But who carries the responsibility of that fear? Growing up I was surrounded by people who emphasised the community over anything else. These are stories of massive human rights violations committed by the Indian state in the countrys margins. 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. On Feb. 14, an Indian paramilitary convoy was attacked. Why do you think India has gotten away with this so far? A lot of travel writing is still written by a particular group of people with immense privilege, and they all tend to center themselves. Suchitra Vijayan on a journey to find a people's history of modern Indias intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. Are you expecting any pushback at all? 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'. 6,253 Followers, 902 Following, 1,165 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitravijayan) 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. Itembodied young Indias grand ambitions and aspired to a nation made of men and women equally protected by the law. Suchitra Ramadurai, known by the mononym Suchitra, is an Indian radio jockey, popular playback singer, songwriter, composer, voice artist, dubbing artist and film actress. It took me 8 years to write the book. It definitely doesnt help when trying to hold a powerful state accountable. Also, hope is a discipline. The people in this book are eloquent advocates of their history and their struggles. Early on, I was very careful to acknowledge this. by Suchitra Vijayan Hardcover 1,759.00 2,023.00 You Save: 264.00 (13%) Usually dispatched in 1 to 3 weeks. I dont think theres just one emotion that drives a writer to finish writing. 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. I find that profoundly inspiring. How do you protect this child? What moral and political stands we should take in the face of ongoing oppression. After Pulwama, the Indian media proves it is the BJPs propaganda machine, Sign up for a weekly roundup of thought-provoking ideas and debates, Fox News bosses scolded reporters who challenged false election claims, To fight defamation suit, Fox News cites election conspiracy theories. Having been trained in law, Suchitra Vijayan initially worked at the United Nations war tribunals in Yugoslavia. Midnights Borders is part investigation, part meditation on the lines drawn on land or water that separate India from its neighbours. 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. '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. A: Writers are very strange creatures. A: I lost friends, saw my father go through a transplant, and I gave birth. ( I hate this word, voiceless, by the way). I kept detailed audio notes that I recorded each night when I traveled. Even the diasporic experience is often told through this limited lens, without taking into account how diverse the immigrant experience in this country is. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. Also, I am an unknown and insignificant entity. What changeshave youobserved in the way you treat your subject after finishing your journey and book? This is the backdrop against which we map how border practices and policies have played out in India. These may not be perfect worlds or even equal worlds, but they strive to be. So lets be very clear that Indias intellectual literary landscape is deeply problematic, feudal, and alienating," says Suchitra Vijayan to FII, Featured Image Source: Fear seems to be a constant motif in the book we see versions and types of it. Now, along with the medias legitimization of an ideology that promotes violence including riots and lynchings its performance after Pulwama leaves severe doubts as to whether it is engaged in journalism or the propagation of Hindu majoritarianism. The pair experience similar situations in their lives: abuse, the death or absence of a husband, and the longing for a better future. Many come from immense privileges of caste, class, wealth, access, and resources. I left a few names out in the acknowledgment, worrying if it might direct more trouble towards them. 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. 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. There was an NDTV programme, where somebody said Should Indias constitution be secularist? Vijayan has travelled 9,000 miles over seven 7 across India's borderline remote areas and has collected many bone-chilling, painful, myth-breaking stories of the people caught in between inter-state disputes because of the lines created by colonial powers who ruled over us for . Not everyone rejoiced in these new freedoms. 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. 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. In Midnight's Borders (Westland Publications, 2021), author and photographer Suchitra Vijayan travels the 9,000 miles of India's borders to understand what Partition did to individual lives and . Apart from his long-suffering wife, no one else in the family knows that he is a spy. 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. They dont. Second, there were times when I ran out of money, when some said that such a book would not be published, when some declared that such a book could not be written. Feminism In India is an award-winning digital intersectional feminist media organisation to learn, educate and develop a feminist sensibility among the youth. In the same chapter of the book, Kamal says, "If I am an Indian, then why am I afraid?" Suchitra Vijayan | The Nation Suchitra Acharjee - Graduate Assistant - The University of Texas Rio We know that the purpose of borders has kept changing for nations. In politics we will have equality, and in social and economic life, we will have inequality. To repurpose an old sayingall infamy is now good virality. 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. We need more such books. The two officers who avert the attack narrowly escape death but are left with broken bodies and broken lives. 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. It was just a sad moment, and I couldnt celebrate a book when there was so much human tragedy playing out. She is not alone. Suchitra Vijayan | C-SPAN.org For far too long, they and their progeny have held power to shape the political understanding of our social worlds. Not mine. A memorable, humane museum of forgotten stories that we must all read and remember. M, What experiences and lives unfold in these pages. I think this book will change the global conversation about India and shape what gets written in the future about India. How do you think this inspiration from a variety of genres allowed you to tell underrepresented stories? The travel, the people they encounter, and the political events they record quickly become cameos. Suchitra Vijayan on Twitter: "Excerpts from the #BBC documentary Sign in. Get your Rumpus merch in our online store. At a time when right-wing nationalism is crescendoing in India and across the world, Suchitra Vijayans Midnights Borders raises pertinent questions about the very foundations of Indias nationalism the cartography of South Asian nation-states defined by arbitrary lines drawn hastily by the British colonial administration. 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. Do you think the future is borderless? Suchitra Vijayan. The failure to forget affects how I use images, and texts; my photographic practice and also how I put everything together. I can see small cracks beginning to appear. To them he is a man who has settled into a job that has no future. Although Vijayan critiques the state and its complicity in violence and erasure of lives, she refrains from villainizing the men who serve the state. By Suchitra Vijayan, Why should I read it? Bhawan Singh, who photographed the Nellie massacre, said he had never seen anything like it. Midnight's Bordersis an exceptional read, but one that may make some uncomfortable. Copyright 2023, THG PUBLISHING PVT LTD. or its affiliated companies. Midnight's Borders by Suchitra Vijayan. Suchitra Vijayan (Author of Midnight's Borders) - Goodreads For instance, if you went to school with, say, Indias most powerful publisher, or your dad plays golf or socialised at the Gymkhana with the politically powerful and the culturally influential, then that system is built to get you the resources. Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, photographer, lawyer, political essayist, and a lecturer. It is meant to manufacture an underclass of rightless subjects. I felt the same way when I would prepare legal petitions for my clients. We thank her for her time, patience, and illuminating insights into her work. They both have pregnant daughters, a fact that becomes significant as the novel progresses. You can speak of confidence and body positivity and defend selling skin-lightening creams. 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. Indian Foreign Secretary V.K. Barrister. 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. That changes how you write and photograph a place. How do you think your book contributes to the larger conversation about India? These are no longer contradictory; instead, even criticism can be converted to views. Suchitra Vijayan talks to FII about Indian politics, communal violence, marginalisation and her book Midnights Borders: A Peoples History of Modern India. 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? 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. Looking Beyond the Lines: Suchitra Vijayan's "Midnight's Borders" Why dont people see the ground shifting beneath their feet? Midnight's Borders by Suchitra Vijayan - The Bangalore Review Say, for instance, do we need a James Nachtwey to fly to war-torn Bosnia? Is secularism a good thing? This is such an insidious conversation to have; this was even before Adani bought it. So the first reflection is this idea of where we are right now: as people, as a society, as a community. The pandemic showed us that crises and recurrent disasters that annihilate our lives are here to stay. O. A Seven Year, 9,000-Mile Journey Along India's Contested Land Borders Chopra has long been neoliberalisms reluctant feminist, hawking giving a voice and sisterhood while silencing those who question her. But for me hope is radical; hope is the last bastion of our defense.
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