""The historical unity of the ruling classes is realized in the state." Antonio Gramsci" Once we eliminated the spectacle, we realized that the Indian public got very little information about the Pulwama attack and its aftermath. And, in many cases, they are children of the literary, cultural, or political elite who have long been the beneficiaries of the Indian state.
10 books like The Home and the World (picked by 7,000+ authors) 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. We need to think about border practices, policing, and national security policies within the larger historical and political contexts. Vijayan creates a constellation of micro-histories of people who have lived through the violence that India has committed in its borderlandsinjustice that has irrigated the glamour and prosperity we witness in what some of us in those borderlands call mainland India. Vijayan, a barrister by profession, is a founding director of Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization in New York.
Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India: Vijayan 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 have two tests. As such, very few media establishments in India have been able to stand against the influence of political leaders. Part of this learning was also why photographer Asim Rafiqui and I created the free UN/DO Photography workshops to think about image-making in relationship to power. We live in a surveillance economy where we are constantly just bearing witness we are record keepers, unwitting spies, and voyeurs. 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. Three hundred million people who had been considered less than subjects under the British rule, divided for years by religion, language, class, and caste, would all be united under one book: the revolutionary Constitution given to India by Babasaheb Ambedkar. 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. And that violence is often abetted by the state and goes unpunished. Now imagine how it would be for someone from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, or working community to try to make inroads. There are also those who have previously been tacit, if not active, supporters of the right-wing Hindu nationalist Indian state. 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? All too often, the Indian media portrays Kashmiris as terrorists or human shields, not as a community seeking self-determination. The stories were a way to understand how people struggled and survived. Vijayan creates a constellation of micro-histories of people who have lived through the violence . For far too long, they and their progeny have held power to shape the political understanding of our social worlds. Suchitra is a BSc graduate from Mar Ivanios College (Trivandrum). Early on, I was very careful to acknowledge this. She has a sister named, Sunitha. 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. News organizations such as India Today, NDTV, News 18, the Indian Express, First Post, Mumbai Mirror, ANI and others routinely attributed their information to anonymous government sources, forensic experts, police officers and intelligence officers. No independent investigations were conducted, and serious questions about intelligence failures were left unanswered. is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. Worse, we have been disciplined to accept injustice and inequality as given. He writes about how when the Constitution was adopted, "We are going to enter into a life of contradictions. 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. Its a dangerous moment where the figure of the rights-bearing citizen is being reduced to a consuming subject. The book arrived in the middle of a pandemic and a devastating second wave [of COVID-19] in India. Updated Date: If she wasnt real she would be a marriage between a meme and parody. This is a challenging task for the writer. [8] On 7 March 2017, she applied for divorce. On Feb. 14, an Indian paramilitary convoy was attacked in Pulwama in India-administered Kashmir, resulting in the death of 40 Indian officers. These new worlds are already herethey are maps of survival, maps of resistance. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments. Suchitra Vijayans new book, Midnights Borders: A Peoples 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. Husain Haqqani: Pakistan released the Indian pilot. These instances are also about border practices because modern states, especially liberal democracies, expend immense energy in creating and maintaining identity categories: who belongs, and where.
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Suchitra Vijayan | The Nation If you want to support the work that goes behind publishing high-quality feminist media content, please consider becoming a FII member. Second, Indias transformation into a nuclear state and the Kargil War is another critical moment of change. This affects who gets to document, and whom.
I'mdyslexic, but have visual and episodic memory, which means I dream and relive moments. 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.
Midnight's Borders by Suchitra Vijayan - The Bangalore Review L.L.B., Law, The University of Leeds, 2004 M.A., International Relation .
Suchitra Vijayan | C-SPAN.org I still do. Later on she moved to Coimbatore for her MBA from PSG Institute of Management. IWE is a body of work where the voices of Indias marginalized are still kept on the fringes; Midnights Borders is anarrative nonfiction book depicting a world that novels from mainland India have failed to depict. Vijayan: Chopra and others like her are a reflection of how popular culture and virality inform discourse and shape it. She digs deep into colonial history to show how years of violence and consequential suffering has shaped these lives across generations.
Suchitra Vijayan on a journey to find a people's history of modern You need a community of people to support you. Theyre screaming all the time, its just that we dont listen to them. I was also trying to tell these stories from a repertoire of skills I had, and some I acquired. The events of 9/11 had profound effects on how border security projects and politics played out. Last edited on 23 February 2023, at 09:35, Filmfare Award for Best Female Playback Singer Telugu, 2nd South Indian International Movie Awards, "Suchitra going through certain emotional condition: Husband Karthik on her tweets", "Will Trisha sound like Trisha in Mankatha?
Suchitra Vijayan - New Lines Institute Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. I think freedom and dignity enables us to really go beyond in our political imaginationbeyond just electoral politics. Midnights Borders, a work of narrative reportage, is the fruit of this journey.
Suchitra Vijayan A: I dont agree with this kind of framing, because its not that underrepresented people dont have voices. Rumpus: Can we please talk about Priyanka Chopra, and how her rise is seen as a marker of brown achievement?
Suchitra Vijayan I am repeating what I have said before, "Kashmir is Indias greatest moral and political failure.
Suchitra Acharjee - Graduate Assistant - The University of Texas Rio Its feudal, entitled, and cannibalistic. While Nehru was still declaring this victory, the slaughter began. Similarly, motherhood changed me; it radicalised me. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle. Not everyone lived to see its promises. Find him on Twitter at @AruniKashyap. Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. I set out not to give voice to the voiceless, my aim was to put an ear to the ground and listen. Aruni Kashyap writes in English, and his native language Assamese. Legislations such as National Register of Citizens and Citizenship Amendment Act threaten to render millions of people, especially Muslims, stateless. There is no denying that the American media landscape is deeply racist, and while the past few years have seen more brown people take center stage, its nowhere close to where we need to be. I believe it can teach us to ask these questions again. [1] Career [ edit] Pushback is such a benign word, isnt it? Vijayan began her journey in Kolkata. 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. Its impossible for a writer not to be affected by their personal life. In politics we will have equality, and in social and economic life, we will have inequality. Keywords: LTTE love jihad Beef politics Hindu Nationalism Kashmir But your book lays bare how differently India's borders are guarded from southern Bengal to the Line of Control. Even those who now write about Modis India, will never write about Brahmanism or be critical of how caste works in the diaspora. Those notes were raw and immediate. Perhaps that offers some protection? 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 . We thank her for her time, patience, and illuminating insights into her work. Its a practice. The government, of course, denies this. 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. 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. What I was most concerned about and still am are the people in the book and their safety. Midnight's Borders by Suchitra Vijayan. Thats part of the political imagination that I believe we need for political movements or any sustained acts of resistance. " India's intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating.
A Seven Year, 9,000-Mile Journey Along India's Contested Land Borders Suchitra Vijayan. When I finished writing, I had become much richer in many waysnot in a material waybut through a community. It seems that they have a different eye for these women, who they describe as cunning, deceitful, and in some cases, prostitutes'. Say, for instance, do we need a James Nachtwey to fly to war-torn Bosnia? 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. Copyright 2023. 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.