The people in the text fear statelessness, unknown violence, and being forgotten. 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? Vijayan: Its a very generous reading, and thanks for that. If you think about communities in resistance to immense violations, theyre all interconnected to climate justice. There is no denying that the American media landscape is deeply racist, and while the past few years have seen more brown people take center stage, its nowhere close to where we need to be. Vijayans book begins a much-needed conversation on thinking about freedom beyond the idea of nation and its illusory lines. Author, lawyer and journalist, Suchitra Vijayan in conversation with Cerebration editor Smita Maitra on her book Midnight's Borders, maps, fragmented identities and postcolonial nation-states. Early on, I was very careful to acknowledge this. Theyre screaming all the time, its just that we dont listen to them. Thoughbordersare conventionally recognised as real or artificial lines of spatial and political demarcation, there may also be an arbitrariness to them. [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]. Vijayan creates a constellation of micro-histories of people who have lived through the violence . One of the reasons I kept writing was of course all the people I met: their love and time and generosity. Can any of theTIMEsubscribers who loved that cover tell us now whats happening in South Sudan today? Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, photographer, lawyer, political essayist, and a lecturer. 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. The original vision of the book also has newspaper cuttings, and found maps. Growing up I was surrounded by people who emphasised the community over anything else. Follow our team of columnists and reporters who write about the media. Now imagine how it would be for someone from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, or working community to try to make inroads. This idea of responsibility gets obfuscated in many ways. As I say in the book, Kashmir changed me, it gave me political and moral clarity to always stand with those fighting for their peoples freedom and dignity. 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. Vasundhara Sirnate Drennan is director of research at the Polis Project. It has taken me over a decade to get here. The emotional cost is something else altogether. Suchitra Vijayan on Twitter: "RT @project_polis: Writing fiction in a The writing grew around the images and the visual memory of the encounters. Rumpus: Toni Morrison said that she writes from a place of delight, not disappointment. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. Are you expecting any pushback at all? This is a profoundly alienating place for anyone without the networks of privilege and resources. 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. She digs deep into colonial history to show how years of violence and consequential suffering has shaped these lives across generations. She has sung in multiple languages including Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu. @suchitrav. Rumpus: Can we please talk about Priyanka Chopra, and how her rise is seen as a marker of brown achievement? Is that a probable solution? Who is expendable, and the manufacturing of rightlessness to render people expendable. This means that the capacity to see does not automatically become the capacity for action. The entire episode is emblematic of a broader trend in Indian media. Jawaharlal Nehrus 'Tryst with Destiny'is a speech I have returned to over the past 20 years. Suchitra Vijayan traveled Indias vast land border to explore how these populations live, and document how even places just a few miles apart can feel like entirely different countries.. Suchitra Vijayan's Midnight's Borders | Youth Ki Awaaz Updated Date: I am repeating what I have said before, "Kashmir is Indias greatest moral and political failure. Also read: Examining My Caste And Its History Is Eye-Opening: A Personal Essay On Casteism And Ancestry. I left my 18-month-old daughter to travel and finish this book. In addition, she is an award- winning photographer, the founder, and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization. Vijayan: Chopra and others like her are a reflection of how popular culture and virality inform discourse and shape it. The Rumpus: It is shocking how unaware the world is about the violence the Indian government has committed since independence on its border citizens. 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. 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. The third thing is: were going back to relitigating everything. Suchitra Vijayan, Newspapers in a Kashmiri home In August 2014 I travelled to the border town of Uri while researching my upcoming book, Borderlands. Even those among us who will speak of BLM will not openly challenge Hindutva or the RSS. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. We need to think about border practices, policing, and national security policies within the larger historical and political contexts. More importantly, as Babasaheb would argue, the political revolution was never accompanied by a social revolution. Excerpts from the #BBC documentary telecast about PM . More importantly, reporters need to engage with what it means to administer what has been called the worlds most militarized zone. Only then can the country answer a more fundamental question: Just what should be done to create conditions that allow Kashmiris to choose their destiny? A:I dont think an ethical or moral compass exists nowI dont know if it ever existed. In 2020, Suchitra took part in the fourth season of the Tamil reality television show, Bigg Boss Tamil hosted by Kamal Haasan. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. Required fields are marked *. They are also essentially bureaucratic, judicial, and procedural acts of terror. Already a subscriber? Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. 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. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. Book reviews and author interviews with a Southern focus. This was something I had to resist from the get-go. The latter is an act of violence against people whose voice you are appropriating. Our investigation into the Indian medias reporting on the Pulwama attack found that many reports were contradictory, biased, incendiary and uncorroborated. There was an NDTV programme, where somebody said Should Indias constitution be secularist? March 06, 2021 04:50 pm | Updated March 07, 2021 08:05 am IST. They all have very specific and carefully curated origin/immigrant stories that cleverly exploit the model minority trope. "Fighting for justice and human rights in India is a long and lonely battle" Nishrin Jafri Hussain, the daughter of Ehsan Jafri (from 2019) We no longer ask if this will lead to a better society, if it will benefit the vast majority of those farthest away from power. 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The book was called ``a genre-bending book of nonfictionmade Also, we shouldn't forget that the border making project is central to capitalist and neoliberal logic. 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. At worst, its navel gazing peppered with white guilt, but always politically vacuous. 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 NONFICTIONMidnights BordersBy Suchitra VijayanMelville HousePublished May 25, 2021. How do you think this inspiration from a variety of genres allowed you to tell underrepresented stories? For far too long, they and their progeny have held power to shape the political understanding of our social worlds. 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. 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. 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 eventually we need all kinds of stories and arguments to emerge from what is now considered Indian American writing. Subscribe here. How do you think the media ought to responsibly report on peoples lives and experiences? I think these are fundamental questions of freedom and dignity. 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. If you want to support the work that goes behind publishing high-quality feminist media content, please consider becoming a FII member. She lucidly explains the complicated history of the McMahon Line, how the India-China border is the result of a fabrication perpetuated by the British colonial administration. Its about what people like me should do. There are some notable exceptions, but they are an exception. Suchitra is now a singer-songwriter as well, composing music on her own and in collaboration with Singer Ranjith. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. 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. In Midnight's Borders (Westland Publications, 2021), author and photographer Suchitra Vijayan travels the 9,000 miles of India's borders to understand what Partition did to individual lives and . 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 came with my privileges, also lets not forget prejudices. Many come from immense privileges of caste, class, wealth, access, and resources. Chopra has long been neoliberalisms reluctant feminist, hawking giving a voice and sisterhood while silencing those who question her. Her distinct and bold voice made her very popular with the younger crowd. Those notes were raw and immediate. Gokhale claimed that it struck the biggest camp and that a large number of terrorists were killed. You can find them onYouTube&Linkedin,and can also check out their websitehere. It seems that they have a different eye for these women, who they describe as cunning, deceitful, and in some cases, prostitutes'. 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. Why do you think India has gotten away with this so far? When Vijayan meets him, he is inside his home with all the windows closed and sealed to snuff out light. From the epoch of Empire to the nation-state, border making is fundamentally a political project that creates, sustains, and reinforces inequality. The first true peoples history of modern India, told through a seven-year, 9,000-mile journey along its many contested borders. As an attorney, 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 Iraqi refugees. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Your email address will not be published. It took me 8 years to write the book. What makes these lives so vivid is how Vijayan contextualizes them by placing them in the bigger picture of history.