Is secularism a good thing? This is such an insidious conversation to have; this was even before Adani bought it. Suchitra is a BSc graduate from Mar Ivanios College (Trivandrum). She has also been appreciated for her honest and positive-humour-filled judging at reality shows like Vijay TV's Airtel Super Singer, Sun TV's Sun Singer, Asianet's Music India, and Bol Baby Bol on Gemini TV and Surya TV. The latter is an act of violence against people whose voice you are appropriating. And our language helps us imagine a vision that is truly just, beautiful and ethical. Are you expecting any pushback at all? You become responsible for a human being. The credit goes to my agent Lucy Cleland who suggested this title. So the first reflection is this idea of where we are right now: as people, as a society, as a community. Vijayan: There is an elusive distance between the photographer and the photographed that cant be bridged. Also, we shouldn't forget that the border making project is central to capitalist and neoliberal logic. As a Bookshop affiliate, The Rumpus earns a percentage from qualifying purchases. 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. 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. She is the founder and executive director of The Polis Project, and the author of. The third thing is: were going back to relitigating everything. 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. Her work looks at theories of violence, war, and human nature. Why dont people see the ground shifting beneath their feet? No one can write a book alone. This idea of responsibility gets obfuscated in many ways. I have no control over what comes next. Rumpus: Were you trying to write a hybrid-genre book? 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 think freedom and dignity enables us to really go beyond in our political imaginationbeyond just electoral politics. Thank you! Its a dangerous moment where the figure of the rights-bearing citizen is being reduced to a consuming subject. We dont document violence against the privileged like we would report violence against those without power. Rumpus: Toni Morrison said that she writes from a place of delight, not disappointment. 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. So I try to learn and listen, and again, as I say in this book, "It is not my goal to 'bear witness' or 'give voice to the voiceless'. Rumpus: The book derives its emotional strength and narrative energy from the stories of people you encounter at the borders. If you want to support the work that goes behind publishing high-quality feminist media content, please consider becoming a FII member. Its when we lose hope that we believe that we have lost everything. After her Twitter page was hacked in 2016, and the pictures and videos released by the hacker went viral under #suchileaks, following a spate of bad press owing to the fact that she only released a statement on Sun News saying she was focused on shutting the page down, Suchitra left for London to pursue culinary arts at Le Cordon Bleu. March 20, 2021 09:50:40 IST. Suchitra tweets @suchitrav. This article was published more than4 years ago. How do you think your book contributes to the larger conversation about India? [1] Career [ edit] Includes previously unreleased investigation under #JackStraw. 2:16. 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. Bhawan Singh, who photographed the Nellie massacre, said he had never seen anything like it. They dont. 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. There are so many nonfiction books about India published yearly but few are so important and subversive. Listen to Season 3 on Apple, Spotify and Google podcasts. She is the executive director of the Polis Project . This is a profoundly alienating place for anyone without the networks of privilege and resources. Also read: Examining My Caste And Its History Is Eye-Opening: A Personal Essay On Casteism And Ancestry. 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. She perfectly captured the happiness and the intimacy of the occasion, the warmth of all the people present, and the splendor of the venue. Suchitra Vijayan. He writes about how when the Constitution was adopted, "We are going to enter into a life of contradictions. The two press briefings by the foreign secretary and Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson entertained no questions. A lot of travel writing is still written by a particular group of people with immense privilege, and they all tend to center themselves. Chopra cleverly uses womens empowerment, diversity, and the immigrant story as a facade to parrot and promote deeply problematic ideologies, takes, and stances. NONFICTIONMidnights BordersBy Suchitra VijayanMelville HousePublished May 25, 2021. 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). Midnights Borders, a work of narrative reportage, is the fruit of this journey. The world we know is already being remade in ways we cant fathom. This is a serious, often funny and deeply revealing book. M, An essential, beautifully written report from the hellish margins of a modern mega-state struggling to be a nation, of people whose lives continue to be shaped by violent political marches across age-old homes and habitats. Stallings, Rumpus Original Fiction: The Litany of Invisible Things. So lets be very clear that Indias intellectual literary landscape is deeply problematic, feudal, and alienating," says Suchitra Vijayan to FII, Featured Image Source: They create cleavages of fear, xenophobia, and insecurity. We still argue if something should be a massacre, a pogrom, or a riot. Indian Foreign Secretary V.K. My role, then, and this books role, is to find in their articulations a critique of the nation-state, its violence and the arbitrariness of territorial sovereignty.". 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 . The Rumpus: It is shocking how unaware the world is about the violence the Indian government has committed since independence on its border citizens. Later on she moved to Coimbatore for her MBA from PSG Institute of Management. History and memory is localwhich means its almost impossible to write about India. Get your Rumpus merch in our online store. I had to write and rewrite this book so many times. Your prose is hopeful there. Chopra has long been neoliberalisms reluctant feminist, hawking giving a voice and sisterhood while silencing those who question her. Our investigation into the Indian medias reporting on the Pulwama attack found that many reports were contradictory, biased, incendiary and uncorroborated. Vijayan reserves her own impressions for later, and allows us to know these people intimately. Suchitra Vijayan. Sari Begum, born of rape during the Partition and married off to a violent, alcoholic man twenty years older than her, is forced to part with her land to make space for an army bunker, while Natasha Javed stumbles upon a piece of family history that reveals her ancestor being killed in the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre of 1919 and the subsequent trauma and loss of having to be forcefully emptied of history when they crossed over to Pakistan, and how talking about this would make them traitors in their homeland. In politics we will have equality, and in social and economic life, we will have inequality. The entire episode is emblematic of a broader trend in Indian media. The interview has been paraphrased and condensed for clarity, at the interviewers discretion. 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). Also read: Book Review: Looking Through Dalit Sahitya And Ambedkar. If it does, I have failed. They are arriving from various cities and people I have never met. Why the Modi government lies. I find that profoundly inspiring. But eventually we need all kinds of stories and arguments to emerge from what is now considered Indian American writing. More than two weeks after the attack, our analysis finds that no news site had rectified the errors in their reporting, leaving these misleading facts as a matter of public record. To them he is a man who has settled into a job that has no future. A:I dont think an ethical or moral compass exists nowI dont know if it ever existed. 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. She was part of a music band at PSG. 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