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Vijayan: Let me start heregood writing is powerful and political. My role, then, and this books role, is to find in their articulations a critique of the nation-state, its violence and the arbitrariness of territorial sovereignty.". The constant making and remaking of who is a citizen, who is not, is accompanied by a profoundly dehumanising process. A: This is a very loaded question. Apart from his long-suffering wife, no one else in the family knows that he is a spy. You can find them onYouTube&Linkedin,and can also check out their websitehere. But eventually we need all kinds of stories and arguments to emerge from what is now considered Indian American writing. 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. Perhaps that offers some protection? Having been trained in law, Suchitra Vijayan initially worked at the United Nations war tribunals in Yugoslavia. This means that, for the longest time, the depiction of violence and marginalised communities has been problematic. Although Vijayan critiques the state and its complicity in violence and erasure of lives, she refrains from villainizing the men who serve the state. We see that during the journey, in a number of places, people stood in lines to speak with you, to show their paperwork to youhow did you negotiate the weight ofthose expectations, which might not have been explicit, but were still very much present? I have never lived under military occupation, curfew, or a looming threat of violence. 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. As a Bookshop affiliate, The Rumpus earns a percentage from qualifying purchases. 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. 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. Subscribe to the Rumpus Book Clubs (poetry, prose, or both) and Letters in the Mail from authors (for adults and kids). Lets start with a very simple statement that everyone can agree on: the way were living right now cannot continue. 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. We have already chosen silence and obfuscation even before the pushback has arrived. Could you comment on how much our present border security policies have changed in the last few years? Can you write about loss without living? She has sung in multiple languages including Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu. They are arriving from various cities and people I have never met. Vijayan: The photographs were the heart of this project. No one would put themselves through the agony and pain of writing. 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? Beyond the confusion over the death tolls at Balakot, news organizations variously reported that between 25 and 350 kilograms of the explosive RDX was used in the attack, when no such information was officially released. [8] On 7 March 2017, she applied for divorce. A consistent ethical framework within the media hasnt existed for a long time. Chopra has long been neoliberalisms reluctant feminist, hawking giving a voice and sisterhood while silencing those who question her. Especially when you can be charged with sedition for a tweet or arrested for the crime of committing comedy while being Muslim. Its about what people like me should do. Creative . Excellent interview, brave insights and critical reflections! Also, a book is an act of community; it has many midwives. These may not be perfect worlds or even equal worlds, but they strive to be. Even those who now write about Modis India, will never write about Brahmanism or be critical of how caste works in the diaspora. It seems that they have a different eye for these women, who they describe as cunning, deceitful, and in some cases, prostitutes'. 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. The Rumpus: It is shocking how unaware the world is about the violence the Indian government has committed since independence on its border citizens. 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. Keywords: LTTE love jihad Beef politics Hindu Nationalism Kashmir 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. 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. 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'. 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. 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. Take a look at theseevents: The vast infrastructure of detention centers being built in Assam and outside; a politician from a ruling party incites violence by saying, goli maaro saalon ko, and remains free; a minister, a Harvard educated technocrat, garlands and celebrates men for the grave crime of lynching; Dr Teltumbde and other BK 16 [the 16 arrests made in the Bhima Koregaon case] political prisoners remain incarcerated with little, no or manufactured evidence for being dissenting subjects; and a standup comic is arrested for the crime of existing as a Muslim. We need more such books. Required fields are marked *. What are those ethical, moral, and political lines? L.L.B., Law, The University of Leeds, 2004 M.A., International Relation . ""The historical unity of the ruling classes is realized in the state." Antonio Gramsci" Barkha Dutt: India has made its point in Pakistan. Siaan On Being Queer And Being Online, FII Interviews: Journalist Meena Kotwal On Minority Politics, Journalism Today And The Caste Divide. How do you think the media ought to responsibly report on peoples lives and experiences? But it needs to do more for peace. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister at law and the author of Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India. What matters is that the book exists. On Feb. 14, an Indian paramilitary convoy was attacked in Pulwama in India-administered Kashmir, resulting in the death of 40 Indian officers. Such writings have long been implicated in the history of colonial ethnographic practices, where native informants are poised to become the voices of the empire. So now, how do we respond to this? Aruni Kashyap writes in English, and his native language Assamese. I still do. I was much younger when I took on this project, so I wanted to prove those people wrong. What changeshave youobserved in the way you treat your subject after finishing your journey and book? History and memory is localwhich means its almost impossible to write about India. 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. That, perhaps, is the only way to avoid further destruction in the region. Chopra cleverly uses womens empowerment, diversity, and the immigrant story as a facade to parrot and promote deeply problematic ideologies, takes, and stances. That capacity to be able to go away and then come back profoundly affects how you write because then you are still rooted. The taxi driver who describes the Egyptian revolution in five minutes to an American columnist (who speaks no Arabic) is sadly where the genre is today. For far too long, they and their progeny have held power to shape the political understanding of our social worlds. Legislations such as National Register of Citizens and Citizenship Amendment Act threaten to render millions of people, especially Muslims, stateless. Suchitra Vijayan. Q: What was your goal with writing the book in the beginning and how did it change and drive you throughout those 8 years? Its impossible for a writer not to be affected by their personal life. You need to write what you seethats why you started this project.. Suchitra was married to actor Karthik Kumar between 2005 and 2017. She is currently working on her first novel. The publishing landscape, including Indian publishing, is deeply flawedit is upper class, upper caste, and deeply alienating for anyone who doesnt come from already established and existing networks of privilege. 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. Suchitra Ramadurai, known by the mononym Suchitra, is an Indian radio jockey, popular playback singer, songwriter, composer, voice artist, dubbing artist and film actress. 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 We are all complicit in upholding and maintaining this fear. Once we eliminated the spectacle, we realized that the Indian public got very little information about the Pulwama attack and its aftermath. It took me 8 years to write the book. 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. So the question is not: will the future be borderless? Time to let the diplomats do the hard talk. 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 . " India's intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. Rumpus: What do you think is the value of well-crafted literary nonfiction in sustaining conversations about equality and justice? The show deals with interesting international happenings. Its not comparable and should not be compared. On Feb. 14, an Indian paramilitary convoy was attacked. While that incident had a profound impact on me, my politics, how I think about violence, its relationship to justice, or the lack of it, this is not the same kind of violence Kashmiris have been subjugated to. What is the function of seeing and documenting? 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. Sometimes the news is the story. 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. Without any official statement on the number of casualties by the Indian government, the Indian news media reported that 300 terrorists were killed, citing government sources. I test my practice of writing or being a photographer against this rule. Q: As you wrote this book, you dont hesitate to meditate on how your personal life bidirectionally impacted the book. 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. In terms of violence, there is also this tendency to photograph and display the bodies of marginalised communities when they experience violence. 6,253 Followers, 902 Following, 1,165 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitravijayan) This is the age of erosion of citizenship rights, a kind of ongoing attrition against human rights, civil liberties, and in the case of India, an accelerated dilution of fundamental rights. At a time when right-wing nationalism is crescendoing in India and across the world, Suchitra Vijayans Midnights Borders raises pertinent questions about the very foundations of Indias nationalism the cartography of South Asian nation-states defined by arbitrary lines drawn hastily by the British colonial administration. Copyright 2023, THG PUBLISHING PVT LTD. or its affiliated companies. India has consistently warred against its own citizens; this book is about some of these wars. Can any of theTIMEsubscribers who loved that cover tell us now whats happening in South Sudan today? 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. Barrister. Perhaps there are lessons to learn from that. Suchitra Vijayan traveled Indias vast land border to explore how these populations live, and document how even places just a few miles apart can feel like entirely different countries.. Qin took charge as Chinese foreign minister in December, succeeding Wang Yi. The post-Cold War and 90s rhetoric of a borderless world that accompanied globalisation also kick-started massive border fencing projects in India. 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. Modi met with senior police officers and ordered them not to intervene as violence raged. ( I hate this word, voiceless, by the way). Her distinct and bold voice made her very popular with the younger crowd. 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. Second, border policies are about "performance and articulations of citizenship". In the middle of significant change, this fraught system cannot exist as it is. She is the founder and executive director of The Polis Project, and the author of Midnights Borders: A Peoples History of Modern India, recently published by Context, Westland. The two press briefings by the foreign secretary and Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson entertained no questions. Q: You frequently describe certain borders as porous. Rumpus: Toni Morrison said that she writes from a place of delight, not disappointment. This is where I believe literary nonfiction becomes a powerful tool. Now imagine how it would be for someone from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, or working community to try to make inroads. Because you are constantly thinking about the ethical universe you are bringing this child into What values do you teach this child? The pandemic showed us that crises and recurrent disasters that annihilate our lives are here to stay. 582.1K views. Suchitra Vijayan. How do you protect this child? 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. There are some notable exceptions, but they are an exception. There is something deeply flawed in the way we live today. 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. This media blitzkrieg resulted in the erasure of two important political trends. In Assam, Vijayan met people devastated by the National Register of Citizens process, with names of long-time residents missing from the final list, and in Kashmir she spent time with a family mourning the loss of their son in an encounter. 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. They both have pregnant daughters, a fact that becomes significant as the novel progresses. 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. She was part of a music band at PSG. Say, for instance, do we need a James Nachtwey to fly to war-torn Bosnia? [2] She became known as Rj Suchi, with her popular morning show Hello Chennai. I kept detailed audio notes that I recorded each night when I traveled. However, at work, Tiwari is in his element. Copyright 2023. It is always Bollywood, the ascent of Priyanka Chopra, or the diasporic loneliness. Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. Theyre screaming all the time, its just that we dont listen to them. In retaliation, the Indian Air Force carried out an airstrike on an alleged militant training camp in Balakot in Pakistans Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. While Nehru was still declaring this victory, the slaughter began. As a trained barrister, I used to believe in the concept of justicebut now I simply call this freedom and dignity. She also embodies the upwardly mobile, privileged sections of the diaspora. Vijayan shows a keen eye for detail as she presents these diverse lives. It is here that even the most civilised amongst us begin to make excuses for repression, brutality, and violence. Similarly, motherhood changed me; it radicalised me. This is a tightrope that you walk so well. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Suchitra Vijayan. Some things are just not discussed anymore. We still argue if something should be a massacre, a pogrom, or a riot. Its a practice. Why the Modi government lies. This idea of responsibility gets obfuscated in many ways. Midnights Borders perhaps also critiques the widely read body of work available as Indian English Writing (IWE), a literary canon that has so far told the story of India but seldom demonstrated social responsibility by acknowledging the atrocities India has committed silently within its borders. I had to write and rewrite this book so many times. No one can write a book alone. In 2020, Suchitra took part in the fourth season of the Tamil reality television show, Bigg Boss Tamil hosted by Kamal Haasan. These are stories of massive human rights violations committed by the Indian state in the countrys margins. The first true peoples history of modern India, told through a seven-year, 9,000-mile journey along its many contested borders. [1] Career [ edit] Perhaps thats their victory. Early on, the idea of bearing witness as a rhetorical tool and as a literary device became deeply problematic. Vijayan began her journey in Kolkata. India shares borders with a host of . How do you think your book contributes to the larger conversation about India? 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. I am repeating what I have said before, "Kashmir is Indias greatest moral and political failure. 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. 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As I travelled, I was very aware of these inherent power differences. Rumpus: Can we please talk about Priyanka Chopra, and how her rise is seen as a marker of brown achievement? Whose Stories Are Told In Indian History? There are so many nonfiction books about India published yearly but few are so important and subversive. 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. "Fighting for justice and human rights in India is a long and lonely battle" Nishrin Jafri Hussain, the daughter of Ehsan Jafri (from 2019) NONFICTIONMidnights BordersBy Suchitra VijayanMelville HousePublished May 25, 2021. Why do you think India has gotten away with this so far? 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.. Do you think the future is borderless? It is here that we subsume all that we otherwise celebrate under the demands of freedom, progress, liberalism, liberty, and secular ideals.". There is also a lot of deep-seated misogyny, casteism, and anti-Black racism in our communities that need to be addressed. You dont need a Leni Riefenstahl today. 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 . 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. As an attorney, 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 Iraqi refugees. Sometimes they are no more, but your storytelling is so invigorating that the reader doesnt forget them. Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. 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.
