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 . The former is an essential act of dissent, even resistance, especially in these dark times. Vijayan is no stranger to stories of violence. Its a vicious cycle. Thats part of the political imagination that I believe we need for political movements or any sustained acts of resistance. She still does a radio show called Flight983 on Radio Mirchi, on Sunday evenings (79 pm). In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. She is currently working on her first novel. There is also a lot of deep-seated misogyny, casteism, and anti-Black racism in our communities that need to be addressed. 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. Updated Date: 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. What we can do is attempt micro-histories of events, timelines, or local communities. Many of the stories didnt make it to the book because it became dangerous to identify people. is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. 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. In Afghanistan, Kashmir, and India, from one dangerous conflict zone to another, she spoke with people, ate with them, and listened to their stories. 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. Worse, we have been disciplined to accept injustice and inequality as given. 10 books like The Home and the World (picked by 7,000+ authors) Anvisha Manral March 20, 2021 09:50:40 IST 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's account of her journeys across the undefinable and ever-shifting borders between India and its neighbours is gripping, frightening, faithful and beautiful. We know that the purpose of borders has kept changing for nations. 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. Includes previously unreleased investigation under #JackStraw. 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. As a bedouin who grew up listening to beautiful stories from beautiful storytellers around a fire, I was transported by her storytelling. From the epoch of Empire to the nation-state, border making is fundamentally a political project that creates, sustains, and reinforces inequality. I left my 18-month-old daughter to travel and finish this book. I am repeating what I have said before, "Kashmir is Indias greatest moral and political failure. Its not sustainable, it fractures who we are, chips away and erodes what it fundamentally means to be human. But its also important to constantly take account of who is writing about this India to an Indian and global audience. We perform rituals of freedom in a right-less societywe dont ask if the rules, laws, and policies that are put in place are fair, just, right or equitable. They are also essentially bureaucratic, judicial, and procedural acts of terror. The people in this book are eloquent advocates of their history and their struggles. They all have very specific and carefully curated origin/immigrant stories that cleverly exploit the model minority trope. Subscribe here. Its when we lose hope that we believe that we have lost everything. As a trained barrister, I used to believe in the concept of justicebut now I simply call this freedom and dignity. Suchitra Vijayan on Twitter: ""Fighting for justice and human rights in This means that, for the longest time, the depiction of violence and marginalised communities has been problematic. We're back with our flagship podcast 'Intersectional FeminismDesi Style!' The third thing is: were going back to relitigating everything. 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. Who gets to shape these stories, what stories are chosen, what stories then are exiled? None of this helps in telling richer, more textured stories. 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. Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitrav) / Twitter 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? Vijayan: A writers responsibility above all is to speak the truth and make sense of our social worlds. Suchitra Vijayan is the executive director of the Polis Project. This contributed to the long-running, brutal silencing of Kashmiris and their struggle for self-determination. She was part of a music band at PSG. She completed her MFA in Writing (Fiction) from the University of San Francisco where she was awarded the Jan Zivic Fellowship and is about to begin her PhD in English with a Creative Dissertation from the University of Georgia, Athens. But, more importantly, I wanted my readers to walk away with a sense of empathy. Suchitra is a BSc graduate from Mar Ivanios College (Trivandrum). 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. These are stories of massive human rights violations committed by the Indian state in the countrys margins. Its an immense privilege to be able to write and be published. This was something I had to resist from the get-go. 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Its about what people like me should do. Co-founded the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, Suchitra is also the founder of the Polis Project, a research and journalism organisation. But for me hope is radical; hope is the last bastion of our defense. 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. If it does, I have failed. Instead, the Indian media has ascribed to itself the role of an amplifier of the government propaganda that took two nuclear states to the brink of war. Excerpts from the #BBC documentary telecast about PM . Stallings, Rumpus Original Fiction: The Litany of Invisible Things. Your email address will not be published. It is here that we subsume all that we otherwise celebrate under the demands of freedom, progress, liberalism, liberty, and secular ideals.". 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. 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. Empathy is taught by our communities; we are brought up with it. What makes these lives so vivid is how Vijayan contextualizes them by placing them in the bigger picture of history. We removed an image just before the printing to make sure the person was protected. Suchitra Acharjee - Graduate Assistant - The University of Texas Rio Perhaps there are lessons to learn from that. How do you think this inspiration from a variety of genres allowed you to tell underrepresented stories? Its a dangerous moment where the figure of the rights-bearing citizen is being reduced to a consuming subject. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. The Family Man has found tremendous success as a slick and funny espionage drama, particularly for its treatment of the protagonist, and even for humanising terrorists. NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Midnights Borders, a work of narrative reportage, is the fruit of this journey. These are no longer contradictory; instead, even criticism can be converted to views. I wrote a book along with it comes love, scorn, and sometimes even ridicule. 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. When fires burn down large swathes of what were peoples homeswhat borders will you impose when climate change will fundamentally remake them? With the phone armed with a camera, everyone is a photographer; we are all witnesses. Why the Modi government lies. Second, as the media continued to promote government positions on the crisis, other critical political issues dropped out of public scrutiny. We have already chosen silence and obfuscation even before the pushback has arrived. A: This is a very loaded question. Midnights Borders , Suchitra Vijayan includes a photo of the pillar, which becomes a cricket stump for boys on either side of the border most days. Suchitra Vijayan's Midnight's Borders | Youth Ki Awaaz 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. No one would put themselves through the agony and pain of writing. Legislations such as National Register of Citizens and Citizenship Amendment Act threaten to render millions of people, especially Muslims, stateless. It is the fragility of human lives that remains at the very center of the book. Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. A: This geopolitical violence is not new, theres a long bloody, brutal history to thisa cyclical, ongoing and never-ending history. I wrote the book, but those who have lived through this hell continue to live and navigate this hell. Its feudal, entitled, and cannibalistic. Q: Speaking about the content of the work, by including under-represented perspectives on the frequently debated partition and border laws you present a novel perspective to journalistic canon. This is where I believe literary nonfiction becomes a powerful tool. MacAdam reviews Suchitra Vijayan's book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India Read More. We live in a profoundly unequal society, where every day brings news of new devastation. Follow our team of columnists and reporters who write about the media. . The Author Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. Lets start with a very simple statement that everyone can agree on: the way were living right now cannot continue. Bigotry is also big business. Many TV newsrooms were transformed into caricatures of military command centers, with anchors assessing military technology and strategy (sometimes incorrectly). Can any of theTIMEsubscribers who loved that cover tell us now whats happening in South Sudan today? In the middle of significant change, this fraught system cannot exist as it is. In politics, we will be recognising the principle of one man, one vote, and one vote, one value. Its a practice. The people in the text fear statelessness, unknown violence, and being forgotten.