This is a profoundly alienating place for anyone without the networks of privilege and resources. The writing grew around the images and the visual memory of the encounters. One feedback I often got was that I had to put more of myself in this book. Subscribe to the Rumpus Book Clubs (poetry, prose, or both) and Letters in the Mail from authors (for adults and kids). The revolutionary Constitution not only created a social world made of contradictions, but it very soon became the tool of suppressing dissent, deployed laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), and Public Safety Act (PSA) in Kashmir. 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. But, more importantly, I wanted my readers to walk away with a sense of empathy. What it means to photograph, write, report and document is an ongoing process. 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. We removed an image just before the printing to make sure the person was protected. Follow our team of columnists and reporters who write about the media. A lot of travel writing is still written by a particular group of people with immense privilege, and they all tend to center themselves. Rumpus: How hard was it to write nonfiction about such a violent contemporary history? Also read: Whose Stories Are Told In Indian History? 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. 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. The entire episode is emblematic of a broader trend in Indian media. Say, for instance, do we need a James Nachtwey to fly to war-torn Bosnia? Barrister. Husain Haqqani: Pakistan released the Indian pilot. 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. I now think twice about calling friends, worried if this might put them at risk. More importantly, as Babasaheb would argue, the political revolution was never accompanied by a social revolution. Where does that leave us? From the epoch of Empire to the nation-state, border making is fundamentally a political project that creates, sustains, and reinforces inequality. 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. Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. And join us by becoming a monthly or yearly Member. I feel very uncomfortable talking about this, or rather I dont know how to discuss this without centering myself. by Suchitra Vijayan Hardcover 1,759.00 2,023.00 You Save: 264.00 (13%) Usually dispatched in 1 to 3 weeks. No one is a stakeholder herethese are people, humans, citizens, who have been deprived of what the Ambedkarite constitution promised them. 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 photographs add another dimension to the book, and could have been used more. 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. Vijayan: Most Indian American writers, especially many of them who occupy the broad spectrum of literary to punditry, come from immense privilege of caste and class. 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. Indias intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. Who gets to travel, tell stories, and, more importantly, publish them are all deeply connected to questions of access, resources, and privilege. 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.. 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. She perfectly captured the happiness and the intimacy of the occasion, the warmth of all the people present, and the splendor of the venue. You need to write what you seethats why you started this project.. This is a tightrope that you walk so well. Atmany points in Midnight's Borders, we see several men in positions of power view the women, who cross over from the 'other' side, as violable. The events of 9/11 had profound effects on how border security projects and politics played out. Chopra cleverly uses womens empowerment, diversity, and the immigrant story as a facade to parrot and promote deeply problematic ideologies, takes, and stances. The stories were a way to understand how people struggled and survived. Photograph of Suchitra Vijayan courtesy of Suchitra Vijayan. Bhawan Singh, who photographed the Nellie massacre, said he had never seen anything like it. Firstly, when we talk about violence, we often talk about it only as communal violence, as if both communities have equal strength and power. Her writing and award-winning photography culminated in Midnights Borders: A Peoples History of Modern India, which was recently shortlisted for the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF book prize. These are stories of massive human rights violations committed by the Indian state in the countrys margins. A: I lost friends, saw my father go through a transplant, and I gave birth. 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. That was my starting point. Categories. O. 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. But eventually we need all kinds of stories and arguments to emerge from what is now considered Indian American writing. 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. In Afghanistan, Kashmir, and India, from one dangerous conflict zone to another, she spoke with people, ate with them, and listened to their stories. The interview has been paraphrased and condensed for clarity, at the interviewers discretion. What do these events have in common? 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. Now, border security policies are linked to domestic politics. The world we know is already being remade in ways we cant fathom. '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. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. Those notes were raw and immediate. Vijayan shows a keen eye for detail as she presents these diverse lives. So now, how do we respond to this? She digs deep into colonial history to show how years of violence and consequential suffering has shaped these lives across generations. The post-Cold War and 90s rhetoric of a borderless world that accompanied globalisation also kick-started massive border fencing projects in India. This discrepancy is just one example of the confusion and misinformation spread to the public by deeply flawed media reports. The government, of course, denies this. Its not comparable and should not be compared. Co-founded the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, Suchitra is also the founder of the Polis Project, a research and journalism organisation. @narendramodi & his role in the Gujarat Pogrom. 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. Instead, she shows the absurdity of the army apparatus that strives to comply with the narrative of patriotism. Vijayan: Chopra and others like her are a reflection of how popular culture and virality inform discourse and shape it. 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. MacAdam reviews Suchitra Vijayan's book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India Read More. Who is expendable, and the manufacturing of rightlessness to render people expendable. Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. This might not seem like much, but it is absolutely essential. Its when we lose hope that we believe that we have lost everything. 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. 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'. Sayantika Mandal is an Indian writer. Many come from immense privileges of caste, class, wealth, access, and resources. 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). The Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Muhammad soon claimed responsibility. 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. suchitrav. Perhaps that offers some protection? . A literary community. Midnights Borders, a work of narrative reportage, is the fruit of this journey. It seems that they have a different eye for these women, who they describe as cunning, deceitful, and in some cases, prostitutes'. Thanks to The New India Foundation for sending across a beautiful copy of the Midnights Borders. Itembodied young Indias grand ambitions and aspired to a nation made of men and women equally protected by the law. They both have pregnant daughters, a fact that becomes significant as the novel progresses. 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. Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, photographer, lawyer, political essayist, and a lecturer. I think the way that news and mostly disinformation makes its way to us, we think of violence in very particular waysas disjointed. In Nellie (Assam) too, where over 3,000 Muslims were killed in 1983, people stared at Vijayan in confusion, no one comes here anymore, she was told. 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. She is not alone. This was something I had to resist from the get-go. A: This geopolitical violence is not new, theres a long bloody, brutal history to thisa cyclical, ongoing and never-ending history. I left my 18-month-old daughter to travel and finish this book. 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. In 1971, East Pakistan seceded and became Bangladesh. To them he is a man who has settled into a job that has no future. Acted as the General Manager for a day and motivated employees to work for the same purpose to reinforce team . And, in many cases, they are children of the literary, cultural, or political elite who have long been the beneficiaries of the Indian state. Suchitra Vijayan. Could you comment on how much our present border security policies have changed in the last few years? What moral and political stands we should take in the face of ongoing oppression. Later on she moved to Coimbatore for her MBA from PSG Institute of Management. So I try to learn and listen, and again, as I say in this book, "It is not my goal to 'bear witness' or 'give voice to the voiceless'. They are also essentially bureaucratic, judicial, and procedural acts of terror. Rumpus: The book utilizes more than one medium: photography, narrative nonfiction, journalism. And what does this mean for on-ground communities, governments, armed forces, and other institutional stakeholders? 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. I had to write and rewrite this book so many times. In season two, a quick flashback resolves the plotline from the previous season. When fires burn down large swathes of what were peoples homeswhat borders will you impose when climate change will fundamentally remake them? Some things are just not discussed anymore. It was not going to be easy as she quickly found out. Aruni Kashyap writes in English, and his native language Assamese. 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. 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. In addition, she is an award- winning photographer, the founder, and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization. In Midnight's Borders, Suchitra Vijayan meditates on belongingness, freedom and political implications of territorial demarcations 'The border making project is central to the capitalist and neoliberal logic,' Vijayan says. 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. She also embodies the upwardly mobile, privileged sections of the diaspora. Suchitra is a BSc graduate from Mar Ivanios College (Trivandrum). Even those among us who will speak of BLM will not openly challenge Hindutva or the RSS. The people in the text fear statelessness, unknown violence, and being forgotten. Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitrav) / Twitter Follow Suchitra Vijayan @suchitrav Author: Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India. News organizations such as India Today, NDTV, News 18, the Indian Express, First Post, Mumbai Mirror, ANI and others routinely attributed their information to anonymous government sources, forensic experts, police officers and intelligence officers. No independent investigations were conducted, and serious questions about intelligence failures were left unanswered. Despite the failures in investigation and prosecution related to criminal trials arising out of the pogrom, the judiciary has projected itself as an able and willing neutral arbiter of justice that is not complicit with the deep structures of Hindutvas anti-Muslim prejudice https://t.co/EFf5bxYEBt, True societal change has always emerged from the ground-up, with communities fighting for their own freedom and dignity. Also, hope is a discipline. RT @project_polis: Writing fiction in a dystopian world - @kiccovich in conversation with @mohammedhanif https://thepolisproject.com/listen/writing-fiction-in-a . Vijayan: There is an elusive distance between the photographer and the photographed that cant be bridged. I can see small cracks beginning to appear.
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