Rumpus: Why do you think the ever-growing canon of Indian American literature has barely tried to engage with these conversations through their stories? And, in many cases, they are children of the literary, cultural, or political elite who have long been the beneficiaries of the Indian state. 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. The latter is an act of violence against people whose voice you are appropriating. [8] On 7 March 2017, she applied for divorce. Why the Modi government lies. Vijayan shows a keen eye for detail as she presents these diverse lives. There are some brilliant writers writing on these issuesthe problem is always that these voices dont make it to the mainstream. Sayantika Mandal is an Indian writer. They are also essentially bureaucratic, judicial, and procedural acts of terror. She lucidly explains the complicated history of the McMahon Line, how the India-China border is the result of a fabrication perpetuated by the British colonial administration. We are consuming subjects in a surveillance economy, not citizens. Q: What struck me about your work was its immersive style. This is a tightrope that you walk so well. When I left him (the first time), I had a one-year-old daughter. The stories were a way to understand how people struggled and survived. How did writing this book affect you? Thoughbordersare conventionally recognised as real or artificial lines of spatial and political demarcation, there may also be an arbitrariness to them. Vijayan reserves her own impressions for later, and allows us to know these people intimately. The Rumpus is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. That capacity to be able to go away and then come back profoundly affects how you write because then you are still rooted. One of the ways she upholds the humane in this book is through her interaction with the men in the security forces. A:I dont think an ethical or moral compass exists nowI dont know if it ever existed. It is meant to manufacture an underclass of rightless subjects. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. 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. A poll asked if its OK to be white. Heres why the phrase is loaded. The two press briefings by the foreign secretary and Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson entertained no questions. The act of recording and documenting cannot be divorced from the inherent question of power. Q: You frequently describe certain borders as porous. Founder & ExecDirector: @project_polis @watchthestate ; Teach @nyugallatin Writer Manhattan, NY linktr.ee/suchitravijayan Born April 14 Joined May 2008 8,013 Following 80.8K Followers Tweets & replies She perfectly captured the happiness and the intimacy of the occasion, the warmth of all the people present, and the splendor of the venue. These are stories of massive human rights violations committed by the Indian state in the countrys margins. We also need a fundamental reframing of language. 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. She digs deep into colonial history to show how years of violence and consequential suffering has shaped these lives across generations. For far too long, they and their progeny have held power to shape the political understanding of our social worlds. Q: Speaking about the content of the work, by including under-represented perspectives on the frequently debated partition and border laws you present a novel perspective to journalistic canon. The Rumpus: It is shocking how unaware the world is about the violence the Indian government has committed since independence on its border citizens. 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. 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. 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. Suchitra Vijayan's new book, Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India, takes a deep look at such stories by prioritizing the experiences of the silenced victims as well as lesser-known accounts from victims of state violence. As a Bookshop affiliate, The Rumpus earns a percentage from qualifying purchases. Required fields are marked *. Growing up I was surrounded by people who emphasised the community over anything else. Apart from his long-suffering wife, no one else in the family knows that he is a spy. Thank you! Even the diasporic experience is often told through this limited lens, without taking into account how diverse the immigrant experience in this country is. We have already chosen silence and obfuscation even before the pushback has arrived. I was much younger when I took on this project, so I wanted to prove those people wrong. Also read: Book Review: Looking Through Dalit Sahitya And Ambedkar. The show deals with interesting international happenings. Thats part of the political imagination that I believe we need for political movements or any sustained acts of resistance. Also, a book is an act of community; it has many midwives. That, perhaps, is the only way to avoid further destruction in the region. First, the escalation in the counterinsurgency war within the Kashmir Valley under which hundreds of activists were arrested and several Kashmiri civilians killed in gun battles was grievously underreported. Midnights Borders: A Peoples History of Modern India ; Suchitra Vijayan, Context/ Westland Books, 699. I can see how religious Hindu fanaticism has started to spread its tentacles in both the Democratic and the Republican parties, and this is primarily because of an absence of balanced stories about India. Its not comparable and should not be compared. Check posts or bunkers were not part of the landscapes of my home. I set out not to give voice to the voiceless, my aim was to put an ear to the ground and listen. Keywords: LTTE love jihad Beef politics Hindu Nationalism Kashmir 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 . 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. This media blitzkrieg resulted in the erasure of two important political trends. What do these events have in common? Legislations such as National Register of Citizens and Citizenship Amendment Act threaten to render millions of people, especially Muslims, stateless. You can find them onYouTube&Linkedin,and can also check out their websitehere. How do you think this shapes climate justice? Acted as the General Manager for a day and motivated employees to work for the same purpose to reinforce team . These are edited excerpts from the interview: 'Midnight' seems to be a metaphor for multiple things both freeing and frightening. Fear seems to be a constant motif in the book we see versions and types of it. However, at work, Tiwari is in his element. Bigotry is also big business. Also read: Whose Stories Are Told In Indian History? 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.". She was part of a music band at PSG. What do you think the future holds? The third thing is: were going back to relitigating everything. Photograph of Suchitra Vijayan courtesy of Suchitra Vijayan. Vijayan is no stranger to stories of violence. 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. A literary community. 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. Why do you think India has gotten away with this so far? An unprecedented militarisation of these spaces accompanied this. The people in the text fear statelessness, unknown violence, and being forgotten. Our investigation into the Indian medias reporting on the Pulwama attack found that many reports were contradictory, biased, incendiary and uncorroborated. 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. 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. 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. I left my 18-month-old daughter to travel and finish this book. Jawaharlal Nehrus 'Tryst with Destiny'is a speech I have returned to over the past 20 years. But eventually we need all kinds of stories and arguments to emerge from what is now considered Indian American writing. Vasundhara Sirnate Drennan is director of research at the Polis Project. Not mine. Contributions for the charitable purposes ofThe Rumpus must be made payable to Fractured Atlas only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. In an interview with Firstpost,Vijayan talks about her book, the militarisation of borders, ethno-nationalism, and the politics of documentation. Especially when you can be charged with sedition for a tweet or arrested for the crime of committing comedy while being Muslim. Vijayan began her journey in Kolkata. The failure to forget affects how I use images, and texts; my photographic practice and also how I put everything together. First, does my work aid the powerful? This means that, for the longest time, the depiction of violence and marginalised communities has been problematic. We are all complicit in upholding and maintaining this fear. The original vision of the book also has newspaper cuttings, and found maps. 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? This is the backdrop against which we map how border practices and policies have played out in India. I wanted to make sure that I was writing in a way that was honest and true to my initial reactions, and capture that without centering myself. Suchitra tweets @suchitrav. What moral and political stands we should take in the face of ongoing oppression. I havent spoken or celebrated with my friends in Kashmir or Assam. 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. Sometimes they are no more, but your storytelling is so invigorating that the reader doesnt forget them. 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. Not everyone lived to see its promises. And that violence is often abetted by the state and goes unpunished. Its impossible for a writer not to be affected by their personal life. Midnight's Borders by Suchitra Vijayan falls in both categories. Second, Indias transformation into a nuclear state and the Kargil War is another critical moment of change. Invariably its the writer who is the protagonist. She has also been appreciated for her honest and positive-humour-filled judging at reality shows like Vijay TV's Airtel Super Singer, Sun TV's Sun Singer, Asianet's Music India, and Bol Baby Bol on Gemini TV and Surya TV. How does one think of violence, how does one make sense of all this, how does one retain a sense ofnot exactly humanity, but ratherempathy for the other? Along the way, we meet the men and women of TASC, dissenting students, ISIS terrorists and Pakistani military officers. ", "Documentary photography has amassed mountains of evidenceyetthe genre has simultaneously contributed much to spectacle, to retinal excitation, to voyeurism, to terror, envy, and nostalgia, and only a little to the critical understanding of the social world.". This affects who gets to document, and whom. 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. Accompanied by this globally, democracies are becoming more authoritarian and stripping people of their citizenshipreducing them to subjects, entrenching the fault lines of inequality. MacAdam reviews Suchitra Vijayan's book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India Read More. Examining My Caste And Its History Is Eye-Opening: A Personal Essay On Casteism And Ancestry, The History Of The Colonial State And The Unmaking Of The Tawaif, Book Review: Looking Through Dalit Sahitya And Ambedkar, These Are The 15 Women Who Helped Draft The Indian Constitution, Gender Roles And Stereotyping In To Kill A Mockingbird, A Brief Summary Of The Second Wave Of Feminism, A Brief Summary Of The First Wave Of Feminism, Kamala Das The Mother Of Modern Indian English Poetry | #IndianWomenInHistory, A Brief Summary Of The Third Wave Of Feminism, The Life And Times Of Dnyanjyoti Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule | #IndianWomenInHistory, FII Interviews: Charlotte Munch Bengtsen Talks About Women In Filmmaking, FII Interviews: Drag King And Influencer Mx. No one can write a book alone. Vijayans book begins a much-needed conversation on thinking about freedom beyond the idea of nation and its illusory lines. The events of 9/11 had profound effects on how border security projects and politics played out. What is the emotional and artistic cost that one pays as a writer while crafting these narratives? I believe it can teach us to ask these questions again. We're back with our flagship podcast 'Intersectional FeminismDesi Style!' 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. We live in a surveillance economy where we are constantly just bearing witness we are record keepers, unwitting spies, and voyeurs. [1] Career [ edit] But it needs to do more for peace. I still do. A: This is a very loaded question. Rumpus: Can we please talk about Priyanka Chopra, and how her rise is seen as a marker of brown achievement? Barkha Dutt: India has made its point in Pakistan. Feminism In India is an award-winning digital intersectional feminist media organisation to learn, educate and develop a feminist sensibility among the youth. I dont want to make this about me. Rumpus: The book utilizes more than one medium: photography, narrative nonfiction, journalism. As an attorney, 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 Iraqi refugees. Lets take Indias English language media, cultural-artistic elite, and publishing. I particularly loved the fact that all our couple shots were very natural and came out truly . Its not sustainable, it fractures who we are, chips away and erodes what it fundamentally means to be human. Book reviews and author interviews with a Southern focus. Co-founded the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, Suchitra is also the founder of the Polis Project, a research and journalism organisation. I think freedom and dignity enables us to really go beyond in our political imaginationbeyond just electoral politics. I have no control over what comes next. 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. Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. Suchitra Vijayan. 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. As a graduate student at Yale, she researched and documented stories along the Af-Pak border and was embedded with the US forces in Afghanistan. She's a good friend and kindly agreed to take our City Hall wedding photos. In an early chapter of the book, you talk about how new worlds are created by the people at Indias borders. What changeshave youobserved in the way you treat your subject after finishing your journey and book? According to a new World Health Organization report, we lost as many as 4.7 million people in India. Rumpus: Toni Morrison said that she writes from a place of delight, not disappointment. Perhaps thats their victory. 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. Thanks to The New India Foundation for sending across a beautiful copy of the Midnights Borders. There are two quotes I regularly use by Allan Sekula when I teach: "The making of a human likeness on film is a political act. Founded in 2009, The Rumpus is one of the longest running independent online literary and culture magazines. Suchitra is a sought-after performer at corporate and other such stage shows. Suchitras account of her journeys across the undefinable and ever-shifting borders between India and its neighbours is gripping, frightening, faithful and beautiful. India has consistently warred against its own citizens; this book is about some of these wars. Because you are constantly thinking about the ethical universe you are bringing this child into What values do you teach this child? They are arriving from various cities and people I have never met. Rumpus: Were you trying to write a hybrid-genre book? You become responsible for a human being. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments. This book ate into so much of my life. Get your Rumpus merch in our online store. Respond to our political present. Already a subscriber? I think these are fundamental questions of freedom and dignity. In the middle of significant change, this fraught system cannot exist as it is. The public is sold a lie as the attack is framed as a gas leak. Some things are just not discussed anymore. Suchitra Vijayan talks to FII about Indian politics, communal violence, marginalisation and her book Midnights Borders: A Peoples History of Modern India. 582.1K views. 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. 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. We need to think about border practices, policing, and national security policies within the larger historical and political contexts. This means that the capacity to see does not automatically become the capacity for action. [4] She also worked as a dubbing artist for popular heroines like Shriya Saran and Lakshmi Rai.[5]. But, more importantly, I wanted my readers to walk away with a sense of empathy. It took a long time to get the voice right. There was an NDTV programme, where somebody said Should Indias constitution be secularist? She writes about war, conflict . Like you train for a marathon, you train to be hopeful everyday. Similarly, motherhood changed me; it radicalised me. A: This geopolitical violence is not new, theres a long bloody, brutal history to thisa cyclical, ongoing and never-ending history. 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 acts of writing, documenting, photographing, and archiving carry privileges of caste and class. Perhaps that offers some protection? History and memory is localwhich means its almost impossible to write about India. Some of the oldest resistances in our nation are those communities who have been fighting for their own homes from militarisation who seek to exploit their mineral rich home land for mining. The nation-state and its ruling class view borders as very different from the people who inhabit these liminal spaces or communities that have been affected by border making and policing practices. Speculation and conjecture were repeated ad infinitum, and several journalists even took to Twitter to encourage the Indian army. The constant making and remaking of who is a citizen, who is not, is accompanied by a profoundly dehumanising process. We have migrated to a new commenting platform. Her writing has appeared in The Citron Review, Dukool Magazine, Cerebration, Feminism in India, Times of India (Spellbound edition), and others. At Fazilka near the Pakistan border, she ran into Sari Begum, who had a bunker on her land but had a darker story of pain and violence from the days of Partition. As a trained barrister, I used to believe in the concept of justicebut now I simply call this freedom and dignity. They dont. The Indian government bears some responsibility for this: Amid this brinkmanship between the two nuclear powers, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not address the nation directly. Its an immense privilege to be able to write and be published. Aruni Kashyap writes in English, and his native language Assamese. 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. Do you think the future is borderless? 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. 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. 'Suchitra's account of her journeys across the undefinable and ever-shifting borders between India and its neighbours is gripping, frightening, faithful and beautiful. Vijayan undertakes a seven-year long, 9,000-mile . 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. They cannot be abusive or personal. 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