suchitra vijayan husband11 Mar suchitra vijayan husband
Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle. We see that more clearly when you decide against photographing children at the India-Bangladesh border. In these circumstances, the lives of people inhabiting the sketchy borderlands has become all the more vulnerable, and fragile. I left my 18-month-old daughter to travel and finish this book. This contributed to the long-running, brutal silencing of Kashmiris and their struggle for self-determination. 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. There are enough stories of people parachuting into communities to do human interest stories.. The Rumpus is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Excerpts from the #BBC documentary telecast about PM . Perhaps that offers some protection? So lets be very clear that Indias intellectual literary landscape is deeply problematic, feudal, and alienating," says Suchitra Vijayan to FII, Featured Image Source: 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 . I particularly loved the fact that all our couple shots were very natural and came out truly . '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 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. A:I dont think an ethical or moral compass exists nowI dont know if it ever existed. And were there any apprehensions since you began working on this book? I find that profoundly inspiring. Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. We have migrated to a new commenting platform. Why do you think India has gotten away with this so far? Yes, men who act as petty sovereigns are everywhere. On the C-SPAN Networks: Suchitra Vijayan is a Founder and Executive Director for the Project Polis, The with one video in the C-SPAN Video Library; the first appearance was a . Barrister. The people in this book are eloquent advocates of their history and their struggles. Siaan On Being Queer And Being Online, FII Interviews: Journalist Meena Kotwal On Minority Politics, Journalism Today And The Caste Divide. Vijayan began her journey in Kolkata. Its feudal, entitled, and cannibalistic. 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. 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. 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. Love, passion, anger, the desire to make a point about something. Now imagine how it would be for someone from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, or working community to try to make inroads. More importantly, as Babasaheb would argue, the political revolution was never accompanied by a social revolution. I was also trying to tell these stories from a repertoire of skills I had, and some I acquired. @suchitrav. " India's intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. Rumpus: In such a climate, what do you think is the responsibility of the diasporic Indian writer? That, perhaps, is the only way to avoid further destruction in the region. This affects who gets to document, and whom. Rumpus: The book utilizes more than one medium: photography, narrative nonfiction, journalism. He writes about how when the Constitution was adopted, "We are going to enter into a life of contradictions. The black and white pictures accompanying the chapters add a thousand words more. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. 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. Could you comment on how much our present border security policies have changed in the last few years? I have no control over what comes next. We're back with our flagship podcast 'Intersectional FeminismDesi Style!' Q: What struck me about your work was its immersive style. ", "Documentary photography has amassed mountains of evidenceyetthe genre has simultaneously contributed much to spectacle, to retinal excitation, to voyeurism, to terror, envy, and nostalgia, and only a little to the critical understanding of the social world.". 1 author picked Midnight's Borders as one of their favorite books, . 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. 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. I wanted to make sure that I was writing in a way that was honest and true to my initial reactions, and capture that without centering myself. Also, I am an unknown and insignificant entity. Vijayan: I would say I am hopeful. There are also those who have previously been tacit, if not active, supporters of the right-wing Hindu nationalist Indian state. 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. [1], Suchitra joined Sify for a year, after graduating. I dont have apprehensions. Midnight's Borders by Suchitra Vijayan falls in both categories. On Feb. 14, an Indian paramilitary convoy was attacked in Pulwama in India-administered Kashmir, resulting in the death of 40 Indian officers. 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. Thoughbordersare conventionally recognised as real or artificial lines of spatial and political demarcation, there may also be an arbitrariness to them. She is currently working on her first novel. At worst, its navel gazing peppered with white guilt, but always politically vacuous. However, at work, Tiwari is in his element. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. Subscribe here. 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. Some people later chose not to be included because they feared repercussions, especially as the NRC process started playing out. In that process, her reportage unravels the cultural and political implicationsof our bordersonour 'collective conscience', as capricious as that might be, and on the lives of those sandwiched between two warring nations. The two press briefings by the foreign secretary and Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson entertained no questions. They are also essentially bureaucratic, judicial, and procedural acts of terror. She sang her first song for the movie, Lesa Lesa under the composition of Harris Jayaraj and her co-singer was the legendary, K. S. Chitra. Suchitra is a sought-after performer at corporate and other such stage shows. It offers brief historical notes on how the nations current borders came into force alongside accounts of increasing militarisation, disputes, little massacres and forgotten pogroms, no-mans-lands, and the people through whom the border runs like barbed wire. Suchitra was married to actor Karthik Kumar between 2005 and 2017. The book was called ``a genre-bending book of nonfictionmade You will see very little critical commentary or public positions on Hindutva, its corrosive role in India, or how RSS works here in the USfunding and now interfering in US elections. If you want to support the work that goes behind publishing high-quality feminist media content, please consider becoming a FII member. It's a disorienting time when your library or what books you read can become evidence of sedition . Panitars division is as cruel as it is arbitrary: here, the houses on either side of one dusty lane occupy two neighbouring countries. We need to think about border practices, policing, and national security policies within the larger historical and political contexts. When Vijayan meets him, he is inside his home with all the windows closed and sealed to snuff out light. At a time when right-wing nationalism is crescendoing in India and across the world, Suchitra Vijayans Midnights Borders raises pertinent questions about the very foundations of Indias nationalism the cartography of South Asian nation-states defined by arbitrary lines drawn hastily by the British colonial administration. 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. 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. How do you think this shapes climate justice? 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. Q: You frequently describe certain borders as porous. I wrote the book, but those who have lived through this hell continue to live and navigate this hell. A memorable, humane museum of forgotten stories that we must all read and remember. M, What experiences and lives unfold in these pages. Despite the failures in investigation and prosecution related to criminal trials arising out of the pogrom, the judiciary has projected itself as an able and willing neutral arbiter of justice that is not complicit with the deep structures of Hindutvas anti-Muslim prejudice https://t.co/EFf5bxYEBt, True societal change has always emerged from the ground-up, with communities fighting for their own freedom and dignity. You become responsible for a human being. My friend Ritesh Uttamchandani said this once, the lens that elusive distance between the photographer and the photographed is often impossible to bridge. What we can do is attempt micro-histories of events, timelines, or local communities. On Feb. 14, an Indian paramilitary convoy was attacked. Then my agent said, Suchitra, you know, I think youre hiding behind your academic language. With the phone armed with a camera, everyone is a photographer; we are all witnesses. 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? That changes how you write and photograph a place. 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. In the popular depictions of India circulating in the US, we rarely see the stories that the nations jingoistic governments have shoved under the carpet. 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. Perhaps there are lessons to learn from that. Ali lived right on the edge of the India-Bangladesh border. Q: You had to deal with a lot of ethical considerations as a writer and photographer, which echo throughout your and your fellow journalists work, as evaluated in your book. Also read: The History Of The Colonial State And The Unmaking Of The Tawaif. Required fields are marked *. 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. A: I dont agree with this kind of framing, because its not that underrepresented people dont have voices. Along the way, we meet the men and women of TASC, dissenting students, ISIS terrorists and Pakistani military officers. 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 A poll asked if its OK to be white. Heres why the phrase is loaded. I can see small cracks beginning to appear. We dont document violence against the privileged like we would report violence against those without power. One of the ways she upholds the humane in this book is through her interaction with the men in the security forces. In addition, she is an award- winning photographer, the founder, and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization. O. Gokhale claimed that it struck the biggest camp and that a large number of terrorists were killed. Vijayan creates a constellation of micro-histories of people who have lived through the violence . Thanks to The New India Foundation for sending across a beautiful copy of the Midnights Borders. And, in many cases, they are children of the literary, cultural, or political elite who have long been the beneficiaries of the Indian state. There are enough stories of people parachuting into communities to do human interest stories. For far too long, they and their progeny have held power to shape the political understanding of our social worlds. Beyond the confusion over the death tolls at Balakot, news organizations variously reported that between 25 and 350 kilograms of the explosive RDX was used in the attack, when no such information was officially released. What do words like democracy, freedom, and citizenship mean? Travel to States like Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland in the Northeast which share borders with China and Myanmar required Inner Line Permits, BSF soldiers followed her everywhere on the West Bengal/ Bangladesh border, and in Kashmir she was summoned to meet the local inspector at Uri. Indias intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. You can speak of confidence and body positivity and defend selling skin-lightening creams. 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. But the inclination to still treat India as a democracy remains. 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. Worse, we have been disciplined to accept injustice and inequality as given. She is the founder and executive director of The Polis Project, and the author of. Suchitras account of her journeys across the undefinable and ever-shifting borders between India and its neighbours is gripping, frightening, faithful and beautiful. 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? What is the emotional and artistic cost that one pays as a writer while crafting these narratives? Vijayan reserves her own impressions for later, and allows us to know these people intimately. 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 is a BSc graduate from Mar Ivanios College (Trivandrum).
No Comments