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Chopra has long been neoliberalisms reluctant feminist, hawking giving a voice and sisterhood while silencing those who question her. 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. Its a vicious cycle. 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. Part of this process is a need to turn the lens back at the powerful. Its not sustainable, it fractures who we are, chips away and erodes what it fundamentally means to be human. NONFICTIONMidnights BordersBy Suchitra VijayanMelville HousePublished May 25, 2021. I believe it can teach us to ask these questions again. Not everyone lived to see its promises. 6,253 Followers, 902 Following, 1,165 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitravijayan) This was something I had to resist from the get-go. I was reading a lot of Pessoa when I was in Afghanistan, so another placeholder title was 'Maps/Lines/Cartographies of Disquiet', inspired by the Book of Disquiet. The government, of course, denies this. Modi met with senior police officers and ordered them not to intervene as violence raged. In Suchitra Vijayan's new book, borders are as arbitrary as history Your prose is hopeful there. 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? I am repeating what I have said before, "Kashmir is Indias greatest moral and political failure. Why I Grew Up Wishing My Mother Were Dead - The Bangalore Review This is a profoundly alienating place for anyone without the networks of privilege and resources. Categories. Can you write about loss without living? That changes how you write and photograph a place. The entire episode is emblematic of a broader trend in Indian media. All rights reserved. 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. 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. 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. Follow our team of columnists and reporters who write about the media. 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. This media blitzkrieg resulted in the erasure of two important political trends. Vijayan: A writers responsibility above all is to speak the truth and make sense of our social worlds. Professor Nandita Sharmas work is an excellent way to engage with this history. On Feb. 14, an Indian paramilitary convoy was attacked in Pulwama in India-administered Kashmir, resulting in the death of 40 Indian officers. Its been a little over a week since the book came out, and every day this week, I have woken up to emails, messages, and DMs from readers. Rohini Menon for Feminism in India, FII Interviews: Suchitra Vijayan Talks About Marginalisation, Institutional Violence & Political Imagination, 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. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions?". Again, in the India-China border, she finds a young army officer closely referring to a book that contradicts the official version of the Indo-China war of 1962, and concludes that perhaps, he recognizes that most of soldiering involved cynical subordination to ideas that no longer made sense.. 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? Dear reader, this article is free to read and it will remain free but it isnt free to produce. While Nehru was still declaring this victory, the slaughter began. Later on she moved to Coimbatore for her MBA from PSG Institute of Management. This means that the capacity to see does not automatically become the capacity for action. 'Music I Like', an album of Suchitra's renditions of Mahakavi Bharatiyaar's poetry, set to contemporary tunes and music, released by Universal Music, was a turning point in her career. It was just a sad moment, and I couldnt celebrate a book when there was so much human tragedy playing out. . Thats part of the political imagination that I believe we need for political movements or any sustained acts of resistance. I can see small cracks beginning to appear. We lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers readers already know and love. Suchitra - Wikipedia Suchitra Vijayan is the executive director of the Polis Project. 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. I felt the same way when I would prepare legal petitions for my clients. Suchitra Vijayan (Author of Midnight's Borders) - Goodreads This article was published more than4 years ago. Even those among us who will speak of BLM will not openly challenge Hindutva or the RSS. The pair experience similar situations in their lives: abuse, the death or absence of a husband, and the longing for a better future. Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, photographer, lawyer, political essayist, and a lecturer. There are enough stories of people parachuting into communities to do human interest stories.. The Indian government bears some responsibility for this: Amid this brinkmanship between the two nuclear powers, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not address the nation directly. The controversy surrounding the Rafale deal and allegations of corruption against the government were suddenly sidelined, as was the order for the eviction of more than a million forest dwellers (that was later stayed) and a hearing on the repeal of an important constitutional clause before the Supreme Court. Looking Beyond the Lines: Suchitra Vijayan's "Midnight's Borders" Reports also identified different people as the supposed masterminds of the Pulwama attack at various points without clear sourcing. There was an NDTV programme, where somebody said Should Indias constitution be secularist? Lets take Indias English language media, cultural-artistic elite, and publishing. In Assam, Vijayan met people devastated by the National Register of Citizens process, with names of long-time residents missing from the final list, and in Kashmir she spent time with a family mourning the loss of their son in an encounter. When I left him (the first time), I had a one-year-old daughter. The nation-state and its ruling class view borders as very different from the people who inhabit these liminal spaces or communities that have been affected by border making and policing practices. A: This is a very loaded question. I dont have apprehensions. If it does, I have failed. Vijayan undertakes a seven-year long, 9,000-mile journey along the borders of India, and interviews people living in these liminal spaces. Its a dangerous moment where the figure of the rights-bearing citizen is being reduced to a consuming subject. In this stunning work of narrative reportagefeaturing over 40 original photographswe hear from those whose stories are never told: from children playing a cricket match in no-mans-land, to an elderly man living in complete darkness after sealing off his home from the floodlit border; from a woman who fought to keep a military bunker off of her land, to those living abroad who can no longer find their family history in India. This discrepancy is just one example of the confusion and misinformation spread to the public by deeply flawed media reports. She never did like my then-husband, which makes her a better judge of character than I was. We believe that literature builds communityand if reading The Rumpus makes you feel more connected, please show your support! I have no control over what comes next. Vijayan: I would say I am hopeful. Vijayan: As we have this conversation, Dr. Stan Swamy, the eighty-four-year-old Jesuit priest, Indias oldest political prisoner, was murdered by the Indian state with the complicity of the judiciary. Suchitra tweets @suchitrav. So lets be very clear that Indias intellectual literary landscape is deeply problematic, feudal, and alienating," says Suchitra Vijayan to FII, Featured Image Source: 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. Suchitra Vijayan on Twitter: "Excerpts from the #BBC documentary Say, for instance, do we need a James Nachtwey to fly to war-torn Bosnia? is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. Barkha Dutt: India has made its point in Pakistan. The act of recording and documenting cannot be divorced from the inherent question of power. 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. They all have very specific and carefully curated origin/immigrant stories that cleverly exploit the model minority trope. How did you respond to that environment being in an extremely challenging position yourself? Similarly, motherhood changed me; it radicalised me. In these circumstances, the lives of people inhabiting the sketchy borderlands has become all the more vulnerable, and fragile. We live in a profoundly unequal society, where every day brings news of new devastation. March 20, 2021 09:50:40 IST. Rumpus: Toni Morrison said that she writes from a place of delight, not disappointment. 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Suchitra Vijayan's Midnight's Borders | Youth Ki Awaaz This might not seem like much, but it is absolutely essential. How do you think this inspiration from a variety of genres allowed you to tell underrepresented stories? Firstpost - All Rights Reserved. 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. You become responsible for a human being. Midnight's Borders by Suchitra Vijayan - The Bangalore Review Co-founded the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, Suchitra is also the founder of the Polis Project, a research and journalism organisation. The acts of writing, documenting, photographing, and archiving carry privileges of caste and class. 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. 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. Yes, men who act as petty sovereigns are everywhere. Be it the teenager who is offered guns, money, and M&M candies to fight the Taliban in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, or Ali, who seeks solace in darkness as the floodlights installed on his plot of land along the India-Bangladesh border leaves him traumatized, or the nonagenarian Johinder Singh Suj from Sindh (a province in present-day Pakistan), who still cherishes his school geography textbook that shows a map of undivided British India the people are captured with deep empathy and come alive in her narration with the adept use of dialogue. Husain Haqqani: Pakistan released the Indian pilot. No one is a stakeholder herethese are people, humans, citizens, who have been deprived of what the Ambedkarite constitution promised them. 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. Speculation and conjecture were repeated ad infinitum, and several journalists even took to Twitter to encourage the Indian army. 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. In the first season, when he and his team are tasked to thwart the terrorist attack Operation Zulfiqar, the plot moves from Mumbai to Kashmir. I dont want to make this about me. 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. She entered the show on day 28 as a new contestant and was evicted on day 49. These may not be perfect worlds or even equal worlds, but they strive to be. Theyre screaming all the time, its just that we dont listen to them. Midnights Borders perhaps also critiques the widely read body of work available as Indian English Writing (IWE), a literary canon that has so far told the story of India but seldom demonstrated social responsibility by acknowledging the atrocities India has committed silently within its borders. My job was to make sure that their voices were centered. She writes about war, conflict . No one would put themselves through the agony and pain of writing. A: This geopolitical violence is not new, theres a long bloody, brutal history to thisa cyclical, ongoing and never-ending history. Is photographing a woman, who was gang-raped by the Sudanese army and put on the cover of TIMEpractically naked, able to stop the war? Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments. Stallings, Rumpus Original Fiction: The Litany of Invisible Things. In addition, she is an award- winning photographer, the founder, and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization. What is the emotional and artistic cost that one pays as a writer while crafting these narratives? 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. 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. 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. You need to write what you seethats why you started this project.. This is a profoundly alienating place for anyone without the networks of privilege and resources. There are also those who have previously been tacit, if not active, supporters of the right-wing Hindu nationalist Indian state. Her distinct and bold voice made her very popular with the younger crowd. Suchitra Vijayan | The Nation 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 What moral and political stands we should take in the face of ongoing oppression. Suchitra Vijayan | The Caravan [8] On 7 March 2017, she applied for divorce. Founded in 2009, The Rumpus is one of the longest running independent online literary and culture magazines. Also, hope is a discipline. Parts of Pakistan have already been consumed by the water. 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. March 06, 2021 04:50 pm | Updated March 07, 2021 08:05 am IST. Suchitra was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, as the daughter of Ramadurai and Padmaja. Also, we shouldn't forget that the border making project is central to capitalist and neoliberal logic. The book arrived in the middle of a pandemic and a devastating second wave [of COVID-19] in India. Abrogation Of Article 370 Jammu And Kashmir Statehood, BSF foils another Pakistan plot, shoots down drone in Punjab's Amritsar, Light on weight, heavy on damage: India will be able to hit deep inside Pakistan with THIS ultralightweight howitzer, Put issues related to border in 'proper place', work for its early normalisation: Chinese FM Qin to Jaishankar, In Midnight's Borders, Suchitra Vijayan meditates on belongingness, freedom and political implications of territorial demarcations. The people whose lives are not just materials for the book, who are, in some ways, your co-conspirators in trying to make sense of the social reality.