Page 277 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere
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and create its own fortunes.” Such a discourse of the fall of the nation and its
resurgence in the era of liberalization bears a striking resemblance to the con-
tours of the familiar rhetoric of the Hindu nation brought to its knees under
colonialism and “Western socialism” after Independence. In the ¤eld of me-
dia and advertising, however, it is the increasing possibilities of consumption,
and the wider range of choices, that strike Seth most. “So the consumer had
little independence in terms of choosing brands,” he argues, yet around the
1970s something changes. “We were aghast when Coca-Cola was banned, Ram-
like, from our land” (Seth 1997, 81). The metaphorical transference of con-
sumer availability to Ram’s banishment into exile is both provocative and an
instantiation of the power of metaphor as a passage, a transfer, and conse-
quently a generative matrix for linking seemingly disparate themes and mean-
ings. Clearly, within such an understanding, neither the product Coca-Cola nor
the mythic character Ram retain their originary nature. Functioning rather like
fetishes, Coca-Cola becomes a symbol of choice that is counterfactually linked
to Indian Independence while the actual circumstances of its banning in the
1970s were precisely those of preserving our Independence! As for Ram, the
skyrocketing TRPs (television rating points) for mythologicals provide the ideal
platform for a massive commercialization of religion, both as a medium for de-
livering consumers to advertisers but also in the marketing of objects as rewards
for religious devotion and faithful viewing, as was made clear in the example
above about Om Nama Shivay. A visual representation of this collapsing of the
discourses of “local ®avor,” Independence through choice, and consumption
is instantiated in a popular TV ad for Candico on Channel [V]. The camera
shakily follows at close range the swiveling head of an enormous Indian water
buffalo as it masticates in the con¤nes of a dark shed, to the strumming of a Ry
Cooder-esque blues guitar. Suddenly, as the animal’s face stares straight into
your eyes, a huge pink balloon blows out of its mouth and pops explosively. The
punch line on the screen, also heard in voiceover, reads “Your Right to Chew!”
If one were tempted to read Seth’s comments as an apology for a whole-
hearted turning to Western consumerism, besides his metaphor of Ram’s banish-
ment, his reading of the failures of advertising reproduce the familiar theme we
have encountered above: the resilience of the nation’s Chiti, or Soul, in “choos-
ing” the path most consistent culturally with its ethos.
By the 90s, the winds of change had swept across the consumer continuum. . . .
But the Indian did not get hypnotized by these events. Having ¤nally got indepen-
dence as far as choice was concerned, the consumer made pragmatic decisions and
evaluated both Indian and global brands with an objectivity that no one expected.
So, the customer did not stand weak-kneed in front of Pepsi. She evaluated and
uncorked a Thums Up. (Ibid., 82)
Rather than stand at the altar of the all-conquering Western God, our, now in-
terestingly gendered consumer asserts her independence through choosing an In-
dian product. This point is crucial. The terms of the discourse of both Inde-
pendence and Openness are not couched in terms of Western materialism and
266 Sudeep Dasgupta