After India’s Elections: A Conversation on Democracy and Dissent

In light of the recent elections in India, the results of which came out this summer, we are at a crucial juncture to explore the state of freedom and dissent in the world’s largest democracy. Suchitra Vijayan is an award-winning journalist and photographer, whose recent books include How Long Can the Moon be Caged? Voices of Indian Political Prisoners and Midnight’s Borders: A People’s History of Modern India. Drawing on both books and her work as founder of the hybrid research and journalism organization, the Polis Project, Ms. Vijayan will reflect on the changing landscape of political freedom and legal repression in India. Given her unique career spanning litigation, policy, and visual storytelling, Ms. Vijayan will also reflect on effective means of advocating for freedom internationally. Ms. Vijayan teaches at NYU Gallatin and Columbia University.

Suchitra Vijayan is an essayist, lawyer, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book Midnight’s Borders: A People’s History of Modern India (Melville House, New York) and How Long Can the Moon Be Caged? Voices of Indian Political Prisoners (Pluto Press). She is the 2023 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Nonfiction Literature. As an attorney, she worked for the United Nations war crimes tribunals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda before co-founding the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, which provides legal aid to Iraqi refugees. She is the founder and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization. She lives in New York and teaches at NYU Gallatin and Columbia University.