The emotional cost is something else altogether. As I travelled, I was very aware of these inherent power differences. She has a sister named, Sunitha. I'mdyslexic, but have visual and episodic memory, which means I dream and relive moments. But for me hope is radical; hope is the last bastion of our defense. I was much younger when I took on this project, so I wanted to prove those people wrong. I had to write and rewrite this book so many times. I cant think in terms of the future being borderless, I can only think in terms of fracturing. There are already about 20 million climate refugees around South Asias borderlands. A: I lost friends, saw my father go through a transplant, and I gave birth. Also read: Book Review: Looking Through Dalit Sahitya And Ambedkar. Sometimes the news is the story. Keywords: LTTE love jihad Beef politics Hindu Nationalism Kashmir 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). For instance, a border security personnel tells her how he failed to capture a photograph of a porcupine after spending half an hour trying to fit a helmet on its head, because he is bored and lonely. In 1971, East Pakistan seceded and became Bangladesh. 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. 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. Always. We lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers readers already know and love. We dont document violence against the privileged like we would report violence against those without power. Like most women, I learnt to navigate this toxic misogyny, the threat of sexual violence, and patriarchy by merely existing as a dark-skinned woman in this country. Many of the stories didnt make it to the book because it became dangerous to identify people. Now imagine how it would be for someone from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, or working community to try to make inroads. Apart from his long-suffering wife, no one else in the family knows that he is a spy. Feminism In India is an award-winning digital intersectional feminist media organisation to learn, educate and develop a feminist sensibility among the youth. What we can do is attempt micro-histories of events, timelines, or local communities. Your prose is hopeful there. We must realise that its the grassroots media, who represent themselves, document what mainstream media ignores, and bring to notice what is important. 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. In recent years, the narrative of hate has escalated with the reelection of the right-wing Narendra Modi government in 2019. 2:16. In her new book Part of this process is a need to turn the lens back at the powerful. The Rumpus is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. These are stories of massive human rights violations committed by the Indian state in the countrys margins. Legislations such as National Register of Citizens and Citizenship Amendment Act threaten to render millions of people, especially Muslims, stateless. 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. ( I hate this word, voiceless, by the way). Creative . 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. Time to let the diplomats do the hard talk. We have already chosen silence and obfuscation even before the pushback has arrived. Vijayan: Chopra and others like her are a reflection of how popular culture and virality inform discourse and shape it. The entire episode is emblematic of a broader trend in Indian media. These new worlds are already herethey are maps of survival, maps of resistance. Second, we can no longer have certain conversationsconversations are now impossible. What are those ethical, moral, and political lines? So the question is not: will the future be borderless? We know that the purpose of borders has kept changing for nations. But the number of anonymous sources willing to disclose classified and conflicting information to reporters who cited them without corroboration points to a serious crisis in how information is reported to the public. 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 . This discrepancy is just one example of the confusion and misinformation spread to the public by deeply flawed media reports. She sang her first song for the movie, Lesa Lesa under the composition of Harris Jayaraj and her co-singer was the legendary, K. S. Chitra. Find him on Twitter at @AruniKashyap. 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. 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. What matters is that the book exists. Sometimes lost. Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. How did writing this book affect you? 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. RT @project_polis: Writing fiction in a dystopian world - @kiccovich in conversation with @mohammedhanif https://thepolisproject.com/listen/writing-fiction-in-a . Now, border security policies are linked to domestic politics. Reports also identified different people as the supposed masterminds of the Pulwama attack at various points without clear sourcing. Through these real histories of the people, she gives readers another perspective on old wounds like Partition and new divisionary tactics like the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. The events of 9/11 had profound effects on how border security projects and politics played out. Invariably its the writer who is the protagonist. Founded in 2009, The Rumpus is one of the longest running independent online literary and culture magazines. Growing up I was surrounded by people who emphasised the community over anything else. Gokhale claimed that it struck the biggest camp and that a large number of terrorists were killed. I test my practice of writing or being a photographer against this rule. 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. Especially when you can be charged with sedition for a tweet or arrested for the crime of committing comedy while being Muslim. 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. There are some notable exceptions, but they are an exception. [2] She became known as Rj Suchi, with her popular morning show Hello Chennai. Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitrav) / Twitter Follow Suchitra Vijayan @suchitrav Author: Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India. I have never lived under military occupation, curfew, or a looming threat of violence. If you want to support the work that goes behind publishing high-quality feminist media content, please consider becoming a FII member. Instead, she shows the absurdity of the army apparatus that strives to comply with the narrative of patriotism. . To repurpose an old sayingall infamy is now good virality. Stallings, Rumpus Original Fiction: The Litany of Invisible Things. I want to clarify that what I witnessed or the violence inflicted on my father is not the same as what over eight million Kashmiris have endured. That, perhaps, is the only way to avoid further destruction in the region. Professor Nandita Sharmas work is an excellent way to engage with this history. We are all complicit in upholding and maintaining this fear. Nine years ago, she began documenting stories from her travels along the borders of India. Even as 70% of the border with Bangladesh has been fenced, smugglers, drug couriers, human traffickers and cattle rustlers continue to cross to ply their trades. All along the border, the common refrain is, It feels like Partition is still alive., A story from near Jalpaiguri in north Bengal, that of a man named Ali, is heartbreaking. First, does my work aid the powerful? The two press briefings by the foreign secretary and Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson entertained no questions. Whose Stories Are Told In Indian History? Its a hard book to name, and I kept going back and forth. Required fields are marked *. Good, honest and non-polemical writing has always forced us to confront the lies we tell ourselves. 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. Then my agent said, Suchitra, you know, I think youre hiding behind your academic language. Suchitra Vijayanis a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. It is meant to manufacture an underclass of rightless subjects. We have migrated to a new commenting platform. 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. She was part of a music band at PSG. We believe that literature builds communityand if reading The Rumpus makes you feel more connected, please show your support! 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. Who gets to travel, tell stories, and, more importantly, publish them are all deeply connected to questions of access, resources, and privilege. I wrote the book, but those who have lived through this hell continue to live and navigate this hell. 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. Q: You frequently describe certain borders as porous. 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. 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. Even those among us who will speak of BLM will not openly challenge Hindutva or the RSS. . Later on she moved to Coimbatore for her MBA from PSG Institute of Management. 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. A memorable, humane museum of forgotten stories that we must all read and remember. M, What experiences and lives unfold in these pages. There is also a lot of deep-seated misogyny, casteism, and anti-Black racism in our communities that need to be addressed. The people in the text fear statelessness, unknown violence, and being forgotten. However, at work, Tiwari is in his element. But your book lays bare how differently India's borders are guarded from southern Bengal to the Line of Control. 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. Sign in. Second, Indias transformation into a nuclear state and the Kargil War is another critical moment of change. Then you sit in a room with a mother telling you that she has no idea what happened to her son and has no way of knowing if hes ever coming back. She entered the show on day 28 as a new contestant and was evicted on day 49. Many come from immense privileges of caste, class, wealth, access, and resources. One of the ways she upholds the humane in this book is through her interaction with the men in the security forces. 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. Nonfiction, Travel, Fiction Member Since February 2021 edit data Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. 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. This contributed to the long-running, brutal silencing of Kashmiris and their struggle for self-determination. 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. In politics we will have equality, and in social and economic life, we will have inequality. [8] On 7 March 2017, she applied for divorce. Subscribe to the Rumpus Book Clubs (poetry, prose, or both) and Letters in the Mail from authors (for adults and kids). What do words like democracy, freedom, and citizenship mean? Thats part of the political imagination that I believe we need for political movements or any sustained acts of resistance. What changeshave youobserved in the way you treat your subject after finishing your journey and book? I think this book will change the global conversation about India and shape what gets written in the future about India. In Afghanistan, Kashmir, and India, from one dangerous conflict zone to another, she spoke with people, ate with them, and listened to their stories. Q: What struck me about your work was its immersive style. Anvisha Manral March 20, 2021 09:50:40 IST More from this author , Tags: Aruni Kashyap, Asian American, bollywood, Brahmanism, caste system, democracy, Hindu, Hinduism, Hinduphobia, Hindutva, immigrants, immigration, India, Indian American, Indian American literature, Leni Riefenstahl, Midnight's Borders, Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India, model minority, Modi, Narendra Damodardas Modi, Narendra Modi, neoliberalism, photographs, photography, Polis Project, Politics, Priyanka Chopra, south asian, South Asian American, South Asian diaspora, Stan Swamy, Suchitra Vijayan, travel writing, Filed Under: Features & Reviews, Rumpus Original. 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. And what does this mean for on-ground communities, governments, armed forces, and other institutional stakeholders? Where India ends and Bangladesh begins is a question confused by history, family and the border pillars themselves. Panitar has a one-foot-high concrete block on the side of the mighty Ichamati river marked Border Pillar No.1. So we might never know the true extent of this loss. Also, a book is an act of community; it has many midwives. Suchitras account of her journeys across the undefinable and ever-shifting borders between India and its neighbours is gripping, frightening, faithful and beautiful. Its feudal, entitled, and cannibalistic. We still argue if something should be a massacre, a pogrom, or a riot. What connects these messages is deep empathy and a willingness to engage with the books stories, ideas, and arguments. They cannot be abusive or personal. 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.. 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. Copyright 2023, THG PUBLISHING PVT LTD. or its affiliated companies. When Vijayan meets him, he is inside his home with all the windows closed and sealed to snuff out light. She has sung in multiple languages including Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu. Ten years later, you were in Kashmir, where you 'hoped to find answers' by talking to a family that had lost a son. I feel very uncomfortable talking about this, or rather I dont know how to discuss this without centering myself. Its a dangerous moment where the figure of the rights-bearing citizen is being reduced to a consuming subject. The former is an essential act of dissent, even resistance, especially in these dark times. In an interview with Firstpost,Vijayan talks about her book, the militarisation of borders, ethno-nationalism, and the politics of documentation. Perhaps there are lessons to learn from that. Rumpus: Were you trying to write a hybrid-genre book? Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. In Afghanistan, Kashmir, and India, from one dangerous conflict zone to another, she spoke with people, ate with them, and listened to their stories. He drops and picks up his kids from school, pines for his old job and is concerned about the newly-formed government in Pakistanall the while trying to salvage his crumbling marriage. I now think twice about calling friends, worried if this might put them at risk. I left a few names out in the acknowledgment, worrying if it might direct more trouble towards them. What it means to photograph, write, report and document is an ongoing process. 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? Second, there is a clear distinction between speaking against the powerful and claiming to speak on behalf of the "voiceless". This is a tightrope that you walk so well. Rumpus: How hard was it to write nonfiction about such a violent contemporary history? 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. 4 reviews of Suchitra Vijayan Photography "Huge fan of Suchitra Vijayan Photography! Indias intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. Who is expendable, and the manufacturing of rightlessness to render people expendable. Often, we settle comfortably into describing things as communal riots instead of saying that it was a state-abetted violence, a pogrom, or a brutal massacre. Its when we lose hope that we believe that we have lost everything. She has a sister named, Sunitha. 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. Chopra has long been neoliberalisms reluctant feminist, hawking giving a voice and sisterhood while silencing those who question her.
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