suchitra vijayan husband

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. I find that profoundly inspiring. This language drums the idea of the fundamental importance of justice, and such language is inalienable: it can easily be defined and empathetically understood. Vijayan: There is an elusive distance between the photographer and the photographed that cant be bridged. Without a political solution, Kashmir will undoubtedly emerge in upcoming news cycles. This article was published more than4 years ago. 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 think the way that news and mostly disinformation makes its way to us, we think of violence in very particular waysas disjointed. 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. 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. My friend Ritesh Uttamchandani said this once, the lens that elusive distance between the photographer and the photographed is often impossible to bridge. Ali lived right on the edge of the India-Bangladesh border. 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. Already a subscriber? How did writing this book affect you? Its a dangerous moment where the figure of the rights-bearing citizen is being reduced to a consuming subject. Also read: Book Review: Looking Through Dalit Sahitya And Ambedkar. 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. Also, we shouldn't forget that the border making project is central to capitalist and neoliberal logic. Many TV newsrooms were transformed into caricatures of military command centers, with anchors assessing military technology and strategy (sometimes incorrectly). 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. I still do. Propaganda and poison work in far more sophisticated ways. Vijayans book begins a much-needed conversation on thinking about freedom beyond the idea of nation and its illusory lines. 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. In her new book This is not the violent right wing and their siege; its centrist and liberal media that is also relitigating history, deconstructing the core values of the constitution. 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 was married to actor Karthik Kumar between 2005 and 2017. . Zoya, a young female officer, is now confined to her wheelchair, and Milind, who also makes it out alive, is seen at home with drawn curtains, battling trauma. ( I hate this word, voiceless, by the way). When Vijayan meets him, he is inside his home with all the windows closed and sealed to snuff out light. Finally, Indias current transformation, the aggressive posturing of an aspiring ethno-nationalist state, will have dire consequences for the people and the region. She's a good friend and kindly agreed to take our City Hall wedding photos. Say, for instance, do we need a James Nachtwey to fly to war-torn Bosnia? Commentary Politics. As a lawyer, journalist, and human rights activist who has worked in conflict-ridden territories of Kosovo, Egypt, Rwanda, and elsewhere, she has often met people scrambling for bare existence, caught in a no-mans land. Vijayan is no stranger to stories of violence. '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. Feminism In India is an award-winning digital intersectional feminist media organisation to learn, educate and develop a feminist sensibility among the youth. Follow our team of columnists and reporters who write about the media. She perfectly captured the happiness and the intimacy of the occasion, the warmth of all the people present, and the splendor of the venue. You need a community of people to support you. She is actively involved in circulating urgent and underrepresented news from the world through her online platform. The government, of course, denies this. How do you think this shapes climate justice? We have already chosen silence and obfuscation even before the pushback has arrived. Its a practice. That, perhaps, is the only way to avoid further destruction in the region. Midnight's Borders by Suchitra Vijayan. Why dont people see the ground shifting beneath their feet? MacAdam reviews Suchitra Vijayan's book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India Read More. I had a very stable home to come back to. Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. The publishing landscape, including Indian publishing, is deeply flawedit is upper class, upper caste, and deeply alienating for anyone who doesnt come from already established and existing networks of privilege. Early on, I was very careful to acknowledge this. The emotional cost is something else altogether. From the epoch of Empire to the nation-state, border making is fundamentally a political project that creates, sustains, and reinforces inequality. I cant think in terms of the future being borderless, I can only think in terms of fracturing. There are already about 20 million climate refugees around South Asias borderlands. 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. A lot of travel writing is still written by a particular group of people with immense privilege, and they all tend to center themselves. A: I dont agree with this kind of framing, because its not that underrepresented people dont have voices. Required fields are marked *. But who carries the responsibility of that fear? Categories. The argument put forward was simple: India, like most countries, had its human rights violations, but these were characterized as the growing pains and maturation of the worlds largest democracy. Sometimes they are no more, but your storytelling is so invigorating that the reader doesnt forget them. Worse, we have been disciplined to accept injustice and inequality as given. Even those who now write about Modis India, will never write about Brahmanism or be critical of how caste works in the diaspora. Instead, we need to ask what fate awaits us. What connects these messages is deep empathy and a willingness to engage with the books stories, ideas, and arguments. Lets take Indias English language media, cultural-artistic elite, and publishing. Respond to our political present. We thank her for her time, patience, and illuminating insights into her work. I dont think theres just one emotion that drives a writer to finish writing. I have no formal training as a writer or a photographer, I taught myself and learnt by doing, failing and creating my own grammar. And join us by becoming a monthly or yearly Member. We live in a profoundly unequal society, where every day brings news of new devastation. Suchitra is a BSc graduate from Mar Ivanios College (Trivandrum). Suchitra Vijayan's debut book, Midnight's Borders, is a genre-bending book of nonfictionmade of stories, encounters, vignettes, and photographsabout home, belonging, and displacement.The book recounts the author's recent journey across India's land borders covering 9000 miles over a span of seven years. ). Why do you think India has gotten away with this so far? Its feudal, entitled, and cannibalistic. The two officers who avert the attack narrowly escape death but are left with broken bodies and broken lives. Vijayan: Its a very generous reading, and thanks for that. Rumpus: How hard was it to write nonfiction about such a violent contemporary history? That capacity to be able to go away and then come back profoundly affects how you write because then you are still rooted. Now, border security policies are linked to domestic politics. Its not comparable and should not be compared. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. It is the fragility of human lives that remains at the very center of the book. They continue to. Who is expendable, and the manufacturing of rightlessness to render people expendable. And were there any apprehensions since you began working on this book? Good, honest and non-polemical writing has always forced us to confront the lies we tell ourselves. 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. This was something I had to resist from the get-go. What I was most concerned about and still am are the people in the book and their safety. 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. 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. You can claim to be patriotic but not political, you can claim to support the troops but ignore the ongoing civilian casualty. Q: Since publishing the book last year, what reflections have you hadgiven that its relevance is increasingly ascertained by 2022s interpersonal and geopolitical violence? Some people later chose not to be included because they feared repercussions, especially as the NRC process started playing out. The book was originally going to be a photographic body of work, which changed when I started writing. Were there times when you doubted your own ability to record and document these people's stories? In Midnight's Borders, Suchitra Vijayan meditates on belongingness, freedom and political implications of territorial demarcations 'The border making project is central to the capitalist and neoliberal logic,' Vijayan says. In season two, a quick flashback resolves the plotline from the previous season. What we can do is attempt micro-histories of events, timelines, or local communities. Those notes were raw and immediate. @suchitrav. Sometimes the news is the story. As Sari Begum's story [in the book] illustrates, 'A life where the violence of the border is not at the fence, or in the trenches, but at the center of 'their' and our 'universe'. 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. So here, 'Midnight' functions as a moment of violent birth, but also perhaps the foundational violence that becomes codified in various ways, especially in the bodies of people farthest away from power. This is the backdrop against which we map how border practices and policies have played out in India. They create cleavages of fear, xenophobia, and insecurity. Anvisha Manral March 20, 2021 09:50:40 IST 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. This is a tightrope that you walk so well. Abrogation Of Article 370 Jammu And Kashmir Statehood, BSF foils another Pakistan plot, shoots down drone in Punjab's Amritsar, Light on weight, heavy on damage: India will be able to hit deep inside Pakistan with THIS ultralightweight howitzer, Put issues related to border in 'proper place', work for its early normalisation: Chinese FM Qin to Jaishankar, In Midnight's Borders, Suchitra Vijayan meditates on belongingness, freedom and political implications of territorial demarcations. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister at law and the author of Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India. I wrote a book along with it comes love, scorn, and sometimes even ridicule. I left a few names out in the acknowledgment, worrying if it might direct more trouble towards them. Not everyone rejoiced in these new freedoms. Her work looks at theories of violence, war, and human nature. This also decides who gets access, awards and accolades. Qin took charge as Chinese foreign minister in December, succeeding Wang Yi. Co-founded the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, Suchitra is also the founder of the Polis Project, a research and journalism organisation. Our borders had become a spectacle, and we the cheering mob, she says, as she calls for purging hatred for the sake of posterity. We have migrated to a new commenting platform. Q: As you wrote this book, you dont hesitate to meditate on how your personal life bidirectionally impacted the book. This means that the capacity to see does not automatically become the capacity for action. 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. It is truly the treason of the intellectuals. We could have attributed this to ignorance even a few years back; now its just silence thats deeply complicit in the Hindutva project. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Q: What was your goal with writing the book in the beginning and how did it change and drive you throughout those 8 years? But also, to be clear in terms of what I wanted to accomplish: as I say in the book, I wasnt bearing witness or giving voice to the voicelessthe people in this book are eloquent and political voices of their lives and realities. Midnight's Borders by Suchitra Vijayan falls in both categories. If it does, I have failed. suchitrav. Excellent interview, brave insights and critical reflections! This book ate into so much of my life. This media blitzkrieg resulted in the erasure of two important political trends. Author In Focus, Celebration, The Literary Journal. NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study. This contributed to the long-running, brutal silencing of Kashmiris and their struggle for self-determination. He drops and picks up his kids from school, pines for his old job and is concerned about the newly-formed government in Pakistanall the while trying to salvage his crumbling marriage. More importantly, as Babasaheb would argue, the political revolution was never accompanied by a social revolution. Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. The stories were a way to understand how people struggled and survived. The acts of writing, documenting, photographing, and archiving carry privileges of caste and class. 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. Fearful of the future he asked quietly, Where did all this hate come from, where is it going to take us? echoing what many residents had told her. 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Take a look at theseevents: The vast infrastructure of detention centers being built in Assam and outside; a politician from a ruling party incites violence by saying, goli maaro saalon ko, and remains free; a minister, a Harvard educated technocrat, garlands and celebrates men for the grave crime of lynching; Dr Teltumbde and other BK 16 [the 16 arrests made in the Bhima Koregaon case] political prisoners remain incarcerated with little, no or manufactured evidence for being dissenting subjects; and a standup comic is arrested for the crime of existing as a Muslim. Now imagine how it would be for someone from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, or working community to try to make inroads. A: I lost friends, saw my father go through a transplant, and I gave birth. This is the age of erosion of citizenship rights, a kind of ongoing attrition against human rights, civil liberties, and in the case of India, an accelerated dilution of fundamental rights. In Nellie (Assam) too, where over 3,000 Muslims were killed in 1983, people stared at Vijayan in confusion, no one comes here anymore, she was told. Suchitra Vijayan. Copyright 2023. 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. Suchitra Vijayan. Modi met with senior police officers and ordered them not to intervene as violence raged. A consistent ethical framework within the media hasnt existed for a long time. She responded to an ad for the post of an RJ in Radio Mirchi. Second, there is a clear distinction between speaking against the powerful and claiming to speak on behalf of the "voiceless". Can you write about loss without living? So we might never know the true extent of this loss. She studied Law, Political Science and International Relations, and was trained as a Barrister-at-Law and called to Bar at the Honourable Society of Inner Temple. Its not sustainable, it fractures who we are, chips away and erodes what it fundamentally means to be human. I have no control over what comes next. Midnights Borders is part investigation, part meditation on the lines drawn on land or water that separate India from its neighbours. There is also a lot of deep-seated misogyny, casteism, and anti-Black racism in our communities that need to be addressed. 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. They are also essentially bureaucratic, judicial, and procedural acts of terror. In terms of violence, there is also this tendency to photograph and display the bodies of marginalised communities when they experience violence. The border runs through him, his friend Jamshed had told Vijayan, He is almost gone, but I dont want his story to be gone too.. Early on, the idea of bearing witness as a rhetorical tool and as a literary device became deeply problematic. She digs deep into colonial history to show how years of violence and consequential suffering has shaped these lives across generations. Acted as the General Manager for a day and motivated employees to work for the same purpose to reinforce team . The Rumpus: It is shocking how unaware the world is about the violence the Indian government has committed since independence on its border citizens. The world we know is already being remade in ways we cant fathom. One of the ways she upholds the humane in this book is through her interaction with the men in the security forces. Our investigation into the Indian medias reporting on the Pulwama attack found that many reports were contradictory, biased, incendiary and uncorroborated. 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. 2:16. Vijayan has travelled 9,000 miles over seven 7 across India's borderline remote areas and has collected many bone-chilling, painful, myth-breaking stories of the people caught in between inter-state disputes because of the lines created by colonial powers who ruled over us for . I came with my privileges, also lets not forget prejudices. Where does that leave us? These are stories of massive human rights violations committed by the Indian state in the countrys margins. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. 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.. The original vision of the book also has newspaper cuttings, and found maps. Is secularism a good thing? This is such an insidious conversation to have; this was even before Adani bought it. 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. Chopra has long been neoliberalisms reluctant feminist, hawking giving a voice and sisterhood while silencing those who question her. Suchitra is now a singer-songwriter as well, composing music on her own and in collaboration with Singer Ranjith. Suchitra Vijayan's new book, Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India, takes a deep look at such stories by prioritizing the experiences of the silenced victims as well as lesser-known accounts from victims of state violence. It is meant to manufacture an underclass of rightless subjects. Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. Suchitra is a BSc graduate from Mar Ivanios College (Trivandrum). While Nehru was still declaring this victory, the slaughter began. Thats part of the political imagination that I believe we need for political movements or any sustained acts of resistance. I had to write and rewrite this book so many times. Rumpus: In such a climate, what do you think is the responsibility of the diasporic Indian writer? There are also those who have previously been tacit, if not active, supporters of the right-wing Hindu nationalist Indian state. Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. It was just a sad moment, and I couldnt celebrate a book when there was so much human tragedy playing out. While Border Pillar No 1 becomes a convenient stump for children playing cricket along the land that India shares with Bangladesh, roughly 2000 kilometers away in Punjab a woman farmer watches on as the army builds a bunker on the few acres of land she owns. 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. When I left him (the first time), I had a one-year-old daughter. In India, that arbitrariness can be seen in how differently we perceive landboundaries with multiple sovereign nations. They are arriving from various cities and people I have never met. The post-Cold War and 90s rhetoric of a borderless world that accompanied globalisation also kick-started massive border fencing projects in India. What are those ethical, moral, and political lines? When your investigations in Kashmir came to an end, what changes did you observe in your 'grammar of dissent'? Fear seems to be a constant motif in the book we see versions and types of it. 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. Lets start with a very simple statement that everyone can agree on: the way were living right now cannot continue. Aruni Kashyap writes in English, and his native language Assamese.

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