Chopra has long been neoliberalisms reluctant feminist, hawking giving a voice and sisterhood while silencing those who question her. As such, very few media establishments in India have been able to stand against the influence of political leaders. Dear reader, this article is free to read and it will remain free but it isnt free to produce. 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. Who gets to shape these stories, what stories are chosen, what stories then are exiled? Can you write about loss without living? These may not be perfect worlds or even equal worlds, but they strive to be. She is actively involved in circulating urgent and underrepresented news from the world through her online platform. That changes how you write and photograph a place. The acts of writing, documenting, photographing, and archiving carry privileges of caste and class. A Seven Year, 9,000-Mile Journey Along India's Contested Land Borders 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. Vijayan: There is an elusive distance between the photographer and the photographed that cant be bridged. 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. Suchitra Vijayan on a journey to find a people's history of modern None of this helps in telling richer, more textured stories. When fires burn down large swathes of what were peoples homeswhat borders will you impose when climate change will fundamentally remake them? March 06, 2021 04:50 pm | Updated March 07, 2021 08:05 am IST. This is the backdrop against which we map how border practices and policies have played out in India. The book was called ``a genre-bending book of nonfictionmade 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. Vijayan began her journey in Kolkata. Once we eliminated the spectacle, we realized that the Indian public got very little information about the Pulwama attack and its aftermath. It was just a sad moment, and I couldnt celebrate a book when there was so much human tragedy playing out. And our language helps us imagine a vision that is truly just, beautiful and ethical. 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. I spoke with Suchitra by email in July about Midnights Borders, the power of literary nonfiction, new possibilities of Indian American literature, neoliberal politics, and the importance of supporting underrepresented stories. Even those among us who will speak of BLM will not openly challenge Hindutva or the RSS. A memorable, humane museum of forgotten stories that we must all read and remember. M, What experiences and lives unfold in these pages. Second, we can no longer have certain conversationsconversations are now impossible. I think these are fundamental questions of freedom and dignity. 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. But who gets to speak for so many of us? 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. Then my agent said, Suchitra, you know, I think youre hiding behind your academic language. The people in the text fear statelessness, unknown violence, and being forgotten. 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. Midnights Borders , Suchitra Vijayan includes a photo of the pillar, which becomes a cricket stump for boys on either side of the border most days. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. 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. Time to let the diplomats do the hard talk. In retaliation, the Indian Air Force carried out an airstrike on an alleged militant training camp in Balakot in Pakistans Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Where does that leave us? India and the US are discussing the possibility of jointly developing and manufacturing an extended-range variant of the M777 ultra lightweight howitzer, Qin's first in-person meeting with EAM Jaishankar came on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers conclave in New Delhi amid the over 34-month-long border row in eastern Ladakh. Its a practice. Now, along with the medias legitimization of an ideology that promotes violence including riots and lynchings its performance after Pulwama leaves severe doubts as to whether it is engaged in journalism or the propagation of Hindu majoritarianism. "Fighting for justice and human rights in India is a long and lonely battle" Nishrin Jafri Hussain, the daughter of Ehsan Jafri (from 2019) 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. Early on, I was very careful to acknowledge this. 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.. 6,253 Followers, 902 Following, 1,165 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitravijayan) 42, Moss Rose Heights, M.M Ali road, WASA Circle, Lalkhan Bazar, Chittogong 4000. 2:16. The people in this book are eloquent advocates of their history and their struggles. L.L.B., Law, The University of Leeds, 2004 M.A., International Relation . 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. Commentary Politics. I was also trying to tell these stories from a repertoire of skills I had, and some I acquired. But who carries the responsibility of that fear? How do you think the media ought to responsibly report on peoples lives and experiences? But its also important to constantly take account of who is writing about this India to an Indian and global audience. Speculation and conjecture were repeated ad infinitum, and several journalists even took to Twitter to encourage the Indian army. MacAdam reviews Suchitra Vijayan's book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India Read More. If you think about communities in resistance to immense violations, theyre all interconnected to climate justice. One of the reasons I kept writing was of course all the people I met: their love and time and generosity. I feel very uncomfortable talking about this, or rather I dont know how to discuss this without centering myself. Unreliable Witnesses - Boston Review 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. In the same chapter of the book, Kamal says, "If I am an Indian, then why am I afraid?" There is a lot to learn and unlearn, and a writer and a photographer should respond to a political moment, and the work should be a reflection of those practices. I still do. There are instances when you and some voices in the narrative question their documentation practice. Not everyone lived to see its promises. " India's intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. Its a dangerous moment where the figure of the rights-bearing citizen is being reduced to a consuming subject. How did you achieve empathy in your writing, without the privileged lens that is common in journalistic canon? Q: What struck me about your work was its immersive style. These are edited excerpts from the interview: 'Midnight' seems to be a metaphor for multiple things both freeing and frightening. ", "Documentary photography has amassed mountains of evidenceyetthe genre has simultaneously contributed much to spectacle, to retinal excitation, to voyeurism, to terror, envy, and nostalgia, and only a little to the critical understanding of the social world.". Perhaps thats their victory. 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. This also decides who gets access, awards and accolades. With profound empathy and a novelistic eye for detail, Vijayan brings us face to face with the brutal legacy of colonialism, state violence, and government corruption. Suchitra Acharjee - Graduate Assistant - The University of Texas Rio We lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers readers already know and love. You can find them onYouTube&Linkedin,and can also check out their websitehere. Tamil Movie Articles Trisha | Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya | Tamannah | Anniyan | Aishwarya Rai", "Bigg Boss Awards for each contestant in Bigg Boss Tamil 4", Suchitra: I can sound sweet, sexy, bold or sensual, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Suchitra&oldid=1141096550, Crossover episode with Bigg Boss Tamil; Fearless Award, Nominated: Filmfare Award for Best Female Playback Singer Telugu for the song 'Nijamena' from, Nominated: SIIMA Award for Best Female Playback Singer|Best Female Playback Singer for the song 'Sir Osthara' from, This page was last edited on 23 February 2023, at 09:35. Vijayan: Chopra and others like her are a reflection of how popular culture and virality inform discourse and shape it. 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 . You dont need a Leni Riefenstahl today. Vijayan reserves her own impressions for later, and allows us to know these people intimately. 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.. After being detained at one of the checkpoints for over two hours, I made my way to one of the villages closest to the Line of Control. Similarly, motherhood changed me; it radicalised me. Co-founded the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, Suchitra is also the founder of the Polis Project, a research and journalism organisation. Theyre screaming all the time, its just that we dont listen to them. I wanted to make sure that I was writing in a way that was honest and true to my initial reactions, and capture that without centering myself. I test my practice of writing or being a photographer against this rule. This was something I had to resist from the get-go. I havent spoken or celebrated with my friends in Kashmir or Assam. They dont. Suchitra Vijayan | The Caravan This is a profoundly alienating place for anyone without the networks of privilege and resources. Ali lived right on the edge of the India-Bangladesh border. 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. She also embodies the upwardly mobile, privileged sections of the diaspora. In India, that arbitrariness can be seen in how differently we perceive landboundaries with multiple sovereign nations. Not mine. We also need a fundamental reframing of language. How do you think your book contributes to the larger conversation about India? Some even dressed for the occasion in combat gear. @suchitrav. So now, how do we respond to this? 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? Say, for instance, do we need a James Nachtwey to fly to war-torn Bosnia? The Indian State and the people of this Republic. We know that the purpose of borders has kept changing for nations. Excellent interview, brave insights and critical reflections! Suchitra Vijayan. Second, as the media continued to promote government positions on the crisis, other critical political issues dropped out of public scrutiny. You've mentioned in the text that you've spent your entire adult life thinking about state violence and justice because of a troubling incident in 1994 when your father was attacked. Its an immense privilege to be able to write and be published. 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. What connects these messages is deep empathy and a willingness to engage with the books stories, ideas, and arguments. But eventually we need all kinds of stories and arguments to emerge from what is now considered Indian American writing. A t a time when right-wing nationalism is crescendoing in India and across the world, Suchitra Vijayan's Midnight's Borders raises pertinent questions about the very foundations of India's nationalism the cartography of South Asian nation-states defined by arbitrary lines drawn hastily by the British colonial administration. Whose Stories Are Told In Indian History? All too often, the Indian media portrays Kashmiris as terrorists or human shields, not as a community seeking self-determination. There was an NDTV programme, where somebody said Should Indias constitution be secularist? What do you think the future holds? I fear we are losing that cosmopolitanism of small places. 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. 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? Founded in 2009, The Rumpus is one of the longest running independent online literary and culture magazines. It's a disorienting time when your library or what books you read can become evidence of sedition . This means that the capacity to see does not automatically become the capacity for action. Having been trained in law, Suchitra Vijayan initially worked at the United Nations war tribunals in Yugoslavia. When the book finally came out, India was undergoing the deadly 2nd wave. And what does this mean for on-ground communities, governments, armed forces, and other institutional stakeholders? The second season of The Family Man begins with Srikant Tiwari, a former intelligence officer of TASCa fictitious intelligence agency akin to the Research & Analysis Wingworking at an IT company. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. Without a political solution, Kashmir will undoubtedly emerge in upcoming news cycles. It is the fragility of human lives that remains at the very center of the book. The word terrorism, for instance, is used almost exclusively to refer to a particular communitybut fails to refer to state-enabled terror or the terror deployed by majority communities. We have already chosen silence and obfuscation even before the pushback has arrived. Midnights Borders is part investigation, part meditation on the lines drawn on land or water that separate India from its neighbours. First, does my work aid the powerful? 10 books like The Home and the World (picked by 7,000+ authors) Vijayan: A writers responsibility above all is to speak the truth and make sense of our social worlds. Vijayan undertakes a seven-year long, 9,000-mile . In Afghanistan, Kashmir, and India, from one dangerous conflict zone to another, she spoke with people, ate with them, and listened to their stories. Sometimes lost. That was my starting point. 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. 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. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. She is not alone. Vijayans book begins a much-needed conversation on thinking about freedom beyond the idea of nation and its illusory lines. I think this book will change the global conversation about India and shape what gets written in the future about India. Suchitra Vijayan - KeyWiki These are no longer contradictory; instead, even criticism can be converted to views. You can find them on, The #GBVinMedia Campaign: Media Reportage Of Gender-Based Violence, #IndianWomenInHistory: Remembering The Untold Legacies of Indian Women, How To Write About Abortion: A Rights-Based Approach, The Crowdsourced List Of Social Justice Collectives Across Indian Campuses. 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. When Vijayan meets him, he is inside his home with all the windows closed and sealed to snuff out light. Like you train for a marathon, you train to be hopeful everyday. Chopra cleverly uses womens empowerment, diversity, and the immigrant story as a facade to parrot and promote deeply problematic ideologies, takes, and stances. Subscribe here. Why is this particular time of the day intrinsic to the book? March 20, 2021 09:50:40 IST. We are all complicit in upholding and maintaining this fear. 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. The entire episode is emblematic of a broader trend in Indian media. Is secularism a good thing? This is such an insidious conversation to have; this was even before Adani bought it. Rumpus: Were you trying to write a hybrid-genre book? Q: What was your goal with writing the book in the beginning and how did it change and drive you throughout those 8 years? Second, Indias transformation into a nuclear state and the Kargil War is another critical moment of change. 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. India has consistently warred against its own citizens; this book is about some of these wars. In the popular depictions of India circulating in the US, we rarely see the stories that the nations jingoistic governments have shoved under the carpet. They continue to. Suchitra Vijayan So the question is not: will the future be borderless? How do you protect this child? 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. 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? From the epoch of Empire to the nation-state, border making is fundamentally a political project that creates, sustains, and reinforces inequality. It is here that we subsume all that we otherwise celebrate under the demands of freedom, progress, liberalism, liberty, and secular ideals.". India shares borders with a host of . Thoughbordersare conventionally recognised as real or artificial lines of spatial and political demarcation, there may also be an arbitrariness to them. She completed her MFA in Writing (Fiction) from the University of San Francisco where she was awarded the Jan Zivic Fellowship and is about to begin her PhD in English with a Creative Dissertation from the University of Georgia, Athens.