Second, we can no longer have certain conversationsconversations are now impossible. It is here that even the most civilised amongst us begin to make excuses for repression, brutality, and violence. That changes how you write and photograph a place. If she wasnt real she would be a marriage between a meme and parody. You need a community of people to support you. No one is a stakeholder herethese are people, humans, citizens, who have been deprived of what the Ambedkarite constitution promised them. What it means to photograph, write, report and document is an ongoing process. Why dont people see the ground shifting beneath their feet? We live in a surveillance economy where we are constantly just bearing witness we are record keepers, unwitting spies, and voyeurs. 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. She lives in New York. We once asked these questions, even if there were no clear answers or consensus. 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. 1 author picked Midnight's Borders as one of their favorite books, . Rumpus: In such a climate, what do you think is the responsibility of the diasporic Indian writer? Be it the teenager who is offered guns, money, and M&M candies to fight the Taliban in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, or Ali, who seeks solace in darkness as the floodlights installed on his plot of land along the India-Bangladesh border leaves him traumatized, or the nonagenarian Johinder Singh Suj from Sindh (a province in present-day Pakistan), who still cherishes his school geography textbook that shows a map of undivided British India the people are captured with deep empathy and come alive in her narration with the adept use of dialogue. Some people later chose not to be included because they feared repercussions, especially as the NRC process started playing out. More importantly, reporters need to engage with what it means to administer what has been called the worlds most militarized zone. Only then can the country answer a more fundamental question: Just what should be done to create conditions that allow Kashmiris to choose their destiny? Aruni Kashyap writes in English, and his native language Assamese. Also read: Book Review: Looking Through Dalit Sahitya And Ambedkar. Instead, we need to ask what fate awaits us. Rumpus: The book derives its emotional strength and narrative energy from the stories of people you encounter at the borders. Subscribe here. They dont. Vijayan: Its a very generous reading, and thanks for that. Vijayan: Let me start heregood writing is powerful and political. Thoughbordersare conventionally recognised as real or artificial lines of spatial and political demarcation, there may also be an arbitrariness to them. 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. 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. 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. Creative . 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.. Always. Vijayan: A writers responsibility above all is to speak the truth and make sense of our social worlds. Check posts or bunkers were not part of the landscapes of my home. Anvisha Manral March 20, 2021 09:50:40 IST To them he is a man who has settled into a job that has no future. 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. Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. She still does a radio show called Flight983 on Radio Mirchi, on Sunday evenings (79 pm). We dont document violence against the privileged like we would report violence against those without power. In Afghanistan, Kashmir, and India, from one dangerous conflict zone to another, she spoke with people, ate with them, and listened to their stories. Many of the stories didnt make it to the book because it became dangerous to identify people. 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. The controversy surrounding the Rafale deal and allegations of corruption against the government were suddenly sidelined, as was the order for the eviction of more than a million forest dwellers (that was later stayed) and a hearing on the repeal of an important constitutional clause before the Supreme Court. Once we eliminated the spectacle, we realized that the Indian public got very little information about the Pulwama attack and its aftermath. Her distinct and bold voice made her very popular with the younger crowd. 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. Get your Rumpus merch in our online store. 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. Your prose is hopeful there. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. Can you write about loss without living? When fires burn down large swathes of what were peoples homeswhat borders will you impose when climate change will fundamentally remake them? So we might never know the true extent of this loss. I left a few names out in the acknowledgment, worrying if it might direct more trouble towards them. There are enough stories of people parachuting into communities to do human interest stories. 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. The black and white pictures accompanying the chapters add a thousand words more. 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. Suchitra Vijayan. Its not comparable and should not be compared. 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. O. 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. Vijayan reserves her own impressions for later, and allows us to know these people intimately. The public is sold a lie as the attack is framed as a gas leak. I dont think theres just one emotion that drives a writer to finish writing. We have migrated to a new commenting platform. Qin took charge as Chinese foreign minister in December, succeeding Wang Yi. Perhaps that offers some protection? Were there times when you doubted your own ability to record and document these people's stories? 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. [8] On 7 March 2017, she applied for divorce. How did you respond to that environment being in an extremely challenging position yourself? Second, Indias transformation into a nuclear state and the Kargil War is another critical moment of change. These are edited excerpts from the interview: 'Midnight' seems to be a metaphor for multiple things both freeing and frightening. She responded to an ad for the post of an RJ in Radio Mirchi. I feel very uncomfortable talking about this, or rather I dont know how to discuss this without centering myself. 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. The acts of writing, documenting, photographing, and archiving carry privileges of caste and class. The show deals with interesting international happenings. A lot of travel writing is still written by a particular group of people with immense privilege, and they all tend to center themselves. This is a profoundly alienating place for anyone without the networks of privilege and resources. When I left him (the first time), I had a one-year-old daughter. Apart from his long-suffering wife, no one else in the family knows that he is a spy. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments. When fencing began, he became trapped in a no-mans land, his marriage to a girl from Bangladesh ended with each being stranded on either side and he never got out of the cycle of debt and struggle, finally losing the ability to dream. ""The historical unity of the ruling classes is realized in the state." Antonio Gramsci" Suchitra Vijayan is the executive director of the Polis Project. It seems that they have a different eye for these women, who they describe as cunning, deceitful, and in some cases, prostitutes'. To repurpose an old sayingall infamy is now good virality. The interview has been paraphrased and condensed for clarity, at the interviewers discretion. 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. This media blitzkrieg resulted in the erasure of two important political trends. Rumpus: Were you trying to write a hybrid-genre book? This means that the capacity to see does not automatically become the capacity for action. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle. Suchitra was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, as the daughter of Ramadurai and Padmaja. 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. If it does, I have failed. Suchitra Vijayan. You've mentioned in the text that you've spent your entire adult life thinking about state violence and justice because of a troubling incident in 1994 when your father was attacked. Over the span of seven years, Suchitra Vijayan interviewed scores of individuals, jotted countless notes, snapped hundreds of photographs, and altogether made herself witness to the manifold absurdities (and atrocities) of who gets to say where one nation ends and another begins. Thats part of the political imagination that I believe we need for political movements or any sustained acts of resistance. He writes about how when the Constitution was adopted, "We are going to enter into a life of contradictions. " India's intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. Accompanied by this globally, democracies are becoming more authoritarian and stripping people of their citizenshipreducing them to subjects, entrenching the fault lines of inequality. None of this helps in telling richer, more textured stories. Sayantika Mandal is an Indian writer. Even those among us who will speak of BLM will not openly challenge Hindutva or the RSS. Photograph of Suchitra Vijayan courtesy of Suchitra Vijayan. 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 . Reports also identified different people as the supposed masterminds of the Pulwama attack at various points without clear sourcing. There is also a lot of deep-seated misogyny, casteism, and anti-Black racism in our communities that need to be addressed. suchitrav. Its when we lose hope that we believe that we have lost everything. Q: You frequently describe certain borders as porous. Q: You had to deal with a lot of ethical considerations as a writer and photographer, which echo throughout your and your fellow journalists work, as evaluated in your book. 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. He was arrested based on fabricated evidence in the middle of a global pandemic, and he was denied bail and medical help. Why is this particular time of the day intrinsic to the book? is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. This is the backdrop against which we map how border practices and policies have played out in India. And that violence is often abetted by the state and goes unpunished. The book was originally going to be a photographic body of work, which changed when I started writing. March 06, 2021 04:50 pm | Updated March 07, 2021 08:05 am IST. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. ", "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.". Time to let the diplomats do the hard talk. 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). Some things are just not discussed anymore. We need more such books. @suchitrav. 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. Its a vicious cycle. This Life Draws Attention to Life Behind Bars and the Transcendent Power of Rap, Wrestling with Reality in The Big Door Prize. Many news channels are not only owned, operated or invested in by politically influential families, but also are sometimes run for the express purpose of advancing party positions. 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). 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. A literary community. News organizations such as India Today, NDTV, News 18, the Indian Express, First Post, Mumbai Mirror, ANI and others routinely attributed their information to anonymous government sources, forensic experts, police officers and intelligence officers. No independent investigations were conducted, and serious questions about intelligence failures were left unanswered. Bigotry is also big business. Vijayan began her journey in Kolkata. 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. Now imagine how it would be for someone from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, or working community to try to make inroads. 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). Already a subscriber? It is here that we subsume all that we otherwise celebrate under the demands of freedom, progress, liberalism, liberty, and secular ideals.". We need more writers from Indias Northeast, Kashmir, Indigenous, Dalit, and Muslim communities to tell stories that help complete the canvas of narratives about India. How did you achieve empathy in your writing, without the privileged lens that is common in journalistic canon? Not mine. Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, photographer, lawyer, political essayist, and a lecturer. Finally, Indias current transformation, the aggressive posturing of an aspiring ethno-nationalist state, will have dire consequences for the people and the region. Her writing has appeared in The Citron Review, Dukool Magazine, Cerebration, Feminism in India, Times of India (Spellbound edition), and others. Author In Focus, Celebration, The Literary Journal. 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. 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. [3], She started singing after a few years as RJ. What changeshave youobserved in the way you treat your subject after finishing your journey and book? Its a hard book to name, and I kept going back and forth. Invariably its the writer who is the protagonist. Theyre screaming all the time, its just that we dont listen to them. How do you think your book contributes to the larger conversation about India? With the phone armed with a camera, everyone is a photographer; we are all witnesses. You will see very little critical commentary or public positions on Hindutva, its corrosive role in India, or how RSS works here in the USfunding and now interfering in US elections. Pushback is such a benign word, isnt it? The Rumpus is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. All too often, the Indian media portrays Kashmiris as terrorists or human shields, not as a community seeking self-determination. Midnight's Borders by Suchitra Vijayan falls in both categories. In 1971, East Pakistan seceded and became Bangladesh. Part of this process is a need to turn the lens back at the powerful. I wrote the book, but those who have lived through this hell continue to live and navigate this hell. 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. While Nehru was still declaring this victory, the slaughter began. Speculation and conjecture were repeated ad infinitum, and several journalists even took to Twitter to encourage the Indian army. I find that profoundly inspiring. These may not be perfect worlds or even equal worlds, but they strive to be. Barrister. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions?". Midnights Borders is part investigation, part meditation on the lines drawn on land or water that separate India from its neighbours. I came with my privileges, also lets not forget prejudices. What matters is that the book exists. Vijayan: The photographs were the heart of this project. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. @narendramodi & his role in the Gujarat Pogrom. One feedback I often got was that I had to put more of myself in this book. 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. 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. "Fighting for justice and human rights in India is a long and lonely battle" Nishrin Jafri Hussain, the daughter of Ehsan Jafri (from 2019) Even the diasporic experience is often told through this limited lens, without taking into account how diverse the immigrant experience in this country is. . She never did like my then-husband, which makes her a better judge of character than I was. So the first reflection is this idea of where we are right now: as people, as a society, as a community. 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. Nonfiction, Travel, Fiction Member Since February 2021 edit data Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India.
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