Shivani Dass’ book is a compilation of pictures depicting the trauma and troubles of Chin refugees living in Vikaspuri. She chats about their poor living condition
Biak Rem Sang fled Myanmar in 2009 after his uncle was fatally beaten up by the army, he often thinks about the life and family he left behind, including his mother. Biak arrived in India along with his wife, Suizi Sung, sons and daughter. Sang belongs to Hakha community and his family earned its living through farming in Myanmar. To make ends meet, Suizi works in a factory that makes mobile phone chargers and Biang has recently started working in a cloth factory as a tailor. life here has been tough and therefore the family is planning to move to Melbourne, Australia, where Biak’s brother is settled now.
Ni Cin is 72. She fled Myanmar in 2008 along with her daughter and six grandchildren. Her daughter Bawi Tial is single and the only earning mother of the family, working as a tailor at a local tailoring unity in Vikaspuri. Ni Cin’s other children are missing in Myanmar but she is happy to have her children with her. The family has shifted house thrice since they arrived. A few members of this family get ‘Subsistence Allowance’ from UNHCR. The family also receives some aid in the form of food supplies from the local church. But Ni Cin’s biggest concern is her grandchildren’s education, which they are unable to continue due to lack of funds. As with the rest of her community, Ni Cin lives with hope that her papers for migration will come through soon and she will migrate to any Western nation.
like these two, there are many stories of migrated families narrated in I Often Think Of Those I left Behind, The Chin Refugees of Delhi by Shivani Dass. But more than words, it is pictures that do the talking. A series of photos clicked at their homes follow the brief introduction of these families. Captured in natural light, these images seem to exude a yellow gloom, “conveying the despair and sadness.” There are pockets of darkness in these photographs, as though a metaphor for refugees’ lives. None of the pictures in the book is a happy picture and depicts the real state of these migrants in Delhi.
The author and photographer, Dass, says, “The handful of families represented in this project embody the trauma and tragedies that define the lives of a majority of the Chin community in India. A large number of them were rice planters, daily wage earners and labourers in Myanmar, until the rise of the military junta and the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi after the general elections of 1989, which turned their peaceful lives into a wrecking hell. The military raided villages, as it still does, forcing men to comply with their impossible demands for extortion and women to submit to their indignities. Refrendrums were thrust at them to be signed and accepted without protest, poultry and live stock were seized, women were threatened and abused. This torture continued forcing members of the Chin community to flee their country, mostly through India’s Northeast border, with the hope of moving to secure terrains. But in India, the difficulties of the Chin community continue. In spite of the vastness of the country and its relative stability, it offers refugees an inhospitable welcome.” Having worked as farmers for generations, their employment prospects are feeble here and even if they manage employment, mostly in factories making cheap electronic goods or stitching clothes, they are easily exploited.
Dass began this project with the intention of photographing people whom she felt were forgotten and neglected. Her work has so far focussed on people on the fringes, and through her lenses she tries to draw attention to them. After two photography exhibitions, she felt the medium of the book would be interesting to make the work travel in a different way from that of an exhibition. “Initially I had attempted to look at both the refugee communities from Burma — Chin and Rohingyas, after several attempts over three months and not gaining access to the Rohingyas, I then focussed on the Chin community,” she adds.
Dass went to several places in Delhi and zeroed down on Vikaspuri for her shoot. The area was chosen because of the large concentration of the community here. It is said that to take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Dass says that during her experience of photographing the Chin refugees living in and around Vikaspuri, she felt this intensely. She says, “I spent time with people whose lives are in limbo, in the midst of great sorrow and loss for a land, a home and people that have been left behind forever. Their sense of home is either a land that brings back memories of great pain and distress, or a temporary home now in the narrow lanes of Vikaspuri, where the alienation of their community is apparent in their daily struggles. When I started interacting with the community, the people were quite open to share their stories and generous to let me in their house and shoot the real picture, the misery that they live with. I think they wanted to be heard and to tell their stories, stories of unspeakable horror and hardship. Most of the stories were similar — how they ran away overnight leaving their families behind. There were stories of rape and tortured in Burma. One of the most heart-wrenching stories was of a woman who lost one of her daughters while she was crossing the border to India.”
The tearful face of a woman and the pensive manner of some of the young children, the tense body language and the grim concentration on their faces reveal everyday struggle that these people have to go through in day-to-day life.
Dass now wants to continue her work in the borders of Northeast India. “I will also look at the lives of the Rohingyas in future,” she ends.