Gandhi Meets Primetime: Globalization and Nationalism in Indian Television.

Kumar, S. (2006). Gandhi meets primetime: Globalization and nationalism in Indian television. Champaign: University of Illinois Press. 240 pages.

Kumar is not sure how satellite television is changing India but he is quite sure it is shaking up long-accepted notions of just what India is. His book argues that the "imagined community" (p. 2) of India of the 1947 founders of the Republic is being shattered by satellite TV. In its place has come "the unimaginable communities of electronic capitalism" (p. 14). Gandhi, the "Father of the Nation" (p. 150), is used as the revered symbol of what the political and cultural elites wanted India to become: a political (if not social and economic) utopia with a united people struggling and sacrificing for future generations.

This was certainly the "imagined community" of Doordarshan, the stodgy government television monopoly established in 1959. It was the only television choice for Indians for 3 decades. Then along came satellite TV or "electronic capitalism." Starting in 1991 with CNN, satellite television grew phenomenally. Murdoch's STAR-TV from Hong Kong and India's own Zee-TV brought a "cultural mishmash" (p. 191) of mostly entertainment programs. Indian audiences loved them, and in 1992 cable operators were hooking up nearly 10,000 homes per day. Programs in Hindi, "Hinglish," and a multitude of "electronic vernaculars" (p. 12) burst forth from satellites. One result, the author laments, is that India is rapidly becoming a nation of consumers and ideals of Indian nationalism are being submerged as advertisers target cultural, linguistic, and regional subgroups.

Kumar's first chapter provides background on the early conflicts over Indian television. Then he picks and chooses his subjects and incidents to make an interesting if at times hard-to-follow argument about how television does (or does not) affect the audience. Chapter 2 reviews the cultural implications of advertising for television sets--ads that sought to persuade Indians to buy television sets by suggesting that reality and modernity were on your TV screen. Then the reader is taken on a ride through political and social theory--Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud make appearances--that is spiced up with lots of gossip about Indian TV. It can be interesting--even titillating at times--although Kumar's efforts to make everything relate to his theorizing are sometimes a strain on the reader. Elaborate sentences abound. A linguistic device to carry the theorizing along and relate it to television's effects is his repetition of one question: "Is there an Indian community of television?" (p. 191). The author provides five versions of this question, changing the emphasis in each version. Of course, each change of emphasis brings a different answer, but in the end his answer seems to be "no." Still, Kumar leaves the decision to the reader as he even cites critics who say that television should not be used to gauge the "Indian community."

Kumar uses the image of Gandhi throughout the book. He examines "the crucial role that television plays in articulating the many uses and abuses of Mahatma Gandhi's status as the father of the Nation of postcolonial India" (p. 15). The abuses, of course, come from those "unimaginable communities of electronic capitalism" that make up satellite TV. Kumar cites "a transient moment of unspeakable transgression of Mahatma Gandhi's name" (p. 155) on a STAR-TV channel in India. In May 1995, a guest on a talk show hosted by an Indian (well, half-Indian) woman called Gandhi "a bastard bania" (p. 157), a pejorative term for a miser. There was a public uproar and politicians called for banning STAR-TV. In the end, Kumar suggests that only in the moment when the "Father of the Nation" was publicly insulted did the "imagined community" of India come together.

James F. Scotton (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin) is an Associate Professor in the College of Communication at Marquette University. His research focuses on international communication, especially in Africa and Asia.