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. 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. There are enough stories of people parachuting into communities to do human interest stories.. Vijayans lens not only captures the people but also the past through objects, such as the picture of Kotwali Gate, the remains of a medieval fort that serves as a border checkpoint rife with weeds and trees growing on it, symbolic of a state bent on rewriting history rather than preserving it. Qin took charge as Chinese foreign minister in December, succeeding Wang Yi. I was much younger when I took on this project, so I wanted to prove those people wrong. Not everyone rejoiced in these new freedoms. I still do. Born and raised in Madras, India, she is the author of the critically acclaimed book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India (Melville House, New York). 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. There are some brilliant writers writing on these issuesthe problem is always that these voices dont make it to the mainstream. In an interview with Firstpost,Vijayan talks about her book, the militarisation of borders, ethno-nationalism, and the politics of documentation. Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. Rumpus: The book derives its emotional strength and narrative energy from the stories of people you encounter at the borders. Vijayan: A writers responsibility above all is to speak the truth and make sense of our social worlds. The former is an essential act of dissent, even resistance, especially in these dark times. The first true peoples history of modern India, told through a seven-year, 9,000-mile journey along its many contested borders. The post-Cold War and 90s rhetoric of a borderless world that accompanied globalisation also kick-started massive border fencing projects in India. So now, how do we respond to this? More Buying Choices 1,732.00 (16 Used & New offers) Audible Audiobook 0.00 Free with Audible trial 586.00 ( 9 ) Propaganda and poison work in far more sophisticated ways. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister at law and the author of Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India. Also, hope is a discipline. No one can write a book alone. Sayantika Mandal is an Indian writer. This income helps us keep the magazine alive. Some people later chose not to be included because they feared repercussions, especially as the NRC process started playing out. They are also essentially bureaucratic, judicial, and procedural acts of terror. The Author Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. This means that, for the longest time, the depiction of violence and marginalised communities has been problematic. This is the backdrop against which we map how border practices and policies have played out in India. And, in many cases, they are children of the literary, cultural, or political elite who have long been the beneficiaries of the Indian state. We need to think about border practices, policing, and national security policies within the larger historical and political contexts. I want to clarify that what I witnessed or the violence inflicted on my father is not the same as what over eight million Kashmiris have endured. Part-time Faculty suchitra@thepolisproject.com. The failure to forget affects how I use images, and texts; my photographic practice and also how I put everything together. [1], Suchitra joined Sify for a year, after graduating. Lets take Indias English language media, cultural-artistic elite, and publishing. In recent years, the narrative of hate has escalated with the reelection of the right-wing Narendra Modi government in 2019. Indias intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. 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. Check posts or bunkers were not part of the landscapes of my home. The latter is an act of violence against people whose voice you are appropriating. 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 She was part of a music band at PSG. She has sung in multiple languages including Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu. 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. A memorable, humane museum of forgotten stories that we must all read and remember. M, What experiences and lives unfold in these pages. A British lawyer, Cyril Radcliffe set foot in India for the first time in July, 1947 to draw the borders and completed the task within seven weeks, engendering communal riots, a heavily militarized border, four wars and seven decades of violence and hatred between the two countries. Suchitra Vijayan's new book, Midnight's Borders: A People's 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. While Border Pillar No 1 becomes a convenient stump for children playing cricket along the land that India shares with Bangladesh, roughly 2000 kilometers away in Punjab a woman farmer watches on as the army builds a bunker on the few acres of land she owns. Also, a book is an act of community; it has many midwives. Acted as the General Manager for a day and motivated employees to work for the same purpose to reinforce team . Vijayan: There is an elusive distance between the photographer and the photographed that cant be bridged. Its impossible for a writer not to be affected by their personal life. What connects these messages is deep empathy and a willingness to engage with the books stories, ideas, and arguments. I now think twice about calling friends, worried if this might put them at risk. If you think about communities in resistance to immense violations, theyre all interconnected to climate justice. Now, border security policies are linked to domestic politics. The complexities of the Naga peace process were apparent on a visit to remote villages of Tuensang district where many of the women remained silent with others admitting they had never encountered an outsider, except Indian soldiers. In season two, a quick flashback resolves the plotline from the previous season. She writes about war, conflict . 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 . Later on she moved to Coimbatore for her MBA from PSG Institute of Management. You can speak of confidence and body positivity and defend selling skin-lightening creams. 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. This was something I had to resist from the get-go. She never did like my then-husband, which makes her a better judge of character than I was. The pair experience similar situations in their lives: abuse, the death or absence of a husband, and the longing for a better future. To them he is a man who has settled into a job that has no future. Vijayan shows a keen eye for detail as she presents these diverse lives. They continue to. She sang her first song for the movie, Lesa Lesa under the composition of Harris Jayaraj and her co-singer was the legendary, K. S. Chitra. 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. 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.. March 06, 2021 04:50 pm | Updated March 07, 2021 08:05 am IST. Love, passion, anger, the desire to make a point about something. We live in a profoundly unequal society, where every day brings news of new devastation. They are arriving from various cities and people I have never met. The book was called ``a genre-bending book of nonfictionmade 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. 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. How violence against women and girlsand even how sexual violence against men and boys (something we dont even talk about enough) is depictedis all seriously problematic. On Feb. 14, an Indian paramilitary convoy was attacked in Pulwama in India-administered Kashmir, resulting in the death of 40 Indian officers. 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. We have migrated to a new commenting platform. Growing up I was surrounded by people who emphasised the community over anything else. No one is a stakeholder herethese are people, humans, citizens, who have been deprived of what the Ambedkarite constitution promised them. Suchitra was married to actor Karthik Kumar between 2005 and 2017. Its about what people like me should do. Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, photographer, lawyer, political essayist, and a lecturer. There was an NDTV programme, where somebody said Should Indias constitution be secularist? In an early chapter of the book, you talk about how new worlds are created by the people at Indias borders. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Your email address will not be published. But who gets to speak for so many of us? Rumpus: Can we please talk about Priyanka Chopra, and how her rise is seen as a marker of brown achievement? 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? 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. But its also important to constantly take account of who is writing about this India to an Indian and global audience. 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. 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.
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