Fear seems to be a constant motif in the book we see versions and types of it. Its a practice. Where does that leave us? Updated Date: 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. They create cleavages of fear, xenophobia, and insecurity. Midnights Borders: A Peoples History of Modern India ; Suchitra Vijayan, Context/ Westland Books, 699. You need to write what you seethats why you started this project.. Her distinct and bold voice made her very popular with the younger crowd. And this is always at the expense of others. [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]. This book ate into so much of my life. Listen to Season 3 on Apple, Spotify and Google podcasts. An unprecedented militarisation of these spaces accompanied this. I have two tests. 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. I think these are fundamental questions of freedom and dignity. Like you train for a marathon, you train to be hopeful everyday. 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. There is a lot to learn and unlearn, and a writer and a photographer should respond to a political moment, and the work should be a reflection of those practices. As a trained barrister, I used to believe in the concept of justicebut now I simply call this freedom and dignity. So I dont know if it was empathy so much as just building a relationship with people. The Author Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. What connects these messages is deep empathy and a willingness to engage with the books stories, ideas, and arguments. They cannot be abusive or personal. The original vision of the book also has newspaper cuttings, and found maps. Conversations With Writers Braver Than Me, Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India, FUNNY WOMEN: Excerpts from George Eliots, Rumpus Original Poetry: Two Poems by John A. Nieves, RUMPUS POETRY BOOK CLUB EXCERPT: WHY I WRITE LOVE POETRY IN A BURNING WORLD by Katie Farris, The Freedom of Form & Re-Entering Myths: An interview with A.E. 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? 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. Perhaps that offers some protection? It is meant to manufacture an underclass of rightless subjects. Subscribe here. What moral and political stands we should take in the face of ongoing oppression. Vijayan shows a keen eye for detail as she presents these diverse lives. She never did like my then-husband, which makes her a better judge of character than I was. Why the Modi government lies. Do you think the future is borderless? Time to let the diplomats do the hard talk. There are so many nonfiction books about India published yearly but few are so important and subversive. She also embodies the upwardly mobile, privileged sections of the diaspora. Vasundhara Sirnate Drennan is director of research at the Polis Project. Worse, we have been disciplined to accept injustice and inequality as given. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle. A place to read, on the Internet. 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. Bhawan Singh, who photographed the Nellie massacre, said he had never seen anything like it. 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. 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. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions?". I had to cut those out, as my editor felt this might not work. How do you think your book contributes to the larger conversation about India? Having been trained in law, Suchitra Vijayan initially worked at the United Nations war tribunals in Yugoslavia. In the middle of significant change, this fraught system cannot exist as it is. If you want to support the work that goes behind publishing high-quality feminist media content, please consider becoming a FII member. Suchitra Vijayan. When the book finally came out, India was undergoing the deadly 2nd wave. This also decides who gets access, awards and accolades. I came with my privileges, also lets not forget prejudices. 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. 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? From the epoch of Empire to the nation-state, border making is fundamentally a political project that creates, sustains, and reinforces inequality. 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. How violence against women and girlsand even how sexual violence against men and boys (something we dont even talk about enough) is depictedis all seriously problematic. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. In retaliation, the Indian Air Force carried out an airstrike on an alleged militant training camp in Balakot in Pakistans Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Her writing has appeared in The Citron Review, Dukool Magazine, Cerebration, Feminism in India, Times of India (Spellbound edition), and others. Thanks to The New India Foundation for sending across a beautiful copy of the Midnights Borders. The entire episode is emblematic of a broader trend in Indian media. 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. 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. ( I hate this word, voiceless, by the way). So the question is not: will the future be borderless? If she wasnt real she would be a marriage between a meme and parody. Not mine. But the inclination to still treat India as a democracy remains. Qin took charge as Chinese foreign minister in December, succeeding Wang Yi. In 2020, Suchitra took part in the fourth season of the Tamil reality television show, Bigg Boss Tamil hosted by Kamal Haasan. We believe that literature builds communityand if reading The Rumpus makes you feel more connected, please show your support! 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.. Q: What struck me about your work was its immersive style. 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. Vijayan reserves her own impressions for later, and allows us to know these people intimately. Its a dangerous moment where the figure of the rights-bearing citizen is being reduced to a consuming subject. 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.". Midnights Borders perhaps also critiques the widely read body of work available as Indian English Writing (IWE), a literary canon that has so far told the story of India but seldom demonstrated social responsibility by acknowledging the atrocities India has committed silently within its borders. 6,253 Followers, 902 Following, 1,165 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitravijayan) 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. Perhaps thats their victory. Siaan On Being Queer And Being Online, FII Interviews: Journalist Meena Kotwal On Minority Politics, Journalism Today And The Caste Divide. In politics we will have equality, and in social and economic life, we will have inequality. 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. This language drums the idea of the fundamental importance of justice, and such language is inalienable: it can easily be defined and empathetically understood. Commentary Politics. Suchitra was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, as the daughter of Ramadurai and Padmaja. [8] On 7 March 2017, she applied for divorce. That capacity to be able to go away and then come back profoundly affects how you write because then you are still rooted. Second, there is a clear distinction between speaking against the powerful and claiming to speak on behalf of the "voiceless". A literary community. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. Can any of theTIMEsubscribers who loved that cover tell us now whats happening in South Sudan today? How do you think the media ought to responsibly report on peoples lives and experiences? Also, we shouldn't forget that the border making project is central to capitalist and neoliberal logic. Includes previously unreleased investigation under #JackStraw. 4 reviews of Suchitra Vijayan Photography "Huge fan of Suchitra Vijayan Photography! This Life Draws Attention to Life Behind Bars and the Transcendent Power of Rap, Wrestling with Reality in The Big Door Prize. Rumpus: In such a climate, what do you think is the responsibility of the diasporic Indian writer? The show deals with interesting international happenings. I kept detailed audio notes that I recorded each night when I traveled. 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. No one can write a book alone. 'Suchitra's account of her journeys across the undefinable and ever-shifting borders between India and its neighbours is gripping, frightening, faithful and beautiful. Second, as the media continued to promote government positions on the crisis, other critical political issues dropped out of public scrutiny. Why is this particular time of the day intrinsic to the book? Later on she moved to Coimbatore for her MBA from PSG Institute of Management. Each of these subscription programs along with tax-deductible donations made to The Rumpus through our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas, helps keep us going and brings us closer to sustainability. None of this helps in telling richer, more textured stories. 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. That changes how you write and photograph a place. The pandemic showed us that crises and recurrent disasters that annihilate our lives are here to stay. Acted as the General Manager for a day and motivated employees to work for the same purpose to reinforce team . 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. What do words like democracy, freedom, and citizenship mean? Perhaps there are lessons to learn from that. 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. Now imagine how it would be for someone from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, or working community to try to make inroads. 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. One of the reasons I kept writing was of course all the people I met: their love and time and generosity. 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. Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. Stallings, Rumpus Original Fiction: The Litany of Invisible Things. We need to think about border practices, policing, and national security policies within the larger historical and political contexts. When Vijayan meets him, he is inside his home with all the windows closed and sealed to snuff out light. I left a few names out in the acknowledgment, worrying if it might direct more trouble towards them. The photographs add another dimension to the book, and could have been used more. In 1971, East Pakistan seceded and became Bangladesh. 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. Pushback is such a benign word, isnt it? 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. According to a new World Health Organization report, we lost as many as 4.7 million people in India. Were there times when you doubted your own ability to record and document these people's stories? She still does a radio show called Flight983 on Radio Mirchi, on Sunday evenings (79 pm). Vijayan began her journey in Kolkata. 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. No one is a stakeholder herethese are people, humans, citizens, who have been deprived of what the Ambedkarite constitution promised them. She sang her first song for the movie, Lesa Lesa under the composition of Harris Jayaraj and her co-singer was the legendary, K. S. Chitra. Once we eliminated the spectacle, we realized that the Indian public got very little information about the Pulwama attack and its aftermath. Ten years later, you were in Kashmir, where you 'hoped to find answers' by talking to a family that had lost a son. 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. They dont. RT @project_polis: Writing fiction in a dystopian world - @kiccovich in conversation with @mohammedhanif https://thepolisproject.com/listen/writing-fiction-in-a . She was part of a music band at PSG. . Rohini Menon for Feminism in India, FII Interviews: Suchitra Vijayan Talks About Marginalisation, Institutional Violence & Political Imagination, 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. 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. She entered the show on day 28 as a new contestant and was evicted on day 49. We thank her for her time, patience, and illuminating insights into her work. We know that the purpose of borders has kept changing for nations. The emotional cost is something else altogether. They both have pregnant daughters, a fact that becomes significant as the novel progresses. 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. Vijayan: A writers responsibility above all is to speak the truth and make sense of our social worlds. Even those among us who will speak of BLM will not openly challenge Hindutva or the RSS. There was an NDTV programme, where somebody said Should Indias constitution be secularist? When I left him (the first time), I had a one-year-old daughter. As I travelled, I was very aware of these inherent power differences. Over the span of seven years, Suchitra Vijayan interviewed scores of individuals, jotted countless notes, snapped hundreds of photographs, and altogether made herself witness to the manifold absurdities (and atrocities) of who gets to say where one nation ends and another begins. In season two, a quick flashback resolves the plotline from the previous season. Part of this process is a need to turn the lens back at the powerful. With the phone armed with a camera, everyone is a photographer; we are all witnesses. Parts of Pakistan have already been consumed by the water. Also read: The History Of The Colonial State And The Unmaking Of The Tawaif. Good, honest and non-polemical writing has always forced us to confront the lies we tell ourselves. 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. To them he is a man who has settled into a job that has no future. In her book, she makes her intention clear at the very beginning, claiming that this endeavor is not to give voice to the voiceless but to critique the nation-state, its violence, and the arbitrariness of territorial sovereignty. She acknowledges that a book in its limited scope cannot really encapsulate the entirety of this journey, and it will remain more of a scrapbook, a collection of images, texts, poetry, and maps. These new worlds are already herethey are maps of survival, maps of resistance. I think its the other way round, these communities have always been speaking, writing, documenting, teachingwe must simply listen rather than represent them in any way. They continue to. 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. Author In Focus, Celebration, The Literary Journal. 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. For instance, a border security personnel tells her how he failed to capture a photograph of a porcupine after spending half an hour trying to fit a helmet on its head, because he is bored and lonely. Rumpus: The book utilizes more than one medium: photography, narrative nonfiction, journalism. I think this book will change the global conversation about India and shape what gets written in the future about India. A: Writers are very strange creatures. A lot of travel writing is still written by a particular group of people with immense privilege, and they all tend to center themselves. It is here that even the most civilised amongst us begin to make excuses for repression, brutality, and violence. Copyright 2023. 582.1K views. Without any official statement on the number of casualties by the Indian government, the Indian news media reported that 300 terrorists were killed, citing government sources. 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. Its not sustainable, it fractures who we are, chips away and erodes what it fundamentally means to be human. 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. What do you think the future holds? 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. Its impossible for a writer not to be affected by their personal life. She was part of a music band at PSG. I have no control over what comes next. A consistent ethical framework within the media hasnt existed for a long time. Q: What was your goal with writing the book in the beginning and how did it change and drive you throughout those 8 years? 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? Bigotry is also big business. We cant continue to see this in neo-liberal terms like stakeholder. I think the usage of this kind of language is ineffectual; its emptied of imagination. 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. Indias intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. 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. 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. 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. 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. Are you expecting any pushback at all? Without a political solution, Kashmir will undoubtedly emerge in upcoming news cycles. This media blitzkrieg resulted in the erasure of two important political trends. She is actively involved in circulating urgent and underrepresented news from the world through her online platform. As such, very few media establishments in India have been able to stand against the influence of political leaders. The world we know is already being remade in ways we cant fathom. 42, Moss Rose Heights, M.M Ali road, WASA Circle, Lalkhan Bazar, Chittogong 4000. 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. She completed her MFA in Writing (Fiction) from the University of San Francisco where she was awarded the Jan Zivic Fellowship and is about to begin her PhD in English with a Creative Dissertation from the University of Georgia, Athens. 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. This article was published more than4 years ago. The result is a gripping, urgent dispatch from a modern India in crisis, and the full and vivid portrait of the country weve long been missing. There is also a lot of deep-seated misogyny, casteism, and anti-Black racism in our communities that need to be addressed. We live in a surveillance economy where we are constantly just bearing witness we are record keepers, unwitting spies, and voyeurs. The act of recording and documenting cannot be divorced from the inherent question of power.