Book Discussion | Spectacle State: How Hindutva Shapes Feeling and Culture

In Spectacle State: How Hindutva Shapes Feeling and Culture, Brahma Prakash examines the relationship between culture, performance and political power in contemporary India. Moving beyond political leaders, ideology and speeches, the book turns to everyday objects, practices and cultural forms, including religious processions, street performances, monuments, music and festivals, to explore how political power is experienced and communicated through spectacle. The book considers how emotions such as fear, pride, victimhood, anger and piety are produced and circulated through these cultural forms. It asks how Hindutva operates not only as an ideology but also through embodied, sensory and affective experiences, and how these processes shape everyday expressions, relationships and understandings of identity. Through examples ranging from loudspeakers and processions to statues, symbols and the political imagery of the bulldozer, Spectacle State examines the ways in which performance and spectacle become sites through which political meanings are made and contested in contemporary India.

Speaker

Dr Brahma Prakash

Brahma Prakash is an Indian cultural theorist, writer and academic who teaches Theatre and Performance Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is the author of Cultural Labour: Conceptualizing the ‘Folk Performance’ in India and Body on the Barricades: Life, Art and Resistance in Contemporary India, which was shortlisted for the David Bradby Award. He received the Dwight Conquergood Award in 2013. His writing has appeared in journals including Asian Theatre Journal, Performance Research, Contemporary Theatre Review, Theatre Research International, Economic and Political Weekly, Global Performance Studies and South Asian History and Culture, as well as publications including Outlook, Scroll and The Wire.

Discussant

Dr M. Sudhir Selvaraj

M. Sudhir Selvaraj is Assistant Professor in the Department of Peace Studies and International Development at the University of Bradford. He is a political scientist whose research focuses on democratic decline, nationalism, religion and politics, and violence against minorities, particularly in South Asia. His recent work has examined Hindu nationalism, anti-Christian violence, the rule of law, and the effects of nationalist movements on religious, gendered, and caste minorities. He holds a PhD in Politics from the King’s India Institute and an MA in International Relations from the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. He previously taught in the Department of International Development at King’s College London and is currently a Research Affiliate at the King’s India Institute.