Midnight’s Borders

Title: Midnight’s Borders – A People’s History of Modern India

Author: Suchitra Vijayan

Publisher: Context, 2021 (First)

ISBN: 9788194879053

Pages: 320

 

There is Jules Verne’s 1872 classic ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’ in which the London socialite Phileas Fogg and his valet Passepartout attempt to circumnavigate the globe in eighty days to win a wager with his friends. The duo, along with a woman they rescue in India from widow-burning sati ritual who would later become Fogg’s wife, cross the nations without the bother of any documents or personal papers which is the current norm. National borders have become solidified and imporous in the intervening 150 years since the publication of that book. There are people supports the restrictions on human movement because of the order and control a state can exert over the outsiders. Then there are the freedom lovers who detest the requirement of documentary verification to move across the planet earth which is in fact the shared home of the entire humanity. Then there are some who enjoy all the benefits the nation state confers on its citizens, but at the same time make self-righteous comments on the national borders as artificially separating groups of people. This book belongs to the third category. This is the record of a 9000-mile journey along India’s borders to meet the people who inhabit the margins of the state and ‘to study the human toll of decades of aggressive, territorial nationalism’. This is not a straightforward chronology of travel. It is a series of encounters in towns, cities and abandoned ruins and comes up with a silly indictment of the Indian Republic, which the author presumes has no right to protect its borders against unauthorized entry of outsiders. It also seems to be a made-to-order narrative western non-governmental organisations (NGOs) want to hear. Suchitra Vijayan was born and brought up in Chennai and is now settled in the US as a writer.

 

What is plainly visible in the core concept and organisation of the narrative is the trivialization of history. Suchitra stands aloof and impervious to its lessons. This is evident in her ‘imagining the possibilities of freedom without nation states’ (p.122). Even a cursory glance at history shows that the demand to divide India into two nation states and thereby to erect a boundary where none existed before came from the proponents of Pakistan. It was the Muslim League who demanded partition and followed it up with blood-curdling atrocities like murder, rape, arson and pillage in Calcutta, Noakhali and numerous other places in Pakistan. She also acts blind to the history of illegal immigration or planned demographic deluge of Assam. In 1947, the Assamese district of Sylhet was surprisingly found to be a Muslim-majority region due to unchecked migration that lasted for decades. Consequently, Sylhet was separated from India and given away to Pakistan. The author wants India to open up her borders and subsequently get drowned in the flood of often violent illegal migration. The book also proposes false pretexts such as the claim that ‘to govern India, the British introduced separate Hindu and Muslim electorates, which further stoked Hindu-Muslim violence’ (p.9). This is either a deliberate falsehood or the height of historical ignorance. Separate electorates were demanded and snatched away by the Muslims in their bid to secure sufficient number of seats for themselves in an electorate where the Hindus otherwise commanded a significant majority. Likewise, we don’t come across any serious research in the preparation of this book. The shallow findings point to a pleasure trip to the border with a camera on the shoulder. She just copies the fanciful tales told to her by interested parties without displaying any insight or critical assessment.

 

The author complains that borders around the world are enclosing and suffocating their people rather than guaranteeing their freedom. This fails to take an important idea into consideration. In all the corners she travelled in India, the fence was erected to keep the outsiders out, rather than keeping the insiders in, like the Berlin Wall did. This makes the assertion inoperative as that does not restrict anybody’s freedom. It is precisely due to the strict border controls that the 2008 Mumbai attackers, who indiscriminately shot dead 166 innocent people, had to take the circuitous route through the sea to reach India. Unfortunately, the author has interviewed only those people who have illegally entered India or who are suspected to be so. After this false step, she escalates the issue to international level and equates the Kashmir issue to Palestine – the typical Pakistani point of view – saying that what is happening at both the places are the same (p.24). What astounds the readers is the book’s romanticizing of jihadi fighters, embellishing their crooked stories of violent heroism and reproducing their photographs with lethal assault rifles strewn over the chest.

 

Suchitra displays a vehement hatred towards India, which is her home country. Even though she stays in New York apparently on a permanent basis, she is still an Indian. This hatred is so intense that she appears to be foaming in the mouth at the intensity of the feeling and the rush of invective. She repeatedly refers to Kashmir as Indian-occupied, following the Pakistani rhetoric. She accuses Indians as treating most of the natives in Arunachal border areas as savages to be tamed. Indians are said to be placing images and idols of Hindu gods and goddesses in ruined temples in border areas, as if that is a crime! Also, the statement that India ‘doesn’t issue IDs to its citizens but do so for cattle’ is an outright lie while the cattle ID seem to be taken from trolls in social media. The author finds the practice of erecting shrines to soldiers fallen in battle, offensive as they ‘protect nationalistic fantasy with no historical basis’. Suchitra writes down the names of dead soldiers of the World War from the War Cemetery at Kohima, Nagaland. Not even one Indian is mentioned, while two from present-day Pakistan is listed. But when she quotes a Naga separatist telling her that they used to name their dogs after Indian soldiers, they come out in a perfect desi flavour – Mishra, Natarajan, Singh and Mukesh!

 

This book proves that the author is not even a liberal who ought to oppose authoritative regimes. Even if the Indian state is accepted as authoritative for argument’s sake, China is infinitely more so. But the author treats China with kid gloves, never uttering a harsh word against them. Kashmir is claimed to be Indian-occupied, but the same logic is not extended to Tibet which should be called Chinese-occupied. Instead, it is the ‘Chinese province of Tibet’ (p.77). She quotes one Karunakar Gupta of London who had ‘found’ forged Aitchison treaties that clinch the argument in favour of China’s claim over Tibet. The 1962 war is said to be caused by ‘India’s suppression of facts, distortion of history, possible alterations of maps and withholding of official documents related to the borders’. She exalts an Indian PoW’s book on the military defeat against China in 1962 while remaining tightlipped on India’s successful intervention in Bangladesh in 1971 and its liberation. It is such tactical omissions and misrepresentations that make the readers doubtful about the author’s real intent and sources of financing for this book.

 

What is truly hilarious is the author’s utter ignorance of India’s judicial system. Judges in courts are said to be working under contract employment who receive better assessments if they declared more people guilty (p.135). They are accused not to be following rules of evidence, acting without supervision and without any challenge to their authority. Rules are also arbitrary which can be bent at a judge’s disposal. At the same time, we also read about ‘destitute’ intruders who are powerful enough to appeal in the Supreme Court against unfavourable verdicts of lower courts, meeting the hefty fees of lawyers who practice in the apex court. The author is naïve and gullible as to swallow their concocted stories lock stock and barrel. Suchitra narrates a personal anecdote which naturally makes her antagonistic to Indian judiciary. Her father was once assaulted by hired goons of a Tamil politician, nearly killing him. After twelve years of legal wrangling, the trial court acquitted all of them for want of evidence. Is that the reason why she is a staunch anti-Indian? Readers are left to wallow in guess work on this point.

 

Quite expectably, a considerable portion of the text is reserved to flay the ruling nationalist dispensation of India for their avowed aim to foster national coherence. India is claimed to be transforming into a violent, xenophobic Hindu state waging war against its Constitution and so many of its people. This is the usual political rhetoric heard since the current coalition came to power in the 2014 elections. The book attempts a selective picking up of atrocities that put the government at a disadvantage. Local cow protection gangs are claimed to be operating under the command of the prime minister. The author’s partiality is best exposed by her clever but false implications that only the Muslims get killed in religious riots. It provides a provocative, one-sided narrative of the 2020 Delhi riots too. The most outrageous assertion is that the Indian economy has failed and thousands are fleeing the country to seek political asylum in the US. The author does not mention whether she is speaking this from personal experience!

Suchitra’s making fun of the sacrifice of 21 soldiers’ lives in the 1971 Pakistan war while recapturing territory in Rajasthan is simply ungrateful and mean. This is mocked as ‘reclaiming a transitory sand dune’. Here also, we distinctly hear echoes of Pakistani propaganda. All these canards are being spread while remaining under the protective shield of the Indian army and paramilitary detachments. She stayed at their guest houses, ate their meals, and travelled to the border in army vehicles with armed guard. Sometimes, the guards clear away interlopers to ensure a decent photo op for the author. In return, she strikes up a conversation with lonely and bored soldiers and reminds them of India’s defeat in the 1962 war or how their home state is being oppressed by the central government in Delhi.

 

This book is a waste of time as not much research has gone into writing it which I suspect to be funded by anti-India agencies. The book is not recommended.

Rating: 1 Star