I havent spoken or celebrated with my friends in Kashmir or Assam. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. Jawaharlal Nehrus 'Tryst with Destiny'is a speech I have returned to over the past 20 years. [1] Career [ edit] Subscribe here. Especially when you can be charged with sedition for a tweet or arrested for the crime of committing comedy while being Muslim. Why dont people see the ground shifting beneath their feet? Over the past 15 years, small democratisation through social media has enabled challenging these practices. Vijayan creates a constellation of micro-histories of people who have lived through the violence that India has committed in its borderlandsinjustice that has irrigated the glamour and prosperity we witness in what some of us in those borderlands call mainland India. Vijayan, a barrister by profession, is a founding director of Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization in New York. Last edited on 23 February 2023, at 09:35, Filmfare Award for Best Female Playback Singer Telugu, 2nd South Indian International Movie Awards, "Suchitra going through certain emotional condition: Husband Karthik on her tweets", "Will Trisha sound like Trisha in Mankatha? What do you think the future holds? (Stay up to date on new book releases, reviews, and more with The Hindu On Books newsletter. Travel to States like Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland in the Northeast which share borders with China and Myanmar required Inner Line Permits, BSF soldiers followed her everywhere on the West Bengal/ Bangladesh border, and in Kashmir she was summoned to meet the local inspector at Uri. An unprecedented militarisation of these spaces accompanied this. We lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers readers already know and love. So the question is not: will the future be borderless? These new worlds are already herethey are maps of survival, maps of resistance. Thank you! Rumpus: Were you trying to write a hybrid-genre book? Many TV newsrooms were transformed into caricatures of military command centers, with anchors assessing military technology and strategy (sometimes incorrectly). The Author Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. 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. 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. In season two, a quick flashback resolves the plotline from the previous season. Like you train for a marathon, you train to be hopeful everyday. She's a good friend and kindly agreed to take our City Hall wedding photos. She is actively involved in circulating urgent and underrepresented news from the world through her online platform. Photograph of Suchitra Vijayan courtesy of Suchitra Vijayan. How did writing this book affect you? The writing grew around the images and the visual memory of the encounters. Suchitra Ramadurai, known by the mononym Suchitra, is an Indian radio jockey, popular playback singer, songwriter, composer, voice artist, dubbing artist and film actress. My friend Ritesh Uttamchandani said this once, the lens that elusive distance between the photographer and the photographed is often impossible to bridge. Empathy is taught by our communities; we are brought up with it. Thanks to The New India Foundation for sending across a beautiful copy of the Midnights Borders. What is the function of seeing and documenting? As I travelled, I was very aware of these inherent power differences. Vasundhara Sirnate Drennan is director of research at the Polis Project. Also, hope is a discipline. These are edited excerpts from the interview: 'Midnight' seems to be a metaphor for multiple things both freeing and frightening. Now imagine how it would be for someone from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, or working community to try to make inroads. L.L.B., Law, The University of Leeds, 2004 M.A., International Relation . How do you think the media ought to responsibly report on peoples lives and experiences? 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. Her career as a playback singer now spans Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam films and she has several hits in all these languages to her credit. The book was called ``a genre-bending book of nonfictionmade I set out not to give voice to the voiceless, my aim was to put an ear to the ground and listen. Can you write about loss without living? Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments. It took me 8 years to write the book. I find that profoundly inspiring. Book reviews and author interviews with a Southern focus. And, in many cases, they are children of the literary, cultural, or political elite who have long been the beneficiaries of the Indian state. Now, border security policies are linked to domestic politics. One of the ways she upholds the humane in this book is through her interaction with the men in the security forces. He writes about how when the Constitution was adopted, "We are going to enter into a life of contradictions. When Vijayan meets him, he is inside his home with all the windows closed and sealed to snuff out light. March 06, 2021 04:50 pm | Updated March 07, 2021 08:05 am IST. And join us by becoming a monthly or yearly Member. ( I hate this word, voiceless, by the way). Dear reader, this article is free to read and it will remain free but it isnt free to produce. Keywords: LTTE love jihad Beef politics Hindu Nationalism Kashmir The former is an essential act of dissent, even resistance, especially in these dark times. A: I dont agree with this kind of framing, because its not that underrepresented people dont have voices. 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. I particularly loved the fact that all our couple shots were very natural and came out truly . I left my 18-month-old daughter to travel and finish this book. In the same chapter of the book, Kamal says, "If I am an Indian, then why am I afraid?" " India's intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. The stories were a way to understand how people struggled and survived. Commentary Politics. 2:16. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. These are no longer contradictory; instead, even criticism can be converted to views. Founded in 2009, The Rumpus is one of the longest running independent online literary and culture magazines. Vijayan undertakes a seven-year long, 9,000-mile . If it does, I have failed. I test my practice of writing or being a photographer against this rule. 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 Q: As you wrote this book, you dont hesitate to meditate on how your personal life bidirectionally impacted the book. 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. Second, border policies are about "performance and articulations of citizenship". 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. I can see small cracks beginning to appear. This also decides who gets access, awards and accolades. What do words like democracy, freedom, and citizenship mean? In India, that arbitrariness can be seen in how differently we perceive landboundaries with multiple sovereign nations. Nine years ago, she began documenting stories from her travels along the borders of India. 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. They are also essentially bureaucratic, judicial, and procedural acts of terror. In these circumstances, the lives of people inhabiting the sketchy borderlands has become all the more vulnerable, and fragile. Many of the stories didnt make it to the book because it became dangerous to identify people. Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. Suchitra Vijayan is the executive director of the Polis Project. Also read: Book Review: Looking Through Dalit Sahitya And Ambedkar. In another essay from 2019, I write about the banality of bearing witness as an excuse to produce extractive work. These questions about documentation practices started long before I started this book project, and I learnt along the way. They are arriving from various cities and people I have never met. 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. Then my agent said, Suchitra, you know, I think youre hiding behind your academic language. What I was most concerned about and still am are the people in the book and their safety. That changes how you write and photograph a place. Qin took charge as Chinese foreign minister in December, succeeding Wang Yi. This income helps us keep the magazine alive. There was an NDTV programme, where somebody said Should Indias constitution be secularist? A relatively small group of people runs it. But also, to be clear in terms of what I wanted to accomplish: as I say in the book, I wasnt bearing witness or giving voice to the voicelessthe people in this book are eloquent and political voices of their lives and realities. Sari Begum, born of rape during the Partition and married off to a violent, alcoholic man twenty years older than her, is forced to part with her land to make space for an army bunker, while Natasha Javed stumbles upon a piece of family history that reveals her ancestor being killed in the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre of 1919 and the subsequent trauma and loss of having to be forcefully emptied of history when they crossed over to Pakistan, and how talking about this would make them traitors in their homeland. 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. When fires burn down large swathes of what were peoples homeswhat borders will you impose when climate change will fundamentally remake them? 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. 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. Perhaps thats their victory. British India was partitioned into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan on the eve of independence in August, 1947. India has consistently warred against its own citizens; this book is about some of these wars. Vijayan: The photographs were the heart of this project. There is something deeply flawed in the way we live today. The Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Muhammad soon claimed responsibility. So lets be very clear that Indias intellectual literary landscape is deeply problematic, feudal, and alienating," says Suchitra Vijayan to FII, Featured Image Source: Indias intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. Could you comment on how much our present border security policies have changed in the last few years? 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. With the phone armed with a camera, everyone is a photographer; we are all witnesses. The credit goes to my agent Lucy Cleland who suggested this title. To them he is a man who has settled into a job that has no future. 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. My job was to make sure that their voices were centered. Propaganda and poison work in far more sophisticated ways. 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. Vijayans book begins a much-needed conversation on thinking about freedom beyond the idea of nation and its illusory lines. Suchitra Vijayanis a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. Some people later chose not to be included because they feared repercussions, especially as the NRC process started playing out. Second, we can no longer have certain conversationsconversations are now impossible. 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.
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