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Palika Bazaar is a major node in the circulation of pirated media. As the
media landscape began changing with the introduction of cable television in
the early 1990s, Palika Bazaar emerged as “the nerve center of a complex web
of operations linking local cable networks, neighborhood video rentals, and
an elaborate courier system between shops and pirate factories in neighbor-
9
ing states, Pakistan, and South East Asia.” Such networks of media circula-
tion provide an alternative perspective on media globalization.
This perspective on piracy as a constitutive dimension of media circulation
in the contemporary world becomes even more apparent when we consider
the dramatic reconfiguration of the mediascape in countries like Nigeria. As
Brian Larkin observes, “instead of being marginalized by official distribu-
tion networks, Nigerian consumers can now participate in the immediacy of
an international consumer culture—but only through the mediating capac-
10
ity of piracy.” But there is, as my account of the Rahman fan community
suggests, another dimension to the culture of the copy and the networked
media terrain in question. If VCDs/DVDs in stores a few steps from multi-
plexes across urban India, BitTorrent sites, and other modes of copying and
circulation constitute one end of the spectrum of participation, the other end
involves industry and fan interests coming together. These are, of course, two
extremes. But taken together, they do signal that the space in between is likely
defined by a range of practices that we have yet to consider seriously.
In the Indian context, our understanding of participatory culture remains
tied to a very specific history of fan associations and their links to electoral
politics in south India. This narrative of fan/cine-politics has been so domi-
nant that other modes and sites of participatory culture have not been con-
sidered, leave alone studied in systematic fashion, for no apparent reason
other than their seemingly “nonpolitical” character. In fact, the topic of fan
activity has not even been raised in relation to Bollywood. In what follows,
I argue against framing participatory culture surrounding Bollywood and
more generally, film and television across India, in terms of devotional excess
or in relation to political mobilization. How might we reframe fan activity
and in doing so, position participatory culture as an important site for map-
ping and analyzing Bollywood’s emergent cultural geography?

Rethinking Participatory Culture

Let me begin by returning to the case of arrahmanfans.com and provide a
brief account of the group’s formation and activities. In 1998, less than three
years after the state-owned telecommunications provider VSNL (Videsh
Sanchar Nigam Limited) offered dial-up connections to the Indian public in