Gandhi Meets Primetime: Globalization and Nationalism in Indian Television

4. "Gandhi Meet Pepsi": Nationalism and Electronic Capitalism in Indian Television

  4฀ “Gandhi฀Meet฀Pepsi”:฀Nationalism฀and ฀ Electronic฀Capitalism฀in฀Indian฀Television “gandhi฀meet฀pepsi,” declared the headline for an article written by the noted feminist scholar Urvashi Butalia (1994) in the Independent฀on฀Sunday.1 The headline is heady, the contrast clever, and the significance stunning. The superstar of Indian nationalism forced to face the rising star of transnational consumerism; the authorial symbol of the struggle for independence of the great-grandparents’ generation asked to accede to the chilling choice of a new generation’s transnational interdependence; the deified signifier of Orientalist renunciation compelled to make room for the reified significance of Occidentalist consumption.One could go on,but the ingenious headline makes the conclusion crystal clear even before one pores over the fine print. But for the ingenuous reader, the lead line says it all: “Western culture is sweeping India,” Butalia announces, with exaggerated effect: “India, which contains one-sixth of the world’s population, is no longer aloof and mysterious. It has dismantled its trade barriers and liberalised its economy. The philosophies of its modern founders,Gandhi and Nehru,seem as far away as Sanskrit texts. We have satellite television. We are a market. We consume.”2 “Gandhi Meet Pepsi.” The equation seems strikingly simple. To liberalize is to be liberated. To be liberated is to undergo revolution. To undergo revolution is to follow the lead of a new star. India has a new star in satellite television. It is the choice of a new generation—Generation NeXt. Never mind the reification—India has been plugged into the transnational networks of electronic capitalism that have consumed large parts of Asia and much of the world since the 1990s. In this chapter, I address the question of how an Indian community of television is imagined by overwriting the 04.119-154.Kumar.indd฀฀฀119 10/18/05฀฀฀11:33:52฀AM 120฀ gandhi฀meets฀primetime narratives of nationalism in the discourse of electronic capitalism. I define overwriting as a paradoxical dual process of writing and erasure. By deconstructing the simultaneous writing and erasure of the subject of nationalism in electronic capitalism, I address how Gandhi’s name is symbolically overwritten to death by competing visions of transnational corporations like Pepsi in postcolonial India.3 Waiting฀to฀Consume “Gandhi Meet Pepsi.” The rhetoric is rhapsodic, the climate chaotic. The scenes are rather familiar; only contexts radically differ, as the magic mantra of “globalization” is chanted by New฀York฀Times columnists writing about the changes they see in cities and villages across Asia.As the New฀York฀Times Asia correspondent Philip Shenon discovers, the transnationalization of national communities across Asia has engendered a “race to satisfy TV appetites .”4 In Asian countries, poor and rich alike, Shenon sees “parabolic dishes” as often as “rice paddies,” and he captures the following “scenes from the satellite television revolution,” in its early days yet: In Hanoi, officials of theVietnamese Communist Party and foreign guests in some of the city’s larger hotels watch the BBC’s hourly news, beamed live by satellite from London.In Hong Kong,stock traders end their day in the office by flipping on Cable News Network to catch the opening share prices half a world away in Europe, while at home their children sit glued to a Madonna video festival on MTV. In Indonesia, rice farmers on the island of Sumatra gather around a communal television set to watch the American soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful”—they don’t understand the English script,but they seem to enjoy it anyway. . . . In the prosperous city-state of Singapore and north across the Gulf of Thailand to Bangkok, viewers pay a monthly fee to enjoy recent Hollywood films on a new pay television service, Home Box Office Asia.5 Over in China,Nicholas Kristof argues that satellite television has brought an “Information Revolution” to the country, and he paints the following picture for the readers of the New฀York฀Times: hundreds of thousands of satellite dishes . . . are sprouting, as the Chinese say, like bamboo shoots after a spring rain. Already millions of Chinese can hook in via satellite to the “global village,” bypassing the Communist Party commissars and leaving them feuding over how to respond.”6 04.119-154.Kumar.indd฀฀฀120 10/18/05฀฀฀11:33:52฀AM “Gandhi฀Meet฀Pepsi”฀ 121 Further across in India...