Page 79 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

54 Vibodh Parthasarathi

Understanding communication as a process is to understand the
production of ideas and articulation of social relations. Historically,
the presence of non-dominant communication is indicative, first, of
an ideological assertion of subjugated knowledge systems; second, of
articulations which either the ‘system’ cannot assimilate (asystemic)
or are confrontationist to its needs (anti-systemic) and third, of spe-
cific processes that have been peripheralized by the politico-economic
organization of the media culture industry. On its part, non-dominant
communication is often said to consist of those practices whose endog-
enous yet assimilative development have not conformed to the aesthetic
values and thematic criteria of Euro-modernism; importantly, they
are largely sustained through an intrinsic local essence in addressing
social issues of the moment. This is evident in those articulations of
the ‘popular’ that are invariably clubbed under the umbrella term of
‘folk culture’.
However, equating the ‘non-dominant’ with the totality of the
‘popular’ is as much a methodological error as viewing it to intrinsically
fuel the ‘alternative’ is an ideological one. For one, there are instances
where the ‘popular’ is so harnessed that it in fact (re)asserts elements
of dominance. In the first real boost to Hindutva’s mass mobilization
in the late 1980s, one may recall, newspapers, radio and television did
not contribute significantly. Rather, it was achieved by appropriating
the traditional form of yatra (pilgrimage)—beginning with the Ram
Janaki yatra in 1984 to the infamous rath yatra (Palampur–Ayodhya)
of 1989. In a de-feudalizing society, political processes pivoted around
and projected through such de-contextualized idioms of popular culture
proved ‘successful’. For a significant period the degree and nature of
this ‘success’ even overtook the consensus-building potential of the
electronic media, itself harnessed later by Hindutva in its use of video
vans. These mobile churches evoked ‘public opinion’ by screening films
and other audio-visual products, heralding the birth of a new, albeit
reactionary, politicization of culture in India.
Similarly, there exist communication processes which, although
peripheral to the established norms of the culture industry, are in their
modes of social organization surprisingly conformist. Take the case of
‘participatory video’, an exercise in development communication that
has hitherto been largely for the non-dominant and not by them. In
most cases this exercise is typified either by a top–down approach of