You need to write what you seethats why you started this project.. 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. Q: What was your goal with writing the book in the beginning and how did it change and drive you throughout those 8 years? In this stunning work of narrative reportagefeaturing over 40 original photographswe hear from those whose stories are never told: from children playing a cricket match in no-mans-land, to an elderly man living in complete darkness after sealing off his home from the floodlit border; from a woman who fought to keep a military bunker off of her land, to those living abroad who can no longer find their family history in India. India shares borders with a host of . The people in this book are eloquent advocates of their history and their struggles. Can any of theTIMEsubscribers who loved that cover tell us now whats happening in South Sudan today? We're back with our flagship podcast 'Intersectional FeminismDesi Style!' 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 your book contributes to the larger conversation about India? She entered the show on day 28 as a new contestant and was evicted on day 49. One of the reasons I kept writing was of course all the people I met: their love and time and generosity. This is a challenging task for the writer. Ali lived right on the edge of the India-Bangladesh border. I was much younger when I took on this project, so I wanted to prove those people wrong. Part of this process is a need to turn the lens back at the powerful. Can you write about loss without living? Suchitra Vijayan. This means that, for the longest time, the depiction of violence and marginalised communities has been problematic. Why dont people see the ground shifting beneath their feet? A: I lost friends, saw my father go through a transplant, and I gave birth. 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. Also, I am an unknown and insignificant entity. Her YouTube channel 'Suchislife' has all her updated work. Thats part of the political imagination that I believe we need for political movements or any sustained acts of resistance. 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. Vijayan researches meticulously into official documents and conducts a series of interviews in an effort to uncover the murky truths behind the death of Hilal Ahmed Mir, a supposed militant killed by the military in an encounter in the disputed territory of Kashmir, or Felani Khatun, a 15-year-old girl who was shot when trying to cross the barbed wire at the porous India-Bangladesh border. Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. You need a community of people to support you. There are some notable exceptions, but they are an exception. 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. 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'. Fear seems to be a constant motif in the book we see versions and types of it. This is the age of erosion of citizenship rights, a kind of ongoing attrition against human rights, civil liberties, and in the case of India, an accelerated dilution of fundamental rights. Suchitra Vijayan talks to FII about Indian politics, communal violence, marginalisation and her book Midnights Borders: A Peoples History of Modern India. Our investigation into the Indian medias reporting on the Pulwama attack found that many reports were contradictory, biased, incendiary and uncorroborated. 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. It was just a sad moment, and I couldnt celebrate a book when there was so much human tragedy playing out. 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. Could you comment on how much our present border security policies have changed in the last few years? The Author Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. On Feb. 14, an Indian paramilitary convoy was attacked. Vijayan undertakes a seven-year long, 9,000-mile journey along the borders of India, and interviews people living in these liminal spaces. 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. I think this book will change the global conversation about India and shape what gets written in the future about India. No one would put themselves through the agony and pain of writing. We need to think about border practices, policing, and national security policies within the larger historical and political contexts. I think freedom and dignity enables us to really go beyond in our political imaginationbeyond just electoral politics. The events of 9/11 had profound effects on how border security projects and politics played out. 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. Vijayan began her journey in Kolkata. Its a vicious cycle. 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. 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. That, perhaps, is the only way to avoid further destruction in the region. 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. Siaan On Being Queer And Being Online, FII Interviews: Journalist Meena Kotwal On Minority Politics, Journalism Today And The Caste Divide. The book was originally going to be a photographic body of work, which changed when I started writing. The Rumpus is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Also read: The History Of The Colonial State And The Unmaking Of The Tawaif. This is a tightrope that you walk so well. Another name that came to my mind was 'An Outline of the Republic', only to discover Siddhartha Debs excellent book by the same name. 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. 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. 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. 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. But the inclination to still treat India as a democracy remains. 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. It definitely doesnt help when trying to hold a powerful state accountable. Suchitra Vijayan, Newspapers in a Kashmiri home In August 2014 I travelled to the border town of Uri while researching my upcoming book, Borderlands. What matters is that the book exists. Its feudal, entitled, and cannibalistic. Excerpts from the #BBC documentary telecast about PM . These are edited excerpts from the interview: 'Midnight' seems to be a metaphor for multiple things both freeing and frightening. RT @project_polis: Writing fiction in a dystopian world - @kiccovich in conversation with @mohammedhanif https://thepolisproject.com/listen/writing-fiction-in-a . Anvisha Manral March 20, 2021 09:50:40 IST They create cleavages of fear, xenophobia, and insecurity. 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. Not mine. She is the founder and executive director of The Polis Project, and the author of Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India, recently published by Context, Westland. Barrister. There is a lot to learn and unlearn, and a writer and a photographer should respond to a political moment, and the work should be a reflection of those practices. They all have very specific and carefully curated origin/immigrant stories that cleverly exploit the model minority trope. Even those among us who will speak of BLM will not openly challenge Hindutva or the RSS. Reports also identified different people as the supposed masterminds of the Pulwama attack at various points without clear sourcing. Nonfiction, Travel, Fiction Member Since February 2021 edit data Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. Where does that leave us? Who gets to travel, tell stories, and, more importantly, publish them are all deeply connected to questions of access, resources, and privilege. The entire episode is emblematic of a broader trend in Indian media. At the end of it, I felt that I learnt more about myself, more about my home, I had becomeif not a better writer, an infinitely better human being, which is to say that one realises that theres always a Longue dure that one needs to consider, crave out time and space to think, train oneself not to always react. Vijayan: A writers responsibility above all is to speak the truth and make sense of our social worlds. This is the backdrop against which we map how border practices and policies have played out in India. This affects who gets to document, and whom. Suchitra was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, as the daughter of Ramadurai and Padmaja. Vijayan: Its a very generous reading, and thanks for that. [1] Career [ edit] In her15,000-kilometre journey, spread over seven years, Vijayan mulls over the meaning of freedom, belongingness in a land of imagined communities, created by territorial demarcations. The failure to forget affects how I use images, and texts; my photographic practice and also how I put everything together. Its a dangerous moment where the figure of the rights-bearing citizen is being reduced to a consuming subject. Vijayans book begins a much-needed conversation on thinking about freedom beyond the idea of nation and its illusory lines. The people in the text fear statelessness, unknown violence, and being forgotten. You can carefully craft a narrative of immigrant success but act tone-deaf about the ongoing refugee crisis. 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. [3], She started singing after a few years as RJ. 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 . As a trained barrister, I used to believe in the concept of justicebut now I simply call this freedom and dignity. Husain Haqqani: Pakistan released the Indian pilot. What we can do is attempt micro-histories of events, timelines, or local communities. This is not the violent right wing and their siege; its centrist and liberal media that is also relitigating history, deconstructing the core values of the constitution. Midnight's Bordersis an exceptional read, but one that may make some uncomfortable. What I was most concerned about and still am are the people in the book and their safety. Empathy is taught by our communities; we are brought up with it. Subscribe to the Rumpus Book Clubs (poetry, prose, or both) and Letters in the Mail from authors (for adults and kids). Thank you! In that process, her reportage unravels the cultural and political implicationsof our bordersonour 'collective conscience', as capricious as that might be, and on the lives of those sandwiched between two warring nations. In recent years, the narrative of hate has escalated with the reelection of the right-wing Narendra Modi government in 2019. There are enough stories of people parachuting into communities to do human interest stories. 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. Professor Nandita Sharmas work is an excellent way to engage with this history. The book is a prelude to what was coming, and is also a impassioned plea to my readers to ask some fundamental questions of what it means to live in a country like Indiawhat is the function of a state when its primary preoccupation is no longer the citizen but a performance of an ideology? 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). 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. At worst, its navel gazing peppered with white guilt, but always politically vacuous. Also, we shouldn't forget that the border making project is central to capitalist and neoliberal logic. Suchitras account of her journeys across the undefinable and ever-shifting borders between India and its neighbours is gripping, frightening, faithful and beautiful. 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. . She's a good friend and kindly agreed to take our City Hall wedding photos. We still argue if something should be a massacre, a pogrom, or a riot. When your investigations in Kashmir came to an end, what changes did you observe in your 'grammar of dissent'? A place to read, on the Internet. Despite the failures in investigation and prosecution related to criminal trials arising out of the pogrom, the judiciary has projected itself as an able and willing neutral arbiter of justice that is not complicit with the deep structures of Hindutvas anti-Muslim prejudice https://t.co/EFf5bxYEBt, True societal change has always emerged from the ground-up, with communities fighting for their own freedom and dignity. Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, photographer, lawyer, political essayist, and a lecturer. 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). Acted as the General Manager for a day and motivated employees to work for the same purpose to reinforce team . Growing up I was surrounded by people who emphasised the community over anything else. So here, 'Midnight' functions as a moment of violent birth, but also perhaps the foundational violence that becomes codified in various ways, especially in the bodies of people farthest away from power. He writes TPS reports for an overbearing boss who calls him the minimum guy. He has replaced eating vada pav at ungodly hours on the streets with overpriced salads. 1 author picked Midnight's Borders as one of their favorite books, . Vasundhara Sirnate Drennan is director of research at the Polis Project. Firstpost - All Rights Reserved. The original vision of the book also has newspaper cuttings, and found maps. 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. In politics, we will be recognising the principle of one man, one vote, and one vote, one value. What it means to photograph, write, report and document is an ongoing process. I dont want to make this about me. 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. Yes, men who act as petty sovereigns are everywhere. If you think about communities in resistance to immense violations, theyre all interconnected to climate justice. 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. 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. All rights reserved. Although Vijayan critiques the state and its complicity in violence and erasure of lives, she refrains from villainizing the men who serve the state. There is no denying that the American media landscape is deeply racist, and while the past few years have seen more brown people take center stage, its nowhere close to where we need to be. Indias intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. I find that profoundly inspiring. Includes previously unreleased investigation under #JackStraw. I came with my privileges, also lets not forget prejudices. On Feb. 14, an Indian paramilitary convoy was attacked in Pulwama in India-administered Kashmir, resulting in the death of 40 Indian officers. The latter is an act of violence against people whose voice you are appropriating. With the phone armed with a camera, everyone is a photographer; we are all witnesses. It is here that we subsume all that we otherwise celebrate under the demands of freedom, progress, liberalism, liberty, and secular ideals.". By Suchitra Vijayan, Why should I read it? ""The historical unity of the ruling classes is realized in the state." Antonio Gramsci"
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