Page 29 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

sumerism and yet appear supernatural and thus as part of a different order al-
together. The Hindu Right relates to modern mass media in complex ways.
While media such as the Internet are used to offer the diaspora a pure notion
of Hinduness or Hindutva (e.g., by providing cyber-rituals and prayers—“click
a deity”—in order to help people reach “back to the source”), in India much
energy is devoted to showing that consumerism is perfectly compatible with
“Indian spirituality” and with the marketing of religious trinkets (cf. Starrett
1995 on Islamic commodities in Cairo, and numerous religious sites in cyber-
space). Vesting commercial items with a new religious aura and religious items
with commercial value, Hindutva, visual media, and global capital are engaged
in a mutually supportive relationship that surpasses modernist distinctions be-
tween the spheres of the economy, politics, and religion, and casts consumers
as “gods in the sacred marketplace.” Thus the aura of modern technology and
the media provides the necessary condition for both the resurgence of narrow
identitarian motifs of Hindu nationalism and their articulation within a dis-
course of globalization and modernization.
The rise of Hindutva also coincides with the invasion of the global media,
the rise of new consumer-oriented middle classes, and the popularity of tele-
vised religious soap operas such as the Ramayana or the Mahabaratha. Can the
argument that Hindutva has encroached upon and grows within public culture
be extended to Indian cinema? Fierce criticisms by members of the national
secular-oriented bourgeoisie notwithstanding, Rachel Dwyer argues, in chap-
ter 13, that Indian ¤lms in general cannot be accused of openly propagating
Hindutva (although there are some exceptions). While ¤lms, of course, con-
tinue to picture signs of Hindu identity as part and parcel of Indian national
culture, the ¤lm industry is too intrinsic to multi-ethnic and global circuits to
propagate a narrow politics of belonging. Not only do Muslims play an impor-
tant role in the sphere of ¤lm production, successful marketing also depends on
broad, increasingly international audiences. As religion has always been called
upon as a repertoire for imagining the nation and presenting its image through
the cinema, the public articulation of religion as such is not new. This raises the
question as to why other visual media, television, for example, may be more
prone to propagate Hindutva than the cinema.
Finally, in chapter 14, Birgit Meyer explores changes instigated by the shift
to audiovisual media in the context of a new mediascape that facilitates the pub-
lic expression of mediated religion in Ghana. Similar processes occur in many
other postcolonial countries, which, often under the pressure of the World
Bank, have liberalized the hitherto state-controlled media and turned to democ-
racy. The marked public articulation of Pentecostalism in Ghana was facilitated
by the retreat of the state from control over the media and the easy accessibly of
cheap media technologies, which gave rise to a new image economy. As shown
by the aptitude for business of Pentecostal-charismatic churches and the adop-
tion of Pentecostal motifs or themes by the video-¤lm industry, which has de-
veloped over the last ¤fteen years, Pentecostalism has become a lucrative vehicle
for projecting ideas and images. Tracing the importance of vision as a key prac-

18 Birgit Meyer and Annelies Moors