Q: As you wrote this book, you dont hesitate to meditate on how your personal life bidirectionally impacted the book. So the question is not: will the future be borderless? 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. 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. 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. The government, of course, denies this. In Midnight's Borders, barrister, political analyst, and writer Suchitra Vijayan documentsmany such telling accounts of lives both growing and barely getting by alongIndian borderlands. This media blitzkrieg resulted in the erasure of two important political trends. 'Suchitra's account of her journeys across the undefinable and ever-shifting borders between India and its neighbours is gripping, frightening, faithful and beautiful. 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. Suchitra was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, as the daughter of Ramadurai and Padmaja. Suchitra Vijayan (Author of Midnight's Borders) - Goodreads Were there times when you doubted your own ability to record and document these people's stories? 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. India has consistently warred against its own citizens; this book is about some of these wars. Suchitras account of her journeys across the undefinable and ever-shifting borders between India and its neighbours is gripping, frightening, faithful and beautiful. 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. These new worlds are already herethey are maps of survival, maps of resistance. Suchitra is a BSc graduate from Mar Ivanios College (Trivandrum). 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. I left a few names out in the acknowledgment, worrying if it might direct more trouble towards them. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. 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. 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 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. It seems that they have a different eye for these women, who they describe as cunning, deceitful, and in some cases, prostitutes'. Reports also identified different people as the supposed masterminds of the Pulwama attack at various points without clear sourcing. You can find them onYouTube&Linkedin,and can also check out their websitehere. Also, we shouldn't forget that the border making project is central to capitalist and neoliberal logic. 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. They dont. Some people later chose not to be included because they feared repercussions, especially as the NRC process started playing out. Co-founded the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, Suchitra is also the founder of the Polis Project, a research and journalism organisation. This is a tightrope that you walk so well. Propaganda and poison work in far more sophisticated ways. 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. We play an ever more important role in these times when there is a fascist authoritarian regime in India and a deeply racist police state in the US. This is a challenging task for the writer. We believe that literature builds communityand if reading The Rumpus makes you feel more connected, please show your support! The constant making and remaking of who is a citizen, who is not, is accompanied by a profoundly dehumanising process. They are arriving from various cities and people I have never met. So I dont know if it was empathy so much as just building a relationship with people. But for me hope is radical; hope is the last bastion of our defense. 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. 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. We thank her for her time, patience, and illuminating insights into her work. The show deals with interesting international happenings. 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. 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. She is actively involved in circulating urgent and underrepresented news from the world through her online platform. This language drums the idea of the fundamental importance of justice, and such language is inalienable: it can easily be defined and empathetically understood. Suchitra tweets @suchitrav. It is also the site of the worlds biggest crisis of statelessness, as it strips citizenship from hundreds of thousands of its peopleespecially those living in disputed border regions. Later on she moved to Coimbatore for her MBA from PSG Institute of Management. We have migrated to a new commenting platform. How do you think this inspiration from a variety of genres allowed you to tell underrepresented stories? It is always Bollywood, the ascent of Priyanka Chopra, or the diasporic loneliness. J.G.P. 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. These are edited excerpts from the interview: 'Midnight' seems to be a metaphor for multiple things both freeing and frightening. Our borders had become a spectacle, and we the cheering mob, she says, as she calls for purging hatred for the sake of posterity. Gokhale claimed that it struck the biggest camp and that a large number of terrorists were killed. When I finished writing, I had become much richer in many waysnot in a material waybut through a community. 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. She also embodies the upwardly mobile, privileged sections of the diaspora. Its impossible for a writer not to be affected by their personal life. This is a profoundly alienating place for anyone without the networks of privilege and resources. Many TV newsrooms were transformed into caricatures of military command centers, with anchors assessing military technology and strategy (sometimes incorrectly). The latter is an act of violence against people whose voice you are appropriating. 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. 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. Rumpus: Why do you think the ever-growing canon of Indian American literature has barely tried to engage with these conversations through their stories? . Who gets to travel, tell stories, and, more importantly, publish them are all deeply connected to questions of access, resources, and privilege. 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. Itembodied young Indias grand ambitions and aspired to a nation made of men and women equally protected by the law. 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. We must realise that its the grassroots media, who represent themselves, document what mainstream media ignores, and bring to notice what is important. Midnights Borders , Suchitra Vijayan includes a photo of the pillar, which becomes a cricket stump for boys on either side of the border most days. Midnights Borders: A Peoples History of Modern India ; Suchitra Vijayan, Context/ Westland Books, 699. Even those who now write about Modis India, will never write about Brahmanism or be critical of how caste works in the diaspora. 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. Some things are just not discussed anymore. 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. 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. If it does, I have failed. There are enough stories of people parachuting into communities to do human interest stories. 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. Stallings, Rumpus Original Fiction: The Litany of Invisible Things. Rumpus: The book utilizes more than one medium: photography, narrative nonfiction, journalism. A memorable, humane museum of forgotten stories that we must all read and remember. M, What experiences and lives unfold in these pages. 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. 582.1K views. That capacity to be able to go away and then come back profoundly affects how you write because then you are still rooted. As such, very few media establishments in India have been able to stand against the influence of political leaders. I feel very uncomfortable talking about this, or rather I dont know how to discuss this without centering myself. 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. Suchitra Vijayan > Faculty > People > NYU Gallatin Where does that leave us? 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. When your investigations in Kashmir came to an end, what changes did you observe in your 'grammar of dissent'? And were there any apprehensions since you began working on this 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. Having been trained in law, Suchitra Vijayan initially worked at the United Nations war tribunals in Yugoslavia. There are also those who have previously been tacit, if not active, supporters of the right-wing Hindu nationalist Indian state. Why the Modi government lies. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. Why do you think India has gotten away with this so far? Can any of theTIMEsubscribers who loved that cover tell us now whats happening in South Sudan today? First, does my work aid the powerful? Suchitra Vijayan. Vijayan: Chopra and others like her are a reflection of how popular culture and virality inform discourse and shape it. Anvisha Manral March 20, 2021 09:50:40 IST It is here that we subsume all that we otherwise celebrate under the demands of freedom, progress, liberalism, liberty, and secular ideals.". There are so many nonfiction books about India published yearly but few are so important and subversive. Copyright 2023. This also decides who gets access, awards and accolades. But the inclination to still treat India as a democracy remains. How did writing this book affect you? Later on she moved to Coimbatore for her MBA from PSG Institute of Management. We also need a fundamental reframing of language. Suchitra Vijayan on Twitter: "Excerpts from the #BBC documentary Early on, the idea of bearing witness as a rhetorical tool and as a literary device became deeply problematic. 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. The entire episode is emblematic of a broader trend in Indian media. Sometimes lost. And that violence is often abetted by the state and goes unpunished. Author In Focus, Celebration, The Literary Journal. This Life Draws Attention to Life Behind Bars and the Transcendent Power of Rap, Wrestling with Reality in The Big Door Prize. Accompanied by this globally, democracies are becoming more authoritarian and stripping people of their citizenshipreducing them to subjects, entrenching the fault lines of inequality. Includes previously unreleased investigation under #JackStraw. Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. Many of the stories didnt make it to the book because it became dangerous to identify people. The Author Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. Whose Stories Are Told In Indian History? So lets be very clear that Indias intellectual literary landscape is deeply problematic, feudal, and alienating," says Suchitra Vijayan to FII, Featured Image Source: More Buying Choices 1,732.00 (16 Used & New offers) Audible Audiobook 0.00 Free with Audible trial 586.00 ( 9 ) In this podcast, Vijayan discusses with host Alex Woodson her 9,000-mile journey through India's borderlands, which formed the basis of the book, and she discusses the violent and continuing history of the 1947 partition, the stark differences and similarities along South Asia's various borders, and what "citizenship" mean in India in 2021 and Vijayan undertakes a seven-year long, 9,000-mile journey along the borders of India, and interviews people living in these liminal spaces. The book was originally going to be a photographic body of work, which changed when I started writing. 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. Ali lived right on the edge of the India-Bangladesh border. Legislations such as National Register of Citizens and Citizenship Amendment Act threaten to render millions of people, especially Muslims, stateless. [2] She became known as Rj Suchi, with her popular morning show Hello Chennai. 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. Also read: Book Review: Looking Through Dalit Sahitya And Ambedkar. They cannot be abusive or personal. To them he is a man who has settled into a job that has no future. According to a new World Health Organization report, we lost as many as 4.7 million people in India. She has a sister named, Sunitha. 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 . The book was called ``a genre-bending book of nonfictionmade 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. O. The act of recording and documenting cannot be divorced from the inherent question of power. 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. 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.

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