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They dont. Subscribe here. 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. Gokhale claimed that it struck the biggest camp and that a large number of terrorists were killed. Legislations such as National Register of Citizens and Citizenship Amendment Act threaten to render millions of people, especially Muslims, stateless. A relatively small group of people runs it. 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'. 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 . In an interview with Firstpost,Vijayan talks about her book, the militarisation of borders, ethno-nationalism, and the politics of documentation. We are consuming subjects in a surveillance economy, not citizens. This is a profoundly alienating place for anyone without the networks of privilege and resources. 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. She is actively involved in circulating urgent and underrepresented news from the world through her online platform. The original vision of the book also has newspaper cuttings, and found maps. Suchitra was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, as the daughter of Ramadurai and Padmaja. I have no formal training as a writer or a photographer, I taught myself and learnt by doing, failing and creating my own grammar. To them he is a man who has settled into a job that has no future. Suchitra Vijayan complicates and expands our understanding of the South Asian American experience, urging readers to consider stories that cast dark eyes at India, a strategic ally of many Western nations. Vijayan undertakes a seven-year long, 9,000-mile journey along the borders of India, and interviews people living in these liminal spaces. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle. 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. When I left him (the first time), I had a one-year-old daughter. Founded in 2009, The Rumpus is one of the longest running independent online literary and culture magazines. At Fazilka near the Pakistan border, she ran into Sari Begum, who had a bunker on her land but had a darker story of pain and violence from the days of Partition. A: Writers are very strange creatures. An unprecedented militarisation of these spaces accompanied this. 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. How do you think this shapes climate justice? But the number of anonymous sources willing to disclose classified and conflicting information to reporters who cited them without corroboration points to a serious crisis in how information is reported to the public. She was part of a music band at PSG. But its also important to constantly take account of who is writing about this India to an Indian and global audience. 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. Thank you! Invariably its the writer who is the protagonist. Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. The Indian State and the people of this Republic. But eventually we need all kinds of stories and arguments to emerge from what is now considered Indian American writing. Stallings, Rumpus Original Fiction: The Litany of Invisible Things. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. In addition, she is an award- winning photographer, the founder, and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization. Why the Modi government lies. Its feudal, entitled, and cannibalistic. Also, a book is an act of community; it has many midwives. 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. The two officers who avert the attack narrowly escape death but are left with broken bodies and broken lives. In that process, her reportage unravels the cultural and political implicationsof our bordersonour 'collective conscience', as capricious as that might be, and on the lives of those sandwiched between two warring nations. More from this author , Tags: Aruni Kashyap, Asian American, bollywood, Brahmanism, caste system, democracy, Hindu, Hinduism, Hinduphobia, Hindutva, immigrants, immigration, India, Indian American, Indian American literature, Leni Riefenstahl, Midnight's Borders, Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India, model minority, Modi, Narendra Damodardas Modi, Narendra Modi, neoliberalism, photographs, photography, Polis Project, Politics, Priyanka Chopra, south asian, South Asian American, South Asian diaspora, Stan Swamy, Suchitra Vijayan, travel writing, Filed Under: Features & Reviews, Rumpus Original. All too often, the Indian media portrays Kashmiris as terrorists or human shields, not as a community seeking self-determination. No one would put themselves through the agony and pain of writing. [3], She started singing after a few years as RJ. Even those among us who will speak of BLM will not openly challenge Hindutva or the RSS. 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. They all have very specific and carefully curated origin/immigrant stories that cleverly exploit the model minority trope. When the book finally came out, India was undergoing the deadly 2nd wave. The failure to forget affects how I use images, and texts; my photographic practice and also how I put everything together. The Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Muhammad soon claimed responsibility. History and memory is localwhich means its almost impossible to write about India. Now imagine how it would be for someone from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, or working community to try to make inroads. Rumpus: The book derives its emotional strength and narrative energy from the stories of people you encounter at the borders. 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. A lot of travel writing is still written by a particular group of people with immense privilege, and they all tend to center themselves. There are some notable exceptions, but they are an exception. We removed an image just before the printing to make sure the person was protected. And yet, the research and the history never overpowers the flow of the narrative. The book was called ``a genre-bending book of nonfictionmade 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.". This Life Draws Attention to Life Behind Bars and the Transcendent Power of Rap, Wrestling with Reality in The Big Door Prize. 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. Over the past 15 years, small democratisation through social media has enabled challenging these practices. 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. Acted as the General Manager for a day and motivated employees to work for the same purpose to reinforce team . How "The Family Man" champions the carceral security state. Yes, men who act as petty sovereigns are everywhere. I had to write and rewrite this book so many times. So we might never know the true extent of this loss. Husain Haqqani: Pakistan released the Indian pilot. Also read: Examining My Caste And Its History Is Eye-Opening: A Personal Essay On Casteism And Ancestry. As a bedouin who grew up listening to beautiful stories from beautiful storytellers around a fire, I was transported by her storytelling. Vasundhara Sirnate Drennan is director of research at the Polis Project. [1], Suchitra joined Sify for a year, after graduating. She has a sister named, Sunitha. 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. Despite the failures in investigation and prosecution related to criminal trials arising out of the pogrom, the judiciary has projected itself as an able and willing neutral arbiter of justice that is not complicit with the deep structures of Hindutvas anti-Muslim prejudice https://t.co/EFf5bxYEBt, True societal change has always emerged from the ground-up, with communities fighting for their own freedom and dignity. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister at law and the author of Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India. This means that the capacity to see does not automatically become the capacity for action. 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. Rumpus: Toni Morrison said that she writes from a place of delight, not disappointment. She lives in New York. So lets be very clear that Indias intellectual literary landscape is deeply problematic, feudal, and alienating," says Suchitra Vijayan to FII, Featured Image Source: Its feudal, entitled, and cannibalistic. I particularly loved the fact that all our couple shots were very natural and came out truly . 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. I now think twice about calling friends, worried if this might put them at risk. Is that a probable solution? This is a challenging task for the writer. 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 emotional cost is something else altogether. I wrote a book along with it comes love, scorn, and sometimes even ridicule. It definitely doesnt help when trying to hold a powerful state accountable. She has sung in multiple languages including Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu. Q: What was your goal with writing the book in the beginning and how did it change and drive you throughout those 8 years? 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. Modi met with senior police officers and ordered them not to intervene as violence raged. Chopra has long been neoliberalisms reluctant feminist, hawking giving a voice and sisterhood while silencing those who question her. It is always Bollywood, the ascent of Priyanka Chopra, or the diasporic loneliness. 6,253 Followers, 902 Following, 1,165 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitravijayan) [1] Career [ edit] The mortality of someone you love affects how you write. 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. Worse, we have been disciplined to accept injustice and inequality as given. . This discrepancy is just one example of the confusion and misinformation spread to the public by deeply flawed media reports. Also, hope is a discipline. As I travelled, I was very aware of these inherent power differences. Second, as the media continued to promote government positions on the crisis, other critical political issues dropped out of public scrutiny. In retaliation, the Indian Air Force carried out an airstrike on an alleged militant training camp in Balakot in Pakistans Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Love, passion, anger, the desire to make a point about something. Professor Nandita Sharmas work is an excellent way to engage with this history. We dont document violence against the privileged like we would report violence against those without power. Suchitra Vijayan. I believe it can teach us to ask these questions again. They are arriving from various cities and people I have never met. It is here that we subsume all that we otherwise celebrate under the demands of freedom, progress, liberalism, liberty, and secular ideals.". Is secularism a good thing? This is such an insidious conversation to have; this was even before Adani bought it. Suchitra Vijayan. Your prose is hopeful there. Parts of Pakistan have already been consumed by the water. Nine years ago, she began documenting stories from her travels along the borders of India. What we can do is attempt micro-histories of events, timelines, or local communities. She never did like my then-husband, which makes her a better judge of character than I was. And, in many cases, they are children of the literary, cultural, or political elite who have long been the beneficiaries of the Indian state. Respond to our political present. 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 book ate into so much of my life. Can you write about loss without living? But who gets to speak for so many of us? Where does that leave us? A place to read, on the Internet. Subscribe to the Rumpus Book Clubs (poetry, prose, or both) and Letters in the Mail from authors (for adults and kids). 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? 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 pair experience similar situations in their lives: abuse, the death or absence of a husband, and the longing for a better future. Vijayan shows a keen eye for detail as she presents these diverse lives. This means that, for the longest time, the depiction of violence and marginalised communities has been problematic. Vijayan: The photographs were the heart of this project. The third thing is: were going back to relitigating everything. Instead, we need to ask what fate awaits us. 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. suchitrav. 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. Panitars division is as cruel as it is arbitrary: here, the houses on either side of one dusty lane occupy two neighbouring countries. 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. [6], She wrote a short story, a graphic illustration of an episode in the life of a black peppercorn called Kuru-Milaku, called "The Runaway Peppercorn".[7].