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A: I dont agree with this kind of framing, because its not that underrepresented people dont have voices. Later on she moved to Coimbatore for her MBA from PSG Institute of Management. Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. A lot of travel writing is still written by a particular group of people with immense privilege, and they all tend to center themselves. I had to write and rewrite this book so many times. Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. More Buying Choices 1,732.00 (16 Used & New offers) Audible Audiobook 0.00 Free with Audible trial 586.00 ( 9 ) The latter is an act of violence against people whose voice you are appropriating. 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. She is actively involved in circulating urgent and underrepresented news from the world through her online platform. India shares borders with a host of . Vijayan undertakes a seven-year long, 9,000-mile . In season two, a quick flashback resolves the plotline from the previous season. Q: As you wrote this book, you dont hesitate to meditate on how your personal life bidirectionally impacted the book. 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. Barrister. 2:16. The former is an essential act of dissent, even resistance, especially in these dark times. 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. The acts of writing, documenting, photographing, and archiving carry privileges of caste and class. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. 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 . How does one think of violence, how does one make sense of all this, how does one retain a sense ofnot exactly humanity, but ratherempathy for the other? The photographs add another dimension to the book, and could have been used more. 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. Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, photographer, lawyer, political essayist, and a lecturer. Not mine. Chopra cleverly uses womens empowerment, diversity, and the immigrant story as a facade to parrot and promote deeply problematic ideologies, takes, and stances. The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy, Supreme Court forms expert panel to probe any regulatory failure on Adani issue, India makes renewed push for consensus at G20 Foreign Ministers meeting, Hindenburg Research report on Adani Group | Supreme Court verdict on expert committee on March 2, High debt on Vedanta books puts investors on tenterhooks, Employees Provident Fund: How to activate UAN online, 1947: Madras Devadasis (Prevention of Dedication) Act passed, RMA 0-1 FCB, El Clasico highlights: Barcelona leads on aggregate after beating Real Madrid courtesy of a Militao own goal. Bhawan Singh, who photographed the Nellie massacre, said he had never seen anything like it. Second, border policies are about "performance and articulations of citizenship". This book ate into so much of my life. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. Along the way, we meet the men and women of TASC, dissenting students, ISIS terrorists and Pakistani military officers. 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. We need to think about border practices, policing, and national security policies within the larger historical and political contexts. She is currently working on her first novel. If you think about communities in resistance to immense violations, theyre all interconnected to climate justice. Yes, men who act as petty sovereigns are everywhere. I was much younger when I took on this project, so I wanted to prove those people wrong. News organizations such as India Today, NDTV, News 18, the Indian Express, First Post, Mumbai Mirror, ANI and others routinely attributed their information to anonymous government sources, forensic experts, police officers and intelligence officers. No independent investigations were conducted, and serious questions about intelligence failures were left unanswered. This is the backdrop against which we map how border practices and policies have played out in India. But for me hope is radical; hope is the last bastion of our defense. In Midnight's Borders, Suchitra Vijayan meditates on belongingness, freedom and political implications of territorial demarcations 'The border making project is central to the capitalist and neoliberal logic,' Vijayan says. 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. The travel, the people they encounter, and the political events they record quickly become cameos. This also decides who gets access, awards and accolades. 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.". Because you are constantly thinking about the ethical universe you are bringing this child into What values do you teach this child? 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. . 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. Indias intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. I felt the same way when I would prepare legal petitions for my clients. What connects these messages is deep empathy and a willingness to engage with the books stories, ideas, and arguments. I can see small cracks beginning to appear. Its a dangerous moment where the figure of the rights-bearing citizen is being reduced to a consuming subject. Fearful of the future he asked quietly, Where did all this hate come from, where is it going to take us? echoing what many residents had told her. Vijayan is no stranger to stories of violence. [4] She also worked as a dubbing artist for popular heroines like Shriya Saran and Lakshmi Rai.[5]. Its easy for Indian Americans and diaspora Desis to become tokens who speak of diversity but not equity or representation, talk of caste as culture and whitewash Hindutva. Midnight's Borders by Suchitra Vijayan falls in both categories. I have no control over what comes next. But eventually we need all kinds of stories and arguments to emerge from what is now considered Indian American writing. Some even dressed for the occasion in combat gear. Thank you! The stories were a way to understand how people struggled and survived. Its feudal, entitled, and cannibalistic. 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. Were there times when you doubted your own ability to record and document these people's stories? NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study. But your book lays bare how differently India's borders are guarded from southern Bengal to the Line of Control. Ali lived right on the edge of the India-Bangladesh border. What are those ethical, moral, and political lines? Dear reader, this article is free to read and it will remain free but it isnt free to produce. (Stay up to date on new book releases, reviews, and more with The Hindu On Books newsletter. Rumpus: How hard was it to write nonfiction about such a violent contemporary history? Even those who now write about Modis India, will never write about Brahmanism or be critical of how caste works in the diaspora. We have migrated to a new commenting platform. Many TV newsrooms were transformed into caricatures of military command centers, with anchors assessing military technology and strategy (sometimes incorrectly). ). Indias intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. Also, a book is an act of community; it has many midwives. Vijayans book begins a much-needed conversation on thinking about freedom beyond the idea of nation and its illusory lines. As a bedouin who grew up listening to beautiful stories from beautiful storytellers around a fire, I was transported by her storytelling. We still argue if something should be a massacre, a pogrom, or a riot. She responded to an ad for the post of an RJ in Radio Mirchi. Find him on Twitter at @AruniKashyap. We need more such books. They dont. She digs deep into colonial history to show how years of violence and consequential suffering has shaped these lives across generations. 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. The book arrived in the middle of a pandemic and a devastating second wave [of COVID-19] in India. I have never lived under military occupation, curfew, or a looming threat of violence. It took a long time to get the voice right. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. Chopra has long been neoliberalisms reluctant feminist, hawking giving a voice and sisterhood while silencing those who question her. 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. Nonfiction, Travel, Fiction Member Since February 2021 edit data Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. Photograph of Suchitra Vijayan courtesy of Suchitra Vijayan. 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. J.G.P. 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. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments. She perfectly captured the happiness and the intimacy of the occasion, the warmth of all the people present, and the splendor of the venue. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions?". Part of this process is a need to turn the lens back at the powerful. Part-time Faculty suchitra@thepolisproject.com. Suchitra tweets @suchitrav. 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. She lives in New York. This is a challenging task for the writer. Rumpus: What do you think is the value of well-crafted literary nonfiction in sustaining conversations about equality and justice? Although Vijayan critiques the state and its complicity in violence and erasure of lives, she refrains from villainizing the men who serve the state. Also read: Whose Stories Are Told In Indian History? This idea of responsibility gets obfuscated in many ways. Our investigation into the Indian medias reporting on the Pulwama attack found that many reports were contradictory, biased, incendiary and uncorroborated. To repurpose an old sayingall infamy is now good virality. Vijayan: I would say I am hopeful. Stallings, Rumpus Original Fiction: The Litany of Invisible Things. Can any of theTIMEsubscribers who loved that cover tell us now whats happening in South Sudan today? Suchitra Vijayan and Francesca Recchia In this era when Indian armed forces and the police act with absolute impunity, a handful of local news outlets play an essential role in reporting and. Rumpus: I believe your book contributes to an important conversation about India we must have right now in the United States, for its own sake. One of the reasons I kept writing was of course all the people I met: their love and time and generosity. You become responsible for a human being. I left my 18-month-old daughter to travel and finish this book. 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. But who gets to speak for so many of us? I think these are fundamental questions of freedom and dignity. Husain Haqqani: Pakistan released the Indian pilot. As a spy working for TASC, Tiwari has to juggle being an underpaid government employee as well as an absent husband and a perpetually late and distracted father. 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. For far too long, they and their progeny have held power to shape the political understanding of our social worlds. Its a hard book to name, and I kept going back and forth. She also embodies the upwardly mobile, privileged sections of the diaspora. After her Twitter page was hacked in 2016, and the pictures and videos released by the hacker went viral under #suchileaks, following a spate of bad press owing to the fact that she only released a statement on Sun News saying she was focused on shutting the page down, Suchitra left for London to pursue culinary arts at Le Cordon Bleu. 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'. No one would put themselves through the agony and pain of writing. Instead, she shows the absurdity of the army apparatus that strives to comply with the narrative of patriotism. They continue to. This is where I believe literary nonfiction becomes a powerful tool. I feel very uncomfortable talking about this, or rather I dont know how to discuss this without centering myself. Each of these subscription programs along with tax-deductible donations made to The Rumpus through our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas, helps keep us going and brings us closer to sustainability. I particularly loved the fact that all our couple shots were very natural and came out truly . 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. We also need a fundamental reframing of language. That, perhaps, is the only way to avoid further destruction in the region. How do you think your book contributes to the larger conversation about India? In terms of violence, there is also this tendency to photograph and display the bodies of marginalised communities when they experience violence. "Fighting for justice and human rights in India is a long and lonely battle" Nishrin Jafri Hussain, the daughter of Ehsan Jafri (from 2019) Those notes were raw and immediate. 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. The first true peoples history of modern India, told through a seven-year, 9,000-mile journey along its many contested borders. [8] On 7 March 2017, she applied for divorce. But it needs to do more for peace. The pandemic showed us that crises and recurrent disasters that annihilate our lives are here to stay. Is secularism a good thing? This is such an insidious conversation to have; this was even before Adani bought it. We thank her for her time, patience, and illuminating insights into her work. Indian Foreign Secretary V.K. 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. It seems that they have a different eye for these women, who they describe as cunning, deceitful, and in some cases, prostitutes'. Good, honest and non-polemical writing has always forced us to confront the lies we tell ourselves. 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. Time to let the diplomats do the hard talk. By Suchitra Vijayan, Why should I read it? Invariably its the writer who is the protagonist. Follow our team of columnists and reporters who write about the media. Rumpus: Toni Morrison said that she writes from a place of delight, not disappointment. 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). Its a vicious cycle. Professor Nandita Sharmas work is an excellent way to engage with this history. Suchitra is now a singer-songwriter as well, composing music on her own and in collaboration with Singer Ranjith. 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. There are so many nonfiction books about India published yearly but few are so important and subversive. 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. 6,253 Followers, 902 Following, 1,165 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitravijayan) What is the emotional and artistic cost that one pays as a writer while crafting these narratives? We removed an image just before the printing to make sure the person was protected. 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. Keywords: LTTE love jihad Beef politics Hindu Nationalism Kashmir How do you think this inspiration from a variety of genres allowed you to tell underrepresented stories? Suchitra Vijayan, Newspapers in a Kashmiri home In August 2014 I travelled to the border town of Uri while researching my upcoming book, Borderlands. Many come from immense privileges of caste, class, wealth, access, and resources. Vijayan: Chopra and others like her are a reflection of how popular culture and virality inform discourse and shape it. They create cleavages of fear, xenophobia, and insecurity. 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. Firstly, when we talk about violence, we often talk about it only as communal violence, as if both communities have equal strength and power. Empathy is taught by our communities; we are brought up with it. 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. Christopher Clary: India and Pakistan resort to the diplomacy of violence and flirt with catastrophe, Hafsa Kanjwal: As India beats its war drums over Pulwama, its occupation of Kashmir is being ignored. But, more importantly, I wanted my readers to walk away with a sense of empathy. But who carries the responsibility of that fear? Sometimes they are no more, but your storytelling is so invigorating that the reader doesnt forget them. In addition, she is an award- winning photographer, the founder, and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization. Second, Indias transformation into a nuclear state and the Kargil War is another critical moment of change. 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. The black and white pictures accompanying the chapters add a thousand words more. Many news channels are not only owned, operated or invested in by politically influential families, but also are sometimes run for the express purpose of advancing party positions. He was arrested based on fabricated evidence in the middle of a global pandemic, and he was denied bail and medical help. 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. It definitely doesnt help when trying to hold a powerful state accountable. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Your email address will not be published. We once asked these questions, even if there were no clear answers or consensus. She has sung in multiple languages including Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu.

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