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( I hate this word, voiceless, by the way). In India, that arbitrariness can be seen in how differently we perceive landboundaries with multiple sovereign nations. Commentary Politics. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. 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. Sign in. 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. Apart from his long-suffering wife, no one else in the family knows that he is a spy. That capacity to be able to go away and then come back profoundly affects how you write because then you are still rooted. On Feb. 14, an Indian paramilitary convoy was attacked. The credit goes to my agent Lucy Cleland who suggested this title. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. It was just a sad moment, and I couldnt celebrate a book when there was so much human tragedy playing out. 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'. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. As such, very few media establishments in India have been able to stand against the influence of political leaders. Her YouTube channel 'Suchislife' has all her updated work. Anvisha Manral March 20, 2021 09:50:40 IST Why the Modi government lies. This Life Draws Attention to Life Behind Bars and the Transcendent Power of Rap, Wrestling with Reality in The Big Door Prize. It is here that we subsume all that we otherwise celebrate under the demands of freedom, progress, liberalism, liberty, and secular ideals.". India and its Borderlands: Suchitra Vijayan in Conversation with Sharjeel Usmani, Book talk with Suchitra Vijayan, author of Midnights Borders, Crisis at the Border: Contestation, Sovereignty, and Statelessness. 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. We believe that literature builds communityand if reading The Rumpus makes you feel more connected, please show your support! This idea of responsibility gets obfuscated in many ways. 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. I felt the same way when I would prepare legal petitions for my clients. [4] She also worked as a dubbing artist for popular heroines like Shriya Saran and Lakshmi Rai.[5]. The Rumpus: It is shocking how unaware the world is about the violence the Indian government has committed since independence on its border citizens. It is the fragility of human lives that remains at the very center of the book. The second season of The Family Man begins with Srikant Tiwari, a former intelligence officer of TASCa fictitious intelligence agency akin to the Research & Analysis Wingworking at an IT company. 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. The people in this book are eloquent advocates of their history and their struggles. Lets start with a very simple statement that everyone can agree on: the way were living right now cannot continue. 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. 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. The public is sold a lie as the attack is framed as a gas leak. A: Writers are very strange creatures. She has a sister named, Sunitha. 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 . I left a few names out in the acknowledgment, worrying if it might direct more trouble towards them. The pair experience similar situations in their lives: abuse, the death or absence of a husband, and the longing for a better future. Some of the oldest resistances in our nation are those communities who have been fighting for their own homes from militarisation who seek to exploit their mineral rich home land for mining. Midnight's Borders by Suchitra Vijayan. How "The Family Man" champions the carceral security state. Some even dressed for the occasion in combat gear. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. The book was originally going to be a photographic body of work, which changed when I started writing. For instance, if you went to school with, say, Indias most powerful publisher, or your dad plays golf or socialised at the Gymkhana with the politically powerful and the culturally influential, then that system is built to get you the resources. It took a long time to get the voice right. 2:16. It offers brief historical notes on how the nations current borders came into force alongside accounts of increasing militarisation, disputes, little massacres and forgotten pogroms, no-mans-lands, and the people through whom the border runs like barbed wire. Are you expecting any pushback at all? '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. Pushback is such a benign word, isnt it? What do words like democracy, freedom, and citizenship mean? As a bedouin who grew up listening to beautiful stories from beautiful storytellers around a fire, I was transported by her storytelling. Q: Since publishing the book last year, what reflections have you hadgiven that its relevance is increasingly ascertained by 2022s interpersonal and geopolitical violence? I dont want to make this about me. The stories were a way to understand how people struggled and survived. 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. He was arrested based on fabricated evidence in the middle of a global pandemic, and he was denied bail and medical help. Because you are constantly thinking about the ethical universe you are bringing this child into What values do you teach this child? She is the founder and executive director of The Polis Project, and the author of. During the initial search, the BSF troops recovered a black coloured drone - DJI Matrice (made in China), in partially damaged condition, lying near Dhussi Bundh near Shahjada village. Could you comment on how much our present border security policies have changed in the last few years? 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). 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. Suchitra Vijayan, Newspapers in a Kashmiri home In August 2014 I travelled to the border town of Uri while researching my upcoming book, Borderlands. Rumpus: Can we please talk about Priyanka Chopra, and how her rise is seen as a marker of brown achievement? While Nehru was still declaring this victory, the slaughter began. 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. L.L.B., Law, The University of Leeds, 2004 M.A., International Relation . 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. But eventually we need all kinds of stories and arguments to emerge from what is now considered Indian American writing. How did you respond to that environment being in an extremely challenging position yourself? 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. 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 . They create cleavages of fear, xenophobia, and insecurity. 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. 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 . 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. It definitely doesnt help when trying to hold a powerful state accountable. The interview has been paraphrased and condensed for clarity, at the interviewers discretion. Get your Rumpus merch in our online store. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. I wrote the book, but those who have lived through this hell continue to live and navigate this hell. (Stay up to date on new book releases, reviews, and more with The Hindu On Books newsletter. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. 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. Some things are just not discussed anymore. 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. Vijayans book begins a much-needed conversation on thinking about freedom beyond the idea of nation and its illusory lines. You need a community of people to support you. We are all complicit in upholding and maintaining this fear. 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. On Feb. 14, an Indian paramilitary convoy was attacked in Pulwama in India-administered Kashmir, resulting in the death of 40 Indian officers. 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. The government, of course, denies this. 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 Suchitras account of her journeys across the undefinable and ever-shifting borders between India and its neighbours is gripping, frightening, faithful and beautiful. Suchitra Ramadurai, known by the mononym Suchitra, is an Indian radio jockey, popular playback singer, songwriter, composer, voice artist, dubbing artist and film actress. The original vision of the book also has newspaper cuttings, and found maps. Its feudal, entitled, and cannibalistic. 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. All too often, the Indian media portrays Kashmiris as terrorists or human shields, not as a community seeking self-determination. I have never lived under military occupation, curfew, or a looming threat of violence. Suchitra is a sought-after performer at corporate and other such stage shows. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Your email address will not be published. I had to cut those out, as my editor felt this might not work. It is here that even the most civilised amongst us begin to make excuses for repression, brutality, and violence. They dont. Later on she moved to Coimbatore for her MBA from PSG Institute of Management. Again, in the India-China border, she finds a young army officer closely referring to a book that contradicts the official version of the Indo-China war of 1962, and concludes that perhaps, he recognizes that most of soldiering involved cynical subordination to ideas that no longer made sense.. What I was most concerned about and still am are the people in the book and their safety. 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. How did you arrive at this stylistic juncture where you manage to tell the stories of these people who are radically less privileged than you without appropriating them? The result is a gripping, urgent dispatch from a modern India in crisis, and the full and vivid portrait of the country weve long been missing. 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. I think the way that news and mostly disinformation makes its way to us, we think of violence in very particular waysas disjointed. The two officers who avert the attack narrowly escape death but are left with broken bodies and broken lives. [1], Suchitra joined Sify for a year, after graduating. What are those ethical, moral, and political lines? The book was called ``a genre-bending book of nonfictionmade Can you write about loss without living? Book reviews and author interviews with a Southern focus. How do you think this inspiration from a variety of genres allowed you to tell underrepresented stories? And join us by becoming a monthly or yearly Member. I wrote a book along with it comes love, scorn, and sometimes even ridicule. In the first season, when he and his team are tasked to thwart the terrorist attack Operation Zulfiqar, the plot moves from Mumbai to Kashmir. Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. We have migrated to a new commenting platform. 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. . 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.