Podcast appearances and mentions of suchitra vijayan

To mark the 40th year of the violence of 1984, we reflect on the events that unfolded in India and make connections with the ongoing and durable violence against Sikhs, Muslims, and other minority groups in India and the diaspora. Featuring: Uma Chakravarti (https://sikhri.org/people/uma-chakravarti) Shruti Devgan (https://sikhri.org/people/shruti-devgan) Sukhman Singh Dhami (https://sikhri.org/people/sukhman-singh-dhami) Suchitra Vijayan (https://sikhri.org/people/suchitra-vijayan) Watch the webinar: https://youtu.be/wGPqKHVvGU0 --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-sikh-cast-sikhri/support

Gaslighting as Method and Ways to Resist It is the second conversation in a series centering the Warscapes anthology Insurgent Feminisms: Writing War (Daraja Press). Featuring Suzy Salamy, Suchitra Vijayan and Bhakti Shringarpure. Gaslighting is a term used to describe the process by which a person is manipulated into questioning their own reality. Defined as a "conscious intent to brainwash," gaslighting is understood as occurring primarily in interpersonal situations of domestic abuse. Victims of gaslighting find themselves questioning their sense of reality as well as their memories; they experience high levels of anxiety and they may begin to lose trust and confidence in themselves. Gaslighting can happen in several different ways: denial, mockery, jokes and trivialization, withholding information, stereotyping, and repetitively countering observations and memories. Without doubt, gaslighting becomes an important concept to understand the feelings, stories and experiences of women, queer, transgender and racialized individuals. As the #MeToo movement grew with hashtags such as #BelieveHer trending, many of the narratives pointed to victims being told for years that they had misread a situation or were overthinking flirtatious advances. Victims of gaslighting found themselves feeling increasingly guilty and wondering if they were responsible for having caused their own abuse and trauma. Increasingly, the phrase "structural gaslighting" has also come into use to explain the effect of ingrained, harmful stereotypes that refuse engagement with marginalized people and continually dismiss their views, beliefs and ideas. Those that challenge the status quo are deemed abnormal, as exaggerating the problem, and often as imagining things. Women are told to "lighten up;" Black women are told they are "too angry;" individuals wishing to emphasize their pronouns are deemed as pushy and petty; migrants are often accused of not trying hard enough to assimilate; the list of such harms is long and the effects of these societal and political abuses is manifold. This is a timely topic because many of us who are deeply concerned about the unfolding horrors in Palestine are being gaslit constantly not only in our own domestic and work environments but also on a broader level by the media and by politicians. Panelists will unpack gaslighting on interpersonal levels but also something that disproportionately affects marginalized individuals and communities, and will try to come up with clear ways to resist these structures and preserve one's self-confidence, moral compass. and belief systems. Suzy Salamy is a social worker and a filmmaker. She has an extensive history of working in the television and film world and has worked on several award-winning documentaries about the Middle East. Suzy has worked at the NYC Anti-Violence Project providing crisis intervention, counseling, and advocacy to LGBTQ and HIV affected survivors of violence. She received her B.A. in film from Bard College and Masters in Social Work from the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, CUNY.Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, photographer and activist. She is the founder and Executive Director of The Polis Project. For her first book, The Midnight's Border: A People's History of India, Suchitra traveled across the 9000-mile Indian border. 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 Iraqi refugees. She is the co-author of How Long Can the Moon Be Caged? Voices of Indian Political Prisoners (2023) which offers a lens into today's India through

Western media has often referred to India as the world's largest democracy. But during the last decade, the world has witnessed the decline of many democratic institutions in India. In a recent Time Magazine article our guest Suchitra Vijayan questions whether India can still be called a democracy.Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government have been especially harsh towards critics of the regime, including journalists. Journalists who have criticized the government have been harassed, detained, imprisoned, and even murdered. Meanwhile, 75% or more of news organizations are now owned by 4 or 5 large corporations, all led by allies of Modi. As you'll hear in this episode, today's Indian government uses complicit media outlets as a weapon against non-violent descent. Suchitra Vijayan is a journalist and attorney based in New York City. Her new book, How Long Can the Moon be Caged? co-authored with Francesca Recchia, tells the stories of political prisoners in India today, including artists, activists, academics, and journalists. Vijayan is also the founder and executive director of the Polis Project, a journalism and research organization focused on authoritarianism and state oppression. She was born and raised in Madras, also known as Chennai, in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Read Vijayan's reporting in The Nation about the government's targeting of Kashmir's free press.Something we didn't have time to include in this episode is the legacy of journalism and activism in Suchitra Vijayan's family. That includes her grandfather, who took part in India's freedom struggle – and became one of the new country's first political prisoners. You can find that story and more in our newsletter, which publishes on Thursday, November 9th. To sign up, go to warstoriespeacestories.org/contact. If you're reading this after that day, email us at info@warstoriespeacestories.org, and we'll be happy to forward it to you. Making Peace Visible is produced by Andrea Muraskin. We had editing help on this episode from Faith McClure. Peter Agoos is the creative director of the War Stories Peace Stories Project. Our host is Jamil Simon.Listen to a recent interview with Jamil on the podcast This is My Silver Lining: Learning to Walk in the Shoes of Another:  a Prayer for Peace with Documentary Filmmaker and Podcaster Jamil Simon.. The New York-born son of Iraqi Jewish immigrants, Jamil's curiosity about the world had him traveling independently from the age of 15. In this interview, Jamil talks about discovering his love for film and photography, working on communications projects in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, and developing the War Stories Peace Stories project – including this podcast – to illuminate peace efforts. Plus, twists and turns along the way, including a stint as a taxi driver in Boston. Find This is My Silver Lining wherever you listen to podcasts. If you find this show valuable, please consider supporting our work. Visit warstoriespeacestories.org/take-action. You can choose a one-time or a recurring tax-deductible donation.  Thank you. Music in this episode by Siddhartha Corsus and Blue Dot Sessions

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji talk with the founders of the Polis Project—Suchitra Vijayan and Francesca Recchia—about their new book, How Long Can the Moon Be Caged? Voices of Indian Political Prisoners. They are joined by the eminent Dalit intellectual, and former political prisoner Dr. Anand Teltumbde to lend his unique insight into the political situation in India and the realities of being a political prisoner there. The book combines deep historical research, documents regarding the current political situation in India, and a set of creative works from political prisoners conveying to the world their resistance and courage.The Polis Project, Inc. is a New York-based hybrid research and journalism organization that works with communities in resistance. Through its Research, Reportage and Resistance approach, they publish and disseminate critical ideas that are excluded from mainstream media.Their work sheds light on the rise of authoritarianism especially in democracies and focuses on issues of racial, class and caste injustice, Islamophobia and State oppression around the world.In September 2019, the United States Library of Congress selected The Polis Project, Inc.'s website for inclusion in its web archives. They consider the “website to be an important part of their collection and the historical record.”www.thepolisproject.comwww.palumbo-liu.com https://speakingoutofplace.comhttps://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20Photo credit: Sarah Franklin

On today's episode we speak with two of the founders of the Polis Project—Suchitra Vijayan and Francesca Recchia—about their new book, How Long Can the Moon Be Caged? Voices of Indian Political Prisoners. We are also deeply honored that the eminent Dalit intellectual, and former political prisoner Dr. Anand Teltumbde is with us as well to lend his unique insight into the political situation in India and the realities of being a political prisoner there. The Polis Project, Inc. is a New York-based hybrid research and journalism organization that works with communities in resistance. Through its  Research, Reportage and Resistanceapproach, they publish and disseminate critical ideas that are excluded from mainstream media. Their work sheds light on the rise of authoritarianism especially in democracies and focuses on issues of racial, class and caste injustice, Islamophobia and State oppression around the world. In September 2019, the United States Library of Congress selected The Polis Project, Inc.'s website for inclusion in its web archives. Francesca Recchia is an independent researcher, educator and writer whose work is grounded in the values and principles of decolonial philosophy and radical pedagogy. She is interested in the geopolitical dimension of heritage and cultural processes in countries in conflict and she focuses on creative practices of collective resistance in contexts of unequal structures of power. Over the last two decades, Francesca has worked in different capacities in Palestine, Pakistan, India, Kashmir, Iraq and Afghanistan. Her latest assignment in Kabul was as Acting Director of the Afghan Institute for Arts and Architecture.She was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College of London, has a PhD in Cultural Studies at the Oriental Institute in Naples and a Master in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Besides being a scholar and practitioner in his formal disciplines of Technology and Management, with a corporate career spanning four decades at top management positions, and a decade as an academic, Dr Anand Teltumbde has maintained his parallel career as a civil rights activist, writer, columnist and public intellectual right since his student days. He contributed to the civil rights movement in India as one of its founding pillars and contributed theoretical insights through his voluminous writings into most issues. He participated and led many fact finding missions and peoples' struggle. He has  published more than 30 books on contemporary issues and wrote a column Margin Speak for a decade in Economic & Political Weekly before being arrested in the infamous Bhima-Koregaon case.  Suchitra Vijayan is an essayist, lawyer, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. She is the award winning author of the critically acclaimed book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India (Melville House, New York) and How Long Can the Moon Be Caged? Voices of Indian Political Prisoners (Pluto Press). Her essays, photographs, and interviews have appeared in The Washington Post, Time Magazine GQ, The Nation, The Boston Review, Foreign Policy, Lit Hub, Rumpus, Electric Literature, NPR, NBC, and BBC. As an attorney, she worked for the United Nations war crimes tribunals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda before co-founding the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, giving Iraqi refugees legal aid. She is an award-winning photographer and the founder and executive director of the Polis Project. She teaches at NYU Gallatin and Columbia University's Oral History Program.A transcript of Dr Tetumbde's remarks can be found on SpeakingOutofPlace.com  

On October 17th 2022, PEN America published a report titled “Reading Between the Lines: Race, Equity and Book Publishing” with the goal to expose and explore the fact that the publishing industry has “entered a moment of moral urgency about the persistent lack of racial and ethnic diversity among employees and authors.” In our three-part series focused on this crisis in publishing, we debrief listeners on this report and gather perspectives from publishing professionals in the United States (Elizabeth Méndez Berry & Porsche Burke) and the United Kingdom (Margaret Busby & Ellah P. Wakatama). In this episode, Bhakti Shringarpure and Suchitra Vijayan break down the PEN America report section by section while also revealing the industry's problematic practices and bad habits through their own experiences. The report is divided into 5 parts. The first section offers a snapshot of the transitions taking place in the industry, and the crisis around racism and diversity exposed and expressed due to the uprisings for Black lives that began in 2020. The second section addresses the lack of diversity among the staff, editors and executives in the publishing world which then limits the types of books being acquired, produced and sold. In this long section, there are shocking revelations about hostile work environments, reported micro-aggressions, and the practice of typecasting editors and authors of color. The third section tackles pervasive prejudices such as “diverse books don't sell” or that certain communities of color “don't read” or the notion that one book per community of color is “enough.” Writers of color are trapped because they “are not only damned if they tell stories that white gatekeepers wrongly believe they've already read—they're also damned if they don't tell stereotypical stories that white publishers actually have already read and expect.” The fourth and fifth sections deal with questions of sales, marketing and promotion practices that continually disadvantage authors of color. Bhakti Shringarpure and Suchitra Vijayan are both writers and co-founded the Radical Books Collective. Read the PEN America report: https://pen.org/report/race-equity-and-book-publishing/Other links:#PublishingPaidMe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PublishingPaidMe#WeNeedDiverseBooks https://diversebooks.org/Archive Editor Erin Overby's thread on racism at the New Yorker: https://twitter.com/erinoverbey/status/1437767832159277058

India is home to the world's largest film industry that instrumentalizes soft power to generate all kinds of imperial fantasies and aspirations. It has historically been plagued by a pernicious nationalism wherein the othering, vilification and downright humiliation of religions, races, ethnicities and castes is normalized. A recent spate of blockbusters as well as several smaller films on streaming platforms have become cultural battlegrounds that work to manufacture an ideological consensus about violent interventions in Kashmir and other occupied regions, sustain hostilities with neighboring countries and foster malevolent forms of Hindu nationalism. Panelists:Azad Essa is South African journalist based between Johannesburg and New York covering US foreign policy, Islamophobia and race in the US for Middle East Eye. He is the author of The Moslems are Coming (Harper Collins India). His new book Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel is forthcoming with Pluto Press.Natasha Javed works with governments, United Nations agencies and Civil Society Organizations on ending violence against children globally at End Violence Against Children; a global Partnership hosted by UNICEF. Born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan, she is an activist, film maker and the founder of Lok Katha, a storytelling platform and production house focusing on stories from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. Her first documentary capturing stories of the people from Punjab who were uprooted during the 1947 Partition will be released in September 2023.Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, photographer and activist. She is the founder and Executive Director of The Polis Project. For her book, The Midnight's Border: A People's History of India, Suchitra traveled across the 9000-mile Indian border. 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 Iraqi refugees. Bhakti Shringarpure is a writer and educator who co-founded and edited Warscapes magazine for ten years before it transitioned into the Radical Books Collective. Her book Cold War Assemblages: Decolonization to Digital looks at the ways in which the Cold War thwarted decolonization movements in colonized regions and used soft power to shape their literary cultures.

Are you shocked and distressed about the way in which war and displacement is being represented, reported and talked about right now with the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Writers, journalists, activists, scholars, Bhakti Shringarpure, Nadifa Mohamed, Suchitra Vijayan and Billy Kahora think through this difficult topic. Recorded on March 25, 2022, they intervene in the moral and political crisis around the writing, reporting, representing and filming of war and all the extraordinary violence, plunder and displacement it perpetuates. Bhakti Shringarpure is a writer and educator who co-founded and edited Warscapes magazine for ten years before it transitioned into the Radical Books Collective. Her book Cold War Assemblages: Decolonization to Digital looks at the ways in which the Cold War thwarted decolonization movements in colonized regions and used soft power to shape their literary cultures. Nadifa Mohamed is an award-winning Somali-British writer. She has published three novels and they all center historical research to retell stories of war, violence and justice through fiction. Her novel The Orchard of Souls is about three women trapped in Hargeisa as it sinks into war in the eighties. She was nominated for the Booker Prize for her novel, The Fortune Men that is based on the true story of Mahmood Mattan, a Somali sailor who was wrongfully executed in the UK in 1952 for a crime he didn't commit. Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, photographer and activist. She is the founder and Executive Director of The Polis Project. For her book, The Midnight's Border: A People's History of India, Suchitra traveled across the 9000-mile Indian border. 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 Iraqi refugees. Billy Kahora is a writer and journalist from Kenya and now based in the UK. He was Managing Editor of the Kwani Trust and has edited several issues of Kwani and a sci-fi anthology titled Imagine 500 with Malawiian writers. His stories have been shortlisted for the Caine Prize For African Literature. He is the author of The Cape Cod Bicycle War And Other Stories and was a screenwriter for the films Soul Boy and Nairobi Half Life.

Politicians around the world use nationalism. They use it to win elections, to stoke fear, and to hold on to power. Nationalism is exclusive, based on ethnicity or race or religion.This series looks at nationalisms around the world, and whether there is another way. Can this politics be countered by building a civic, liberal nationalism?In the third episode, Emily Tamkin examines nationalism in India. First, Ravinder Kaur, associate professor of modern South Asian studies at the University of Copenhagen and author of Brand New Nation: Capitalist Dreams and Nationalist Designs in Twenty-First Century India, talks about why nationalist politics have proven so effective in India, and how nationalism and capitalism in India are entwined. Then, Suchitra Vijayan, author of Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India, explains what is lost in the country's broader political narrative, and discusses where there are signs of resistance.Read more:Emily on the accelerating rise of a dangerous new nationalism in India. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This BookRising episode celebrates the translation and publication of revolutionary Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani's works of literary criticism. Translated into English by Mahmoud Najib for the first time since publication in 1967, Kanafani's On Zionist Literature analyzes the corpus of literature written in support of the Zionist colonization of Palestine. The book includes a preface by Annie Kanafani as well as an introduction by Steven Salaita who writes that the book shows that "Kanafani was a searing and incisive critic, at once generous in his understanding of emotion and form and unsparing in his assessment of politics and myth.” In this podcast, the book's publisher and editor Louis Allday speaks about the process of assembling Kanafani's literary criticism and attempts to bring these to life in translation. Suchitra Vijayan asks about the figure of the revolutionary as a critic since the literary critic has a different and potentially less political function in the Western publishing world. Allday and Vijayan also touch upon the challenges of editing and translating a work that primarily addresses Palestinians and they think through the role of prefaces, annotations and introduction in bringing such a complex work to an English readership. Louis Allday is a writer and historian based in London. He is the founding editor of Liberated Texts. Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, activist and co-founder of The Radical Books Collective and The Polis Project. She is the author of Midnight's Border: A People's History of India (2021).

Suchitra Vijayan in conversation with Elizabeth Baer about her book "The Genocidal Gaze." The first genocide of the twentieth century, though not well known, was committed by Germans between 1904–1907 in the country we know today as Namibia, where they exterminated hundreds of Herero and Nama people and subjected the surviving indigenous men, women, and children to forced labor. The perception of Africans as subhuman—lacking any kind of civilization, history, or meaningful religion—and the resulting justification for the violence against them is what author Elizabeth R. Baer refers to as the “genocidal gaze,” an attitude that was later perpetuated by the Nazis. In The Genocidal Gaze: From German Southwest Africa to the Third Reich, Baer uses the metaphor of the gaze to trace linkages between the genocide of the Herero and Nama and that of the victims of the Holocaust. Significantly, Baer also considers the African gaze of resistance returned by the indigenous people and their leaders upon the German imperialists.

Suchitra Vijayan speaks to Darren Byler about his book Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City. In Terror Capitalism anthropologist Darren Byler theorizes the contemporary Chinese colonization of the Uyghur Muslim minority group in the northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang. He shows that the mass detention of over one million Uyghurs in “reeducation camps” is part of processes of resource extraction in Uyghur lands that have led to what he calls terror capitalism—a configuration of ethnoracialization, surveillance, and mass detention that in this case promotes settler colonialism. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the regional capital Ürümchi, Byler shows how media infrastructures, the state's enforcement of “Chinese” cultural values, and the influx of Han Chinese settlers contribute to Uyghur dispossession and their expulsion from the city. He particularly attends to the experiences of young Uyghur men—who are the primary target of state violence—and how they develop masculinities and homosocial friendships to protect themselves against gendered, ethnoracial, and economic violence. By tracing the political and economic stakes of Uyghur colonization, Byler demonstrates that state-directed capitalist dispossession is coconstructed with a colonial relation of domination.

In this episode of the New Lines Institute's Contours podcast series, host Nicholas Heras is joined by two leading experts on the Indian Subcontinent, Dr. Syed Mohammad Ali and Suchitra Vijayan , to analyze the dangerous emerging dynamics on the Indian subcontinent, especially inside India and in the contentious relationship between India and Pakistan. The discussion covers Vijayan's critically acclaimed book, Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India , and assesses how the tortured history of the subcontinent continues to drive India and Pakistan to instability and conflict. The panel also discusses how the United States can approach its policy toward the subcontinent, with a special focus on how the growing Indian-American community is shaping U.S.-India policy in an era of great-power competition.

Twenty years after the Gujarat pogrom, Suchitra Vijayan speaks to Zahir Janmohamed about the moment, his experience on the ground and his work since. The conversation delves into the deep seated anti-Muslim sentiment in India and looks for ways to heal. The conversation was originally held as a Twitter Space session.

In this conversation, Suchitra Vijayan speaks to Arvind Narrain about his book India's Undeclared Emergency: Constitutionalism and the Politics of Resistance. They touch upon the provisions in the constitution that have been interpreted to shove India into an unofficial emergency situation, reflect on how this compares to India's emergency of the 1970s and imagine what the way forward can look like.

Suchitra joins me to talk about the rise in state violence against minorities in India, what that means for the world's most populous democracy, and the future of the Modi government. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

Suchitra Vijayan sits down with author Jessica Namakkal to discuss her book "Unsettling Utopia". The book presents a new account of the history of twentieth-century French India to show how colonial projects persisted beyond formal decolonization. Through the experience of the French territories, Namakkal recasts the relationships among colonization, settlement, postcolonial sovereignty, utopianism, and liberation, considering questions of borders, exile, violence, and citizenship from the margins. She demonstrates how state-sponsored decolonization—the bureaucratic process of transferring governance from an imperial state to a postcolonial state—rarely aligned with local desires.

Suchitra Vijayan speaks to Prasanna S. about data privacy in India, the state's use of the Pegasus spyware to surveil voices of dissent and what it means for civil rights in the country. The discussion was originally held on Twitter Spaces.

In this episode, Suchitra Vijayan sits down with Dinesh Narayanan to discuss the formation of the RSS, its links with the BJP, its role in violence and the distortion of history to create role models out of RSS figures like V.D Savarkar.

This episode is brought to you by MUBI, a curated streaming service showing exceptional films from around the globe. Every day, MUBI premieres a new film, each one thoughtfully hand-picked. From new directors to award-winners. Beautiful, interesting, incredible movies—there is always something new to discover. After 102 episodes on South Indian cinema, The Other Banana Podcast has finally chanced upon a film by Mani Ratnam. In this episode we discuss Mani Ratnam's polarizing Iruvar - his take on the friendship between the real life figures of MG Ramachandran and M Karunanidhi, two stalwarts of that heady concoction - cinema and politics. We discuss both the aspects of the film - the form and aesthetics, and Mani's depiction of the Dravidian politics and the various characters in its inception and implementation. You can watch the film with subtitles on MUBI. You can try MUBI for a hugely discounted price by signing up on https://mubi.com/theotherbanana or click here. The film stars Mohanlal, Prakash Raj, Aishwarya Rai, Nasser et al. To talk about Iruvar, we are joined by a special guest - writer, researcher, author Suchitra Vijayan who runs the independent research and journalism organization The Polis Project. Her new book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India came out this year. Participants: Suchitra Vijayan Deepauk Aditya Shrikrishna Episode edited by Anantha You can listen to the episodes referenced in this podcast here: Vada Chennai Andha Naal Music/BGM Courtesy: Iruvar Soundtrack by AR Rahman/Pyramid

"What does it mean for us to think about these border regions beyond the questions of international security?" asks Suchhitra Vijayan, the author of the new book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India. In this podcast, Vijayan discusses with host Alex Woodson her 9,000-mile journey through India's borderlands, which formed the basis of the book, and she discusses the violent and continuing history of the 1947 partition, the stark differences and similarities along South Asia's various borders, and what "citizenship" mean in India in 2021 and throughout the world. For more, including a transcript of this talk, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

"What does it mean for us to think about these border regions beyond the questions of international security?" asks Suchhitra Vijayan, the author of the new book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India. In this podcast, Vijayan discusses with host Alex Woodson her 9,000-mile journey through India's borderlands, which formed the basis of the book, and she discusses the violent and continuing history of the 1947 partition, the stark differences and similarities along South Asia's various borders, and what "citizenship" mean in India in 2021 and throughout the world. For more, including a transcript of this talk, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

India's border meanders over 9,000 miles from Pakistan to Myanmar, crossing desert, fertile plains, rivers, and snow-capped mountains. India's border is also the site of a massive crisis of statelessness, with hundreds of thousands of people stripped of their citizenship and entangled in the region's ever-shifting— and often arbitrary— boundaries. Suchitra Vijayan took us to the thick of it in her book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India, detailing seven years of travel amongst people living in the margins of her home country. Through vivid and painful vignettes, Vijayan captured human stories that would otherwise remain untold; and in doing so, brings the impacts of a legacy of colonialism, state violence, and government corruption into clear view. Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Nation, and Foreign Policy. 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 Iraqi refugees. She is an award-winning photographer and the founder and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization. She lives in New York. Dr. Amrita Ghosh is a research fellow at SASNET (South Asia Center, Sweden) and an associate faculty member at the Brooklyn Institute of Social Research. Ghosh is also co-editor of the coming anthology: Tagore and Yeats: A Postcolonial Reenvisioning (2021), which covers themes of translation, authorship, the Nobel controversy between the two writers. Buy the Book: Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India (Hardcover) Elliott Bay Books Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation online click here.

What's The Chakkar? In Episode 11, we will be joined by Anurag Tagat, Jamie Alter, and Shaista Vaishnav to listen to music by Indian guitar-piano duo Tinctures, review the Marathi film The Disciple, and discuss books by Suchitra Vijayan and Kiley Reid. Hosted by Karan Madhok.

In this episode, Suchitra Vijayan sits down with Abhishek Saha to discuss the xenophobic rhetoric around issues of migration and citizenship. What does belonging to a land look like? How is the way we imagine citizenship inherently violent? And how do state negligence and ill-intent come together to deny someone their right of existence in their homes? Saha explores all these questions and more.

Borders are “important”: they define, in legal terms, who we are, our identity, and our rights. Except borders are rarely imposed with any thought to the people actually living there. And once a border is imposed, it can radically change the lives of those who live alongside it, dividing communities forever more. India's border, imposed by colonial authorities and disputed by successor governments, makes this clear. Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India (Context / Melville House, 2021) sees author Suchitra Vijayan travel along India's vast land border to meet the people who live there, and investigates how lives have been affected by geopolitics, colonialism, state violence, ethnic strife, and corruption. In this interview, Suchitra and I talk about India's border regions: with Afghanistan, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Myanmar. We talk about the lives of those that live in these borderlands, and why she chose to call this book a “People's History”. Suchitra Vijayan is the founder and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization. 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 Iraqi refugees. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu and Foreign Policy. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Midnight's Borders. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

Borders are “important”: they define, in legal terms, who we are, our identity, and our rights. Except borders are rarely imposed with any thought to the people actually living there. And once a border is imposed, it can radically change the lives of those who live alongside it, dividing communities forever more. India's border, imposed by colonial authorities and disputed by successor governments, makes this clear. Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India (Context / Melville House, 2021) sees author Suchitra Vijayan travel along India's vast land border to meet the people who live there, and investigates how lives have been affected by geopolitics, colonialism, state violence, ethnic strife, and corruption. In this interview, Suchitra and I talk about India's border regions: with Afghanistan, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Myanmar. We talk about the lives of those that live in these borderlands, and why she chose to call this book a “People's History”. Suchitra Vijayan is the founder and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization. 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 Iraqi refugees. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu and Foreign Policy. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Midnight's Borders. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Borders are “important”: they define, in legal terms, who we are, our identity, and our rights. Except borders are rarely imposed with any thought to the people actually living there. And once a border is imposed, it can radically change the lives of those who live alongside it, dividing communities forever more. India's border, imposed by colonial authorities and disputed by successor governments, makes this clear. Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India (Context / Melville House, 2021) sees author Suchitra Vijayan travel along India's vast land border to meet the people who live there, and investigates how lives have been affected by geopolitics, colonialism, state violence, ethnic strife, and corruption. In this interview, Suchitra and I talk about India's border regions: with Afghanistan, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Myanmar. We talk about the lives of those that live in these borderlands, and why she chose to call this book a “People's History”. Suchitra Vijayan is the founder and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization. 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 Iraqi refugees. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu and Foreign Policy. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Midnight's Borders. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies

Borders are “important”: they define, in legal terms, who we are, our identity, and our rights. Except borders are rarely imposed with any thought to the people actually living there. And once a border is imposed, it can radically change the lives of those who live alongside it, dividing communities forever more. India's border, imposed by colonial authorities and disputed by successor governments, makes this clear. Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India (Context / Melville House, 2021) sees author Suchitra Vijayan travel along India's vast land border to meet the people who live there, and investigates how lives have been affected by geopolitics, colonialism, state violence, ethnic strife, and corruption. In this interview, Suchitra and I talk about India's border regions: with Afghanistan, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Myanmar. We talk about the lives of those that live in these borderlands, and why she chose to call this book a “People's History”. Suchitra Vijayan is the founder and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization. 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 Iraqi refugees. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu and Foreign Policy. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Midnight's Borders. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Borders are “important”: they define, in legal terms, who we are, our identity, and our rights. Except borders are rarely imposed with any thought to the people actually living there. And once a border is imposed, it can radically change the lives of those who live alongside it, dividing communities forever more. India's border, imposed by colonial authorities and disputed by successor governments, makes this clear. Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India (Context / Melville House, 2021) sees author Suchitra Vijayan travel along India's vast land border to meet the people who live there, and investigates how lives have been affected by geopolitics, colonialism, state violence, ethnic strife, and corruption. In this interview, Suchitra and I talk about India's border regions: with Afghanistan, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Myanmar. We talk about the lives of those that live in these borderlands, and why she chose to call this book a “People's History”. Suchitra Vijayan is the founder and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization. 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 Iraqi refugees. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu and Foreign Policy. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Midnight's Borders. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Suchitra Vijayan's book, Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India, is available now. Check out the Polis Project and their podcast.   Consider supporting the podcast.  Go to eastpodcast.com  for links to patreon, Gofundme, merch store, and cash apps.

Suchitra Vijayan and Harsha Walia discuss contested border regions and the crises of statelessness experienced by the people who live there. Scholar Hardeep Dhillon will moderate this discussion between acclaimed writers Suchitra Vijayan and Harsha Walia about contestations over borders, sovereignty, and nationalism and national identity. This discussion will reference both writers' most recent books: Suchitra Vijayan's Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India and Harsha Walia's Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism. ---------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. 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 Iraqi refugees. She is an award-winning photographer, the founder and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization. She lives in New York. Harsha Walia is the award-winning author of Undoing Border Imperialism (2013) and, most recently, Border and Rule. Trained in the law, she is a community organizer and campaigner in migrant justice, anti-capitalist, feminist, and anti-imperialist movements, including No One Is Illegal and Women's Memorial March Committee. Hardeep Dhillon attended U.C. Berkeley before completing her doctorate in History with a secondary in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGS) at Harvard University. Her dissertation examined the global development of U.S. immigration and border controls through the lens of Asian exclusion at the turn of the twentieth century. Hardeep's larger research interests include histories of law, mobility, empire, racial capitalism, and settler colonialism. In Fall 2021, Hardeep will join the American Bar Foundation (ABF) as the incoming postdoctoral fellow in the ABF/National Science Foundation Fellowship Program in Law and Inequality. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/IfJ8-2IDOiE Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

In today's episode, we have Suchitra Vijayan in the #DesiCraftChat segment. She'll be discussing her debut nonfiction, Midnight's Borders. And we have Dr. Ayesha Chaudhry reading from her new memoir, The Color of God, in the #DesiReads segment. And, of course, the usual roundup of new and notable books. The episode transcript and all links will be up in a few days at http://desibooks.co. Thank you for listening. Twitter: @DesiBooks Instagram: @desi.books Website: https://desibooks.co Email: hellodesibooks@gmail.com --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/desibooks/support

Writer and Photographer Suchitra Vijayan spent seven years travelling solo, across 9,000 miles along India's many borders, from Pakistan to Myanmar to Afghanistan.

In this episode, Suchitra Vijayan is in conversation with Dr. Deana Heath about her book Colonial Terror. Focusing on India between the early nineteenth century and the First World War, Colonial Terror explores the centrality of the torture of Indian bodies to the law-preserving violence of colonial rule and some of the ways in which extraordinary violence was embedded in the ordinary operation of colonial states. Dr. Deana Heath is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Liverpool. She writes and teaches about South Asian, imperial and colonial and global histories and their post-colonial legacies.

This is the first conversation of a four part series. Bombay-based photographer and author of The Red Cat and Other Stories Ritesh Uttamchandani and Suchitra Vijayan discuss her book Midnight’s Borders, as a continuation of their decade-long conversation about history, memory, and photography. Music: Architect by Blue Dot Sessions (Creative Commons License)

Joining Women Fight Back is Suchitra Vijayan, a Barrister-at-law, researcher and the author of Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India. She is the founder and executive director of The Polis Project, a radical and independent research and journalism organization.She will be discussing the vaccine apartheid in the Global South and the state of the current COVID-19 crisis in India.

Suchitra Vijayan, author of Midnight’s Borders: A People’s History of Modern India, talks about what propelled her to travel 9,000 miles along India’s borderlands. In conversation with Vaibhav Vats, Vijayan recounts her reportage along India’s tenuous boundaries with Bangladesh, Myanmar, China and - most contentious of all – Pakistan. The conversation delves into the nature of borders, the peculiar origins of India’s demarcations and the fractured, founding history that underpins the Indian nation-state. Vijayan and Vats also muse on how the violence on the peripheries slowly permeates inwards, as raging conflicts over citizenship and identity - once an issue confined largely to the borderlands - have moved to the centre of the Indian body politic.  Suchitra Vijayan is an award-winning photographer, the founder and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organisation. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. 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 Iraqi refugees. Vaibhav Vats is an independent writer and journalist. His work has appeared in the New York Times and Al Jazeera, among other publications. He is working on a book on Hindu nationalism and the making of India’s Second Republic.

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. India shares borders with a host of countries including Pakistan, China, Bangladesh, Myanmar and so forth. From the densely populated border that India shares with Bangladesh to the highly disputed one with Pakistan, she meets men, women and children who tell her how they live, struggle, fight and survive. She also offers notes on how the lines came to be and why some of them are arbitrary and still being contested. The award winning photographer -- there are some devastating black and white pictures accompanying the stories -- is founder and executive director of the Polis Project, a research and journalism organisation. Host: Sudipta Datta, Senior Deputy Editor, The Hindu Want to get more from The Hindu on books? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here (Newsletter Subscription) Write to us with comments and feedback at socmed4@thehindu.co.in

In this conversation, The Polis Project’s Suchitra Vijayan discusses Prof. Craig Jones's recent book The War Lawyers: The United States, Israel, and Juridical Warfare. Over the last 20 years, the world's most advanced militaries have invited a small number of military legal professionals into the heart of their targeting operations and spaces that generals and commanders had exclusively inhabited. These professionals, trained and hired to give legal advice on an array of military operations, have become war lawyers. The book War Lawyers examines the laws of war as applied by military lawyers to aerial targeting operations carried out by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Israel military in Gaza. Drawing on interviews with military lawyers and others, this book explains why some lawyers became integrated into the command chain. Dr. Craig Jones is a Lecturer in Political Geography in the School of Geography, Sociology, and Politics at Newcastle University. He researches the geographies of later modern warfare and is especially interested in the legal and medical materialities of war and conflict in the contemporary Middle East. He blogs at www.thewarspace.com and tweets at @thewarspace.

Support Lights Camera Azadihttps://www.patreon.com/azadiFollow Suchitra.Twitter: https://twitter.com/suchitravInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/suchitravijayan/https://suchitravijayan.com/Have you ever wondered how life is at the borders? Far away from the elite urban spaces of the nation-state. Places where the force of constitution barely exists. How is life around these borders where national identities dilute? What is it like to be a part of a tribe near a Bangladeshi border or a fighter on the Afghanistan border? Suchitra Vijayan joins me to discuss her fantastic book ‘Midnight's Borders' which is a brilliant work of investigative journalism.To buy Midnight's Borderhttps://www.amazon.in/Midnights-Borders-Peoples-History-Modern/dp/8194879051/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1609997755&sr=8-12:30 to 6:00Knowing Suchitra6:00 to 10:44What is your experience carrying an Indian Passport?10:44 to 15:00What made Suchitra travel to the extent of our borders?15:00 to 24:44How was Afghanistan – Pakistan border?24:44 to 27:15Suchitra's perspective on war27:15 to 31:21Why are we so emotional about borders?31:21 to 38:00A story that did not make it to the book. 38:00 to 48:15How do you manage to put yourself together?48:15 to 1:03:00India-Bangladesh border 1:03:00 to 1:15:20Kotwali Darwaza 1:15:20 to 1:18:30Ali's house1:18:30 to 1:41:30Tawang and elites of Delhi1:41:30 to 1:50:25Nagaland 1:50:25 to 1:53:53Battle of Kohima1:53:53 to 2:06:00Nellie massacre2:06:00 to end.Guwahati and Burmese Citizenship ActBooks and References•The Loss of Hindustan: The Invention of India •Despite the State: Why India Lets Its People Down and How They Cope •Nellie Massacre : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_massacre•Bhawan Singh : http://www.betterphotography.in/perspectives/great-masters/bhawan-singh/46132/•Burmese Citizenship Act of 1982 : https://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/burma/burm005-02.htm•Gupta, Karunakar. "The McMahon line 1911-45: the British legacy." China Quarterly (1971): 521-545.•Gupta, Karunakar. "Distortions in the history of Sino-Indian frontiers." Economic and Political Weekly (1980): 1265-1270. •Gupta, Karunakar. "Mr Karunakar Gupta Replies." The China Quarterly 54 (1973): 363-368.•Gupta, Karunakar. "A note on source material on the Sino-Indian border dispute—Western Sector." China Report 17.3 (1981): 51-55.Gupta, Karunakar. "Hidden History of the Sino-Indian Frontier I—1947-1954." Economic and Political Weekly (1974): 721-726.Gupta, Karunakar. "Hidden History of the Sino-Indian Frontier: II: 1954-1959." Economic and Political Weekly (1974): 765-772

For each episode of 5 Objects, we ask a guest to choose five pieces or items that have influenced their intellectual life and work. These can be books, art, music, poetry, photographs, performance, a person, an event, or an experience. The choices of objects have ranged from books by Edward Said, Steve Biko, and Assata Shakur, music from Notorious BIG, art by Ermias Ekube, the radio, and becoming a refugee after the Somali war. The choices then become the basis of a free-flowing conversation that discusses our guest’s life, their personal, political, and intellectual journeys and histories. For this episode, Suchitra Vijayan talks to Dr. Anand Pandian, a professor of anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. Here are his five objects: 1. The Burma Evacuee Identity Certificate that my grandfather was given when he returned to India as a refugee from Burma during the Second World War 2. The Left Hand of Darknessby Ursula K. Le Guin 3. The voice of Karupayi Amma, a landless laborer I worked with closely during my dissertation research in the Cumbum Valley of south India 4. Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Storyteller,” in Illuminations 5. An orange plastic toy paratrooper I found on a rocky shoreline in northern Chile during a weeklong expedition to study ocean plastic debris in 2017

Suchitra Vijayan in conversation with Prof. Romila Thapar about her new book "Voices of Dissent" and the history of dissent in India.

In this conversation, The Polis Project's Suchitra Vijayan and Vasundhara Sirnate, discuss Prof. Ravinder Kaur's new book Brand New Nation: Capitalist Dreams and Nationalist Designs in Twenty-First-Century India.  Prof Kaur walks us through the transformation of the Indian nation-state into a neoliberal business enterprise and theorizes the process of branding the nation-state through a rich visual archive of posters and advertising material. She articulates how those early years of 'India rising' rhetoric and aggressive push for globalization is largely responsible for the emergence of authoritarian populism under Modi. We explore the unintended political consequences of the corporatization of the state, what this means for the future.

Earlier this year, Citizens Against Hate (CAH), a Delhi based collective, published “Everyone has been Silenced”: a comprehensive report on UP violence and its aftermath. In this episode of The Polis Project Conversation Series, Suchitra Vijayan discusses the report and places the violence in the context of institutional bias against the Muslim community with Dr.Sajjad Hassan, who leads the Citizens Against Hate.

Suchitra Vijayan speaks to the philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O Táíwò, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles. Before that, he completed BAs in Philosophy and Political Science at Indiana University. His theoretical work draws liberally from German transcendental philosophy, contemporary philosophy of language, contemporary social science, histories of activism and activist thinkers, and the Black radical tradition. He is currently writing a book entitled Reconsidering Reparations that considers a novel philosophical argument for reparations and explores links with environmental justice. He also is committed to public engagement and is publishing articles in popular outlets with general readership (e.g. Slate, Pacific Standard) exploring intersections between climate justice and colonialism. For this episode he picked 1. Illmatic 2. Black Marxism 3. Amílcar Cabral 4. Combahee River Collective Statement 5. Ender's Game

A nation needs its anthems, flags, soldiers, and statues. But, the function of the writer is something else. Writers are the ones who capture the conflict, the dissonance, and often the lies we are constantly told over and over again. We’re all living through a remarkable moment, especially for many of us in South Asia, particularly in India. As we at The Polis Project try to make sense of what is happening today, we decided that we would use the 45th anniversary of the Emergency to take a strong look at the past and the present. We reached out to historians and journalists who covered the Emergency to think about the past. But, when it came to the present, we really wanted to reach out to the writers and the poets on what they thought of the state of the republic. The conversation you will now hear is an exchange between Suchitra Vijayan and a writer, Annie Zaidi. It’s a conversation about small mercies and many tyrannies. But, it’s also a conversation about how we think, act, and react in an age where the very act of thinking could become an act of treason.

On this episode we're in conversation with Suchitra Vijayan – lawyer, writer and founder of the Polis Project. We speak about the undemocratic UAPA, participation in public life, the media and how resistance starts at home. You can follow the Polis Project and support their incredible independent research and work by donating.

 Suchitra Vijayan  is the founder and Executive Director of the Polis Project. An appeal Please consider supporting the show. I can't do this for much longer unless I can at least hit my goal of $1500 a month. (That literally would give me enough for rent + $300). Right now, I make just over half of that and it's unsustainable. I have a Patreon and Gofundme.  You can also donate directly with Venmo or Paypal.  Links on the homepage, eastpodcast.com     

Suchitra Vijayan speaks to author Hassan Ghedi Santur about his new book The Youth of God, representation and diversity and what it means to be a writer.

"Crisis of the Republics” is a meditation on the nature of borders, camps, and carceral citizenship in the aftermath of 9/11. The keynote returns to fundamental questions about citizenship, statelessness, and the future of nation-states. It links the many crises facing republics around the world and provocatively asks if we can dare dream of citizenship that exists as “collective freedom”, outside the boundaries of nationalism.

"Crisis of the Republics” is a meditation on the nature of borders, camps, and carceral citizenship in the aftermath of 9/11. The keynote returns to fundamental questions about citizenship, statelessness, and the future of nation-states. It links the many crises facing republics around the world and provocatively asks if we can dare dream of citizenship that exists as “collective freedom”, outside the boundaries of nationalism.

In this episode of the Polis Project’s Podcast series Suchitra Vijayan speaks to Nitharsan, the coordinator of Puradsi Media, who is part of the collective that edited and published “Structures of Tamil Eelam”, a book that documents how the de –facto Tamil State was built and run during the long years of fight against the Sri Lankan government. The book is a collection of texts and rare photographs that are no longer available in the Tamil homeland, and it documents the various legal, political and administrative of structures that existed throughout the decades in the Northeast. The book through these rare images makes the argument that LTTE built and ran a de-facto state. The conversation discusses the Sri Lankan state’s efforts to re-write history, militarization since 2009, online censorship and what it means to talk about Tamil sovereignty, ten years after the war.

In this episode, Pramod and Chandu, along with guest panelist Suchitra Vijayan of the Polis Project, critique the idea and substance of exit polls in Indian elections.

Suchitra Vijayan speaks to Alana Hunt, an award-winning artist and writer, For this episode Alana chose Queen Liliuokalani's Quilt Statues also Die by Chris Marker 1953 MSS Pandian's course The Politics of Nation Making Gija and Miriwoong people and places Kashmir, my first visit, and more after

“Billionaires are being produced at the same time that people are actually dying from lack of food”: In conversation with Balmurli Natrajan As the world’s largest democracy goes to the polls with 900 million voters getting ready to decide the future of the Republic, The Polis Project is speaking to scholars, writers, artists and activists about some of the most critical issues affecting India today. In this conversation, Suchitra Vijayan speaks to Prof Balmurli Natrajan about the political and cultural history of Hindutva, it’s a relationship to fascism, how caste and violence are deployed by Hindutva and what awaits the country in the aftermath of the elections.

On February 14, a 20-year old man drove a car packed with explosives into a bus full of Indian Central Reserve Police Forces. 40 of the police officers died in the attack. This happened in an Indian controlled portion of Kashmir and India responded by launching an air strike on a village in Pakistan. Things have escalated since then and, as so often happens in modern conflict, gotten confusing and muddied.With us today to help untangle all this is Suchitra Vijayan. Vijayan is a writer, photographer, and lawyer. Her work has appeared in GQ, the Telegraph, and Foreign Policy. As a lawyer she worked for the United States war crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia and Rwanda. As a journalist, she was embedded with NATO-led troops along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and is currently studying the conflict in Kashmir and India’s borderlands.You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

As founder and executive director of The Polis Project, a research and journalism organization, Suchitra Vijayan is helping to document a concerning trend of identity-based violence in India. She discusses her organization's work on this issue, the violence's connection to a rise in nationalism in India since Prime Minister Modi came to power, and some imperfect parallels with the contentious political climate in the United States.

As founder and executive director of The Polis Project, a research and journalism organization, Suchitra Vijayan is helping to document a concerning trend of identity-based violence in India. She discusses her organization's work on this issue, the violence's connection to a rise in nationalism in India since Prime Minister Modi came to power, and some imperfect parallels with the contentious political climate in the United States.

Zillah Eisenstein is one of the foremost political theorists and activists of our time. Her groundbreaking book “The Female Body and the Law” has been re-issued. In this conversation, we return to questions that have occupied her remarkable scholarship –the intimate relationship between neoliberal imperial politics, white supremacy, misogyny, and racism. The Polis Project’s Suchitra Vijayan spoke to Zillah Eisenstein on the day of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testified at the Brett Kavanaugh’s hearing. The conversation returned to Anita Hill, nature of gendered racism and misogyny, what it means to think and resist in the age of Trump and the future trajectories of feminist solidarity and resistance.

A Conversation with Mou Banerjee by Suchitra Vijayan

The Polis Project in conversation with lawyer Arjun Singh Sethi about his latest book, ‘American Hate’. The book chronicles the stories of hate crime survivors and those targeted by hate under the Trump administration. #trumpadministration #americanpolitics #thepolisproject #hatecrime #survivorsspeakout #hatecrimesurvivors #survivorstories #hate #hope #americanhate

Siddharth Narrain is a lawyer and legal researcher based in Delhi. He is an Honorary Research Fellow with the Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi. He has worked previously as an Assistant Professor at the School of Law, Governance, and Citizenship, Ambedkar University Delhi; as a legal researcher with the Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, and as a journalist with The Hindu group of publications, Delhi. Suchitra Vijayan at Polis Project spoke to Siddharth Narrain about the history of hate speech in India, and its current trajectories in realtion to technology. social media and question of dissent.

For this episode, Suchitra Vijayan spoke to Nijah Cunningham Nijah Cunningham is a Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow at the Princeton Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts and an Assistant Professor of English at Hunter College, CUNY (where he is currently on leave). His teaching and research focus on issues of time, aesthetics, and historiography in 20th century African American and African diasporic literature and culture.

India has recently excluded four million people from the National Register of Citizens, thereby deeming them ‘illegal’ and, if their appeals fail, will deny them citizenship. In our specially curated conversation series Suddenly Stateless, The Polis Project takes an in-depth look at the controversial National Register of Citizens through conversations with various scholars, reporters, writers, artists, historians, anthropologists and political scientists. The Polis Project’s Suchitra Vijayan spoke to Dr. Kalyani Ramnath, Prize Fellow in Economics, History, and Politics at Harvard University. She received my Ph.D. in history from Princeton University and has law degrees from the National Law School of India University and the Yale Law School. Kalyani is a legal historian of South Asia and her work interrogates the complex histories of migration and questions of citizenship, by excavating legal archives. Today we take a look at the laborers who moved from the southern districts of Madras to the tea plantations of central Ceylon and their claims of citizenship. We explore the parallels between the saga of citizenship that played out in Ceylon between in 40’s and the 50’s and the recent crisis that followed the National Register of Citizens in Assam.

India has recently excluded four million people from the National Register of Citizens, thereby deeming them ‘illegal’ and, if their appeals fail, will deny them citizenship. In our specially curated conversation series Suddenly Stateless, The Polis Project takes an in-depth look at the controversial National Register of Citizens through conversations with various scholars, reporters, writers, artists, historians, anthropologists and political scientists. The Polis Project’s Suchitra Vijayan spoke to Malini Sur is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society and teaches anthropology at Western Sydney University. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam (2012). She has conducted fieldwork in Bangladesh and India, and with South Asian asylum seekers in Belgium. She first traveled to lower Assam’s border char (seasonal inland) areas in 2007 on dissertation fieldwork, seeking to explore the life-worlds of undocumented Bangladeshi laborers. You can hear more from the series here http://thepolisproject.com/category/podcast-series/

t is not often that one gets to record a podcast that is part of a conversation that has lasted 10 years.   I spoke to Bombay based photographer Ritesh Uttamchandani. He is one of the first contemporary photographers whose work I became familiar with in 2007. For over 10 years we have spoken about photography and representation, ethics and aesthetics story  I asked Ritesh for five things that have influenced him and he gave me more :   In his own words   “1. Radio and our lack of tv, and then Doordarshan that exposed me to Indian Cinema, especially Hrishikesh Mukherjee. That whole phase of films about the indian middle class which was all based on small stories. Films like Saleem Langde, Pe Mat Ro and international stuff like Red Desert.   2. Family    3. Non-fiction writers like Gay Talese, Kapuscinski, John Mc Phee and recently Rohit Brijnath (sports writer)   4. Aarey Milk Colony   5. My mentor -  A Srinivas and  Soumitra Ghosh.   6. The White Viv. - Suchitra Vijayan

Suchitra Vijayan and Benjamin Chesterton discuss the ethics and politics of representation in photojournalism. The conversation was sparked by the recent Souvid Datta / LensCulture /Magnum case where an image portraying and identifying a trafficked child being raped was used to promote a photo award.   SHOWNOTES: Suchitra @suchitrav Benjamin @duckrabbitblog  Souvid Datta: Photography, plagiarism and the politics of grants, by Suchitra Vijayan http://www.suchitravijayan.com/archives/923 LensCulture and the Commodification of Rape By Benjamin Chesterton on Peta Pixel https://petapixel.com/2017/05/01/lensculture-commodification-rape/ Shaken Photojournalism Industry Questions Itself After Souvid Datta Scandal http://time.com/4772234/souvid-datta-question/ (MMW enjoyed Fed Ritchie’s commentary in this article)  Where do we go from here? A wake-up call for visual journalism in the “post-factual” era https://witness.worldpressphoto.org/where-do-we-go-from-here-8cf1131e23db (In case you wanted to hear more on Fed Ritchin’s thoughts on ethics and moving visual journalism forward Representing the Majority World by D J Clark http://djclark.com/index.php/representing-the-majority-world-famine-photojournalism-and-the-changing-visual-economy/