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. Also, hope is a discipline. 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. Its impossible for a writer not to be affected by their personal life. Vijayan: I wasnt trying to write a hybrid book; I was trying to tell the stories I encountered as a way to think about the moral and political realities of our lives. These are stories of massive human rights violations committed by the Indian state in the countrys margins. While Nehru was still declaring this victory, the slaughter began. Includes previously unreleased investigation under #JackStraw. We need more writers from Indias Northeast, Kashmir, Indigenous, Dalit, and Muslim communities to tell stories that help complete the canvas of narratives about India. 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. Conversations With Writers Braver Than Me, Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India, FUNNY WOMEN: Excerpts from George Eliots, Rumpus Original Poetry: Two Poems by John A. Nieves, RUMPUS POETRY BOOK CLUB EXCERPT: WHY I WRITE LOVE POETRY IN A BURNING WORLD by Katie Farris, The Freedom of Form & Re-Entering Myths: An interview with A.E. Follow our team of columnists and reporters who write about the media. Say, for instance, do we need a James Nachtwey to fly to war-torn Bosnia? 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. Its feudal, entitled, and cannibalistic. Part of this process is a need to turn the lens back at the powerful. Subscribe here. What are those ethical, moral, and political lines? Why dont people see the ground shifting beneath their feet? Book reviews and author interviews with a Southern focus. 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. You need a community of people to support you.
Suchitra Acharjee - Graduate Assistant - The University of Texas Rio Is secularism a good thing? This is such an insidious conversation to have; this was even before Adani bought it. I havent spoken or celebrated with my friends in Kashmir or Assam. A: Writers are very strange creatures. 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. Her work looks at theories of violence, war, and human nature.
Hope Is the Last Bastion: Talking with Suchitra Vijayan Opinion | After Pulwama, the Indian media proves it is the BJP's Suchitra Vijayan Theyre screaming all the time, its just that we dont listen to them. Growing up I was surrounded by people who emphasised the community over anything else. To them he is a man who has settled into a job that has no future. 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. 2:16. 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. But the inclination to still treat India as a democracy remains. J.G.P. 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. 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. It is here that even the most civilised amongst us begin to make excuses for repression, brutality, and violence. Nine years ago, she began documenting stories from her travels along the borders of India. 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. Where does that leave us? There is also a lot of deep-seated misogyny, casteism, and anti-Black racism in our communities that need to be addressed. Fear seems to be a constant motif in the book we see versions and types of it. (Stay up to date on new book releases, reviews, and more with The Hindu On Books newsletter. 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. [3], She started singing after a few years as RJ. The people whose lives are not just materials for the book, who are, in some ways, your co-conspirators in trying to make sense of the social reality. 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.. But Pakistan responded by rejecting these claims and told the Associated Press that the area was mostly deserted wooded area and that there were no casualties or damage on the ground. She has a sister named, Sunitha. Perhaps that offers some protection? Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news.
In Midnight's Borders, Suchitra Vijayan meditates on belongingness Suchitra Vijayan > Faculty > People > NYU Gallatin 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.
SUCHITRA VIJAYAN PHOTOGRAPHY - 42 Photos - Manhatan, NY - Yelp We see that during the journey, in a number of places, people stood in lines to speak with you, to show their paperwork to youhow did you negotiate the weight ofthose expectations, which might not have been explicit, but were still very much present? In the first season, when he and his team are tasked to thwart the terrorist attack Operation Zulfiqar, the plot moves from Mumbai to Kashmir. And this is always at the expense of others. The people in the text fear statelessness, unknown violence, and being forgotten. As an attorney, 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 Iraqi refugees. In retaliation, the Indian Air Force carried out an airstrike on an alleged militant training camp in Balakot in Pakistans Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. I wrote the book, but those who have lived through this hell continue to live and navigate this hell. In Midnight's Borders, barrister, political analyst, and writer Suchitra Vijayan documentsmany such telling accounts of lives both growing and barely getting by alongIndian borderlands. In the middle of significant change, this fraught system cannot exist as it is.
Why do you think India has gotten away with this so far?
Suchitra Vijayan's Midnight's Borders | Youth Ki Awaaz The latter is an act of violence against people whose voice you are appropriating. But who gets to speak for so many of us? Midnights Borders, a work of narrative reportage, is the fruit of this journey. Its easy for Indian Americans and diaspora Desis to become tokens who speak of diversity but not equity or representation, talk of caste as culture and whitewash Hindutva. How did you arrive at this stylistic juncture where you manage to tell the stories of these people who are radically less privileged than you without appropriating them? Vijayan began her journey in Kolkata. Over the past 15 years, small democratisation through social media has enabled challenging these practices. 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. 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. 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. What makes these lives so vivid is how Vijayan contextualizes them by placing them in the bigger picture of history. As such, very few media establishments in India have been able to stand against the influence of political leaders. . There are some notable exceptions, but they are an exception. She has a sister named, Sunitha. Without a political solution, Kashmir will undoubtedly emerge in upcoming news cycles. We know that the purpose of borders has kept changing for nations. Vijayan shows a keen eye for detail as she presents these diverse lives. I can see small cracks beginning to appear. It seems that they have a different eye for these women, who they describe as cunning, deceitful, and in some cases, prostitutes'. More from this author , Tags: Aruni Kashyap, Asian American, bollywood, Brahmanism, caste system, democracy, Hindu, Hinduism, Hinduphobia, Hindutva, immigrants, immigration, India, Indian American, Indian American literature, Leni Riefenstahl, Midnight's Borders, Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India, model minority, Modi, Narendra Damodardas Modi, Narendra Modi, neoliberalism, photographs, photography, Polis Project, Politics, Priyanka Chopra, south asian, South Asian American, South Asian diaspora, Stan Swamy, Suchitra Vijayan, travel writing, Filed Under: Features & Reviews, Rumpus Original. Even those who now write about Modis India, will never write about Brahmanism or be critical of how caste works in the diaspora. Apart from his long-suffering wife, no one else in the family knows that he is a spy. Suchitra Vijayan. Also read: The History Of The Colonial State And The Unmaking Of The Tawaif. Her distinct and bold voice made her very popular with the younger crowd. The two press briefings by the foreign secretary and Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson entertained no questions. Feminism In India is an award-winning digital intersectional feminist media organisation to learn, educate and develop a feminist sensibility among the youth. The post-Cold War and 90s rhetoric of a borderless world that accompanied globalisation also kick-started massive border fencing projects in India. 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 . 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. Sometimes lost. 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. I dont have apprehensions. According to a new World Health Organization report, we lost as many as 4.7 million people in India. She lucidly explains the complicated history of the McMahon Line, how the India-China border is the result of a fabrication perpetuated by the British colonial administration. In an interview with Firstpost,Vijayan talks about her book, the militarisation of borders, ethno-nationalism, and the politics of documentation. This is where I believe literary nonfiction becomes a powerful tool. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. How did you achieve empathy in your writing, without the privileged lens that is common in journalistic canon? In recent years, the narrative of hate has escalated with the reelection of the right-wing Narendra Modi government in 2019. Is that a probable solution? The interview has been paraphrased and condensed for clarity, at the interviewers discretion. A consistent ethical framework within the media hasnt existed for a long time. 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