Midnight's bordersa people's history of modern India
954 VIJ
Vijayan, Suchitra
3344 3500
Midnight's borders a people's history of modern India
/ Suchitra Vijayan
. — Chennai : Context, an imprint of Westland Publications, 2021.
261 p. : ill., map, tables ; 24 cm
incl. bibliographical references and index
Prologue: (My) Ishmael -- Introduction -- PART I: THE AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN BORDER -- 1. SAR HAWZA: Trapped in the Coloniser's Map -- PART II: THE INDIA-BANGLADESH BORDER -- 2. PANITAR: Playing Cricket in No Man's Land -- 3. NEAR JALPAIGURI: "They Stole My Dreams' -- PART III: THE INDIA-CHINA BORDER -- 4. TAWANG: Cartographic Confusion -- PART IV: THE INDIA-MYANMAR BORDER -- 5. NAGALAND: Unimagined by My Nation's Cartography -- 6. NELLIE: Stuck Between Remembering and Forgetting -- 7. GUWAHATI: Tales of Three Detentions -- PART V: THE INDIA-PAKISTAN BORDER -- 8. KASHMIR: Records of Repression -- 9. KASHMIR TODAY: The Revocation of Article 370 -- 10. RAJASTHAN: The Tyranny of Territory -- 11. FAZILKA: Bunkered Territory -- 12. SRI GANGANAGAR: The Tractor Brigade -- 13. AMRITSAR AND NEW YORK: Histories Partitioned – Acknowledgements -- Glossary of Inhuman Words – Notes -- A Note on the Maps -- Index
"India is a land of borders, its peripheries nestling against seven countries. Over seven years, across 9,000 miles, Suchitra Vijayan travelled these borderlands. The more she travelled, the clearer it became to her that local history and memory bear no resemblance to the political history of the nation that claims these lands and peoples.
From the densely populated border that India shares with Bangladesh to the highly disputed one with Pakistan, the stories in this book engage with how people live, struggle, fight and survive. A man escapes the floodlights that invade his home by blocking out all light, children use a border pillar as a handy cricket stump, and a family live out their lives beside the men who orchestrated their son’s death. These are stories that question our ideas of what freedom means and what it means to be a citizen. At a time when millions in India face loss of citizenship—the largest crisis of manufactured statelessness in human history— Vijayan’s clear-eyed, empathetic reportage provides a re-examination of the idea of territorial sovereignty.
Midnight’s Borders, featuring over forty original photographs, is a compelling narrative of a country in crisis, turning against its own people while coping with the legacy of colonialism and Partition. As the margins close in on the mainland, this necessary account forces a reckoning with the brutality that informs India’s relationship with its borderlands''--Book jacket
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India Boundaries India History--20th century India History--21st century India Politics and government Anecdotes Geopolitics Geopolitics--India--1947 Travel writing
