Page 83 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

58 Vibodh Parthasarathi

culture associated with the underclass is vibrant in India. However, in
instances where such traditions of culture and communication continue
to be associated with a technology and social organization of its very
specific milieu, such practices are portrayed as being a remnant of the
past. A historical analysis of the peripheralization of such institutions
of popular culture reveals otherwise. That the processes and struc-
tures of such media run contrary to dominant values, ideological pro-
postions and organizational norms of the culture industry is what
makes them appear ‘backward’ or ‘anti-modern’. In other words, since
technology interacts in different ways with society as also with pre-
dating modes of communication, it is the techno-industrial base of
the mass media that has defined its pre-eminence relative to other
(pre-dating and contemporary) institutions of culture and communica-
tion. This explains why local cultural practices, overshadowed as they
are by the mass media, appear archaic and lacking in dynamism.
Popular culture, especially whose social base lies in the agrarian
underclass, over a period of time gets meshed with the dynamics of the
mass media market. Typically, such local practices get absorbed first
into the national and thereafter into the global culture industry—it is
another matter that once absorbed, they get redefined in terms of a
dominant style by the culture industry. Of course, on searching hard
one does find instances where social actors associated with popular
culture choose to remain peripheral to the culture industry, as they
realize their essence being in addressing local aspirations in situ. The
case of bhangra may be mentioned here. It has over the years been
transformed from being a local cultural form to being the darling of
metropolitan Punjabi popular music. No coincidence that it was a cul-
tural form originally associated with a community richest in expatriate
or migrant Indians. The complete marginalization of local institutions
of culture and communication (the Phad-assisted ballad in Marwar) or
alternatively their transformation from being local institutions to being
monopoly industrial activities (such as bhangra pop/cattle market-
based religious faire), is essentially the challenge beckoning popular
culture in India.
The glut of folk pop in India and abroad together with the related
birth of ‘world music’ in recent years may seem to indicate a wider
number of people having access to, and being producers of, popular
music. For me, this perfectly illustrates the biggest paradox concerning