And join us by becoming a monthly or yearly Member. The travel, the people they encounter, and the political events they record quickly become cameos. They continue to. Perhaps thats their victory. In an early chapter of the book, you talk about how new worlds are created by the people at Indias borders. Speculation and conjecture were repeated ad infinitum, and several journalists even took to Twitter to encourage the Indian army. Itembodied young Indias grand ambitions and aspired to a nation made of men and women equally protected by the law. Its not comparable and should not be compared. 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. What do these events have in common? 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. 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. We're back with our flagship podcast 'Intersectional FeminismDesi Style!' 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. Get your Rumpus merch in our online store. Suchitra is a sought-after performer at corporate and other such stage shows. 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. But it needs to do more for peace. She writes about war, conflict . Even the diasporic experience is often told through this limited lens, without taking into account how diverse the immigrant experience in this country is. When fires burn down large swathes of what were peoples homeswhat borders will you impose when climate change will fundamentally remake them? Always. As the author notes, here, beauty and violence coexist, but never as a binary. A. Midnights Borders is fascinating, eloquent in its insights, and unflinching in its depiction of the dark side of nation-building. What matters is that the book exists. The former is an essential act of dissent, even resistance, especially in these dark times. Rumpus: What do you think is the value of well-crafted literary nonfiction in sustaining conversations about equality and justice? I find that profoundly inspiring. [1] Career [ edit] This is a tightrope that you walk so well. Q: What was your goal with writing the book in the beginning and how did it change and drive you throughout those 8 years? 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. We live in a profoundly unequal society, where every day brings news of new devastation. Chopra cleverly uses womens empowerment, diversity, and the immigrant story as a facade to parrot and promote deeply problematic ideologies, takes, and stances. 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. 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. This contributed to the long-running, brutal silencing of Kashmiris and their struggle for self-determination. This means that, for the longest time, the depiction of violence and marginalised communities has been problematic. Feminism In India is an award-winning digital intersectional feminist media organisation to learn, educate and develop a feminist sensibility among the youth. There are enough stories of people parachuting into communities to do human interest stories. They dont. Who gets to travel, tell stories, and, more importantly, publish them are all deeply connected to questions of access, resources, and privilege. 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.. All rights reserved. This might not seem like much, but it is absolutely essential. I fear we are losing that cosmopolitanism of small places. 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. Its a dangerous moment where the figure of the rights-bearing citizen is being reduced to a consuming subject. NONFICTIONMidnights BordersBy Suchitra VijayanMelville HousePublished May 25, 2021. Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. The acts of writing, documenting, photographing, and archiving carry privileges of caste and class. Its been a little over a week since the book came out, and every day this week, I have woken up to emails, messages, and DMs from readers. Without a political solution, Kashmir will undoubtedly emerge in upcoming news cycles. This book ate into so much of my life. 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. 'Suchitra's account of her journeys across the undefinable and ever-shifting borders between India and its neighbours is gripping, frightening, faithful and beautiful. Its about what people like me should do. She also embodies the upwardly mobile, privileged sections of the diaspora. 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. 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. We believe that literature builds communityand if reading The Rumpus makes you feel more connected, please show your support! Who is expendable, and the manufacturing of rightlessness to render people expendable. 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. They all have very specific and carefully curated origin/immigrant stories that cleverly exploit the model minority trope. We removed an image just before the printing to make sure the person was protected. How do you think your book contributes to the larger conversation about India? Suchitra is a BSc graduate from Mar Ivanios College (Trivandrum). She is the executive director of the Polis Project . A Barrister by training, she previously worked for the United Nations war crimes tribunals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda before co-founding the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, which gives legal aid to . Commentary Politics. Instead, she shows the absurdity of the army apparatus that strives to comply with the narrative of patriotism. She has a sister named, Sunitha. Find him on Twitter at @AruniKashyap. Not everyone lived to see its promises. The interview has been paraphrased and condensed for clarity, at the interviewers discretion. The world we know is already being remade in ways we cant fathom. Firstly, when we talk about violence, we often talk about it only as communal violence, as if both communities have equal strength and power. Pushback is such a benign word, isnt it? 4 reviews of Suchitra Vijayan Photography "Huge fan of Suchitra Vijayan Photography! by Suchitra Vijayan Hardcover 1,759.00 2,023.00 You Save: 264.00 (13%) Usually dispatched in 1 to 3 weeks. 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. We must realise that its the grassroots media, who represent themselves, document what mainstream media ignores, and bring to notice what is important. " India's intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. 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. A place to read, on the Internet. Early on, I was very careful to acknowledge this. Apart from his long-suffering wife, no one else in the family knows that he is a spy. The controversy surrounding the Rafale deal and allegations of corruption against the government were suddenly sidelined, as was the order for the eviction of more than a million forest dwellers (that was later stayed) and a hearing on the repeal of an important constitutional clause before the Supreme Court. A: This is a very loaded question. A poll asked if its OK to be white. Heres why the phrase is loaded. Over the past 15 years, small democratisation through social media has enabled challenging these practices. If it does, I have failed. The book was called ``a genre- bending book of nonfictionmade of stories, encounters, vignettes, and photographsabout home, belonging, and displacement.`` Her essays, photographs, and interviews have appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Nation, The Boston Review, Foreign Policy, Lit Hub, Rumpus, Electric literature, NPR, NBC, and BBC. Vijayan: The photographs were the heart of this project. 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? Not mine. A: I dont agree with this kind of framing, because its not that underrepresented people dont have voices. It is here that even the most civilised amongst us begin to make excuses for repression, brutality, and violence. Early on, the idea of bearing witness as a rhetorical tool and as a literary device became deeply problematic. Suchitra is a BSc graduate from Mar Ivanios College (Trivandrum). And our language helps us imagine a vision that is truly just, beautiful and ethical. 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. She was part of a music band at PSG. When I left him (the first time), I had a one-year-old daughter. Parts of Pakistan have already been consumed by the water. 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. Siaan On Being Queer And Being Online, FII Interviews: Journalist Meena Kotwal On Minority Politics, Journalism Today And The Caste Divide. 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). A:I dont think an ethical or moral compass exists nowI dont know if it ever existed. Author In Focus, Celebration, The Literary Journal. Also read: The History Of The Colonial State And The Unmaking Of The Tawaif. Instead, the Indian media has ascribed to itself the role of an amplifier of the government propaganda that took two nuclear states to the brink of war. Where India ends and Bangladesh begins is a question confused by history, family and the border pillars themselves. Panitar has a one-foot-high concrete block on the side of the mighty Ichamati river marked Border Pillar No.1. Anvisha Manral March 20, 2021 09:50:40 IST Vijayan: Chopra and others like her are a reflection of how popular culture and virality inform discourse and shape it. Not everyone rejoiced in these new freedoms. So the question is not: will the future be borderless? Its impossible for a writer not to be affected by their personal life. Were there times when you doubted your own ability to record and document these people's stories? ( I hate this word, voiceless, by the way). 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. 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. @narendramodi & his role in the Gujarat Pogrom. Suchitra Vijayan: The Indian state has always used excessive and extrajudicial violence on communities that resist, whether its the borderlands, peripheries, or mainland Now the international viewfor instance while the Gujarat riots of 2002 brought critical international media attention and criticism, and [current Prime Minister] Modi was banned from entering the US, India was able to effectively manage global public opinion. She responded to an ad for the post of an RJ in Radio Mirchi. 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. Christopher Clary: India and Pakistan resort to the diplomacy of violence and flirt with catastrophe, Hafsa Kanjwal: As India beats its war drums over Pulwama, its occupation of Kashmir is being ignored. In addition, she is an award- winning photographer, the founder, and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization. You can speak of confidence and body positivity and defend selling skin-lightening creams. What do words like democracy, freedom, and citizenship mean? 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. Modi met with senior police officers and ordered them not to intervene as violence raged. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. Ten years later, you were in Kashmir, where you 'hoped to find answers' by talking to a family that had lost a son. Keywords: LTTE love jihad Beef politics Hindu Nationalism Kashmir I wrote a book along with it comes love, scorn, and sometimes even ridicule. Suchitra Vijayan. 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. 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. 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. The stories were a way to understand how people struggled and survived. 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.