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. Rumpus: The book utilizes more than one medium: photography, narrative nonfiction, journalism. The Indian media must learn to portray the conflict and human rights violations in the region in a more nuanced way, and not reduce Kashmir to a catalogue of death, destruction and emergency laws. We know that the purpose of borders has kept changing for nations. There is something deeply flawed in the way we live today. In recent years, the narrative of hate has escalated with the reelection of the right-wing Narendra Modi government in 2019. An unprecedented militarisation of these spaces accompanied this. India and the US are discussing the possibility of jointly developing and manufacturing an extended-range variant of the M777 ultra lightweight howitzer, Qin's first in-person meeting with EAM Jaishankar came on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers conclave in New Delhi amid the over 34-month-long border row in eastern Ladakh. One of the reasons why this book was written was to step back: to say that this violence that you and I listen to and encounter is not new to say that this violence is not new. She was part of a music band at PSG. 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. In politics we will have equality, and in social and economic life, we will have inequality. They cannot be abusive or personal. 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. She was part of a music band at PSG. British India was partitioned into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan on the eve of independence in August, 1947. Who gets to shape these stories, what stories are chosen, what stories then are exiled? The stories were a way to understand how people struggled and survived. With sharp political analyses, dense historical research and lyrical, image-rich prose, Vijayans journalism displays an inspiring ethic, one that is invested in the micro-histories of the small man, the one existing on the fringes of history and the one that most requires urgent representation. B, A book that will enlighten every citizen of every nation. Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. The revolutionary Constitution not only created a social world made of contradictions, but it very soon became the tool of suppressing dissent, deployed laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), and Public Safety Act (PSA) in Kashmir. 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. She is the executive director of the Polis Project . Suchitra Vijayan. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Your email address will not be published. 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. Especially when you can be charged with sedition for a tweet or arrested for the crime of committing comedy while being Muslim. Vijayan shows a keen eye for detail as she presents these diverse lives. The first true peoples history of modern India, told through a seven-year, 9,000-mile journey along its many contested borders. Where does that leave us? She has a sister named, Sunitha. In these circumstances, the lives of people inhabiting the sketchy borderlands has become all the more vulnerable, and fragile. Panitars division is as cruel as it is arbitrary: here, the houses on either side of one dusty lane occupy two neighbouring countries. 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. It is here that we subsume all that we otherwise celebrate under the demands of freedom, progress, liberalism, liberty, and secular ideals.". ). Whose Stories Are Told In Indian History? 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. Is that a probable solution? . I think this book will change the global conversation about India and shape what gets written in the future about India. More importantly, as Babasaheb would argue, the political revolution was never accompanied by a social revolution. Suchitras account of her journeys across the undefinable and ever-shifting borders between India and its neighbours is gripping, frightening, faithful and beautiful. One feedback I often got was that I had to put more of myself in this book. A British lawyer, Cyril Radcliffe set foot in India for the first time in July, 1947 to draw the borders and completed the task within seven weeks, engendering communal riots, a heavily militarized border, four wars and seven decades of violence and hatred between the two countries. They both have pregnant daughters, a fact that becomes significant as the novel progresses. They are arriving from various cities and people I have never met. Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, photographer, lawyer, political essayist, and a lecturer. Often, we settle comfortably into describing things as communal riots instead of saying that it was a state-abetted violence, a pogrom, or a brutal massacre. A place to read, on the Internet. But the inclination to still treat India as a democracy remains. Subscribe here. Updated Date: The Family Man has found tremendous success as a slick and funny espionage drama, particularly for its treatment of the protagonist, and even for humanising terrorists. . It definitely doesnt help when trying to hold a powerful state accountable. 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. More than two weeks after the attack, our analysis finds that no news site had rectified the errors in their reporting, leaving these misleading facts as a matter of public record. She lives in New York. L.L.B., Law, The University of Leeds, 2004 M.A., International Relation . In retaliation, the Indian Air Force carried out an airstrike on an alleged militant training camp in Balakot in Pakistans Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The original vision of the book also has newspaper cuttings, and found maps. Suchitra Vijayan, Newspapers in a Kashmiri home In August 2014 I travelled to the border town of Uri while researching my upcoming book, Borderlands. Who gets to travel, tell stories, and, more importantly, publish them are all deeply connected to questions of access, resources, and privilege. Without a political solution, Kashmir will undoubtedly emerge in upcoming news cycles. Her writing has appeared in The Citron Review, Dukool Magazine, Cerebration, Feminism in India, Times of India (Spellbound edition), and others. And were there any apprehensions since you began working on this book? More Buying Choices 1,732.00 (16 Used & New offers) Audible Audiobook 0.00 Free with Audible trial 586.00 ( 9 ) 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. The government, of course, denies this. How "The Family Man" champions the carceral security state. Her work looks at theories of violence, war, and human nature. 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. No one is a stakeholder herethese are people, humans, citizens, who have been deprived of what the Ambedkarite constitution promised them. This income helps us keep the magazine alive. Her distinct and bold voice made her very popular with the younger crowd. That was my starting point. Vijayan: As we have this conversation, Dr. Stan Swamy, the eighty-four-year-old Jesuit priest, Indias oldest political prisoner, was murdered by the Indian state with the complicity of the judiciary. Midnights Borders is part investigation, part meditation on the lines drawn on land or water that separate India from its neighbours. A: This is a very loaded question. This contributed to the long-running, brutal silencing of Kashmiris and their struggle for self-determination. The events of 9/11 had profound effects on how border security projects and politics played out. As I travelled, I was very aware of these inherent power differences. That, perhaps, is the only way to avoid further destruction in the region. By Suchitra Vijayan, Why should I read it? I now think twice about calling friends, worried if this might put them at risk. You can claim to be patriotic but not political, you can claim to support the troops but ignore the ongoing civilian casualty. I was also trying to tell these stories from a repertoire of skills I had, and some I acquired. There are instances when you and some voices in the narrative question their documentation practice. This means that, for the longest time, the depiction of violence and marginalised communities has been problematic. Good, honest and non-polemical writing has always forced us to confront the lies we tell ourselves. In 2020, Suchitra took part in the fourth season of the Tamil reality television show, Bigg Boss Tamil hosted by Kamal Haasan. When the book finally came out, India was undergoing the deadly 2nd wave. 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. As she travelled 9000 miles over seven years across Indias borders, some drawn so hastily that they cut across fields, homes and courtyards, she met men, women and children, finishing with endless notebooks, over a thousand images and more than 300 hours of recorded conversations. Her quest took her to the farthest ends of the India-Bangladesh/ China/ Myanmar/ Pakistan borders. Is secularism a good thing? This is such an insidious conversation to have; this was even before Adani bought it. Indian Foreign Secretary V.K. It was not going to be easy as she quickly found out. I dont have apprehensions. Suchitra Vijayan. Part-time Faculty suchitra@thepolisproject.com. "Fighting for justice and human rights in India is a long and lonely battle" Nishrin Jafri Hussain, the daughter of Ehsan Jafri (from 2019) Now imagine how it would be for someone from a Dalit/Bahujan, Muslim, Adivasi, or working community to try to make inroads. The book was called ``a genre-bending book of nonfictionmade A:I dont think an ethical or moral compass exists nowI dont know if it ever existed. I was reading a lot of Pessoa when I was in Afghanistan, so another placeholder title was 'Maps/Lines/Cartographies of Disquiet', inspired by the Book of Disquiet. The acts of writing, documenting, photographing, and archiving carry privileges of caste and class. 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. Even the diasporic experience is often told through this limited lens, without taking into account how diverse the immigrant experience in this country is. 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 . 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. Second, there is a clear distinction between speaking against the powerful and claiming to speak on behalf of the "voiceless". 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. Thank you! Be it the teenager who is offered guns, money, and M&M candies to fight the Taliban in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, or Ali, who seeks solace in darkness as the floodlights installed on his plot of land along the India-Bangladesh border leaves him traumatized, or the nonagenarian Johinder Singh Suj from Sindh (a province in present-day Pakistan), who still cherishes his school geography textbook that shows a map of undivided British India the people are captured with deep empathy and come alive in her narration with the adept use of dialogue. Nonfiction, Travel, Fiction Member Since February 2021 edit data Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. 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. There are some notable exceptions, but they are an exception. No one would put themselves through the agony and pain of writing. We need more such books. And our language helps us imagine a vision that is truly just, beautiful and ethical. Many TV newsrooms were transformed into caricatures of military command centers, with anchors assessing military technology and strategy (sometimes incorrectly). This book ate into so much of my life. 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.
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