Author: Arvind Rajagopal
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 393
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0521648394
Description
With brilliant theoretical acuity and empirical richness, this work explores how television redefines and forms part of a new circuit of politics and public culture in India. A superb and stimulating contribution to the study of contemporary politics in India.
In January 1987, the Indian state-run television began broadcasting a Hindu epic in serial form, the Ramayana, to nationwide audiences, violating a decades-old taboo on religious partisanship. What resulted was the largest political campaign in post-independence times, around the symbol of Lord Ram, led by Hindu nationalists. The complexion of Indian politics was irrevocably changed thereafter.
In this book Arvind Rajagopal analyses this extraordinary series of events. While audiences may have thought they were harking back to an epic golden age, Hindu nationalist leaders were embracing the prospects of neoliberalism and globalization. Television was the device that hinged these movements together, symbolizing the new possibilities of politics, at once more inclusive and authoritarian. Simultaneously, this study examines how the larger historical context was woven into and changed the character of Hindu nationalism.
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
Rajgopal changes our way of thinking about the world, not only in India, but everywhere: his book is indispensable for anyone who wants to understand how globalism and localism interact.-Robert N Bellah, Professor of Sociology Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley
A theoretically rich and sophisticated contribution to the development of transnational cultural studies. . the case of recent Indian experience is replete with illuminating parallels for the study of the cultural dynamics of other sectors of the emerging global marketplace.-David Morley, Professor of Communications, Goldsmith College, University of London
This beautifully written book will surely become a classic in media and globalization studies and in the cultural sociology of contemporary India.-Arjun Appadurai, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Hindu Nationalism and the Cultural forms of Indian Politics
Prime Time Religion
The Communicating Thing and Its Public
A Split Public in the making and unmaking of the Ram Janmabhumi Movement
Organization, Performance, and Symbol
Hindutva Goes Global
Conclusion
Appendix: Background to the Babri Masjid Dispute
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index