Suchitra Vijayan > Quotes

“When a state treats its citizens as an existential threat then that state ceases to be a democracy.”
― Suchitra Vijayan

“Our Constitution is our act of revolution”
― Suchitra Vijayan

“Kashmir is India’s greatest moral and political failure. It is here that even the most civilised amongst us begin to make excuses for repression, brutality and violence. It is here that we subsume all that we otherwise celebrate under the demands of freedom, progress, liberalism, liberty and secular ideals. Since 1947, the Indian state has responded to the political aspirations and the social and the legal demands in Kashmir through militarisation, repression, and indiscriminate violence, including, at various times, the denial of democratic rights, the manipulation of elections, and the murder and imprisonment of its political leaders.”
― Suchitra Vijayan

“The idea of bearing witness is often very problematic as a concept, as a rhetorical tool, and as a literary device. We no longer need James Nachtwey to fly to war-torn Bosnia. Everyone is a photographer now, so we are all witnesses. We live in a surveillance economy where we are constantly just bearing witness. Which means that the capacity to see does not automatically become the capacity for action. What is the function of seeing something, and saying something, if it doesn’t lead to concrete action or change?”
― Suchitra Vijayan

“When the judiciary is the midwife of tyranny, the law becomes the most lethal weapon of a fascist state.”
― Suchitra Vijayan

“Silence in the face of fascism is treason”
― Suchitra Vijayan

“For me, it comes down to the fundamental question of who owns knowledge, who produces knowledge, who enables other people to produce knowledge. And that’s why it’s important that knowledge should not belong to one person or group, neither should the profits of that knowledge belong to one corporation, whether it’s The Washington Post or The New York Times, and the Amazons and Jeff Bezoses of the world. It’s absolutely important that all of us, whether we are brown or black, have the capacity to produce knowledge and own that knowledge.”
― Suchitra Vijayan

“Instead, the regime that has legislated on what we eat, whom we love, what we desire and how we live has now come for our memory.”
― Suchitra Vijayan

“The capacity to tell stories, and relate to another person’s story, is the most human thing we can do.”
― Suchitra Vijayan

“The Judiciary cannot revolt against the Constitution, but only on its behalf.”
― Suchitra Vijayan

“Pain is for the living; the dead are immune to the consequences of death.”
― Suchitra Vijayan, Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India

“Pedagogy is political”
― Suchitra Vijayan

“But for me hope is radical; hope is the last bastion of our defense. It’s when we lose hope that we believe that we have lost everything. Also, hope is a discipline. It’s a practice. Like you train for a marathon, you train to be hopeful everyday. That’s part of the political imagination that I believe we need for political movements or any sustained acts of resistance. These new worlds are already here—they are maps of survival, maps of resistance. These may not be perfect worlds or even equal worlds, but they strive to be. This might not seem like much, but it is absolutely essential.”
― Suchitra Vijayan

“This disastrous marriage between religion and nationalism will ultimately subvert the values that have held this nation together because it substitutes with murderers and symbols the place meant for substantive values of secular statehood, equality, and justice. India’s future lies in pluralism, parity, reasonable and principled cosmopolitanism and not with settling scores in history.”
― Suchitra Vijayan

“Words are powerful, and they have the capacity to normalise hate. To call a human being illegal is not only racist and inaccurate, but also dehumanising. No human being is illegal. Existing is not illegal.”
― Suchitra Vijayan, Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India

“People fight, struggle, survive and sometimes die for the freedom and dignity
denied to them. Amid all this, they also live, eat, laugh, cry, play with their
children, share meals with friends and fall in love. Above all, they fight for their
homes, histories, languages and memories.”
― Suchitra Vijayan