Page 270 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

as Rupert Murdoch’s STAR Network and Time-Warner’s CNN, BBC, and oth-
ers. The crucial shifts in this period beginning in 1990, during the U.S.-led
Iraq Gulf War, could be seen in terms of ownership, kinds of programming,
and audiences. From a primarily state-controlled media environment, the new
ecology of globalization led to an in®ux of programming previously unseen and
primarily U.S.-produced such as Dynasty, Baywatch, and Phil Donahue. Later
this content was to shift dramatically to indigenously produced programming
and a localization of the broadcasting from the global players. Further, given
that such programming was satellite-based, the primary clientele were urban,
middle-class households, often part of housing colonies that shared one satellite
dish. What currently marks the TV scene in India is that the most popular pro-
gramming content is that which is considered “hybrid,” featuring “Hinglish” as
its language and owned by Indians and nonresident Indian corporations such
as Zee TV, SET (Sony Entertainment Television), and STAR (with Murdoch now
holding a minority share). These highly popular programs include TV serials,
televised religious epics, and ¤lm-based musical programming. Most strikingly,
the earlier discourse against consumerism and in favor of “building the nation”
through education and information has all but disappeared. Rather, the logic
of the commodity form has penetrated not just advertising-led programming
but the content as well, through strategies such as prizes for viewers, lifestyle
programming like interior decoration and fashion shows, and the most popu-
lar program of all, Kaun Banega Krorepati? (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?),
hosted by aging ¤lm icon Amitabh Bachchan.
The hybrid mix of religious imagery and consumer sacrality visualized in the
MTV clip that opened this chapter cannot be understood without placing it
within a historical horizon which shifted dramatically in economic terms from
the earlier, relatively sequestered period of partial state control to the present
wholesale wooing of foreign capital and consumer goods. Crucial for the pur-
pose of this argument is an insistence that this switch in economic conditions
was not the result of a rationally thought-out strategy for increasing prosperity
but instead was precipitated by a series of global crises such as the rise in oil
prices after the Gulf War and the consequent burgeoning internal debt of the
state. Thus it was the crisis situation within the economy and the inevitable turn
to foreign lending institutions such as the World Bank that led to a massive in-
®ux of consumer goods and foreign capital investment into the country, often
on terms most bene¤cial to the emergent Indian petite bourgeoisie and multi-
national corporations. Some important points need to be made with regard to
this observation.
The historicist narrative that underwrites present triumphalist discourses of
the reinvigorated nation dissimulate this crisis and recode it as the “natural”
consequence of the development of the “Indian nation.” It is precisely here
that Jameson’s call for critical distance and Benjamin’s attack on teleological
historicism become particularly relevant. Further, this discourse of newfound
consumption-fueled prosperity is often transcribed in the form of religious
belonging. However, as opposed to discourses of the “return of the repressed”

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