Dhs Chore Provider Application Michigan, Nsw Police Detective Ranks, Convert Jde Julian Date To Calendar Date Excel, Dirty Valentines Day Jokes For Adults, Enemy Lines Filming Locations, Articles S

Rumpus: Toni Morrison said that she writes from a place of delight, not disappointment. The Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Muhammad soon claimed responsibility. Global Ethics Review: Midnight's Borders, with Suchitra Vijayan She digs deep into colonial history to show how years of violence and consequential suffering has shaped these lives across generations. Husain Haqqani: Pakistan released the Indian pilot. This means that the capacity to see does not automatically become the capacity for action. Respond to our political present. Growing up I was surrounded by people who emphasised the community over anything else. 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. Finally, Indias current transformation, the aggressive posturing of an aspiring ethno-nationalist state, will have dire consequences for the people and the region. The black and white pictures accompanying the chapters add a thousand words more. Like you train for a marathon, you train to be hopeful everyday. They cannot be abusive or personal. Who gets to shape these stories, what stories are chosen, what stories then are exiled? She is not alone. In her15,000-kilometre journey, spread over seven years, Vijayan mulls over the meaning of freedom, belongingness in a land of imagined communities, created by territorial demarcations. This is a profoundly alienating place for anyone without the networks of privilege and resources. 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. The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy, Supreme Court forms expert panel to probe any regulatory failure on Adani issue, India makes renewed push for consensus at G20 Foreign Ministers meeting, Hindenburg Research report on Adani Group | Supreme Court verdict on expert committee on March 2, High debt on Vedanta books puts investors on tenterhooks, Employees Provident Fund: How to activate UAN online, 1947: Madras Devadasis (Prevention of Dedication) Act passed, RMA 0-1 FCB, El Clasico highlights: Barcelona leads on aggregate after beating Real Madrid courtesy of a Militao own goal. There are instances when you and some voices in the narrative question their documentation practice. 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. The emotional cost is something else altogether. Often, we settle comfortably into describing things as communal riots instead of saying that it was a state-abetted violence, a pogrom, or a brutal massacre. It has taken me over a decade to get here. We removed an image just before the printing to make sure the person was protected. Updated Date: 6,253 Followers, 902 Following, 1,165 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitravijayan) She responded to an ad for the post of an RJ in Radio Mirchi. 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 In Afghanistan, Kashmir, and India, from one dangerous conflict zone to another, she spoke with people, ate with them, and listened to their stories. 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. The events in Hathras did not happen at the border; neither did the murder and gang rape of two teenage girls in the Katra village of Budaun district, Uttar Pradesh. 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. Suchitra Vijayan | C-SPAN.org Its a dangerous moment where the figure of the rights-bearing citizen is being reduced to a consuming subject. Why dont people see the ground shifting beneath their feet? IWE is a body of work where the voices of Indias marginalized are still kept on the fringes; Midnights Borders is anarrative nonfiction book depicting a world that novels from mainland India have failed to depict. This contributed to the long-running, brutal silencing of Kashmiris and their struggle for self-determination. I feel very uncomfortable talking about this, or rather I dont know how to discuss this without centering myself. As the author notes, here, beauty and violence coexist, but never as a binary. A. Midnights Borders is fascinating, eloquent in its insights, and unflinching in its depiction of the dark side of nation-building. Suchitra Vijayan complicates and expands our understanding of the South Asian American experience, urging readers to consider stories that cast dark eyes at India, a strategic ally of many Western nations. Suchitra Vijayan: The Indian state has always used excessive and extrajudicial violence on communities that resist, whether its the borderlands, peripheries, or mainland Now the international viewfor instance while the Gujarat riots of 2002 brought critical international media attention and criticism, and [current Prime Minister] Modi was banned from entering the US, India was able to effectively manage global public opinion. As a trained barrister, I used to believe in the concept of justicebut now I simply call this freedom and dignity. 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. A: Writers are very strange creatures. In Afghanistan, Kashmir, and India, from one dangerous conflict zone to another, she spoke with people, ate with them, and listened to their stories. Yes, Chopra does take a huge share of attention, but the real danger is how people like her whitewash Hindutva, and now increasingly co-opt the language of Hinduphobia to counter any critique of Hindutva. Who is expendable, and the manufacturing of rightlessness to render people expendable. Suchitra tweets @suchitrav. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments. Already a subscriber? During the initial search, the BSF troops recovered a black coloured drone - DJI Matrice (made in China), in partially damaged condition, lying near Dhussi Bundh near Shahjada village. Speculation and conjecture were repeated ad infinitum, and several journalists even took to Twitter to encourage the Indian army. What moral and political stands we should take in the face of ongoing oppression. These may not be perfect worlds or even equal worlds, but they strive to be. Even the diasporic experience is often told through this limited lens, without taking into account how diverse the immigrant experience in this country is. 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. Its feudal, entitled, and cannibalistic. Bigotry is also big business. Midnights Borders: A Peoples History of Modern India ; Suchitra Vijayan, Context/ Westland Books, 699. Suchitra is a sought-after performer at corporate and other such stage shows. 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. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. Through these real histories of the people, she gives readers another perspective on old wounds like Partition and new divisionary tactics like the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. 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. I can see how religious Hindu fanaticism has started to spread its tentacles in both the Democratic and the Republican parties, and this is primarily because of an absence of balanced stories about India. It took me 8 years to write the book. 1 author picked Midnight's Borders as one of their favorite books, . Midnights Borders is part investigation, part meditation on the lines drawn on land or water that separate India from its neighbours. I think these are fundamental questions of freedom and dignity. Unreliable Witnesses - Boston Review ""The historical unity of the ruling classes is realized in the state." Antonio Gramsci" This affects who gets to document, and whom. The latter is an act of violence against people whose voice you are appropriating. Her work looks at theories of violence, war, and human nature. Because you are constantly thinking about the ethical universe you are bringing this child into What values do you teach this child? You need to write what you seethats why you started this project.. 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. Now, border security policies are linked to domestic politics. A lot of travel writing is still written by a particular group of people with immense privilege, and they all tend to center themselves. Like most women, I learnt to navigate this toxic misogyny, the threat of sexual violence, and patriarchy by merely existing as a dark-skinned woman in this country. Your prose is hopeful there. The credit goes to my agent Lucy Cleland who suggested this title. One of the ways she upholds the humane in this book is through her interaction with the men in the security forces. Theyre screaming all the time, its just that we dont listen to them. We once asked these questions, even if there were no clear answers or consensus. Copyright 2023. Chopra has long been neoliberalisms reluctant feminist, hawking giving a voice and sisterhood while silencing those who question her. 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 Suchitra Vijayan I felt the same way when I would prepare legal petitions for my clients. It is the fragility of human lives that remains at the very center of the book. How do you think this shapes climate justice? 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. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. We believe that literature builds communityand if reading The Rumpus makes you feel more connected, please show your support! Its impossible for a writer not to be affected by their personal life. She is actively involved in circulating urgent and underrepresented news from the world through her online platform. I think its the other way round, these communities have always been speaking, writing, documenting, teachingwe must simply listen rather than represent them in any way. 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. This means that, for the longest time, the depiction of violence and marginalised communities has been problematic. Also, a book is an act of community; it has many midwives. Vijayan began her journey in Kolkata. Pushback is such a benign word, isnt it? I have two tests. This is a challenging task for the writer. If she wasnt real she would be a marriage between a meme and parody. Check posts or bunkers were not part of the landscapes of my home. 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. Second, there is a clear distinction between speaking against the powerful and claiming to speak on behalf of the "voiceless". In her book, she makes her intention clear at the very beginning, claiming that this endeavor is not to give voice to the voiceless but to critique the nation-state, its violence, and the arbitrariness of territorial sovereignty. She acknowledges that a book in its limited scope cannot really encapsulate the entirety of this journey, and it will remain more of a scrapbook, a collection of images, texts, poetry, and maps. A literary community. 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. Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitravijayan) Instagram photos and videos Midnight's Borders by Suchitra Vijayan falls in both categories. 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.. Vijayan: Let me start heregood writing is powerful and political. This is the backdrop against which we map how border practices and policies have played out in India. It is here that we subsume all that we otherwise celebrate under the demands of freedom, progress, liberalism, liberty, and secular ideals.". So we might never know the true extent of this loss. Whose Stories Are Told In Indian History? Book reviews and author interviews with a Southern focus. That, perhaps, is the only way to avoid further destruction in the region. Now imagine how it would be for someone from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, or working community to try to make inroads. We dont document violence against the privileged like we would report violence against those without power. He is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Georgia and is the author of The House With a Thousand Stories, His Fathers Disease, and There Is No Good Time for Bad News. Suchitra was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, as the daughter of Ramadurai and Padmaja. Its an immense privilege to be able to write and be published. There are some notable exceptions, but they are an exception. Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. 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. In Suchitra Vijayan's new book, borders are as arbitrary as history 4 reviews of Suchitra Vijayan Photography "Huge fan of Suchitra Vijayan Photography! Suchitra is now a singer-songwriter as well, composing music on her own and in collaboration with Singer Ranjith. From the epoch of Empire to the nation-state, border making is fundamentally a political project that creates, sustains, and reinforces inequality. Not everyone rejoiced in these new freedoms. As a bedouin who grew up listening to beautiful stories from beautiful storytellers around a fire, I was transported by her storytelling. Once we eliminated the spectacle, we realized that the Indian public got very little information about the Pulwama attack and its aftermath. Excerpts from the #BBC documentary telecast about PM . To them he is a man who has settled into a job that has no future. 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. It is here that even the most civilised amongst us begin to make excuses for repression, brutality, and violence. Keywords: LTTE love jihad Beef politics Hindu Nationalism Kashmir Founded in 2009, The Rumpus is one of the longest running independent online literary and culture magazines. 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). The mask is off. The arrest of Khurram Parvez shows that India is no [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]. Lets start with a very simple statement that everyone can agree on: the way were living right now cannot continue. 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. Vijayan: Most Indian American writers, especially many of them who occupy the broad spectrum of literary to punditry, come from immense privilege of caste and class. There are two quotes I regularly use by Allan Sekula when I teach: "The making of a human likeness on film is a political act.