In politics we will have equality, and in social and economic life, we will have inequality. 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. As a spy working for TASC, Tiwari has to juggle being an underpaid government employee as well as an absent husband and a perpetually late and distracted father. I almost never forget, I remember entire episodes or events since I was six years old. They are arriving from various cities and people I have never met. . When your investigations in Kashmir came to an end, what changes did you observe in your 'grammar of dissent'? 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? Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. Although Vijayan critiques the state and its complicity in violence and erasure of lives, she refrains from villainizing the men who serve the state. @suchitrav. Also, a book is an act of community; it has many midwives. The Family Man has found tremendous success as a slick and funny espionage drama, particularly for its treatment of the protagonist, and even for humanising terrorists. Excerpts from the #BBC documentary telecast about PM . The Author Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. 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. The writing grew around the images and the visual memory of the encounters. 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. Sayantika Mandal is an Indian writer. I have no formal training as a writer or a photographer, I taught myself and learnt by doing, failing and creating my own grammar. Q: You frequently describe certain borders as porous. She has a sister named, Sunitha. The word terrorism, for instance, is used almost exclusively to refer to a particular communitybut fails to refer to state-enabled terror or the terror deployed by majority communities. Propaganda and poison work in far more sophisticated ways. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. 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. And what does this mean for on-ground communities, governments, armed forces, and other institutional stakeholders? Another name that came to my mind was 'An Outline of the Republic', only to discover Siddhartha Debs excellent book by the same name. Also read: Examining My Caste And Its History Is Eye-Opening: A Personal Essay On Casteism And Ancestry. 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. They all have very specific and carefully curated origin/immigrant stories that cleverly exploit the model minority trope. And our language helps us imagine a vision that is truly just, beautiful and ethical. Abrogation Of Article 370 Jammu And Kashmir Statehood, BSF foils another Pakistan plot, shoots down drone in Punjab's Amritsar, Light on weight, heavy on damage: India will be able to hit deep inside Pakistan with THIS ultralightweight howitzer, Put issues related to border in 'proper place', work for its early normalisation: Chinese FM Qin to Jaishankar, In Midnight's Borders, Suchitra Vijayan meditates on belongingness, freedom and political implications of territorial demarcations. What changeshave youobserved in the way you treat your subject after finishing your journey and book? I feel very uncomfortable talking about this, or rather I dont know how to discuss this without centering myself. And this is always at the expense of others. Her distinct and bold voice made her very popular with the younger crowd. Who is expendable, and the manufacturing of rightlessness to render people expendable. Invariably its the writer who is the protagonist. Rumpus: Were you trying to write a hybrid-genre book? Second, there is a clear distinction between speaking against the powerful and claiming to speak on behalf of the "voiceless". However, at work, Tiwari is in his element. First, does my work aid the powerful? Finally, Indias current transformation, the aggressive posturing of an aspiring ethno-nationalist state, will have dire consequences for the people and the region. suchitrav. The third thing is: were going back to relitigating everything. Q: What was your goal with writing the book in the beginning and how did it change and drive you throughout those 8 years? Suchitra Vijayan is the executive director of the Polis Project. In Afghanistan, Kashmir, and India, from one dangerous conflict zone to another, she spoke with people, ate with them, and listened to their stories. @narendramodi & his role in the Gujarat Pogrom. 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. Chopra is popular because she satisfies a certain need for validationthe trope of brown representation where the mere act of being represented is seen as a singular virtue worth applauding. 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. Sharing borders with six countries and spanning a geography that extends from Pakistan to Myanmar, India is the worlds largest democracy and second most populous country. Fearful of the future he asked quietly, Where did all this hate come from, where is it going to take us? echoing what many residents had told her. A: This is a very loaded question. These are edited excerpts from the interview: 'Midnight' seems to be a metaphor for multiple things both freeing and frightening. Thats part of the political imagination that I believe we need for political movements or any sustained acts of resistance. Its a practice. If she wasnt real she would be a marriage between a meme and parody. Lets start with a very simple statement that everyone can agree on: the way were living right now cannot continue. 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. Excellent interview, brave insights and critical reflections! Midnight's Borders by Suchitra Vijayan. You can claim to be patriotic but not political, you can claim to support the troops but ignore the ongoing civilian casualty. 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. How do you think this inspiration from a variety of genres allowed you to tell underrepresented stories? We live in a surveillance economy where we are constantly just bearing witness we are record keepers, unwitting spies, and voyeurs. A: Writers are very strange creatures. Its when we lose hope that we believe that we have lost everything. These new worlds are already herethey are maps of survival, maps of resistance. She's a good friend and kindly agreed to take our City Hall wedding photos. Rumpus: In such a climate, what do you think is the responsibility of the diasporic Indian writer? Itembodied young Indias grand ambitions and aspired to a nation made of men and women equally protected by the law. Barkha Dutt: India has made its point in Pakistan. It definitely doesnt help when trying to hold a powerful state accountable. 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). Second, border policies are about "performance and articulations of citizenship". 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. 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. She digs deep into colonial history to show how years of violence and consequential suffering has shaped these lives across generations. With profound empathy and a novelistic eye for detail, Vijayan brings us face to face with the brutal legacy of colonialism, state violence, and government corruption. Co-founded the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, Suchitra is also the founder of the Polis Project, a research and journalism organisation. I want to flag two essays where I engage with this in an in-depth manner, Disaster Ruins Everything, on my work in Haiti, and what it means to photograph disaster, especially when it is Brown and Black bodies. There are some brilliant writers writing on these issuesthe problem is always that these voices dont make it to the mainstream. Barrister. The first true peoples history of modern India, told through a seven-year, 9,000-mile journey along its many contested borders. In season two, a quick flashback resolves the plotline from the previous season. Thanks to The New India Foundation for sending across a beautiful copy of the Midnights Borders. L.L.B., Law, The University of Leeds, 2004 M.A., International Relation . In 1971, East Pakistan seceded and became Bangladesh. 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.. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. To repurpose an old sayingall infamy is now good virality. 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. How did writing this book affect you? '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. I had to write and rewrite this book so many times. Ali lived right on the edge of the India-Bangladesh border. The credit goes to my agent Lucy Cleland who suggested this title. 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. This is where I believe literary nonfiction becomes a powerful tool. The people in the text fear statelessness, unknown violence, and being forgotten. Vasundhara Sirnate Drennan is director of research at the Polis Project. Tamil Movie Articles Trisha | Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya | Tamannah | Anniyan | Aishwarya Rai", "Bigg Boss Awards for each contestant in Bigg Boss Tamil 4", Suchitra: I can sound sweet, sexy, bold or sensual, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Suchitra&oldid=1141096550, Crossover episode with Bigg Boss Tamil; Fearless Award, Nominated: Filmfare Award for Best Female Playback Singer Telugu for the song 'Nijamena' from, Nominated: SIIMA Award for Best Female Playback Singer|Best Female Playback Singer for the song 'Sir Osthara' from, This page was last edited on 23 February 2023, at 09:35. I believe it can teach us to ask these questions again. 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. Rumpus: I believe your book contributes to an important conversation about India we must have right now in the United States, for its own sake. 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. One of the reasons I kept writing was of course all the people I met: their love and time and generosity. The entire episode is emblematic of a broader trend in Indian media. How do you protect this child? The constant making and remaking of who is a citizen, who is not, is accompanied by a profoundly dehumanising process. So lets be very clear that Indias intellectual literary landscape is deeply problematic, feudal, and alienating," says Suchitra Vijayan to FII, Featured Image Source: All too often, the Indian media portrays Kashmiris as terrorists or human shields, not as a community seeking self-determination. How "The Family Man" champions the carceral security state. What we can do is attempt micro-histories of events, timelines, or local communities. It was not going to be easy as she quickly found out. Especially when you can be charged with sedition for a tweet or arrested for the crime of committing comedy while being Muslim. There are enough stories of people parachuting into communities to do human interest stories. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. J.G.P. But it needs to do more for peace. Second, we can no longer have certain conversationsconversations are now impossible. The government, of course, denies this. But Pakistan responded by rejecting these claims and told the Associated Press that the area was mostly deserted wooded area and that there were no casualties or damage on the ground. 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. 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. Rumpus: What do you think is the value of well-crafted literary nonfiction in sustaining conversations about equality and justice? We are all complicit in upholding and maintaining this fear. Copyright 2023. 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. 2:16. Now, border security policies are linked to domestic politics. I wrote the book, but those who have lived through this hell continue to live and navigate this hell. Nine years ago, she began documenting stories from her travels along the borders of India. 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. 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. It is necessary to speak truth to power through our art. Instead, we need to ask what fate awaits us. Indias intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. 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. What I was most concerned about and still am are the people in the book and their safety. Suchitra Vijayan traveled Indias vast land border to explore how these populations live, and document how even places just a few miles apart can feel like entirely different countries.. It is here that even the most civilised amongst us begin to make excuses for repression, brutality, and violence. Q: Since publishing the book last year, what reflections have you hadgiven that its relevance is increasingly ascertained by 2022s interpersonal and geopolitical violence? 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. 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. 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. And yet, the research and the history never overpowers the flow of the narrative. That changes how you write and photograph a place. The black and white pictures accompanying the chapters add a thousand words more. I left a few names out in the acknowledgment, worrying if it might direct more trouble towards them. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Your email address will not be published. Rumpus: The book derives its emotional strength and narrative energy from the stories of people you encounter at the borders. There are so many nonfiction books about India published yearly but few are so important and subversive. Midnight's Bordersis an exceptional read, but one that may make some uncomfortable. She is currently working on her first novel. 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 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. A relatively small group of people runs it. MacAdam reviews Suchitra Vijayan's book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India Read More. The revolutionary Constitution not only created a social world made of contradictions, but it very soon became the tool of suppressing dissent, deployed laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), and Public Safety Act (PSA) in Kashmir. My job was to make sure that their voices were centered. She also embodies the upwardly mobile, privileged sections of the diaspora. British India was partitioned into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan on the eve of independence in August, 1947. We must realise that its the grassroots media, who represent themselves, document what mainstream media ignores, and bring to notice what is important. 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. 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. 582.1K views. 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 . Also, hope is a discipline. Some people later chose not to be included because they feared repercussions, especially as the NRC process started playing out. In her new book Why do you think India has gotten away with this so far? Even those who now write about Modis India, will never write about Brahmanism or be critical of how caste works in the diaspora. Founded in 2009, The Rumpus is one of the longest running independent online literary and culture magazines. Midnights Borders is part investigation, part meditation on the lines drawn on land or water that separate India from its neighbours. 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. Suchitra Vijayans new book, Midnights Borders: A Peoples 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. Q: As you wrote this book, you dont hesitate to meditate on how your personal life bidirectionally impacted the book. What is the emotional and artistic cost that one pays as a writer while crafting these narratives? Sign in. ""The historical unity of the ruling classes is realized in the state." Antonio Gramsci" Required fields are marked *. 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. In terms of violence, there is also this tendency to photograph and display the bodies of marginalised communities when they experience violence. Now imagine how it would be for someone from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, or working community to try to make inroads. They both have pregnant daughters, a fact that becomes significant as the novel progresses. 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. [3], She started singing after a few years as RJ. Vijayan undertakes a seven-year long, 9,000-mile . Accompanied by this globally, democracies are becoming more authoritarian and stripping people of their citizenshipreducing them to subjects, entrenching the fault lines of inequality. I dont have apprehensions. As a trained barrister, I used to believe in the concept of justicebut now I simply call this freedom and dignity. We believe that literature builds communityand if reading The Rumpus makes you feel more connected, please show your support! 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. Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. The failure to forget affects how I use images, and texts; my photographic practice and also how I put everything together. What are those ethical, moral, and political lines? What it means to photograph, write, report and document is an ongoing process. More importantly, as Babasaheb would argue, the political revolution was never accompanied by a social revolution. The two press briefings by the foreign secretary and Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson entertained no questions. No one is a stakeholder herethese are people, humans, citizens, who have been deprived of what the Ambedkarite constitution promised them. We need more such books. I think these are fundamental questions of freedom and dignity. Its an immense privilege to be able to write and be published. [1] Career [ edit] The Indian State and the people of this Republic. This article was published more than4 years ago. The mortality of someone you love affects how you write. 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. There was an NDTV programme, where somebody said Should Indias constitution be secularist? The travel, the people they encounter, and the political events they record quickly become cameos. Keywords: LTTE love jihad Beef politics Hindu Nationalism Kashmir 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. They continue to. 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. 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. As she travelled 9000 miles over seven years across Indias borders, some drawn so hastily that they cut across fields, homes and courtyards, she met men, women and children, finishing with endless notebooks, over a thousand images and more than 300 hours of recorded conversations. Her quest took her to the farthest ends of the India-Bangladesh/ China/ Myanmar/ Pakistan borders. Once we eliminated the spectacle, we realized that the Indian public got very little information about the Pulwama attack and its aftermath. Instead, she shows the absurdity of the army apparatus that strives to comply with the narrative of patriotism. Suchitra Vijayanis a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. 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. 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. As a lawyer, journalist, and human rights activist who has worked in conflict-ridden territories of Kosovo, Egypt, Rwanda, and elsewhere, she has often met people scrambling for bare existence, caught in a no-mans land. Perhaps there are lessons to learn from that. Those notes were raw and immediate. If you want to support the work that goes behind publishing high-quality feminist media content, please consider becoming a FII member. Suchitra Ramadurai, known by the mononym Suchitra, is an Indian radio jockey, popular playback singer, songwriter, composer, voice artist, dubbing artist and film actress.

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