suchitra vijayan husband
Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. Why the Modi government lies. 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. Why dont people see the ground shifting beneath their feet? Excellent interview, brave insights and critical reflections! Its an immense privilege to be able to write and be published. The original vision of the book also has newspaper cuttings, and found maps. Lets take Indias English language media, cultural-artistic elite, and publishing. 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.. As she travelled 9000 miles over seven years across Indias borders, some drawn so hastily that they cut across fields, homes and courtyards, she met men, women and children, finishing with endless notebooks, over a thousand images and more than 300 hours of recorded conversations. Her quest took her to the farthest ends of the India-Bangladesh/ China/ Myanmar/ Pakistan borders. Worse, we have been disciplined to accept injustice and inequality as given. Our investigation into the Indian medias reporting on the Pulwama attack found that many reports were contradictory, biased, incendiary and uncorroborated. Copyright 2023, THG PUBLISHING PVT LTD. or its affiliated companies. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. 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. 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. 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. I was much younger when I took on this project, so I wanted to prove those people wrong. This means that the capacity to see does not automatically become the capacity for action. She was part of a music band at PSG. Theyre screaming all the time, its just that we dont listen to them. I wrote a book along with it comes love, scorn, and sometimes even ridicule. The government, of course, denies this. There are so many nonfiction books about India published yearly but few are so important and subversive. At the end of it, I felt that I learnt more about myself, more about my home, I had becomeif not a better writer, an infinitely better human being, which is to say that one realises that theres always a Longue dure that one needs to consider, crave out time and space to think, train oneself not to always react. NONFICTIONMidnights BordersBy Suchitra VijayanMelville HousePublished May 25, 2021. 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. With sharp political analyses, dense historical research and lyrical, image-rich prose, Vijayans journalism displays an inspiring ethic, one that is invested in the micro-histories of the small man, the one existing on the fringes of history and the one that most requires urgent representation. B, A book that will enlighten every citizen of every nation. 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. In an interview with Firstpost,Vijayan talks about her book, the militarisation of borders, ethno-nationalism, and the politics of documentation. She writes about war, conflict . Rumpus: Were you trying to write a hybrid-genre book? In terms of violence, there is also this tendency to photograph and display the bodies of marginalised communities when they experience violence. Anvisha Manral March 20, 2021 09:50:40 IST I believe it can teach us to ask these questions again. The credit goes to my agent Lucy Cleland who suggested this title. 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? One feedback I often got was that I had to put more of myself in this book. What we can do is attempt micro-histories of events, timelines, or local communities. What it means to photograph, write, report and document is an ongoing process. We thank her for her time, patience, and illuminating insights into her work. Suchitra Vijayan, Newspapers in a Kashmiri home In August 2014 I travelled to the border town of Uri while researching my upcoming book, Borderlands. 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. Could you comment on how much our present border security policies have changed in the last few years? And that violence is often abetted by the state and goes unpunished. 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. 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. Contributions for the charitable purposes ofThe Rumpus must be made payable to Fractured Atlas only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. We once asked these questions, even if there were no clear answers or consensus. 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). Chopra has long been neoliberalisms reluctant feminist, hawking giving a voice and sisterhood while silencing those who question her. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle. You need a community of people to support you. In 2020, Suchitra took part in the fourth season of the Tamil reality television show, Bigg Boss Tamil hosted by Kamal Haasan. Speculation and conjecture were repeated ad infinitum, and several journalists even took to Twitter to encourage the Indian army. Propaganda and poison work in far more sophisticated ways. She has sung in multiple languages including Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu. Say, for instance, do we need a James Nachtwey to fly to war-torn Bosnia? 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. 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. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments. Even those who now write about Modis India, will never write about Brahmanism or be critical of how caste works in the diaspora. Some people later chose not to be included because they feared repercussions, especially as the NRC process started playing out. Its a practice. We are consuming subjects in a surveillance economy, not citizens. Later on she moved to Coimbatore for her MBA from PSG Institute of Management. Francesca Recchia, a researcher and writer and former director of the Institute for Afghan Arts and Architecture, is the editor and creative director of The Polis Project.. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister, researcher and the author of "Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India." She is the executive director of the Polis Project. This means that, for the longest time, the depiction of violence and marginalised communities has been problematic. When I finished writing, I had become much richer in many waysnot in a material waybut through a community. Vijayan: Let me start heregood writing is powerful and political. Especially when you can be charged with sedition for a tweet or arrested for the crime of committing comedy while being Muslim. They dont. An unprecedented militarisation of these spaces accompanied this. 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. Suchitra Ramadurai, known by the mononym Suchitra, is an Indian radio jockey, popular playback singer, songwriter, composer, voice artist, dubbing artist and film actress. (Stay up to date on new book releases, reviews, and more with The Hindu On Books newsletter. '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. ""The historical unity of the ruling classes is realized in the state." Antonio Gramsci" Many TV newsrooms were transformed into caricatures of military command centers, with anchors assessing military technology and strategy (sometimes incorrectly). Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister at law and the author of Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India. We see that more clearly when you decide against photographing children at the India-Bangladesh border. 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. Book reviews and author interviews with a Southern focus. While that incident had a profound impact on me, my politics, how I think about violence, its relationship to justice, or the lack of it, this is not the same kind of violence Kashmiris have been subjugated to. Respond to our political present. We play an ever more important role in these times when there is a fascist authoritarian regime in India and a deeply racist police state in the US. 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. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. What do you think the future holds? Is secularism a good thing? This is such an insidious conversation to have; this was even before Adani bought it. Rumpus: Why do you think the ever-growing canon of Indian American literature has barely tried to engage with these conversations through their stories? Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, photographer, lawyer, political essayist, and a lecturer. Its feudal, entitled, and cannibalistic. Were there times when you doubted your own ability to record and document these people's stories? The book arrived in the middle of a pandemic and a devastating second wave [of COVID-19] in India. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. Not everyone rejoiced in these new freedoms. 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. Suchitras account of her journeys across the undefinable and ever-shifting borders between India and its neighbours is gripping, frightening, faithful and beautiful. 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. Instead, we need to ask what fate awaits us. The black and white pictures accompanying the chapters add a thousand words more. This was something I had to resist from the get-go. Part of this process is a need to turn the lens back at the powerful. 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. You can find them onYouTube&Linkedin,and can also check out their websitehere. They continue to. Some even dressed for the occasion in combat gear. No one would put themselves through the agony and pain of writing. 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. It is meant to manufacture an underclass of rightless subjects. I kept detailed audio notes that I recorded each night when I traveled. The entire episode is emblematic of a broader trend in Indian media. None of this helps in telling richer, more textured stories. What makes these lives so vivid is how Vijayan contextualizes them by placing them in the bigger picture of history. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. Like you train for a marathon, you train to be hopeful everyday. In an early chapter of the book, you talk about how new worlds are created by the people at Indias borders. The two officers who avert the attack narrowly escape death but are left with broken bodies and broken lives. 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. 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. The stories were a way to understand how people struggled and survived. The show deals with interesting international happenings. When fencing began, he became trapped in a no-mans land, his marriage to a girl from Bangladesh ended with each being stranded on either side and he never got out of the cycle of debt and struggle, finally losing the ability to dream. I had a very stable home to come back to. Lets start with a very simple statement that everyone can agree on: the way were living right now cannot continue. Suchitra Vijayan is the executive director of the Polis Project. He was arrested based on fabricated evidence in the middle of a global pandemic, and he was denied bail and medical help. The first true peoples history of modern India, told through a seven-year, 9,000-mile journey along its many contested borders. This is the backdrop against which we map how border practices and policies have played out in India. Now imagine how it would be for someone from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, or working community to try to make inroads. These are no longer contradictory; instead, even criticism can be converted to views. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. This is a challenging task for the writer. L.L.B., Law, The University of Leeds, 2004 M.A., International Relation . This discrepancy is just one example of the confusion and misinformation spread to the public by deeply flawed media reports. A lot of travel writing is still written by a particular group of people with immense privilege, and they all tend to center themselves. Professor Nandita Sharmas work is an excellent way to engage with this history. The travel, the people they encounter, and the political events they record quickly become cameos. 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. Atmany points in Midnight's Borders, we see several men in positions of power view the women, who cross over from the 'other' side, as violable. The two press briefings by the foreign secretary and Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson entertained no questions. They took my land, they stole my life, they stole my future, they took my nightmares and they stole my dreams too. Ali went missing in 2018. Rumpus: How hard was it to write nonfiction about such a violent contemporary history? That, perhaps, is the only way to avoid further destruction in the region. MacAdam reviews Suchitra Vijayan's book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India Read More. Vijayan: There is an elusive distance between the photographer and the photographed that cant be bridged. Perhaps that offers some protection? Q: What was your goal with writing the book in the beginning and how did it change and drive you throughout those 8 years? Firstly, when we talk about violence, we often talk about it only as communal violence, as if both communities have equal strength and power. Its not sustainable, it fractures who we are, chips away and erodes what it fundamentally means to be human. The failure to forget affects how I use images, and texts; my photographic practice and also how I put everything together. As a spy working for TASC, Tiwari has to juggle being an underpaid government employee as well as an absent husband and a perpetually late and distracted father. I have never lived under military occupation, curfew, or a looming threat of violence. Suchitra Vijayanis a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher.
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