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. They are also essentially bureaucratic, judicial, and procedural acts of terror. A:I dont think an ethical or moral compass exists nowI dont know if it ever existed. It took me 8 years to write the book. Having been trained in law, Suchitra Vijayan initially worked at the United Nations war tribunals in Yugoslavia. However, at work, Tiwari is in his element. 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 first true peoples history of modern India, told through a seven-year, 9,000-mile journey along its many contested borders. 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. I think the way that news and mostly disinformation makes its way to us, we think of violence in very particular waysas disjointed. As a bedouin who grew up listening to beautiful stories from beautiful storytellers around a fire, I was transported by her storytelling. 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. The mortality of someone you love affects how you write. 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. If it does, I have failed. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. 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. Its an immense privilege to be able to write and be published. Say, for instance, do we need a James Nachtwey to fly to war-torn Bosnia? Also read: Examining My Caste And Its History Is Eye-Opening: A Personal Essay On Casteism And Ancestry. Who gets to travel, tell stories, and, more importantly, publish them are all deeply connected to questions of access, resources, and privilege. The pair experience similar situations in their lives: abuse, the death or absence of a husband, and the longing for a better future. Even those among us who will speak of BLM will not openly challenge Hindutva or the RSS. Bhawan Singh, who photographed the Nellie massacre, said he had never seen anything like it. In her book, she makes her intention clear at the very beginning, claiming that this endeavor is not to give voice to the voiceless but to critique the nation-state, its violence, and the arbitrariness of territorial sovereignty. She acknowledges that a book in its limited scope cannot really encapsulate the entirety of this journey, and it will remain more of a scrapbook, a collection of images, texts, poetry, and maps. Early on, I was very careful to acknowledge this. The book was called ``a genre- bending book of nonfictionmade of stories, encounters, vignettes, and photographsabout home, belonging, and displacement.`` Her essays, photographs, and interviews have appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Nation, The Boston Review, Foreign Policy, Lit Hub, Rumpus, Electric literature, NPR, NBC, and BBC. Book reviews and author interviews with a Southern focus. The images, however, are not all bereft of hope, as children from both India and Bangladesh use a border pillar as a cricket stump, while men on opposing sides of the war on terror in Afghanistan gather around in a cold evening, smoking and sharing stories. Second, there is a clear distinction between speaking against the powerful and claiming to speak on behalf of the "voiceless". How did you respond to that environment being in an extremely challenging position yourself? The border runs through him, his friend Jamshed had told Vijayan, He is almost gone, but I dont want his story to be gone too.. The entire episode is emblematic of a broader trend in Indian media. She studied Law, Political Science and International Relations, and was trained as a Barrister-at-Law and called to Bar at the Honourable Society of Inner Temple. Subscribe here. 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. First, the escalation in the counterinsurgency war within the Kashmir Valley under which hundreds of activists were arrested and several Kashmiri civilians killed in gun battles was grievously underreported. 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. Theyre screaming all the time, its just that we dont listen to them. She entered the show on day 28 as a new contestant and was evicted on day 49. What makes these lives so vivid is how Vijayan contextualizes them by placing them in the bigger picture of history. She was part of a music band at PSG. Yes, men who act as petty sovereigns are everywhere. Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. What is the emotional and artistic cost that one pays as a writer while crafting these narratives? Suchitra Vijayan is the executive director of the Polis Project. The book is a prelude to what was coming, and is also a impassioned plea to my readers to ask some fundamental questions of what it means to live in a country like Indiawhat is the function of a state when its primary preoccupation is no longer the citizen but a performance of an ideology? Although Vijayan critiques the state and its complicity in violence and erasure of lives, she refrains from villainizing the men who serve the state. It was just a sad moment, and I couldnt celebrate a book when there was so much human tragedy playing out. What moral and political stands we should take in the face of ongoing oppression. Where does that leave us? 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. He writes about how when the Constitution was adopted, "We are going to enter into a life of contradictions. 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. Vijayan: I would say I am hopeful. 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. Can you write about loss without living? Rumpus: Can we please talk about Priyanka Chopra, and how her rise is seen as a marker of brown achievement? 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. The Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Muhammad soon claimed responsibility. What we can do is attempt micro-histories of events, timelines, or local communities. Suchitra is now a singer-songwriter as well, composing music on her own and in collaboration with Singer Ranjith. I have no control over what comes next. 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. I kept detailed audio notes that I recorded each night when I traveled. She is the executive director of the Polis Project . As Sari Begum's story [in the book] illustrates, 'A life where the violence of the border is not at the fence, or in the trenches, but at the center of 'their' and our 'universe'. L.L.B., Law, The University of Leeds, 2004 M.A., International Relation . There was an NDTV programme, where somebody said Should Indias constitution be secularist? 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. These instances are also about border practices because modern states, especially liberal democracies, expend immense energy in creating and maintaining identity categories: who belongs, and where. According to a new World Health Organization report, we lost as many as 4.7 million people in India. Vijayan: Chopra and others like her are a reflection of how popular culture and virality inform discourse and shape it. NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study. The two press briefings by the foreign secretary and Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson entertained no questions. We have already chosen silence and obfuscation even before the pushback has arrived. What are those ethical, moral, and political lines? ( I hate this word, voiceless, by the way). You can claim to be patriotic but not political, you can claim to support the troops but ignore the ongoing civilian casualty. India shares borders with a host of . 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. It is the fragility of human lives that remains at the very center of the book. Why do you think India has gotten away with this so far? Some things are just not discussed anymore. (Stay up to date on new book releases, reviews, and more with The Hindu On Books newsletter. Atmany points in Midnight's Borders, we see several men in positions of power view the women, who cross over from the 'other' side, as violable. March 20, 2021 09:50:40 IST. Examining My Caste And Its History Is Eye-Opening: A Personal Essay On Casteism And Ancestry, The History Of The Colonial State And The Unmaking Of The Tawaif, Book Review: Looking Through Dalit Sahitya And Ambedkar, These Are The 15 Women Who Helped Draft The Indian Constitution, Gender Roles And Stereotyping In To Kill A Mockingbird, A Brief Summary Of The Second Wave Of Feminism, A Brief Summary Of The First Wave Of Feminism, Kamala Das The Mother Of Modern Indian English Poetry | #IndianWomenInHistory, A Brief Summary Of The Third Wave Of Feminism, The Life And Times Of Dnyanjyoti Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule | #IndianWomenInHistory, FII Interviews: Charlotte Munch Bengtsen Talks About Women In Filmmaking, FII Interviews: Drag King And Influencer Mx. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments. Q: What was your goal with writing the book in the beginning and how did it change and drive you throughout those 8 years? Sayantika Mandal is an Indian writer. We are all complicit in upholding and maintaining this fear. My friend Ritesh Uttamchandani said this once, the lens that elusive distance between the photographer and the photographed is often impossible to bridge. The constant making and remaking of who is a citizen, who is not, is accompanied by a profoundly dehumanising process. MacAdam reviews Suchitra Vijayan's book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India Read More. 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. Suchitra is a BSc graduate from Mar Ivanios College (Trivandrum). But who carries the responsibility of that fear? What changeshave youobserved in the way you treat your subject after finishing your journey and book? We have migrated to a new commenting platform. by Suchitra Vijayan Hardcover 1,759.00 2,023.00 You Save: 264.00 (13%) Usually dispatched in 1 to 3 weeks. Barkha Dutt: India has made its point in Pakistan. This language drums the idea of the fundamental importance of justice, and such language is inalienable: it can easily be defined and empathetically understood. Your email address will not be published. They are arriving from various cities and people I have never met. Good, honest and non-polemical writing has always forced us to confront the lies we tell ourselves. As such, very few media establishments in India have been able to stand against the influence of political leaders. We still argue if something should be a massacre, a pogrom, or a riot. Invariably its the writer who is the protagonist. In 1971, East Pakistan seceded and became Bangladesh. 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? Founded in 2009, The Rumpus is one of the longest running independent online literary and culture magazines. Gokhale claimed that it struck the biggest camp and that a large number of terrorists were killed. Suchitra is a sought-after performer at corporate and other such stage shows. I now think twice about calling friends, worried if this might put them at risk. First, does my work aid the powerful? Updated Date: This Life Draws Attention to Life Behind Bars and the Transcendent Power of Rap, Wrestling with Reality in The Big Door Prize. Perhaps there are lessons to learn from that. With sharp political analyses, dense historical research and lyrical, image-rich prose, Vijayans journalism displays an inspiring ethic, one that is invested in the micro-histories of the small man, the one existing on the fringes of history and the one that most requires urgent representation. B, A book that will enlighten every citizen of every nation. Vijayan researches meticulously into official documents and conducts a series of interviews in an effort to uncover the murky truths behind the death of Hilal Ahmed Mir, a supposed militant killed by the military in an encounter in the disputed territory of Kashmir, or Felani Khatun, a 15-year-old girl who was shot when trying to cross the barbed wire at the porous India-Bangladesh border. What is the function of seeing and documenting? There are enough stories of people parachuting into communities to do human interest stories.. They continue to. Part of this process is a need to turn the lens back at the powerful. She is currently working on her first novel. 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. Over the span of seven years, Suchitra Vijayan interviewed scores of individuals, jotted countless notes, snapped hundreds of photographs, and altogether made herself witness to the manifold absurdities (and atrocities) of who gets to say where one nation ends and another begins. That capacity to be able to go away and then come back profoundly affects how you write because then you are still rooted. The photographs add another dimension to the book, and could have been used more. There are enough stories of people parachuting into communities to do human interest stories. 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. She also embodies the upwardly mobile, privileged sections of the diaspora. The latter is an act of violence against people whose voice you are appropriating. Ten years later, you were in Kashmir, where you 'hoped to find answers' by talking to a family that had lost a son. Feminism In India is an award-winning digital intersectional feminist media organisation to learn, educate and develop a feminist sensibility among the youth. [8] On 7 March 2017, she applied for divorce. 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. Rumpus: The book derives its emotional strength and narrative energy from the stories of people you encounter at the borders. Parts of Pakistan have already been consumed by the water. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. India has consistently warred against its own citizens; this book is about some of these wars. How do you think the media ought to responsibly report on peoples lives and experiences? Perhaps thats their victory. I have no formal training as a writer or a photographer, I taught myself and learnt by doing, failing and creating my own grammar. Midnights Borders: A Peoples History of Modern India ; Suchitra Vijayan, Context/ Westland Books, 699. Without a political solution, Kashmir will undoubtedly emerge in upcoming news cycles. 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. It is meant to manufacture an underclass of rightless subjects. Its not sustainable, it fractures who we are, chips away and erodes what it fundamentally means to be human. The Author Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. Many TV newsrooms were transformed into caricatures of military command centers, with anchors assessing military technology and strategy (sometimes incorrectly). Empathy is taught by our communities; we are brought up with it. A literary community. 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.. 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. [1], Suchitra joined Sify for a year, after graduating. Similarly, motherhood changed me; it radicalised me. Lets start with a very simple statement that everyone can agree on: the way were living right now cannot continue. The Rumpus is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. But your book lays bare how differently India's borders are guarded from southern Bengal to the Line of Control. She is the founder and executive director of The Polis Project, and the author of. Chopra cleverly uses womens empowerment, diversity, and the immigrant story as a facade to parrot and promote deeply problematic ideologies, takes, and stances. We see that more clearly when you decide against photographing children at the India-Bangladesh border. 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. 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. 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.