Perhaps there are lessons to learn from that. And this is always at the expense of others. Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitrav) / Twitter Follow Suchitra Vijayan @suchitrav Author: Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India. 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. So the question is not: will the future be borderless? Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. The Author Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. How "The Family Man" champions the carceral security state 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. What moral and political stands we should take in the face of ongoing oppression. 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. 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. Whose Stories Are Told In Indian History? Sometimes the news is the story. Suchitra Vijayan > Faculty > People > NYU Gallatin This is a profoundly alienating place for anyone without the networks of privilege and resources. Q: You frequently describe certain borders as porous. Vijayan: There is an elusive distance between the photographer and the photographed that cant be bridged. 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. It is here that we subsume all that we otherwise celebrate under the demands of freedom, progress, liberalism, liberty, and secular ideals.". 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. 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. Suchitra Vijayanis a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. The acts of writing, documenting, photographing, and archiving carry privileges of caste and class. Suchitra is a BSc graduate from Mar Ivanios College (Trivandrum). They are also essentially bureaucratic, judicial, and procedural acts of terror. In season two, a quick flashback resolves the plotline from the previous season. I was much younger when I took on this project, so I wanted to prove those people wrong. I find that profoundly inspiring. 10 books like The Home and the World (picked by 7,000+ authors) I dont think theres just one emotion that drives a writer to finish writing. Thoughbordersare conventionally recognised as real or artificial lines of spatial and political demarcation, there may also be an arbitrariness to them. What it means to photograph, write, report and document is an ongoing process. Speculation and conjecture were repeated ad infinitum, and several journalists even took to Twitter to encourage the Indian army. The Rumpus: It is shocking how unaware the world is about the violence the Indian government has committed since independence on its border citizens. Rumpus: In such a climate, what do you think is the responsibility of the diasporic Indian writer? Suchitra Vijayan | The Nation I dont want to make this about me. We need more such books. Thank you! Its impossible for a writer not to be affected by their personal life. The emotional cost is something else altogether. All rights reserved. Vijayan began her journey in Kolkata. 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. The two officers who avert the attack narrowly escape death but are left with broken bodies and broken lives. Q: As you wrote this book, you dont hesitate to meditate on how your personal life bidirectionally impacted the book. As such, very few media establishments in India have been able to stand against the influence of political leaders. He was arrested based on fabricated evidence in the middle of a global pandemic, and he was denied bail and medical help. Growing up I was surrounded by people who emphasised the community over anything else. The Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Muhammad soon claimed responsibility. Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, photographer, lawyer, political essayist, and a lecturer. She was part of a music band at PSG. Suchitra Vijayan We see that more clearly when you decide against photographing children at the India-Bangladesh border. Its feudal, entitled, and cannibalistic. Subscribe here. Many come from immense privileges of caste, class, wealth, access, and resources. Invariably its the writer who is the protagonist. Suchitra Vijayan - KeyWiki Could you comment on how much our present border security policies have changed in the last few years? . When the book finally came out, India was undergoing the deadly 2nd wave. I was also trying to tell these stories from a repertoire of skills I had, and some I acquired. The public is sold a lie as the attack is framed as a gas leak. Not mine. 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. We must realise that its the grassroots media, who represent themselves, document what mainstream media ignores, and bring to notice what is important. 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. Because you are constantly thinking about the ethical universe you are bringing this child into What values do you teach this child? First, does my work aid the powerful? This book ate into so much of my life. 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. Midnight's Borders by Suchitra Vijayan. I almost never forget, I remember entire episodes or events since I was six years old. Itembodied young Indias grand ambitions and aspired to a nation made of men and women equally protected by the law. NONFICTIONMidnights BordersBy Suchitra VijayanMelville HousePublished May 25, 2021. In politics we will have equality, and in social and economic life, we will have inequality. Book reviews and author interviews with a Southern focus. 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. Also read: Book Review: Looking Through Dalit Sahitya And Ambedkar. I'mdyslexic, but have visual and episodic memory, which means I dream and relive moments. Jawaharlal Nehrus 'Tryst with Destiny'is a speech I have returned to over the past 20 years. Like you train for a marathon, you train to be hopeful everyday. Its about what people like me should do. Once we eliminated the spectacle, we realized that the Indian public got very little information about the Pulwama attack and its aftermath. Also read: Whose Stories Are Told In Indian History? It took me 8 years to write the book. More Buying Choices 1,732.00 (16 Used & New offers) Audible Audiobook 0.00 Free with Audible trial 586.00 ( 9 ) Some even dressed for the occasion in combat gear. Often, we settle comfortably into describing things as communal riots instead of saying that it was a state-abetted violence, a pogrom, or a brutal massacre. Suchitra Vijayan | C-SPAN.org [1] Career [ edit] . Find him on Twitter at @AruniKashyap. The constant making and remaking of who is a citizen, who is not, is accompanied by a profoundly dehumanising process. When fires burn down large swathes of what were peoples homeswhat borders will you impose when climate change will fundamentally remake them? Suchitra Vijayan - New Lines Institute Some people later chose not to be included because they feared repercussions, especially as the NRC process started playing out. 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. Includes previously unreleased investigation under #JackStraw. Rumpus: How hard was it to write nonfiction about such a violent contemporary history? She is the executive director of the Polis Project . Photograph of Suchitra Vijayan courtesy of Suchitra Vijayan. MacAdam reviews Suchitra Vijayan's book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India Read More. 'Suchitra's account of her journeys across the undefinable and ever-shifting borders between India and its neighbours is gripping, frightening, faithful and beautiful. The writing grew around the images and the visual memory of the encounters. The world we know is already being remade in ways we cant fathom. Be it the teenager who is offered guns, money, and M&M candies to fight the Taliban in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, or Ali, who seeks solace in darkness as the floodlights installed on his plot of land along the India-Bangladesh border leaves him traumatized, or the nonagenarian Johinder Singh Suj from Sindh (a province in present-day Pakistan), who still cherishes his school geography textbook that shows a map of undivided British India the people are captured with deep empathy and come alive in her narration with the adept use of dialogue. 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. I can see small cracks beginning to appear. 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. This Life Draws Attention to Life Behind Bars and the Transcendent Power of Rap, Wrestling with Reality in The Big Door Prize. Now imagine how it would be for someone from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, or working community to try to make inroads. 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. 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 people in this book are eloquent advocates of their history and their struggles. 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. A: I lost friends, saw my father go through a transplant, and I gave birth. This is the backdrop against which we map how border practices and policies have played out in India. In this podcast, Vijayan discusses with host Alex Woodson her 9,000-mile journey through India's borderlands, which formed the basis of the book, and she discusses the violent and continuing history of the 1947 partition, the stark differences and similarities along South Asia's various borders, and what "citizenship" mean in India in 2021 and 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. But who gets to speak for so many of us? The government, of course, denies this. FII Media Private Limited | All rights reserved, "Imagine how it would be for someone coming from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, working class background, who wants to come into thisit is especially difficult if youre a woman coming from these backgrounds. There are some brilliant writers writing on these issuesthe problem is always that these voices dont make it to the mainstream. Beyond the confusion over the death tolls at Balakot, news organizations variously reported that between 25 and 350 kilograms of the explosive RDX was used in the attack, when no such information was officially released. 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. Why dont people see the ground shifting beneath their feet? Vijayan shows a keen eye for detail as she presents these diverse lives. The second season of The Family Man begins with Srikant Tiwari, a former intelligence officer of TASCa fictitious intelligence agency akin to the Research & Analysis Wingworking at an IT company. 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. An unprecedented militarisation of these spaces accompanied this. Worse, we have been disciplined to accept injustice and inequality as given. Now, border security policies are linked to domestic politics. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. If you want to support the work that goes behind publishing high-quality feminist media content, please consider becoming a FII member. 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 . Heartbreaking, and still, something we must all notice and understand. M, Unique and ambitious, Vijayans project gains urgency and significance from our moment of resurgent nationalisms, when borders are being aggressively reasserted, in India and across the globe. G, An intervention like no other when it comes to thinking through not just the history of India but for reflections on borders, migration, the elusory nature of nations.
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