suchitra vijayan husband

Suchitra Vijayan is a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. What makes these lives so vivid is how Vijayan contextualizes them by placing them in the bigger picture of history. 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. 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. 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. The third thing is: were going back to relitigating everything. The Indian government bears some responsibility for this: Amid this brinkmanship between the two nuclear powers, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not address the nation directly. Vijayan: Let me start heregood writing is powerful and political. Once we eliminated the spectacle, we realized that the Indian public got very little information about the Pulwama attack and its aftermath. Husain Haqqani: Pakistan released the Indian pilot. With the phone armed with a camera, everyone is a photographer; we are all witnesses. It seems that they have a different eye for these women, who they describe as cunning, deceitful, and in some cases, prostitutes'. [4] She also worked as a dubbing artist for popular heroines like Shriya Saran and Lakshmi Rai.[5]. Vijayan undertakes a seven-year long, 9,000-mile journey along the borders of India, and interviews people living in these liminal spaces. 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 . It was just a sad moment, and I couldnt celebrate a book when there was so much human tragedy playing out. (Stay up to date on new book releases, reviews, and more with The Hindu On Books newsletter. 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. The failure to forget affects how I use images, and texts; my photographic practice and also how I put everything together. Thoughbordersare conventionally recognised as real or artificial lines of spatial and political demarcation, there may also be an arbitrariness to them. 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. 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. The book arrived in the middle of a pandemic and a devastating second wave [of COVID-19] in India. How do you think the media ought to responsibly report on peoples lives and experiences? Suchitra Vijayan and Francesca Recchia In this era when Indian armed forces and the police act with absolute impunity, a handful of local news outlets play an essential role in reporting and. [2] She became known as Rj Suchi, with her popular morning show Hello Chennai. My job was to make sure that their voices were centered. This contributed to the long-running, brutal silencing of Kashmiris and their struggle for self-determination. Part-time Faculty suchitra@thepolisproject.com. Speculation and conjecture were repeated ad infinitum, and several journalists even took to Twitter to encourage the Indian army. Bigotry is also big business. The world we know is already being remade in ways we cant fathom. She has sung in multiple languages including Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu. When Vijayan meets him, he is inside his home with all the windows closed and sealed to snuff out light. This means that, for the longest time, the depiction of violence and marginalised communities has been problematic. Is that a probable solution? Sometimes lost. 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. Suchitra is a BSc graduate from Mar Ivanios College (Trivandrum). Copyright 2023. So we might never know the true extent of this loss. And join us by becoming a monthly or yearly Member. In Assam, Vijayan met people devastated by the National Register of Citizens process, with names of long-time residents missing from the final list, and in Kashmir she spent time with a family mourning the loss of their son in an encounter. 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. The images, however, are not all bereft of hope, as children from both India and Bangladesh use a border pillar as a cricket stump, while men on opposing sides of the war on terror in Afghanistan gather around in a cold evening, smoking and sharing stories. Sayantika Mandal is an Indian writer. She perfectly captured the happiness and the intimacy of the occasion, the warmth of all the people present, and the splendor of the venue. But who gets to speak for so many of us? First, does my work aid the powerful? 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. Invariably its the writer who is the protagonist. Its been a little over a week since the book came out, and every day this week, I have woken up to emails, messages, and DMs from readers. Worse, we have been disciplined to accept injustice and inequality as given. This is a tightrope that you walk so well. If you want to support the work that goes behind publishing high-quality feminist media content, please consider becoming a FII member. But your book lays bare how differently India's borders are guarded from southern Bengal to the Line of Control. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. I was also trying to tell these stories from a repertoire of skills I had, and some I acquired. When fencing began, he became trapped in a no-mans land, his marriage to a girl from Bangladesh ended with each being stranded on either side and he never got out of the cycle of debt and struggle, finally losing the ability to dream. The post-Cold War and 90s rhetoric of a borderless world that accompanied globalisation also kick-started massive border fencing projects in India. India has consistently warred against its own citizens; this book is about some of these wars. Get your Rumpus merch in our online store. Vijayans lens not only captures the people but also the past through objects, such as the picture of Kotwali Gate, the remains of a medieval fort that serves as a border checkpoint rife with weeds and trees growing on it, symbolic of a state bent on rewriting history rather than preserving it. If you think about communities in resistance to immense violations, theyre all interconnected to climate justice. Parts of Pakistan have already been consumed by the water. I want to flag two essays where I engage with this in an in-depth manner, Disaster Ruins Everything, on my work in Haiti, and what it means to photograph disaster, especially when it is Brown and Black bodies. 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. 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. 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. Nonfiction, Travel, Fiction Member Since February 2021 edit data Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. This is where I believe literary nonfiction becomes a powerful tool. Our borders had become a spectacle, and we the cheering mob, she says, as she calls for purging hatred for the sake of posterity. But eventually we need all kinds of stories and arguments to emerge from what is now considered Indian American writing. The constant making and remaking of who is a citizen, who is not, is accompanied by a profoundly dehumanising process. I think freedom and dignity enables us to really go beyond in our political imaginationbeyond just electoral politics. 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. We still argue if something should be a massacre, a pogrom, or a riot. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Your email address will not be published. They are arriving from various cities and people I have never met. Perhaps there are lessons to learn from that. Because you are constantly thinking about the ethical universe you are bringing this child into What values do you teach this child? They cannot be abusive or personal. Even the diasporic experience is often told through this limited lens, without taking into account how diverse the immigrant experience in this country is. I kept detailed audio notes that I recorded each night when I traveled. A poll asked if its OK to be white. Heres why the phrase is loaded. 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. Q: What was your goal with writing the book in the beginning and how did it change and drive you throughout those 8 years? 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 trades. All along the border, the common refrain is, It feels like Partition is still alive., A story from near Jalpaiguri in north Bengal, that of a man named Ali, is heartbreaking. 1 author picked Midnight's Borders as one of their favorite books, . Excellent interview, brave insights and critical reflections! Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. What we can do is attempt micro-histories of events, timelines, or local communities. Vijayan is no stranger to stories of violence. 6,253 Followers, 902 Following, 1,165 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Suchitra Vijayan (@suchitravijayan) You need to write what you seethats why you started this project.. Who is expendable, and the manufacturing of rightlessness to render people expendable. There are two quotes I regularly use by Allan Sekula when I teach: "The making of a human likeness on film is a political act. What connects these messages is deep empathy and a willingness to engage with the books stories, ideas, and arguments. @narendramodi & his role in the Gujarat Pogrom. In an early chapter of the book, you talk about how new worlds are created by the people at Indias borders. The people in this book are eloquent advocates of their history and their struggles. What matters is that the book exists. There was an NDTV programme, where somebody said Should Indias constitution be secularist? The second season of The Family Man begins with Srikant Tiwari, a former intelligence officer of TASCa fictitious intelligence agency akin to the Research & Analysis Wingworking at an IT company. 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. Midnights Borders, a work of narrative reportage, is the fruit of this journey. Although Vijayan critiques the state and its complicity in violence and erasure of lives, she refrains from villainizing the men who serve the state. You need a community of people to support you. And this is always at the expense of others. The entire episode is emblematic of a broader trend in Indian media. She is currently working on her first novel. No one can write a book alone. Also read: Book Review: Looking Through Dalit Sahitya And Ambedkar. Vijayan: I would say I am hopeful. That capacity to be able to go away and then come back profoundly affects how you write because then you are still rooted. Anvisha Manral March 20, 2021 09:50:40 IST Lets start with a very simple statement that everyone can agree on: the way were living right now cannot continue. Rumpus: The book derives its emotional strength and narrative energy from the stories of people you encounter at the borders. The stories were a way to understand how people struggled and survived. 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. Vasundhara Sirnate Drennan is director of research at the Polis Project. A: Writers are very strange creatures. You dont need a Leni Riefenstahl today. Theyre screaming all the time, its just that we dont listen to them. A relatively small group of people runs it. 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. I left my 18-month-old daughter to travel and finish this book. This was something I had to resist from the get-go. This also decides who gets access, awards and accolades. She's a good friend and kindly agreed to take our City Hall wedding photos. I can see small cracks beginning to appear. Now, along with the medias legitimization of an ideology that promotes violence including riots and lynchings its performance after Pulwama leaves severe doubts as to whether it is engaged in journalism or the propagation of Hindu majoritarianism. Q: Since publishing the book last year, what reflections have you hadgiven that its relevance is increasingly ascertained by 2022s interpersonal and geopolitical violence? Q: What struck me about your work was its immersive style. There are enough stories of people parachuting into communities to do human interest stories. But who carries the responsibility of that fear? What do words like democracy, freedom, and citizenship mean? We live in a profoundly unequal society, where every day brings news of new devastation. 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. 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. Nine years ago, she began documenting stories from her travels along the borders of India. Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, photographer, lawyer, political essayist, and a lecturer.

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