Indian Public Sphere Research Articles

Shaping Public Opinion and Community Mobilisation: The Role of Urdu Language Media in India

Considering the role played by Rashtria Sahara, an Urdu daily newspaper that took recourse to the democratic practice of questioning and challenging the hegemonic formation of the maligned image of Islam and the faith community vis-à-vis terrorism in the discursive arena, that is, the public sphere, this article tries to understand the role of the Urdu language media in shaping the public opinion and mobilising people from within the community. To this end, first, the article seeks to comprehend the present configuration of the Indian public sphere keeping in view its colonial origin. Moreover, the ‘othering’ of Muslims in postcolonial India that has colonial roots, too, has been understood through the idea of ‘interior frontiers’. Second, the role and practices of the Indian state towards Muslims have been taken into account. And, the final section analyses strategies that were put to use by the newspaper to contest the hegemonic formation, which paved the way for social movement to emerge.

Digital disruption? Journalism startups in India

India’s large and thriving news media is going digital. Spurred by an exponential increase in Internet use and digital advertising, a number of digital journalism startups have been established in recent years. These startups have received popular and academic attention, often narrated as disruptors and revolutionaries. This study considers these claims of disruption from the perspective of those doing the supposed disrupting. Based on 31 semi-structured interviews with founders and journalists working at 18 such English-language startups, this study examines how they work with and against the grain of established media in India. Participants critiqued existing media practices with regard to the business model, the content of news coverage, and the values underlying their journalism and then offered their own site or work as possible redress. While the critiques were aimed at legacy media writ large, they also aligned themselves with and sought legitimacy from print journalism. Their coverage, audience, and values were all oriented toward English-language newspapers, which have historically formed the elite public sphere in India. Participants saw themselves operating in concert with print media, ultimately offering not a disruption to the established order of journalism but rather a distillation of how the English-speaking elite in India access news.

Can Indian journalism survive the onslaught of social media?

In recent times, researchers have examined the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s use of social media to directly connect with his followers, while largely shunning the mainstream media. This strategy of direct communication with their constituents has been adopted by other political parties too, with opposition party leaders hosting ‘Facebook Live’ sessions and tweeting their messages. A large proportion of Indian voters, who increasingly own mobile phones, are enjoying being part of the ‘like’ and ‘share’ online networks. What does this effective use of social media by Indian political parties mean for the public discourse in India? This article presents the view that this phenomenon is more than Modi’s ‘selfie nationalism’ or his attempt to marginalize the news media. The article argues that there is a structural shift in the Indian public sphere, which might prove to be the greatest challenge to Indian journalism.

The Quotidian Revolution: Vernacularization, Religion, and the Premodern Public Sphere in India. By Christian Lee Novetzke. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. Pp. xxvi+402. $65.00 (cloth).

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsThe Quotidian Revolution: Vernacularization, Religion, and the Premodern Public Sphere in India. By Christian Lee Novetzke. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. Pp. xxvi+402. $65.00 (cloth).Anne FeldhausAnne FeldhausArizona State University Tempe Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by History of Religions Volume 58, Number 4May 2019 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/702258 Views: 71Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Sexual Violence in Indian Public Sphere: Counter-public Creation and Deferral

The paper hypothesises that public and counter-public spheres are rhetorically constructed and argues that the nature of rhetoric in both the spheres is dialectically construed by various agencies which on the one hand ensure the execution of public sphere rhetoric, and on the other hand, defer counter-public discourse to be implemented in practice, especially in case of sexual violence against women in India. The paper contextualises the same argument using various newspaper articles which are reflective of the ineffectiveness of the rhetorical counter-public and its consequent deferral.

Let There Be Clamor: Exploring the Emergence of a New Public Sphere in India and Use of Social Media as an Instrument of Activism

This article traces the emergence of a new public sphere in India by applying a critical-cultural theoretical lens to the digital discourse on the Twitter platform surrounding the 2014 Jadavpur University student movement against on-campus sexual violence. Social media platforms allowed the student movement to challenge not only the sociopolitical complications in academia but also the structural silence surrounding issues of sexual assault in the country. In this study, the method of qualitative textual analysis is used to critically analyze the tweets made using the hashtag #hokkolorob (meaning “let there be clamor”), during the movement. The findings in this examination indicate that the Internet today has the capacity to guide public opinion formation, influence collective action, and is emerging as a discursive public sphere among the youth of India. This study contributes toward an understanding of the use of social media communication for political mobilization in the Indian context.

Book Review: Christian Lee Novetzke, The Quotidian Revolution: Vernacularization, Religion, and the Premodern Public Sphere in India

Christian Lee Novetzke, The Quotidian Revolution: Vernacularization, Religion, and the Premodern Public Sphere in India, New Delhi and Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2017, 402 pp.

Christian Lee Novetzke. The Quotidian Revolution: Vernacularization, Religion, and the Premodern Public Sphere in India.

Christian Lee Novetzke. The Quotidian Revolution: Vernacularization, Religion, and the Premodern Public Sphere in India.

Revisiting the Idea of Multiculturalism in India: Accommodating Muslims’ Religious Identity in Public Sphere

India is among the most diverse societies in the world. Various religions, cultures, faiths, languages and social milieu of India reflect a very fine aspect of Indian multiculturalism. The Indian multiculturalism is not defined by any particular, community, religion or region rather it is a matrix of different values, traditions, customs and languages of its heterogeneous cultures, religions, sects etc. As a liberal democracy, it provides recognition to its vast diverse ethnic and religious groups with group-differentiated rights. For the Muslim community in India, both recognition and equal opportunity within the public sphere are keenly desired notions that tend to mobilise them politically and religiously. This paper explores the salience of Indian multiculturalism and issues of marginalisation of the Muslim minority in a liberal democratic polity. The objective of this study is to reflect upon the issues of representation of the Muslims in public sphere in India. This paper will examine the factors which help or hinder in shaping the attitude and participation of the Muslim minority in public sphere in India.

‘The Coming Clash of East and West’: syncretism, cosmopolitanism, and disaffection in the colonial public sphere

ABSTRACTThis essay analyses the modernist Indian journal ‘East and West’, published in Bombay from 1901 to 1921, as a significant instance of how and why syncretic ideals circulated in the colonial public sphere in India. The idea of East–West union, I argue, was a form of modernist cosmopolitanism that mediated between Enlightenment public sphere ideals and an emergent, ‘spiritual cosmopolitanism’, critical of Western values. It was also a way to conform to the government’s criminalisation of the Indian press for expressions of ‘disaffection’; by professing its allegianceto East–West friendship, but demonstrating the fallacy of this idea in practice through its juxtaposition of articles by British and Indian writers, the journal gives us insight into the changing valences of cosmopolitanism over the period of its circulation; the way syncretism mediated between these valences; and how these discourses were shaped by the regulation of the press.

Tamil talk shows: Maintaining tradition in the new public sphere

The popular Indian television talk show, Neeya? Naana? ( You? or Me?), offers a public platform for open discussion of important issues facing citizens in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Through its inclusive nature and open discussion format, the programme demonstrates the gendered involvement of citizens from all sections of society, including the socially disadvantaged castes and classes. While this suggests that Indian television provides a new site for an emerging public sphere, we contend that the public sphere in India can be historicized to the third millennium BC. In our analysis of Neeya? Naana?, we establish a relationship between Habermasian notions of the public sphere, India’s argumentative tradition and the ancient Sangam literature of South India. We further interrogate the concept of the public sphere by asserting that while India’s television talk shows offer the suggestion of an open democratic forum, they instead reinforce conservative cultural values.

Redefining the Indian Public Sphere:A Study of the LGBT Rights Movement in India

New media networks have led to a personalization of the political sphere as affordances provided by the virtual space give precedence to the significance of the ‘self’ over the ‘masses’. Through this paper an attempt has been made to understand how the LGBT community uses new media technologies to transcend the boundaries of the traditional public sphere in order to create a realm of self-identification in the virtual world. The study focuses on a group of Indian citizens who identify themselves as members of the LGBT community, who are digitally active and have participated in activities to mobilize public opinion in favor of the legalization of their sexual preferences. The study delineates how the LGBT community translates online discursive practices into offline civic engagement activities through the process of community formation, mobilization, setting up agenda for collective actions and creation of a realm for expression by the marginalized other.

Duties of a ‘good citizen’: colonial secondary school textbook policies in late nineteenth-century India

The late nineteenth century, which was marked by the earliest instances of students’ participation in anti-colonial political agitations in the Bengal and Bombay Presidencies, witnessed significant shifts in the British colonial education policies in India. This article highlights the political significance of the Indian child in the British colonial project by investigating a key locus of knowledge production and dissemination – the colonial school, specifically the school curriculum. Against the background of an emerging politicized child, the British colonial state intervened in school curriculum and aimed to thwart the spread of ‘sedition’ among students. The colonial state devised methods to extend greater control over the processes of curriculum selection to combat its anxieties over ‘seditious’ deviant youth and to generate loyal imperial subjects. Textbooks of ‘aggressive character’ were censored and substituted by those imparting lessons on ‘state feeling’ and duties of a ‘good citizen’. I examine colonial school curriculum policies, particularly controversies surrounding a school textbook titled The Citizen of India (1897) written primarily to inculcate ‘state feeling’ and familiarize children to a ‘simple sketch of the duties of a good citizen’. I argue that these curriculum changes were undertaken by the British colonial state with the conscious agenda of re-moulding ‘seditious’ Indian children and youth into governable subject-citizens. To interrogate colonial education as not simply confined to classroom pedagogical relationships but also shaped by its social contexts, I examine the political contestations generated within the Indian public sphere over state-sponsored school textbooks and government policies on school curriculum.

The Political is Populist: Talk Shows, Political Debates, and the Middle-Class Public Sphere in India

Emerging literature on the rapid rise of 24-hour commercial news television in India in the last decade, as well as popular and editorial commentary on the above phenomenon, suggests that these channels are playing the role of mediators for the middle classes. While the news content is widely believed to be sensationalised for the sake of attaining higher ratings in an overcrowded and competitive market, political talk shows have turned into the analytical and narrative extension of news segments. By including the ordinary – mostly through its mediation by middle-class experts and journalists – these talk shows have turned into the popular culture equivalent of a public sphere for middle-class discussions of pertinent political issues. This article traces the genealogy of a long-standing political talk show on one of India's longest-running commercial networks, NDTV 24×7's We the People, to demonstrate its attempts to mirror an inclusive Indian public sphere. Further, in light of the recent middle classled anti-corruption movement in India, and subsequent conclusions about the weakening of the state, an episode of the talk show titled ‘Anna and the Great Indian Middle Class' is subject to a detailed textual analysis. The purpose of this analysis is to demonstrate the show's construction of: (a) corruption as a pan-Indian, and not just a middle-class, issue; (b) the middle class itself as a homogeneous group; and (c) the televisual public sphere (and not a community consultation involving representatives of the state) as a place for establishing populist consensus. Literature on new political television and theories of the public sphere are used as theoretical springboards throughout the article.

Reconstructing the Indian public sphere: Newswork and social media in the Delhi gang rape case

In recent years, a growing literature in journalism studies has discussed the increasing importance of social media in European and American news production. Adding to this body of work, we explore how Indian and foreign correspondents reporting from India used social media during the coverage of the Delhi gang rape; how journalists represented the public sphere in their social media usage; and, what this representation says about the future of India’s public sphere. Throughout our analysis, Manuel Castells’ discussion of ‘space of flows’ informs our examination of journalists’ social media uses. Our article reveals that while the coverage of the Delhi gang rape highlights an emerging, participatory nature of storytelling by journalists, this new-found inclusiveness remains exclusive to the urban, educated, connected middle and upper classes. We also find that today in India, social media usage is rearticulated around pre-existing journalistic practices and norms common to both Indian reporters working for English-language media houses and foreign correspondents stationed in India.

“Reaching Out to the People”: The Cultural Production of Mental Health Professionalism in the South Indian Public Sphere

“Reaching Out to the People”: The Cultural Production of Mental Health Professionalism in the South Indian Public Sphere

“Reaching Out to the People”: The Cultural Production of Mental Health Professionalism in the South Indian Public Sphere

AbstractAlthough a significant body of scholarship has examined medical discourse in clinical and other institutional settings, far less has been studied in regard to the discursive activity of health professionals in the public sphere. This line of inquiry is particularly relevant in Kerala, south India, where, for reasons including felt obligation, the political economy of allopathic mental health care, and desires for social prestige, many psychologists and psychiatrists actively engage the public as lecturers, authors, and guests of television and radio programs alongside their clinical work. Ethnographic attention to discursive activity in the public sphere reveals how these experts blur the boundaries between clinical and popular registers of speech and forge alternative ethical sensibilities and values that challenge institutionally prescribed ideas of clinical professionalism. They do so in ways that can attract reprobation and accusations of quackery among critical peers who hold competing ideas of where, how, and to whom mental health professionals “should” speak.

Book Review: Arvind Rajagopal (ed.), The Indian Public Sphere: Readings in Media History

Book Review: Arvind Rajagopal (ed.), <i>The Indian Public Sphere: Readings in Media History</i>

Lost Boys: The Infernal Youth of the Cinematic Teenage Vampire

Popular cinema in India has been identified as providing rich cultural texts for understanding the legitimization of ideological and political hegemony, especially through narrative-cinematic forms popular in the post-colonial Indian public sphere. An impressive amount of literature has explored the various trajectories of discourses regarding the post colonial nation-state, family, and the iconic presence of the mother informing the narrative organization of popular Hindi cinema. However, representation of boyhood within the specific narrative and visual rhetoric of popular Hindi cinema received little scholarly attention. This essay traces the representation of boyhood and adolescence - first, as predominantly integrated within the narrative of male protagonists' early life, a popular cinematic motifs in 1970s and 1980s which, interestingly enough, has somewhat disappeared from post-liberalization Hindi cinema; and second, as a discursively formed narrative agent with specific ideological and psychological connotations. Drawing analogies from a range of Indian literary works on and for children, I explore how concomitant cinematic tropes serve to reiterate and negotiate ideological and social codes interlacing gender, sexuality, class, and caste, not however without leaving fissures for subaltern agency. Keywords: BOLLYWOOD, HINDI FILM, CHILDHOOD, POSTCOLONIAL, IDEOLOGY, CHILDREN'S LITERATURE, BARNA PARICHAY New normative discourses on the in nineteenth and early twentieth century India produced a number of texts that directly dealt with children's character formation. Such discourses recurrently conceived the notion of family as an isolated private domain, separate not only from the kinship system but also as a shelter from an aggressive and cruel outside world. discursive construction of the Indian depended heavily on the ways of powers and pleasures were distributed and in the process generated a radical separation between childhood and adulthood. child was central to this construction, as a new idea of childhood helped precipitate the new discourse of the family. The child came to be regarded as a person with distinctive attributes- impressionability, vulnerability, innocence-that required a 'correct/ protected, and prolonged period of nurture. It was only through a certain practice and strategy that the child's character-building exercise was to be pursued (Bose, 1995, p. 118). Hence, to be the ideal child, it was necessary for (the him is used deliberately, because, as we will discuss later, discourses almost exclusively referenced the male child) to avoid rash confrontation with various corrupting influences and to be subjected to a system of love, affection, discipline, and punishment. Interestingly, this discourse on childhood in India underscored the fact that the was envisaged as a realm that played the most valuable task of shaping the individual's life. As Satischandra Chakrabarti, in an influential, widely read book written in Bengali, Santaner Charitra Gathan (Building the Character of Child, 1912), writes: word Hie has given a new turn to the system. In earlier times, the principal question before the was how juniors would behave toward elders and superiors and how elders would behave toward juniors. Now the main subject of discussion is how every life in the family, especially the life of children, can be developed. is now a center for the development of life. (P- 2) customary belief prevailing in Indian household was that seniority was to be respected. father was a disciplinarian, a figure of supreme authority, and the children in return offered bhakti (devotional love) to their parents, a kind of love that gods are supposed to receive. It is noteworthy that this bhakti towards parents, especially the mother, became a recurrent narrative trope in popular Hindi cinema in immediately post-independence India, an aspect that signals the normative, disciplinary ideologies that the child was to internalize from birth. …

The Proper Female Subject: Poetics and Erotics in Early-Twentieth-Century Hindi

By the time it came under attack in late-nineteenth-century British India, the concept of śṛṅgāra rasa —the Sanskrit aesthetic mode designating the erotic, and the aesthetic experience and representation of the feelings and actions of romantic love—had informed Indian poetry for over a millennium. This article examines the rise of anti- śṛṅgāra rhetoric, and re-purposings of śṛṅgāra in Hindi literary publications of the early twentieth century, preceding and including the full-fledged print culture of the 1920s. Authors modernizing śṛṅgāra incorporated genres of quasi-literary, quasi-science writing from English, in the creation of a new aesthetic basis for śṛṅgāra based on a spiritually-exalted realism in nature. This aesthetic, spawned in a colonial North Indian public sphere of moral panic over sexual propriety, has survived into contemporary times.