Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. " India's intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. I spoke with Suchitra by email in July about Midnights Borders, the power of literary nonfiction, new possibilities of Indian American literature, neoliberal politics, and the importance of supporting underrepresented stories. Similarly, motherhood changed me; it radicalised me. We believe that literature builds communityand if reading The Rumpus makes you feel more connected, please show your support! Suchitra Vijayan. Author, lawyer and journalist, Suchitra Vijayan in conversation with Cerebration editor Smita Maitra on her book Midnight's Borders, maps, fragmented identities and postcolonial nation-states. But who carries the responsibility of that fear? We dont document violence against the privileged like we would report violence against those without power. I think this book will change the global conversation about India and shape what gets written in the future about India. Vijayan shows a keen eye for detail as she presents these diverse lives. Qin took charge as Chinese foreign minister in December, succeeding Wang Yi. 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. 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. How do you think your book contributes to the larger conversation about India? The black and white pictures accompanying the chapters add a thousand words more. 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. We thank her for her time, patience, and illuminating insights into her work. 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. The complexities of the Naga peace process were apparent on a visit to remote villages of Tuensang district where many of the women remained silent with others admitting they had never encountered an outsider, except Indian soldiers. They create cleavages of fear, xenophobia, and insecurity. 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. I think these are fundamental questions of freedom and dignity. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions?". Its not sustainable, it fractures who we are, chips away and erodes what it fundamentally means to be human. 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. Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, 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? This is a challenging task for the writer. It is always Bollywood, the ascent of Priyanka Chopra, or the diasporic loneliness. 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. On Feb. 14, an Indian paramilitary convoy was attacked in Pulwama in India-administered Kashmir, resulting in the death of 40 Indian officers. 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. This book ate into so much of my life. Yes, men who act as petty sovereigns are everywhere. We once asked these questions, even if there were no clear answers or consensus. Lets start with a very simple statement that everyone can agree on: the way were living right now cannot continue. I think the way that news and mostly disinformation makes its way to us, we think of violence in very particular waysas disjointed. Legislations such as National Register of Citizens and Citizenship Amendment Act threaten to render millions of people, especially Muslims, stateless. 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. I came with my privileges, also lets not forget prejudices. Later on she moved to Coimbatore for her MBA from PSG Institute of Management. This discrepancy is just one example of the confusion and misinformation spread to the public by deeply flawed media reports. That capacity to be able to go away and then come back profoundly affects how you write because then you are still rooted. 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. A:I dont think an ethical or moral compass exists nowI dont know if it ever existed. The pandemic showed us that crises and recurrent disasters that annihilate our lives are here to stay. That changes how you write and photograph a place. How did writing this book affect you? I have two tests. 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. These are no longer contradictory; instead, even criticism can be converted to views. Even those who now write about Modis India, will never write about Brahmanism or be critical of how caste works in the diaspora. You can find them on, The #GBVinMedia Campaign: Media Reportage Of Gender-Based Violence, #IndianWomenInHistory: Remembering The Untold Legacies of Indian Women, How To Write About Abortion: A Rights-Based Approach, The Crowdsourced List Of Social Justice Collectives Across Indian Campuses. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. RT @project_polis: Writing fiction in a dystopian world - @kiccovich in conversation with @mohammedhanif https://thepolisproject.com/listen/writing-fiction-in-a . ", "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.". Thoughbordersare conventionally recognised as real or artificial lines of spatial and political demarcation, there may also be an arbitrariness to them. Who gets to travel, tell stories, and, more importantly, publish them are all deeply connected to questions of access, resources, and privilege. Vijayan began her journey in Kolkata. Nonfiction, Travel, Fiction Member Since February 2021 edit data Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. ). None of this helps in telling richer, more textured stories. The emotional cost is something else altogether. Suchitra Vijayan undertook a 9000 mile journey over seven years to India's borderlands to write Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India. Also read: Book Review: Looking Through Dalit Sahitya And Ambedkar. Barrister. Check posts or bunkers were not part of the landscapes of my home. The pair experience similar situations in their lives: abuse, the death or absence of a husband, and the longing for a better future. Vijayan: Let me start heregood writing is powerful and political. Whose Stories Are Told In Indian History? There are some brilliant writers writing on these issuesthe problem is always that these voices dont make it to the mainstream. A: I lost friends, saw my father go through a transplant, and I gave birth. I kept detailed audio notes that I recorded each night when I traveled. 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. It is here that we subsume all that we otherwise celebrate under the demands of freedom, progress, liberalism, liberty, and secular ideals.". Vijayan: Chopra and others like her are a reflection of how popular culture and virality inform discourse and shape it. Each of these subscription programs along with tax-deductible donations made to The Rumpus through our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas, helps keep us going and brings us closer to sustainability. They both have pregnant daughters, a fact that becomes significant as the novel progresses. 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. Second, border policies are about "performance and articulations of citizenship". Suchitra tweets @suchitrav. The Indian State and the people of this Republic. This is a profoundly alienating place for anyone without the networks of privilege and resources. We need more such books. Vijayan is no stranger to stories of violence. Its an immense privilege to be able to write and be published. She is currently working on her first novel. Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. What changeshave youobserved in the way you treat your subject after finishing your journey and book? Some people later chose not to be included because they feared repercussions, especially as the NRC process started playing out. She is the founder and executive director of The Polis Project, and the author of. I fear we are losing that cosmopolitanism of small places. I can see small cracks beginning to appear. 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. Co-founded the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, Suchitra is also the founder of the Polis Project, a research and journalism organisation. I was much younger when I took on this project, so I wanted to prove those people wrong. 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. 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. Also read: The History Of The Colonial State And The Unmaking Of The Tawaif. A Barrister by training, 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 . Our investigation into the Indian medias reporting on the Pulwama attack found that many reports were contradictory, biased, incendiary and uncorroborated. By looking beyond maps to create a museum of forgotten stories, Vijayan has given voice to those who live on the fringes like Ali or Sari. Ali lived right on the edge of the India-Bangladesh border. 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. India has consistently warred against its own citizens; this book is about some of these wars. Excerpts from the #BBC documentary telecast about PM . Vijayan: There is an elusive distance between the photographer and the photographed that cant be bridged. I believe it can teach us to ask these questions again. 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 The latter is an act of violence against people whose voice you are appropriating. These may not be perfect worlds or even equal worlds, but they strive to be. You can speak of confidence and body positivity and defend selling skin-lightening creams. Bhawan Singh, who photographed the Nellie massacre, said he had never seen anything like it. You dont need a Leni Riefenstahl today. Dear reader, this article is free to read and it will remain free but it isnt free to produce. Anvisha Manral March 20, 2021 09:50:40 IST What is the emotional and artistic cost that one pays as a writer while crafting these narratives? Barkha Dutt: India has made its point in Pakistan. I had a very stable home to come back to. Feminism In India is an award-winning digital intersectional feminist media organisation to learn, educate and develop a feminist sensibility among the youth. India shares borders with a host of . This also decides who gets access, awards and accolades. Nine years ago, she began documenting stories from her travels along the borders of India. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. 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. 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. She has a sister named, Sunitha. In politics, we will be recognising the principle of one man, one vote, and one vote, one value. When I finished writing, I had become much richer in many waysnot in a material waybut through a community. She responded to an ad for the post of an RJ in Radio Mirchi. 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. Rumpus: What do you think is the value of well-crafted literary nonfiction in sustaining conversations about equality and justice? I had to write and rewrite this book so many times. What we can do is attempt micro-histories of events, timelines, or local communities. 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. Firstly, when we talk about violence, we often talk about it only as communal violence, as if both communities have equal strength and power. Also, hope is a discipline. 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. History and memory is localwhich means its almost impossible to write about India. He is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Georgia and is the author of The House With a Thousand Stories, His Fathers Disease, and There Is No Good Time for Bad News. Not everyone rejoiced in these new freedoms. Co-founded the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, Suchitra is also the founder of the Polis Project, a research and journalism organisation. 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. 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. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle. Vijayan: A writers responsibility above all is to speak the truth and make sense of our social worlds. The Rumpus: It is shocking how unaware the world is about the violence the Indian government has committed since independence on its border citizens. The book arrived in the middle of a pandemic and a devastating second wave [of COVID-19] in India. Suchitra was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, as the daughter of Ramadurai and Padmaja. Not everyone lived to see its promises. The show deals with interesting international happenings. They continue to. Many TV newsrooms were transformed into caricatures of military command centers, with anchors assessing military technology and strategy (sometimes incorrectly). I am repeating what I have said before, "Kashmir is Indias greatest moral and political failure. 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. 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. Now, border security policies are linked to domestic politics. Many come from immense privileges of caste, class, wealth, access, and resources. An unprecedented militarisation of these spaces accompanied this. Vijayan: The photographs were the heart of this project. She lives in New York. Follow our team of columnists and reporters who write about the media. Second, we can no longer have certain conversationsconversations are now impossible. It's a disorienting time when your library or what books you read can become evidence of sedition . I left my 18-month-old daughter to travel and finish this book. So I try to learn and listen, and again, as I say in this book, "It is not my goal to 'bear witness' or 'give voice to the voiceless'. Excellent interview, brave insights and critical reflections! Were there times when you doubted your own ability to record and document these people's stories? Your email address will not be published. I particularly loved the fact that all our couple shots were very natural and came out truly . I wrote a book along with it comes love, scorn, and sometimes even ridicule. Accompanied by this globally, democracies are becoming more authoritarian and stripping people of their citizenshipreducing them to subjects, entrenching the fault lines of inequality. She never did like my then-husband, which makes her a better judge of character than I was. 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. 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. Aruni Kashyap writes in English, and his native language Assamese. And, in many cases, they are children of the literary, cultural, or political elite who have long been the beneficiaries of the Indian state. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Your email address will not be published. Vijayan undertakes a seven-year long, 9,000-mile journey along the borders of India, and interviews people living in these liminal spaces. 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 . She digs deep into colonial history to show how years of violence and consequential suffering has shaped these lives across generations. In these circumstances, the lives of people inhabiting the sketchy borderlands has become all the more vulnerable, and fragile. Photograph of Suchitra Vijayan courtesy of Suchitra Vijayan. One feedback I often got was that I had to put more of myself in this book. 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? It took a long time to get the voice right. 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. Rumpus: The book utilizes more than one medium: photography, narrative nonfiction, journalism. There are enough stories of people parachuting into communities to do human interest stories.. And that violence is often abetted by the state and goes unpunished. A t a time when right-wing nationalism is crescendoing in India and across the world, Suchitra Vijayan's Midnight's Borders raises pertinent questions about the very foundations of India's nationalism the cartography of South Asian nation-states defined by arbitrary lines drawn hastily by the British colonial administration. Q: You frequently describe certain borders as porous. We live in a profoundly unequal society, where every day brings news of new devastation. She still does a radio show called Flight983 on Radio Mirchi, on Sunday evenings (79 pm). If she wasnt real she would be a marriage between a meme and parody. Also read: Examining My Caste And Its History Is Eye-Opening: A Personal Essay On Casteism And Ancestry. [1] Career [ edit] 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 Rumpus is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. In politics we will have equality, and in social and economic life, we will have inequality. @narendramodi & his role in the Gujarat Pogrom. One of the reasons why this book was written was to step back: to say that this violence that you and I listen to and encounter is not new to say that this violence is not new. The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy, Supreme Court forms expert panel to probe any regulatory failure on Adani issue, India makes renewed push for consensus at G20 Foreign Ministers meeting, Hindenburg Research report on Adani Group | Supreme Court verdict on expert committee on March 2, High debt on Vedanta books puts investors on tenterhooks, Employees Provident Fund: How to activate UAN online, 1947: Madras Devadasis (Prevention of Dedication) Act passed, RMA 0-1 FCB, El Clasico highlights: Barcelona leads on aggregate after beating Real Madrid courtesy of a Militao own goal. Suchitra Vijayan. There is also a lot of deep-seated misogyny, casteism, and anti-Black racism in our communities that need to be addressed. Sayantika Mandal is an Indian writer. We need to think about border practices, policing, and national security policies within the larger historical and political contexts. 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.

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