Politics After Television : Hindu Nationalism and the Reshaping of the Public in India

The broadcast on Indian national television in January 1987 of the Hindu epic The Ramayana sparked the largest political campaign in post-independence times, led by Hindu nationalists. Arvind Rajagopal's book analyses this extraordinary series of events. This book will interest scholars of politics, sociology, religion, media, and South Asian studies.

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 globalisation. Television was the device that hinged these movements together, symbolising 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.