The first true people’s history of modern India, told through a
seven-year, 9,000-mile journey along its many contested borders
Sharing borders with
six countries and spanning a geography that extends from Pakistan to
Myanmar, India is the world’s largest democracy and second most
populous country. It is also the site of the world’s biggest crisis
of statelessness, as it strips citizenship from hundreds of thousands
of its people–especially those living in disputed border regions.
Suchitra Vijayan
traveled India’s vast land border to explore how these populations
live, and document how even places just few miles apart can feel like
entirely different countries.
In this stunning
work of narrative reportage–featuring over 40 original
photographs–we hear from those whose stories are never told: from
children playing a cricket match in no-man’s-land, to an elderly
man living in complete darkness after sealing off his home from the
floodlit border; from a woman who fought to keep a military bunker
off of her land, to those living abroad who can no longer find their
family history in India.
With profound
empathy and a novelistic eye for detail, Vijayan brings us face to
face with the brutal legacy of colonialism, state violence, and
government corruption. The result is a gripping, urgent dispatch from
a modern India in crisis, and the full and vivid portrait of the
country we’ve long been missing.