Between the Lines: South Asians and Postcoloniality

11. From Ritual Drama to National Prime Time: Mahabharata, India’s Televisual Obsession

--------------From Ritual Drama to National Prime Time Mahabharata, India's Televisual Obsession Sanjoy Majumder The Mahabharata I grew up with in India is a vital source of nourishment , a measure of one's thoughts and deeds. It is not mere epic constrained by literary and narrative strategies, but a revelatory injunction, ethical and theological in purpose, that determines and defines the social and personal interaction of millions of Indians. Gautam Dasgupta, in Peter Brook and the Mahabharata We are telling a story which, on the one hand, is universal, but, on the other, would never have existed without India. To tell this story, we had to avoid allOWing the suggestion of India to be so strong as to inhibit human identification to too great an extent, while at the same time telling it as a story with its roots in the earth of India. If it were to be placed uniquely in the realm of the imaginary, it would both betray and diminish its vitality to some degree. Peter Brook, in Peter Brook and the Mahabharata The Mahabharata has recently been introduced to Western audiences via Peter Brook's elaborate, international, and multiethnic theatrical production. Between 1987 and 1988 the English-language version, produced by Brook's International Center ofTheatre Research (CIRT), traveled around the world, opening in Zurich and moving on to Los Angeles, New York, Perth, Adelaide, Copen- 205 From Ritual Drama to National Prime Time hagen, Glasgow, and Tokyo.} Brook attempts to present the epic as a cultural text that is able to stand independent of anyone history or social reality, as a universal tale of "all humanity."2 This is significant when we examine the Mahabharata as a cultural text, for in his use of a multicultural cast Brook demonstrates two facets of the epic: its ability to be read as multiple texts (authorially as well as contextually), and its ability to be essentialized into a singular and hegemonic vision. This cultural appropriation also underwrites the process by which both the West, through colonialism, and nationalist Indians attempt to construct and define the notion of "Indianness" in its historic specificity. In India, audiences can witness performances of the Mahabharata in an array of styles that range from a two-hour recitation by a Single performer and informal women's singing groups, to all-night shadow puppet plays, to professional theatrical productions performed for thirty consecutive nights.3 Numerous aesthetic forms are used to perform and narrate the epic, from folk styles such as the Chhau dance of Purulia, Burrakatha of Andhra Pradesh, and Therukoothu ofTamil Nadu to Sanskritic stylized forms such as latra, Kathakali, and Yakshagana.4 These performances frequently celebrate ritual passagesbirths , deaths, and weddings as well as religious ceremonies. This essay examines the popular adaptation of the Mahabharata made for Indian television by commercial Indian film producers and broadcast between 1988 and 1990. I argue that an analysis of the popularity of the television series needs to consider the Mahabharata as a multivalent text. If cultural practices can be recognized as consisting of various signifying practices, then as Tejaswini Niranjana, P. Sudhir, and V. Dhareshwar argue, the cultural critic needs to consider the discourses of class, caste, and religion which invariably intersect the site of cultural presentation. In this way one can delineate "the contestation of both 'Indian' and the very notion of 'culture' itself, [as] clearly the need today is to understand 'Indian culture' not as some kind of organic unified whole or as 'a way of life,' but as 'ways of struggle.' "5 Appearing again and again in multiple contexts and in diverse forms, the Mahabharata provides the basis for many of the textual strategies and moral codes employed in subsequent plays, performances, and even commercial films. Through its continual re<;:urrence in different contexts, the epic can be seen as a "national" text, yet different "readings" applied to it make it a localized text as well. The Mahabharata is one ofthe longest Single poems that exists in a textual form. It comprises almost 100,000 stanzas of narratives dealing with conflicts, theology , morality, ethics, statecraft, and Hindu philosophy.6 While it has been periodized by some historians between 1000 and 700 B.C. and others between 400 B.C. and 200 A.D., most historians tend to agree t~at it was originally a secular 206 Sanjoy Majumder tale ofwar and strife to which sections have been added by a succession ofBrahman priests. Romila Thapar presents it as possibly describing a local feud which may have caught the imagination of bards and which, subsequently, acquired a variety of episodes and interpolations.7 The televised version, which went on the air in the winter of 1988-89, is considered one of the biggest series ever made for state-run television in India. Made by Indian commercial film producer B. R. Chopra, it followed another renowned Hindu epic television series, the Ramayana, produced by Chopra's film industry rival, Ramanand Sagar.8 The screenplay of the Mahabharata, which lacked the religious intensity of the Ramayana, was written by Muslim screenwriter Rahi Masoom Raza.9 Both series were based on vernacular written texts rather than the rigidly structured Sanskrit versions. Stretched over seventy-eight and ninety-three Sunday morning hour-long episodes, the serials brought the nation to a standstill. Movies were canceled for lack ofaudiences; weddings and funerals were delayed; streets and markets were deserted, and traffic on many of the nation's highways came to a halL l 0 "Villagers clubbed together to hire televisions. People who had no set converged on the homes ofneighbours and relatives, or in shops, to watch.... When a power failure blacked out screens in one district at a crucial moment, the substation was burned down by an indignant crowd." 11 The two series attracted a vast national audience with estimates varying from 70 to 600 million regular viewers. 12 In many instances television screens were draped with flower garlands in a gesture of ritual celebration . In the 1989 and 1991 parliamentary elections three of the major stars of the Ramayana won parliamentary seats as members ofa right-wing Hindu revivalist party, the Indian People's Party, identified nationally as the Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP (see Chapter 12).13 Studies of both television adaptations emphasize the appropriation of the texts by nationalist forces and their "Hinduization." That is, their central discourses and conflicts are merged into discourses ofHindu nationalism and a reconstruction of history. Ananda Mitra argues that "the representation of Ram, Krishna and the Pandavas ... reproduced the residual Hindu practices in India 's cultural stock and memory." 14 This reading, however, overlooks the ambiguous presentation of such reproductions and the contestation of such practices . As Niranjana, Sudhir, and Dhareshwar emphasize, only through analyses of such cultural practices as a struggle over meaning can the seemingly disparate nature of these presentations of culture be located in an understanding of ideological formations. In postcolonial India, one is confronted with a multiplicity of contradictory readings of what it means to be Indian. Different voices claim authentic readings ofthe past and the present.1S The religious, class, and ethnic differences that 207 From Ritual Drama to National Prime Time were exploited by the British in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries continue to be used by politicians and other power groups today in the competition for limited economic resources. Theorists such as Benedict Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm, and Homi Bhabha have consistently stressed that the nation is an imagined construction, maintained by entrenched power groups. Hobsbawm and Anderson both introduce the idea that a shared heritage is often invoked mythically by nationalists, to construct a cultural and historical past in which the legitimacy ofthe modern nation can be found. Bhabha too, in analyzing the presentation ofnational identity in fiction and other cultural forms, talks about the narration ofthe present in terms ofthe past; he argues that nationalist discourses persistently produce the nation as a continuous narrative ofnational progress.16 In Hobsbawm's words: "It is clear that plenty of political institutions, ideological movements and groups were so unprecedented that even historic continuity has to be invented It is also clear that entirely new symbols and devices come into existence such as the national anthem, ... the national flag, ... or the personification of 'the nation' in symbol or image."17 Referring to the adoption ofnationalism as a discourse in freedom struggles, Partha Chatterjee demonstrates that the invention of the nation as an ideology and discourse of power was a distinctly European concept. Although adopted and utilized to fight colonialism, it also affirms and reifies the "bourgeoisrationalist " ideology of the colonial masters: "Nationalism ... asserted that a backward nation could 'modernize' itself while retaining its cultural identity. It thus produced a discourse in which, even as it challenged the colonial claim to political domination, it also accepted the very intellectual premises of 'modernity' on which colonial domination was based."Is These ideas are important in the consideration of the Mahabharata as a national text. The cultural and historical legitimacy of India has been invoked in presentations of pre-Islamic India, originating from the "pure" Aryan race. The indigenous name for India is "Bharat," which means "pure race" or the land of the descendants of the sage Bharata, himself a descendant of the Lunar kings of ancient Aryan India.19 The Mahabharata is therefore very much a text about race, or racial origins. The appropriation of this discourse by nationalists is symbolically rendered in the closing sequence ofeach television episode: a narrative synopsis that summarizes the preceding action, followed by a song whose lyriCS invoke the Mahabharata as a tale ofAryan India and as a salute to the brave warriors of the nation. The song emphasizes the idea that this is a narrative belonging to a unified India, overlooking the fact that it is a story ofHindu or pre-Islamic India . It becomes both a reference to the struggle of the independence movement -by mentioning the nation-state and alluding to those who fought for its freedom-and at the same time a clever suggestion that the foundations of the 208 Sanjoy Majumder present nation were laid in its mythic past. This theme is used politically by right-wing Hindu nationalists as well as by cultural imperialists who suggest that pan-Indian notions of kinship and morality are universal. Militant Hindu nationalists insist that the essence of being an Indian is being Hindu, which they call "Hindutva," a term coined politically in 1923 to construct an identification of the Hindu community with the Indian nation.2o Yet the heterogeneous traditions that constitute Hindu culture have no Single foundation text or even a canonical body of texts. Instead, a mass of oral and written literature composed in more than twenty languages stretches back in time. Amid the diversity, the epic stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata have been fundamental. Both were transmitted orally for centuries and later translated into regional languages. The medium of television itself becomes an important consideration in discussing questions of national identities and cultures. Charlotte Brunsdon and David Morley have demonstrated that the notion of simultaneity in viewership allows for a shared construction of time and space, and Benedict Anderson extends this observation in his argument of the nation as an "imagined community " where the national subject carries an "image" ofhis or her fellow national subject, allowing for a shared point ofreference.21 It is clear that the Mahabharata television series fulfills the aspirations of the Indian state as well as the middleclass elite, with its reliance on nationalist and Hindu religiOUS imagery. The producer's idea ofcompressing the epic into dramatic episodes was not exactly new; local performers and traveling acting troupes have brought the narrative alive for audiences in village and towns for centuries. This series, however, was the first instance in which the entire epic was transmitted to mass audiencesa single version shown to an audience of unprecedented size. Given the nature of the political economy of Indian television, this project acquires a unique resonance. Indian television, which began with experimental telecasts in 1959, is state-controlled.22 Following the launch of a multipurpose satellite in October 1983, television grew on a very large scale all over India until a majority of the population had access to at least a community set.23 India joined Marshall McLuhan's global village in late 1991 with the introduction of the Hong Kong-based Satellite Television Asia Region (STAR TV), carrying BBC, CNN, and outdated American soap operas. The response of the Indian state was to use its own satellites to increase programming by setting up five new channels as of 15 August 1993 (Indian independence day). Ironically, Western cultural imperialism is countered by the state's own hegemonic designs , in a hyperreal affirmation of Partha Chatterjee's observations on the nature of the nation-state in the post-colonial world. Thus, through the reiteration of the nationalist overtones of the Mahabharata as well as its presentation on national television, the appropriation of the cen- 209 From Ritual Drama to National Prime Time tral discourses and codes ofthe text into a hegemonic nationalist vision is seemingly complete and irrefutable. Yet the nature ofcultural production as the site of contested meanings and contested identities, as Stuart Hall has documented ,24 as well as the history of the Mahabharata as a polysemic text, conflate all such readings. Subjectivity, examined below, is better realized in its interpellations and formations as a multiple force, consisting of intersecting discourses of identity. James Clifford and Trinh Minh-ha examine the notion ofsubjectivity and argue that the singular, unified subject (position) is a myth, for it denies the existence of multiple selves or identities that might even be contradictory. Both Minh-ha's notion of the subjective identity of the Third World woman and Clifford's notion of cultural identity in ethnic subjects are attempts to link: history to cultural analysis. Authenticity, therefore, as these authors examine it, has less to do with discovering original histories than with the power to represent the subjectivity of the other.2S This is a useful notion to consider while examining the Mahabharata as a polysemic text. No single text or discourse makes up the Mahabharata, even if it is presented as such. Thus the cultural project of those who wish to utilize it as an all-consuming hegemonic text is self-defeating. The epic already exists in multiple contexts; different communities across India have different versions and readings of it. Joyce Flueckiger and Laurie Sears have argued that the epic text in India is fluid, since it is written and performed in a variety of genres that may be either rigid or flexible. In the oral tradition , information about the epics is reported along with summaries of the stories, related cultural data, and hagiographies of authors and composers-all passed down from parent to child, or performer to apprentice. In this method of transmission the focus is on the context of the presentation rather than the presentation itself. Performances, on the other hand, consist ofverbal and artistic enactments of oral and written texts.26 The text, therefore, becomes a part of the communal experience, like a ritual. "Textualization," says Clifford, "is understood as a prerequisite to interpretation. . . . It is the process through which unwritten behavior, speech, beliefs, oral tradition and ritual come to be marked as a corpus, a potentially meaningful ensemble separated out from an immediate discursive or performative situation."27 Recurrences of the epic texts across different contexts is also a critical cognitive process. A bard or minstrel may recite a myth in a certain way, only to be interrupted by members of the audience with the argument that it differs from their version of the text. The subsequent explanation is that both versions are true but occur in different world eras. An event becomes important precisely because it has multiplied; hence, the .spoken word is eternal, not the written word. There exists, therefore, a multiple interpretive frame through which the epic text 210 SanjOY Majumder is transmitted. This consists of the cultural perceptions and expectations of various traditions, particularly folk tradition, local legends, the ritual and performative frames, and finally the commentary that accompanies the performance. Multiple readings of a text such as the Mahabharata are particularly helped by the ambiguous nature of the narrative itself, which both praises and condemns all its characters. There is no moral retribution for any Single character, nor is there anyone hero. This ambiguity is best represented in the section titled "The Game of Dice." In this episode Duryodhana, the crown prince of Hastinapur, invites his cousin Yudhisthira, the king of Indraprashtha-along with his four brothers and their "shared" queen-to a game ofdice, in an effort to cheat him of his kingdom and possessions. The climax of the episode is reached when Yudhisthira, shorn not only of all his possessions but ofhis brothers, whom he has sold as slaves, is forced to stake his queen, Draupadi. After he loses her too, there is a dramatic scene in which she is dragged and humiliated in front ofthe entire assembly. In short, both sides are morally flawed; indeed, all the male characters in the royal chamber are morally condemned. Duryodhana plays the antihero, condemned for his avarice and lust for power, and ultimately for his treatment ofDraupadi. His brothers and uncle are condemned for being unable to intervene or to answer Draupadi's questioning ofthe construction ofkinship relations. In a sense the Mahabharata is fatalistic, since the outcome is known to the audience in advance, and the focus is on the dilemmas and the discourses of power, kinship relations, the role and nature of the state, and conceptions of divinity. And it is clear that different sections have been appropriated for different agendas. Thus, the Bhagvad Gita section, which is a lengthy discourse on morality, duty, and divine retribution, is also produced separately as a religiOUS text in Hinduism, often canonically represented as corresponding to the Bible or the Koran. As Romila Thapar points out, this is one ofthe instances of bardic poetry being given the sanctity of divine revelation. The folk text is converted by the Brahman into a religiOUS text.28 Central to the philosophy of the Gita is the doctrine of karma and transmigration: One's actions in the present life set the conditions for one's subsequent rebirth. It is the central discourses of the epic that make it such an engaging and popular text relevant to different people in different parts of the country. The Mahabharata deals with the fundamentals of genealogy, politiCS, and power. Its social and political significance extends therefore to both the ruling class and the marginalized, for it does not resolve any of the dilemmas it sets up. This openendedness allows the epic, I believe, to be read in different ways with different conclusions. An example of a possible subverted reading can be seen in the treatment ofgenealogy, which is central to the Mahabharata, for it begins as a tale 211 From Ritual Drama to National Prime Time related to a young boy to reconstruct his ancestry. This can be metaphorically used by nationalists to symbolize the genealogy of the Indian nation by invoking a mythic cultural tradition. The epic offers a vision of matrilineal genealogy , however (as opposed to patr~lineage), which is inconsistent with normative patriarchal constructions of the nation-state. The line of the Kauravas, of whom Duryodhana is crown prince, comes to an end with the last generation, for they are all killed in the war that marks the final conflict of the Mahabharata. Yudhisthira and his Pandava brothers are born of divine unions between the gods and their mother Kunti, since their father is cursed and unable to sire children . Their birth outside the royal union can be either constructed as something sacred, since they have divine parentage, or deconstructed as destroying notions of patrilineage and replacing it with matrilineage. Similarly, in "The Game ofDice," Draupadi questions the nature of the marital relationship. If, she argues, relations between a couple are equal, then a man cannot stake his wife on the gambling board. If, on the other hand, a woman is the property of a man, then Yudhisthira had forfeited his ownership right over her, since he had staked himself first and lost. The nature of the quibble aside, this is one of many central arguments that structure the Mahabharata.29 Since the epic was presented over the formal apparatus of state television, questions ofform are crucial to determining the nature of this cultural presentation . As Brundson and Morley, followed by Anderson, show, the framework oftelevision and broadcasting can shape and refract the discourse ofthe nation. At the same time, as we have seen, the Mahabharata follows a tradition of folk reenactment, with its attendant formal implications. How do these disparate forms of presentation combine in the serial version? In its formal aesthetic, Chopra's Mahabharata can be mapped as spectacle, ritual drama, and realist narrative as well as in the aesthetic styles of commercial Indian cinema. The transition from folk text to national television text is a transition from folk traditions of oral storytelling, traveling theater, mime, and dance drama to the discursive space ofnational television. Although commodified for the national audience, elements of folk dramaturgy can still be found in the formal style of the television series. As argued above, in the oral tradition it is not the tale that is significant but the process ofrelating it. The content therefore is less privileged, since its treatment is used as a process of confronting core problematics or issues. Since the Mahabharata includes narratives that are already known and privileged, it is the treatment that is significant here, or the version ofthe text that is presented. Narration has been formalized by the presence of a narrator (sutradhar) who introduces and concludes each television episode. The sutradhar is a dramatic device "borrowed" from classical Sanskrit drama as well as vernacular folk forms; the 21 2 Sanjoy Majumder sutradhar is often a wise man such as Vyasa himself (the mythological author of the Mahabharata), or even a buffoon.30 There is also, however, a "narrator" or narrative process internal to the medium itself: that is, the television as narrator.31 Other formal elements exist as well, borrowed from both folk traditions and the more recent cinematic tradition. The action is rigidly stylized rather than produced through the conventional aesthetic ofrealism. The focus is on the dialogue and the delivery. Each episode relies not so much on dramatic action (since the conclusions are known in advance) as on the presentation of arguments or conflicts. The stiff, stylized mode qf presentation derives from folk dramaturgy, formally aestheticized in the classical Sanskrit dramaturgy of the medieval period. The most evident folk influences are boisterousness and simplicity of expression. The televisual narrative has to be less rigid and less sophisticated in an unselfconscious manner, for it must be able to reach the broadest pOSSible audience. Privileged knowledge must, therefore, be kept to a minimum. At the same time, there are elements of the aesthetics of Indian commercial films and a functional realism. The realist element comes from the attempt at periodization via costumes and sets, in the tradition of such film genres as the historical and the mythological.32 Thus, considerable effort has gone into creating elaborate locations and properties. The cinematic element is more evident in the Cinematography and the use ofmusic and sound effects. The aesthetic of commercial Indian cinema is well summarized by Satish Bahadur: "charming stars, songs, dances, fights, chase, spectacle, lavish sets, big locations, melodrama and humor, a bit of everything all strung together."33 In "The Game of Dice" sequence the cinematic presentation alternates between preserving the sense of spectacle and presenting a sense of drama. The gambling mat is the focal point, but attention has also been paid to the sense of spectatorship, with the adversaries arranged on either side of the mat, and the council ofelders placed against one side ofthe great hall. The camera movements are slow with a consistent use of deep focus in which the intent is to foreground the action. As in many commercial Indian films, songs are used to present elements of the narrative and, more important, elements of theme. Orchestrated sound effects are conventionally used to highlight dramatic tension. The language of the series is a mix of the idiomatic Hindi popularized by commercial cinema and a common North Indian vernacular version, Hindustani . It is neither regional dialect nor the high-flown Sanskritic version used in most conventional theatrical productions or religious rites.34 It thus emphaSizes the neutral spectator and the universal national subject. The immense success of the television serial is particularly remarkable, since the central narrative is familiar to every Indian viewer. Clearly then, the act of 213 From Ritual Drama to National Prime Time watching the series was more than just the consumption of a televisual text. Consequently, the following questions are necessarily foregrounded: What did the Indian spectator bring to the television screen every Sunday morning? How were conflicts of interpretation resolved? And how did the various subject positions of the viewers, created both by the text and by their own ideological moorings, enhance their reading ofthe text as well as mediate their experience of its production? This essay is not a study of audiences and how they read texts. Nor is it a mere textual reading ofthe Mahabharata, examining form, content, and narrative modes. I reject linear causal theoretical approaches to the study of media texts which seek to explain action and events on the basis of the structural and interpretive impact of televisual discourse. Rather, I have tried to create space between constricting' projections of the viewing experience and the media text. This allows for the setting up of multiple interpretive frames through which the analyst can examine negotiated readings of texts by viewers. Auseful study of such an approach can be found in Purnima Mankekar's exploration of the "viewer's active negotiation of hegemonic discourse" in her study of women viewers of the Mahabharata.35 She examines the ways viewers use their experiences and subject positions as interpretive frames through which they view texts, showing that the woman viewer is able to bring to the screen her own complex notion of her subject position and history. As Niranjana and others argue, "The field of culture is ... a constant battlefield where there are no victories to be gained, only strategic positions to be won and lost. Cultural practice then becomes a realm where one engages with and elaborates a politics."36 The nature of this particular text is ambiguous, given its tremendous ties to popular memories and personal histories. I believe that the popularity of the Mahabharata derives from its intertextual characteristics as well as its functional impact on different audiences in different contexts. It presents a situation vy-hereby it can be appropriated for both hegemoniC and .subversive purposes. ' NOTES Acknowledgment: I am grateful to Gita Rajan for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this essay. 1. Production notes in Peter Brook and the Mahabharata, ed. David Williams (London: Routledge , 1991), 283-311. 2. David Williams, introduction to Peter Brook and the Mahabharata, 3-28. 3. Joyce Flueckiger and Laurie J. Sears, eds., Boundaries of the Text: Epic Performances in South and Southeast Asia, Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia 3S (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), 1. 214 Sanjoy Majumder 4. Balwant Gargi, Folk Theater of India (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966). S. Tejaswini Niranjana, P. Sudhir, V. Dhareshwar, eds., Interrogating Modernity: Culture and Colonialism in India (Calcutta: Seagull, 1993), 1, 2. 6. It has been argued that much of the central philosophy of the Mahabharata consists of Brahmanic pondering. See Gautam Dasgupta, "Peter Brook's Orientalism," in Peter Brook and the Mahabharata, 262-67. Others such as Rustom Bharucha, "A View from India," in Peter Brook and the Mahabharata, 232, argue that it "provides a Hindu perspective of action in the larger cosmic context." 7. Romila Thapar, A History of India, vol. 1(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966),31-32. 8. ]agdish Bhatia, "War by Another Means: Two TV Soap Operas Vie in Popularity," Far Eastern Economic Review 143.9 (1 989): 75. 9. Although this has been highlighted by the Indian state as demonstrative of its secular nature, it is more reflective of the surprisingly secular and progressive nature of the commercial Indian film. Raza is also a former member of the Communist Party of India. 10. Bhatia, "War"; Philip Lutgendorf, "Ramayana: The Video," Drama Review 34.2 (1990): 127-76. 11. Brian Cathcart, "Faith versus Reason: Lord Ram," The Independent, 13 December 1992, 25. 12. Manjunath Pendakur, "Indian Television Comes of Age: Liberalization and the Rise of Consumer Culture," Communication 11 (1989): 177-97; Arvind Rajagopal, "The Rise of National Programming: The Case of Indian Television," Media Culture and Society 15.1 (1993): 91-111; Cathcart, "Faith versus Reason." 13. One of the victors was Arvind Trivedi, who played Ravana, the antagonist of the Ramayana ; he won from Sabarkantha in the west Indian state ofGujarat. Significantly, he defeated Rajmohan Gandhi, who is the nephew ofMahatma Gandhi and was standing for election from a constituency closely identified with the politics of the Indian freedom struggle and its vision ofthe Indian nation. The other notable winner was Deepika Chikhalia, who played Ram's consort Sita; she won from the ci~y of Baroda in the same state (see Chapter 12). 14. Ananda Mitra, "TV & Nation: Doordarshan's India," Media Asia 20.1 (1993): 41. 15. Barbara S. Miller, "Contending Narratives: The Political Life ofthe Indian Epics," Journal of Asian Studies 50.4 (1991): 783-92. 16. Eric Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983); Homi Bhabha ed., Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990), 1: 17. Hobsbawm, Invention of Tradition, 7. 18. Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (London: Zed, 1986), 18-19, 30. 19. According to the legendary history of India, two dynasties were originally dominant in the north--called Solar and Lunar-under whom numerous petty princes held authOrity and to whom they acknowledged fealty. The most celebrated of the Solar line was Rama of the Ramayana. Under this dynasty the Brahmanical system gained ascendancy more rapidly and completely than under the Lunar kings in the more northern districts, where fresh arrivals of martial tribes preserved an independent spirit among the population already settled in those parts. The most famous of the Lunar race, who reigned in Hastinapura, or ancient Delhi, was Bharata, whose authority is said to have extended over a great part of India, and from whom sprang the name Bharata-varsha, the country or domain of Bharata. 215 From Ritual Drama to National Prime Time 20. Miller, "Contending Narratives," 786. The term "Hindutva" was introduced politically in 1923 by V. D. Savarkar, an ideologue of the anti-Muslim, right-wing Hindu Mahasabha (Hindu Grand Council). In the 1980s and 1990s it has become a slogan used by militant groups to assert Hindu pride and target the minority Muslim community. It is also used to invoke the idea ofRamrajya, which Partha Chatterjee describes as "a utopia ... a patriarchy in which the ruler, by his moral quality and habitual adherence to truth, always expresses the collective will" (Nationalist Thought, 92). 21. Charlotte Brunsdon and David Morley, Everyday Television: Nationwide (London: British Film Institute, 1978); Anderson, Imagined Communities. 22. Manjunath Pendakur, "Political Economy and Ethnography," in Illuminating the Blindspots: Essays Honoring Dallas Smythe, ed. Janet Wasko, Vincent Mosco, and Manjunath Pendakur (New Jersey: Ablex,1991), 82-108. 23.. Author's field research notes from winter 1992-93. The Indian National Multipurpose Satellite (INSAT-1 B) was the second ofa series ofsat~lliteslaunched by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). Pendakur, "Indian Television Comes ofAge," and Rajagopal, "Rise of National Programming," are both excellent and comprehensive accounts ofthe development of Indian television. 24. See Stuart Hall, Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-79 (Birmingham : University of Birmingham, 1980). 25. James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literat~re and Art (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988); Trinh Minh-ha, Woman Native Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989). 26. Flueckiger and Sears, Boundaries of the Text, 1, 6. 27. Clifford, Predicament of Culture, 38. 28. Thapar, History of India, 133-34. 29. Purnima Mankekar, "Television Tales and a Woman's Rage: A Nationalist Recasting ofDraupadi's Disrobing," Public Culture 11.93 (1995): 469-92, analyzes how a female audience "reads" the televisual text of the Mahabharata, subverting the dominant patriarchal construction of the narrative. 30. Gargi,Folk Theater of India, 4-5. 3 1. The structure of television viewersmp situates viewers in time and space and "frames" their reception ofthe television image. This dimension ofa technological form acting upon cultural production of meaning is best examined by British Marxist scholar Raymond Williams in Television: Technology and Cultural Form (New York: Schocken Books, 1975). 32. While the historical as a genre is familiar to western filmmaking from the German expressionism films of the 1920s to the Hollywood recreations of, e.g., Ben Hur and Lawrence of Arabia, the mythological film has been particular to Indian commercial cinema since the days ofDada Phalke, producing films such as Raja Harishchandra (1 913). 33. Satish Bahadur, "Aesthetics: From Traditional Iconography to Contemporary Kitsch," in Indian Cinema Superbazaar, ed. Arona Vasudeva and Phillipe Langlett (New Delhi: Vikas), 110. 34. Eric Bamouw and S. Krishnaswamy in Indian Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), describe Hindustani as the simplest form of Hindi, a "bazaar language" derived from a heteroglossic mix of Simplified Sanskrit, Prakrit, and a bit of Urdu. 35. Mankekar, "Television Tales." 36. Niranjana, Sudhir, and Dhareshwar, Interrogating Modernity, 7. ...