‘The writer’s role is to incite dissent against power’
I met Suchitra Vijayan in Athens, Georgia when she was visiting the University of Georgia as the 2023-24 Distinguished Lecturer/Artist. For a few years now, I have been following her work as well as The Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization that Vijayan founded in 2016. The Polis Project provides varied perspectives from people affected by conflicts and crises plaguing our world with the intention of achieving peace and harmony. Her latest book that she co-authored with Francesca Recchia, How Long Can the Moon Be Caged? Voices of Indian Political Prisoners (2023), critically scrutinizes the current political landscape in India with the help of testimonies, interviews, documents, and stories shared by political prisoners as well as their kin and allies.
How Long Can the Moon Be Caged? is also one of the few narrative nonfiction books that delves into topics like the unscrupulous usage of conspiracy theories by the ruling party in India and the despicable state of mainstream Indian media. At a time when traditional media around the world is struggling to survive amidst the emergence of totalitarian regimes, this book is a reminder as to what happens when citizens of a country are not vigilant of the actions of its government and media. The following interview was conducted in person on a late January evening in 2024. Vijayan was hosted by the Creative Writing Program at UGA and the visit was supported by the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts.
AS: In your latest book How Long Can the Moon Be Caged (2023) Francesca Recchia and you show how fascist regimes provide air to the ember of conspiracy theories to manufacture enemies and curb political dissent. Conspiracy theories are often understood as by-products of the distrust shared by citizens in any democratic country. How do you think the fascist governments use them differently to their benefit? Do you see a similar trend globally?
SV: Of course, but I think there are aspects to it. The first, authoritarian regimes, even those elected democratically across the world, learn very effectively from each other. These are strategies of repression, disinformation, and misinformation and even the strategies of creating an environment where we are constantly questioning our own reality. This is foundational to these regimes, and it is true of the United States, Britain, India, Turkey, and many others. Authoritarian regimes hold on to power by constantly creating myths about the benefits of the current regime and the singular “leader” who is anointed. But much before conspiracy theories, I think it starts with an erasure of history, rewriting of history and then once that is done, we see erasure not just of history but also physical spaces.
In India, a criminal structure that has been built on top of the desecration and destruction of a 500-year-old mosque in India is now being celebrated. Even the Indian Supreme Court said there was no pre-existing structure underneath the mosque to warrant its destruction, but what is really appalling is that despite the fact that this information exists, the entire country has been told and they believe that there was indeed a temple, and then a Masjid was built on top of it and now we’ve destroyed the Masjid to bring Ram – the temple god – back home. So really what you’re seeing is erasure of history, rewriting of history, consistent and systematic spread of misinformation and disinformation followed by mythologizing. And the conspiracy theory in some way put all these puzzles together and kept moving them. It’s not just the temple. Every aspect of Indian life is now a conspiracy theory, like every aspect of what you eat, who you love…
AS: In India today, most of the popular news channels and dailies are sponsored by the government in various ways. Hence, they regularly demonise the political prisoners in your book. The strength the political prisoners and their families show in the face of such vilification is really commendable. In fact, we cannot help but remain inspired by the commitment of political prisoners from around the world to keep fighting for justice. How big of a hindrance is state-sponsored media in bringing the voices of political prisoners to the forefront around the world? And what do you think is the future of independent media?
SV: In our book, we document about 250 political prisoners. But it is an incomplete and ongoing list and as we get ready for the India edition of this book, that list has already expanded. We have at least another 15 new names added to the list. Now the issue is that the term ‘political prisoners’ is not used to describe them. The way you will learn about political prisoners from the Indian media is through terms like “terrorists”, “anti-national”, “communists”, “urban Naxals”, etc. The Indian media even refuses to call these political prisoners by their name. But many of these political prisoners are some of the country’s most important activists, scholars, writers, thinkers, and student leaders.
One of the core patterns that we notice over and over again is that the media plays an incredibly important role in carrying the story that the state creates, like the narrative in the case of Bhima Koregaon, where we are told that some of India’s smartest minds actually conspired to kill the Prime Minister of the country without an ounce of evidence. They not only spew disinformation and misinformation but also target all of these arrested people by leaking the police’s version of the story without proof. I think one of the really telling cases is the case of student activist Umar Khalid where the proof that was presented of him inciting violence is a doctored video that was circulated by all of the major media. When the court asked the media to provide the raw footage, they all said that they don’t have it. Umar Khalid has spent about four years in prison and his bail hearing has been postponed 13 times already.
So, what you’re really seeing is that the media not only gives you misinformation and disinformation, but they’re also very much the propaganda arm of the state to a point where they celebrate violence. They do not question the state and they are, for all purposes, cheerleaders for India’s crony capitalists. They are in collusion with the Indian state to not only dispossess people of their rights but of their humanity and dignity.
AS: What role can writers and poets play in a political climate in which, to borrow your words, “it is no longer needed to commit a crime to be treated like a criminal”? How important is it in today’s world for writers to shape political discourses?
SV: As writers, we both valorise and also downplay the role of poetry and words. Recently, we heard that someone was arrested for writing poetry in India. In Palestine, we have seen writers and poets like Refaat Alareer, Heba Abu Nada, and many others have been killed in Gaza since October 7th. Of course, they were killed, arrested, and maimed for writing poetry because poetry is powerful, words are powerful. I think we forget how powerful words are and words are important because words document and record.
One of the ways in which you take away people’s faith, their capacity, their resistance is by depriving them of their history, their capacity to define who they are. And I think that’s why writing and recording, and the capacity to tell stories to each other and pass on stories to each other, is such a powerful medium and that’s exactly what the state does not want you to do. That is the reason why India has targeted so many writers, journalists, and activists and that is true for every other authoritarian regime. The US has banned books, critical race studies textbooks, in the past and why do you think Zionists are going around removing Palestinian books from libraries in New York? Because stories are a powerful record of who we are.
I think now, more than ever, is the time for writers to get to work. We get to work when the world is on fire. We get to work when the world is beautiful but also when the world just simply exists. This is not the time for us to stop. I think writers just responding and describing the social reality is incredibly critical and important. If we are able to describe the social reality around us, even without commentary, that is political.
AS: What stops writers and poets from doing that? Right now, we can see that a lot of popular writers are not even responding to the wrongs being committed around them.
SV: I think what is stopping them is fear. I’m not saying fear of life or of someone hurting them. It’s fear of losing, of what happens if some publishers don’t publish their next book, what happens to a certain fellowship, what happens to a residency, and what happens to an invite to an American PEN gala. What I mean is, there is the fear of losing favor, not getting the next big publisher, and not being published with a big five.
It is their choice and right to be cowardly. To obfuscate language. Perform politics, say liberal platitudes. People talk about selling and marketing but writing is not about selling. Even if it was, now that I know that you’ve chosen silence, I have nothing more to buy from you. You see, it just really comes down to what the role of a writer is.
Writers who have surrendered their words to silence in the face of this grotesque violence, inhumanity, and sheer injustice have inevitably drawn up the will and testament of their intellectual and moral demise. The writer’s role is to incite dissent against power. Everyone has a right to be a coward, it’s your choice. But if you call yourself a writer, yet refuse to name or even acknowledge the sheer scale of violence unfolding in front of you, then I have no interest in anything else you have to say or sell.
AS: I would like to know about the process of researching and writing your new book. Would you like to share any story or incident that remains with you from the time you were researching this book but did not make it to the final text?
SV: This book is an act of community. I know my and Francesca’s names appear in the front, but the person I have to acknowledge primarily is Afreen Fatima who was the lead researcher on the book. I also want to mention the fact that, in some ways, the cruel demolition of her house by the police following her father’s arrest on charges of being a mastermind for a protest against a ruling party leader also changed this book from an anthology of prison writing to the book that it is today. It’s her and many others like her – scholars and activists – who were part of this book and made it possible. Francesca and I could not have done this book alone.
To talk about the way this book was researched, it started as profiles of dissent for the Polis Project. We did profiles of political prisoners in India in early 2020. But by 2021, it became very clear to us that the current regime – that was halfway to their second term in office – was dealing with the political prisoners differently. It is not that India didn’t have political prisoners before, but something was changing and we felt that this was the right time to document the voices. It was simply going to be a way to collect as many prison writings as possible and for us to bring it together as an act of resistance. And Afreen Fatima, who is a researcher and also a Muslim student leader in India, helped us with the book along with others. But when her house was demolished, we also lost much of the material in the book which meant that we had to fundamentally rethink it. Now the book couldn’t just be a compilation of personal writings.
The heart of the book is a chapter called “A Community in Resistance”. It is about what it means to live after someone who’s so dear to you is taken away. The book is also a scrapbook that gathers information that centers people’s voices, and it also brings lists. I like lists because they are a powerful way of commemorating a very particular kind of state violence so we replicated the idea of the list. Francesca had this brilliant idea of including the photographs of the material objects as a chapter. So, the book structure is a response to documenting the social realities and that was what really governed what the final book was going to look like.
AS: In the chapter titled “A Community in Resistance”, you write that the authority that is in charge of safeguarding its citizens in India seems to derive pleasure from outright exercise of cruelty: Gautam Navlakha was not given a mosquito net, Umar Khalid was not allowed to use his spectacles for a long time… the list goes on. We have seen the same in other countries. To provide an example, Alexei Navalny in Russia is made to listen to Putin’s speeches for hours and is not allowed to meet his family. What purpose do you think it serves, other than trying to weaken the spirits of the political prisoners and those standing in solidarity with them (which you have shown is not possible)?
SV: When we first started putting together the profiles of dissent, I kept thinking why these states were so cruel and it occurred to me that a weak state is a cruel state. Their cruelty, in some way, reflects their weakness. When I say weakness, I’m not talking about some kind of moral weakness. It’s just the fickleness of their ideologies and their lack of courage. The only thing that the state has monopoly over is violence and a particular kind of cruelty.
So, I think foundationally it is about destroying the spirit but every single person who’s actually walked out of prison – look at those videos – they come out laughing. Look at Asif Iqbal Tana, Natasha Narval, and Devangana Kalita, they were smiling while coming out of prison. They were sloganeering, right? All these political prisoners come out smiling, raising slogans. They’re still fighting for something better so, obviously, the state has not succeeded in doing what it intended to do.
I think their cruelty is a manifestation, their own acknowledgment, of their fickleness. They are violent and cruel because it is the only thing that they can actually control. They cannot control morality, ethics, freedom, beauty, or love. They have no legislation over it, they can never control it.
AS: One question kept on occurring to me while reading How Long Can the Moon Be Caged and you actually address it towards the end of your book too. Let me put it again (for the nth time perhaps): were you not afraid to travel, interview, and collect testimonies from political prisoners as well as their associates and kin in a country where you could have easily got arrested? What motivated you to keep going?
SV: I think the right way to answer this question is that it’s not about us. The moment we start talking about ourselves we do the same violence to the stories of others. Francesca and I did it because it is our job to do it and we did it. That’s it. So, we are not going to talk about ourselves. We are not the only people doing this work. We are perhaps one of the more privileged ones doing this. I mean, I still happen to live in the United States. I don’t live in India, I’m not a Muslim, and I still carry the immense privileges of being born to a Hindu father. Francesca is a white European with a European passport. I have an American passport now. So privileged people speaking about their work in this manner is inappropriate.
On the other hand, I want to talk about people who have a fraction of the privilege that we possess but continue doing this work, day in and day out. They are the foundational backbone of our new book. The reason why we can source cite every single one of the things in our book is because some reporter somewhere made sure to document it. Without that, this book would not exist. I don’t know if that answers your question. But this is what we do. We are researchers, we are writers. We document. There is no great valour, no great martyrdom, no heroes when your job is to do this.
Abhijit Sarmah is a poet and researcher specializing in indigenous literatures and creative writing. He holds a Master of Philosophy (MPhil.) degree from Dibrugarh University, India and is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Georgia in Athens. He is also a UGA Arts Lab Graduate Fellow (2022-25) and has received such honors as the Ruth Pack Scholarship from the Institute of Native American Studies and Michael G. Moran Graduate Student Award from the Department of English at UGA. His work has been published in a range of print and online journals, including Poetry, The Margins, Lunch Ticket, Glassworks Magazine, Porter House Review, and The Lincoln Review.
