They are also essentially bureaucratic, judicial, and procedural acts of terror. Love, passion, anger, the desire to make a point about something. Who gets to shape these stories, what stories are chosen, what stories then are exiled? We no longer ask if this will lead to a better society, if it will benefit the vast majority of those farthest away from power. "Fighting for justice and human rights in India is a long and lonely battle" Nishrin Jafri Hussain, the daughter of Ehsan Jafri (from 2019) @suchitrav. Why the Modi government lies. They took my land, they stole my life, they stole my future, they took my nightmares and they stole my dreams too. Ali went missing in 2018. Your prose is hopeful there. Fear seems to be a constant motif in the book we see versions and types of it. If you want to support the work that goes behind publishing high-quality feminist media content, please consider becoming a FII member. A memorable, humane museum of forgotten stories that we must all read and remember. M, What experiences and lives unfold in these pages. Rumpus: How hard was it to write nonfiction about such a violent contemporary history? That changes how you write and photograph a place. It is here that we subsume all that we otherwise celebrate under the demands of freedom, progress, liberalism, liberty, and secular ideals.". Gokhale claimed that it struck the biggest camp and that a large number of terrorists were killed. Vijayan: A writers responsibility above all is to speak the truth and make sense of our social worlds. 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. Especially when you can be charged with sedition for a tweet or arrested for the crime of committing comedy while being Muslim. Instead, she shows the absurdity of the army apparatus that strives to comply with the narrative of patriotism. Nine years ago, she began documenting stories from her travels along the borders of India. Indias intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. How do you protect this child? Were there times when you doubted your own ability to record and document these people's stories? I dont want to make this about me. It is meant to manufacture an underclass of rightless subjects. I feel very uncomfortable talking about this, or rather I dont know how to discuss this without centering myself. Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. This contributed to the long-running, brutal silencing of Kashmiris and their struggle for self-determination. But it needs to do more for peace. 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. 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. [6], She wrote a short story, a graphic illustration of an episode in the life of a black peppercorn called Kuru-Milaku, called "The Runaway Peppercorn".[7]. 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. 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. The book arrived in the middle of a pandemic and a devastating second wave [of COVID-19] in India. Stallings, Rumpus Original Fiction: The Litany of Invisible Things. It is here that even the most civilised amongst us begin to make excuses for repression, brutality, and violence. They both have pregnant daughters, a fact that becomes significant as the novel progresses. A: I lost friends, saw my father go through a transplant, and I gave birth. A poll asked if its OK to be white. Heres why the phrase is loaded. Keywords: LTTE love jihad Beef politics Hindu Nationalism Kashmir 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. 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. This income helps us keep the magazine alive. Suchitra Vijayan talks to FII about Indian politics, communal violence, marginalisation and her book Midnights Borders: A Peoples History of Modern India. Dear reader, this article is free to read and it will remain free but it isnt free to produce. The credit goes to my agent Lucy Cleland who suggested this title. She has a sister named, Sunitha. Part-time Faculty suchitra@thepolisproject.com. India shares borders with a host of . '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. 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 . She is currently working on her first novel. Also, I am an unknown and insignificant entity. What connects these messages is deep empathy and a willingness to engage with the books stories, ideas, and arguments. Vijayan began her journey in Kolkata. The former is an essential act of dissent, even resistance, especially in these dark times. Second, Indias transformation into a nuclear state and the Kargil War is another critical moment of change. 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. They are arriving from various cities and people I have never met. I can see small cracks beginning to appear. Good, honest and non-polemical writing has always forced us to confront the lies we tell ourselves. In these circumstances, the lives of people inhabiting the sketchy borderlands has become all the more vulnerable, and fragile. Vijayan began her journey in Kolkata. J.G.P. 'Suchitra's account of her journeys across the undefinable and ever-shifting borders between India and its neighbours is gripping, frightening, faithful and beautiful. 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. The acts of writing, documenting, photographing, and archiving carry privileges of caste and class. Suchitras account of her journeys across the undefinable and ever-shifting borders between India and its neighbours is gripping, frightening, faithful and beautiful. 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. 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. It took a long time to get the voice right. Barrister. Although Vijayan critiques the state and its complicity in violence and erasure of lives, she refrains from villainizing the men who serve the state. But the inclination to still treat India as a democracy remains. 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. This Life Draws Attention to Life Behind Bars and the Transcendent Power of Rap, Wrestling with Reality in The Big Door Prize. Founded in 2009, The Rumpus is one of the longest running independent online literary and culture magazines. Without a political solution, Kashmir will undoubtedly emerge in upcoming news cycles. The black and white pictures accompanying the chapters add a thousand words more. Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. 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 may not be perfect worlds or even equal worlds, but they strive to be. It was just a sad moment, and I couldnt celebrate a book when there was so much human tragedy playing out. I set out not to give voice to the voiceless, my aim was to put an ear to the ground and listen. Its when we lose hope that we believe that we have lost everything. 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. 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. Legislations such as National Register of Citizens and Citizenship Amendment Act threaten to render millions of people, especially Muslims, stateless. I think freedom and dignity enables us to really go beyond in our political imaginationbeyond just electoral politics. Suchitra Vijayan is the executive director of the Polis Project. We dont document violence against the privileged like we would report violence against those without power. 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. To them he is a man who has settled into a job that has no future. Our borders had become a spectacle, and we the cheering mob, she says, as she calls for purging hatred for the sake of posterity. From the epoch of Empire to the nation-state, border making is fundamentally a political project that creates, sustains, and reinforces inequality. It seems that they have a different eye for these women, who they describe as cunning, deceitful, and in some cases, prostitutes'. Could you comment on how much our present border security policies have changed in the last few years? British India was partitioned into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan on the eve of independence in August, 1947. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. When your investigations in Kashmir came to an end, what changes did you observe in your 'grammar of dissent'? In 2020, Suchitra took part in the fourth season of the Tamil reality television show, Bigg Boss Tamil hosted by Kamal Haasan. A: Writers are very strange creatures. According to a new World Health Organization report, we lost as many as 4.7 million people in India. We must realise that its the grassroots media, who represent themselves, document what mainstream media ignores, and bring to notice what is important. They continue to. With the phone armed with a camera, everyone is a photographer; we are all witnesses. And our language helps us imagine a vision that is truly just, beautiful and ethical. Its not comparable and should not be compared. Indian Foreign Secretary V.K. Finally, Indias current transformation, the aggressive posturing of an aspiring ethno-nationalist state, will have dire consequences for the people and the region. ", "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.". NONFICTIONMidnights BordersBy Suchitra VijayanMelville HousePublished May 25, 2021. 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. Vijayan is no stranger to stories of violence. First, does my work aid the powerful? 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. I dont think theres just one emotion that drives a writer to finish writing. Its feudal, entitled, and cannibalistic. 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. She writes about war, conflict . Thanks to The New India Foundation for sending across a beautiful copy of the Midnights Borders. 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. In recent years, the narrative of hate has escalated with the reelection of the right-wing Narendra Modi government in 2019. I was reading a lot of Pessoa when I was in Afghanistan, so another placeholder title was 'Maps/Lines/Cartographies of Disquiet', inspired by the Book of Disquiet. Also, we shouldn't forget that the border making project is central to capitalist and neoliberal logic. A: This geopolitical violence is not new, theres a long bloody, brutal history to thisa cyclical, ongoing and never-ending history. And join us by becoming a monthly or yearly Member. No one can write a book alone. Respond to our political present. A British lawyer, Cyril Radcliffe set foot in India for the first time in July, 1947 to draw the borders and completed the task within seven weeks, engendering communal riots, a heavily militarized border, four wars and seven decades of violence and hatred between the two countries. 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. Midnights Borders: A Peoples History of Modern India ; Suchitra Vijayan, Context/ Westland Books, 699. RT @project_polis: Writing fiction in a dystopian world - @kiccovich in conversation with @mohammedhanif https://thepolisproject.com/listen/writing-fiction-in-a . You need a community of people to support you. This is a profoundly alienating place for anyone without the networks of privilege and resources. Suchitra Vijayan is the executive director of the Polis Project. The stories were a way to understand how people struggled and survived. Is secularism a good thing? This is such an insidious conversation to have; this was even before Adani bought it. Those notes were raw and immediate. The act of recording and documenting cannot be divorced from the inherent question of power. When Vijayan meets him, he is inside his home with all the windows closed and sealed to snuff out light. 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. But its also important to constantly take account of who is writing about this India to an Indian and global audience. She has sung in multiple languages including Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu. 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. 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. I test my practice of writing or being a photographer against this rule. @narendramodi & his role in the Gujarat Pogrom. Later on she moved to Coimbatore for her MBA from PSG Institute of Management. I am repeating what I have said before, "Kashmir is Indias greatest moral and political failure. 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. You become responsible for a human being. Her writing has appeared in The Citron Review, Dukool Magazine, Cerebration, Feminism in India, Times of India (Spellbound edition), and others. 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. It is truly the treason of the intellectuals. We could have attributed this to ignorance even a few years back; now its just silence thats deeply complicit in the Hindutva project. She completed her MFA in Writing (Fiction) from the University of San Francisco where she was awarded the Jan Zivic Fellowship and is about to begin her PhD in English with a Creative Dissertation from the University of Georgia, Athens. Along the way, we meet the men and women of TASC, dissenting students, ISIS terrorists and Pakistani military officers. We are all complicit in upholding and maintaining this fear. Suchitra Ramadurai, known by the mononym Suchitra, is an Indian radio jockey, popular playback singer, songwriter, composer, voice artist, dubbing artist and film actress. I particularly loved the fact that all our couple shots were very natural and came out truly . 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. In terms of violence, there is also this tendency to photograph and display the bodies of marginalised communities when they experience violence. She also embodies the upwardly mobile, privileged sections of the diaspora. Accompanied by this globally, democracies are becoming more authoritarian and stripping people of their citizenshipreducing them to subjects, entrenching the fault lines of inequality. 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. 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. She has a sister named, Sunitha. 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. These are edited excerpts from the interview: 'Midnight' seems to be a metaphor for multiple things both freeing and frightening. Vijayan: As we have this conversation, Dr. Stan Swamy, the eighty-four-year-old Jesuit priest, Indias oldest political prisoner, was murdered by the Indian state with the complicity of the judiciary. What do words like democracy, freedom, and citizenship mean? We're back with our flagship podcast 'Intersectional FeminismDesi Style!' She digs deep into colonial history to show how years of violence and consequential suffering has shaped these lives across generations. 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. Acted as the General Manager for a day and motivated employees to work for the same purpose to reinforce team .