meditation on the lines drawn on land or water that separate India from its neighbours. 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. How do you think the media ought to responsibly report on peoples lives and experiences? Growing up I was surrounded by people who emphasised the community over anything else. 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. Thank you! Its not sustainable, it fractures who we are, chips away and erodes what it fundamentally means to be human. This was something I had to resist from the get-go. Rumpus: The book derives its emotional strength and narrative energy from the stories of people you encounter at the borders. One of the reasons I kept writing was of course all the people I met: their love and time and generosity. 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. Sometimes they are no more, but your storytelling is so invigorating that the reader doesnt forget them. I felt the same way when I would prepare legal petitions for my clients. 6,253 Followers, 902 Following, 1,165 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitravijayan) Second, there is a clear distinction between speaking against the powerful and claiming to speak on behalf of the "voiceless". Its easy for Indian Americans and diaspora Desis to become tokens who speak of diversity but not equity or representation, talk of caste as culture and whitewash Hindutva. @narendramodi & his role in the Gujarat Pogrom. Even those among us who will speak of BLM will not openly challenge Hindutva or the RSS. 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.. He writes about how when the Constitution was adopted, "We are going to enter into a life of contradictions. Copyright 2023, THG PUBLISHING PVT LTD. or its affiliated companies. It definitely doesnt help when trying to hold a powerful state accountable. While Border Pillar No 1 becomes a convenient stump for children playing cricket along the land that India shares with Bangladesh, roughly 2000 kilometers away in Punjab a woman farmer watches on as the army builds a bunker on the few acres of land she owns.

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