Media and Identity Politics

MEDIA AND IDENTITY POLITICS

Pranjali Bandhu

The shame of this time puts its

Burning fingers to our faces

Who will erase the ruthlessness

Hidden in innocent blood

Neruda

The problem, the most vital problem, confronting us at the moment worldwide is the unleashing of irrational violence by the state powers. This is not confined to one or a few states. Almost all are involved to a greater or lesser degree. The point in discussion is the role that the mass media, primarily print (i.e., newspapers), electronic (i.e., TV), and the cinema, in particular commercial Hindi cinema, are playing through their identity politics in helping these reactionary, diabolic, anti-people forces to be unleashed. Analysing this particular tool of the mass media is important for arriving at a better understanding of the destructive phenomena let loose, and this is necessary if one is not to drown in depression and apathy and if one does not want to become a victim of, or party to state terrorism, either direct or sponsored, and an accomplice in the scenario of looming wars, in which in all probability nuclear, chemical and biological weaponry would be put to use.

It is important to keep alive the spirit of rational enquiry to overcome and counteract the madness, obscurantism and prejudices let loose and reinforced by these forces, and work towards the establishment of a sane civil society, which actually realises in its day-to-day social and political practice the principles and ideals of liberty, fraternity and equality. In this context, I’d like to quote Malcolm X, the Black Muslim radical:

“The truth alone will make you free – not the President, not the Senate, not the Supreme Court, but truth alone will make you and me free.” (“Black Revolution”)

This is an important point in the face of the fact that all the institutions of a liberal, secular, democratic republic are presently under siege. This includes the big mainstream media also.

The media are, generally speaking, the socially sanctioned means of self-expression and communication within a society/community and between communities and societies. Their main use is the affirmation of certain values, attitudes and norms that keep a particular historically determined societal framework and mode of production functioning. In a hierarchically ordered global system, the dominant sections in the dominant nations have developed the major means of mass communication. Through their monopoly control over or ownership of them and by their presentation of facts in a certain manner they aim to exert influence on people’s minds all over the world in order to keep up that domination. Manipulation of the people’s consciousness through imposed images, misinformation, lack of information, lies, propaganda, is the main means used to generate some degree of social consensus for their political and economic goals.

The formation of a sense of individual and social identity is an important objective of the media owned and controlled by transnational and national business entities and/or the various state powers as a means to their exploitative ends. When we say this we do not by any means imply that viewers/readers/listeners/consumers are fully and in every case/aspect passive recipients/victims of media messages, images, ideologies, and thus constructed identities. Living and working within a given social order we accept, or reject, resist or criticize them on individual and group bases, no doubt. Nevertheless, these messages and images are so all-pervasive – from hoardings in the city/town junctions to jingles on the radio – that they have a tendency to and are meant to percolate into the subconscious. I think even the most critically aware among us would confess to being conditioned by them in some way or the other, and cannot claim to be fully immune to the indoctrination they represent, or are always in a position to be able to see through all the tricks, misinformation and illusionism they use in order to try and make us into pliable material and accomplices in the existing social and political order.

III

An important function of all the big media in India, government- and corporate-owned, or largely black money and NRI-financed, as the Hindi film industry, is to inculcate a sense of Indian identity, a uniform all-India culture, to purvey the message of ‘national integration’ against fissiparous and separatist forces. This is a requirement of the all-India big and bureaucrat bourgeoisies who desire a unified country as a labour and commodity market. Let us take a closer look at the various components that go into the making of the ‘Indian’ identity.

As the function of ‘national integration’ seems to be exemplified most transparently in the commercial Hindi film, and due to its mass all-India audience, we shall elucidate these components largely as they are presented in Hindi cinema. The ‘ideal type’ ‘Indian’ of the typical Hindi film is the male hero, usually belonging to the majority religious community, who is urban-centred, from the North, fair and not dark-skinned. The question of caste is bypassed in films, though caste belongingness plays an important role in reality. This was in line with the Nehruvian approach of upholding an illusion of a democratic society, where particularly caste had ostensibly ceased to play a significant role with the constitution of a republic.

However, with the ascendancy of the Hindutva forces and increasingly overtly caste-based electoral politics, this has been changing, more so in the case of the print media. Caste identity is now sometimes being specifically indicated, but in an overall context of reinforcing upper caste bias and dominance. As an example, it was made a point to mention in the print and electronic media that the police officer who led the assault on journalists at the Sabarmati Ashram where peace meetings were being held in Ahmedabad on April 7 was a ‘tribal.’ On the whole, even if caste identity is not explicit, it is clear that our mainstream Hindi or even regional film hero is not a Dalit or Adivasi, he does not belong to any ethnic minority; he is seldom from one of the North-Eastern States. This region and its peoples rarely find representation in the mainstream media, and their inhabitants as a result are often seen to be as “Chinks” or foreigners by the general ‘normal’ population, and hardly as citizens of this country, though the state desperately wants to retain these regions within the Indian Union.

The important fact to be noted here is that the ethnic/regional secular identities are as a rule not emphasized, except for the North Indian (Punjabi Hindu) identity. It was the mythological rather than the historical which flourished in the early decades of cinema in India. Today they are a popular item in the electronic media. The hero is rarely explicitly a Maharashtrian, a Gujarati, a Tamilian, or an Assamese. Secondly, the heroine is mostly in an appendage role to the male hero; does not enjoy an autonomous existence; is obviously also from the Hindu community; is fair-skinned, rarely a dusky beauty (exceptions are there).

In the context of sharpening communalism another dimension of the politics of identity surfaced in some blockbusters, where the hero is a Hindu and the heroine a Muslim (e.g., the film “Bombay”). This is in accordance with the Hindutva ideology that finds this permissible as it adds to the Hindu numbers; whereas the reverse cases are not found to be acceptable. Male control over the women of their respective community is emphasized. The relationship of the Hindu hero to those belonging to other religious communities is that of domination, and not of equality. If in an earlier more liberal era, while upholding Hindu supremacy, tolerance and communal harmony were the main thread, this trend is being broken by another one of communal patriotism.

A new level of stereotyping has come into being. The Hindu is a “nationalist”; the Muslim a “terrorist”. The militant Hindu is a “political activist.” He is highly patriotic. He loves and defends his motherland against predatory neighbouring countries which pose a threat to the unity and stability of the motherland. This patriotism is communal and militaristic in its content. It is an ideology serving the expansionist and exploitative aims and desires of the all-India bourgeoisie in the subcontinent and beyond. It is also directed against the struggles of the peoples in various parts of the country for their self-determination rights and for more balanced Centre-State relations. It is a resurgence of the unresolved legacy of Partition – the division into Muslim Pakistan and Hindu majority India, which had behind it a long history of the communalisation of politics with imperialist connivance – that is, of the unresolved nationality question in India.

This has fissured the ‘Indian’ identity into the Hindu upper caste-biased self and the Muslim ‘other.’ The ‘terrorists’ within, depicted as belonging mainly to the minority religious community, are shown to be in collusion with the external enemy across the border to break the unity and integrity of the Indian nation. We now have this border within some Indian cities like Ahmedabad, where Muslims are increasingly being ghettoised to separate Hindu from Muslim areas. A realistic portrayal and assessment of anti-state struggles is missing even in those few films that portray them in a somewhat sympathetic manner. The functioning of the Censorship laws and the Censor Board also often act as major deterrents in any realistic portrayal of regional identities, political issues and man/woman relationships.

The actual diversity of and syncretic threads in the people’s cultures across the country are missed out. In the case of the print media too the 16th amendment to the Constitution does not permit untrammelled freedom of speech when it comes to the question of the “sovereignty” and “integrity” of the nation. In the name of patriotism and national identity and integrity, Hindu majority communalism and upper caste dominance and to some extent North Indian racist and chauvinist attitudes are being propagated and reinforce, directly and indirectly. For instance, in the case of the film, “Bandit Queen”, the Censor Board got deleted the quotation from Manusmriti at the beginning of the film, which shows the casteism and oppression of women are sanctified in Brahminical Hindu literature.

Corporate culture is a determining factor of culture in India as elsewhere. And this is an anti-‘lower’ caste, anti-minority, and to a great extent an anti-woman culture. This is implicit in the recruitment policy and division of labour prevalent in Indian big business. Indian corporate culture is inegalitarian, hierarchical, bureaucratic and grossly imitative of Western culture and technology.

In the media certain kinds of images of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ are constructed and put into juxtaposition in order to promote mental slavery. A historical analysis of this and a dichotomising of monolithic ‘Hindu’ and ‘Islamic’ identities across the media including literature from colonial to present times would be a useful exercise for scholars. Some studies along these lines already exist. These should proceed alongside studies of exactly how religious, caste, gender and other differences and contradictions were being handled, contained and balanced at the grass-roots level, how much of this legacy still continues to exist, and whether and to what extent such practices are relevant today. Here it is possible for me to only point out to some current trends in the construction and juxtaposition of the images of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity.’

Advertisements provide illuminating cases. In the case of women they will usually be projected wearing a sari, bindi, maybe a mangalasutra, i.e., a typical ‘traditional’ Hindu upper caste/class woman, and getting ecstatic over a washing machine, a frost-free refrigerator, micro-oven or whatever other latest model of a modern kitchen gadget. Her ‘modernity’ as consumer of these products does not affect her traditional roles, but helps her to carry out her primary tasks as cook, homemaker, bearer and nurturer of children. The gender-based division of labour is not overturned. Another variant of ‘modernity’ is expressed through baring one’s body as much as possible. This is not limited to women alone; and it is certainly not for health reasons for soaking in sun or for the sake of greater comfort in hot weather, but we have these semi-clad humans exhibiting themselves titillatingly in order to sell a car, a mobile, or other sundry products of the corporate sector.

Actually, national identity, the identity of the ‘Indian’, who now sings “I love my India” ensconced abroad (in the West preferably), has been steadily eroded over the years with globalisation, the incursion of NRI and other foreign funds and the globalised market for Hindi films. Foreign (western) locales have become a commonality, a hybrid Bops (Bap+Pop) culture has got anchored even more thoroughly across the media, which is also reflected in the kind of language being used.

The one side of the identity coin is the revivalist Hindu identity (the manner in which weddings are being organised, the innumerable temples being constructed, the way in which various North Indian Hindu festivals like Deepavali and Holi are now being celebrated as ‘national’ festivals, even in parts of South India). As this revivalism is fused with a crass consumerist approach these festivals become occasions for shopping in the manner of Christmas celebrations in the West. The other side of the coin is the imitative “West is Best” syndrome, whereby increasingly purely western festivals are also celebrated, like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, etc. In general, it is the consumerist lifestyle aspect of the West that is projected through the media as an object of desire and imitative living: branded clothing items, food, hairstyles, make-up and such like things.

The question that arises is: what is the economic base for this kind of identity construction? Of the strengthening of a consciousness and mentality that is feudal in its attitude towards women and the ‘lower’ castes on the one hand, which actively promotes the marginalisation of the religious and ethnic minorities, and is neo-colonial on the other hand. Even half a century of Indian political independence has not led to the emergence of a genuinely secular, democratic identity in a civil society where all the citizens of a state are equal and there is no discrimination on the basis of region, religion, caste or gender. The reason is that India transitioned to a dependent neo-colonial mode of production.

It should be noted that even the independent (and predatory) capitalism of the West, has not shown itself to be capable of throwing off distinctions and discrimination on the basis of race, ethnic identity and gender – the holocaust against the Jews is a telling case in point. ‘Underdeveloped’, dependent capitalist countries are similarly ridden with these and other distortions. But it is not pertinent to the topic at hand to go into politico-economic issues in greater detail. What concerns us here are the cultural ramifications as manifested in the media. In line with the character of our bourgeoisie, which is dependent, which has more of a trading and speculative character than a manufacturing one, the predominant edge of certain economic spheres – like illicit liquor – making large sections of it into a lumpen class – the culture that becomes pervasive is not so much based on production and the work ethic as on consumerism, the inculcation of greed to the extent of it becoming a core value, the dehumanising overexploitation of those on the lower rungs of the socio-economic scale, and today it has come down to the level of mass-scale inhuman extermination, rape and looting of an entire community falsely projected to be an “enemy.”

The issue of increasing greed and consumerism bring to the fore the fact of cultural colonisation, primarily through the media, but also through other institutions like the educational set-up. The foreign (western) media (TV channels, Hollywood films, international news agencies) are a means for assuring the mental slavery of the people of the ‘underdeveloped’ third world and enable their consequent economic plunder and devastation by the TNCs.

The new information and communications technologies have helped in intensifying the centralization, concentration and monopolisation of the earth’s resources in the hands of TNCs, based mainly in the US, Western Europe and Japan. It is important to note that the communications industry itself is owned and controlled by giant mainly US-based TNCs, among which the electronics and aerospace conglomerates dominate (Matsushita, GE etc.). these conglomerates are engaged in the production of both hardware and software and have investments by major institutional financial groups like insurance companies, mutual and investment funds and banks like Citicorp, Chase Manhattan and J.P. Morgan. The development of new information and communications technologies has also been largely funded by the defence establishments in these countries and there is thus a close link with the military-industrial complex and its requirements.

The TNCs want to, of course, create a global homogenous market for their products and they use the mass media to create the consciousness, value system and demand attuned to this end. The state powers upholding the TNC interests also use the media to manufacture consent for their military and other interventions all over the globe for safeguarding their geostrategic and commercial interests.

By changing our consumption patterns (from Nariyal pani, Nimbu pani and Jal Jeera to Coca Cola, Pepsi and Aha!, whisky and tea; from cloth bags, earthenware water containers and cups to pastic bags, cups and pots) not only are healthy traditional practices that are more environment-friendly thrown into the trash bin, but it also leads to a loss of livelihood for whole communities and groups and prevents the formation of regional, self-sufficient markets. Language itself gets influenced with the evolution of hybrid varieties like Hinglish (Hindi+English) and Tinglish (Tamil+English), affecting thinking and analytical capabilities. History is obliterated or reconstructed, memory is stamped out, all with serious implications for the question of identity.

The US media, disseminated worldwide, not only raise their heads for hegemony and market domination for their country’s consumer products, but also in cultural terms: For example, the Oscars and Grammy awards are being treated and projected as the most coveted awards in their respective fields. The political messages are also intended to maintain their global hegemony. The meanings invested in words are decided by them. Untruth becomes a truth in the process. What is ‘good’ and what is ‘evil’ is defined in accordance with US imperialist interests. Who is a ‘terrorist’ and who is not. The ‘rogue’ and ‘evil’ states are those whose current political leadership is refusing client status of their countries to US imperialism. Who are the ‘humanitarian’ angels ensuring the ‘rule of law’, protecting ‘freedom’, ‘justice’ and ‘democracy’? The political and military bosses in Washington decide all this and their media are made to toe the line; and our media often blindly follow them. The enemy of the US is also our enemy and those fundamentalist Muslims who were critical of US policy in Afghanistan were simply not allowed to express their views. Attempts at thought control and mind control are reaching new dimensions amid claptrap of democracy and freedom. This is an indication of increasing subservience to US imperialism by our ruling classes in a world which is currently still more or less unipolar.

At one end of the spectrum of the media-constructed ‘Indian’ identity we have the communal, Hindu revivalist, patriarchal, upper caste-biased authoritarian and militarist mindset; at the other end of the spectrum is the imitative colonial mindset. There is no fundamental contradiction between these components across the spectrum, that is, between the Hindu revivalist and the neo-colonial mindset. Rather, they are complementary and reflective of the interests of the big bourgeois and trading sections, both local and NRI, and the rich peasantry, and hence are being propelled by their political and media representatives as a means of social control and crisis management under the conditions of globalisation.

Regional identities being constructed through the regional media are also by no means identities that are presently completely in opposition to the forces of globalisation. The ‘local’ is being constructed in such a way that the hegemonic control of the capitalist-imperialist centre is strengthened and covert centralisation triumphs.

Intrinsic to the pattern of development under globalisation is the further marginalisation of weaker groups – Dalits, women, religious and ethnic minorities. There is large-scale unemployment due to industrial and agricultural stagnation and an ascendancy of speculation on the stock market. With economic instability and volatility becoming endemic to the economy, it is vital to the ruling classes/castes to divert the resulting frustration and violent oppositional tendencies among the various sections of the affected people into directions and targets that do not disturb their rule. Divisions among the people on the basis of caste and sub caste, religion, gender and region are used to this end. They form an endless and valuable resource for vote bank politics and become obstructions in the path of forming a united front of the people against their actual foes who are leading them onto a highly destructive path.

It is not Hindu revivalism alone but Islamic fundamentalism too that are unable to effectively withstand imperialist domination, though its rhetoric may occasionally touch upon the themes of cultural imperialism, western cultural decadence, Swadeshi and so on. Islamic fundamentalism seemingly has a greater anti-imperialist edge, but it is ideologically and practically unable to overcome imperialist domination and exploitation. Identities based on these mindsets allow the people at large to remain the exploited and become accomplices in their own exploitation in the present set-up. Internalisation and anchoring of these narrowly defined identities allow them to become victims, passive witnesses or active participants in massacres, genocides, pogroms, holocausts, interventionist wars and looming nuclear ones. These are the irrational and destructive means that are being used to retain the privileges, hegemony and monopoly of the dominant sections and classes, nationally and internationally. Identities based on these constructs are disseminated throughout the mass media and enjoy the support of the imperialist and local political and corporate classes, despite the barbarism they are capable of unleashing.

Global media posit a total opposition between the ‘backwardness’ of fundamentalist and revivalist thinking and the ‘modernity’ of the advanced capitalist countries, who have taken up the task of civilizing these backward, barbaric countries. But this line of thinking is just a cover-up for a neo-imperialist hegemonic agenda. There is some difference, however, in the projection of Islamic fundamentalism and Hindu revivalism in the global media. Islam as a religious ideology is sought to be projected by the Western media as an intrinsically fanatic and bigoted one, while there is a tendency to project Hindu revivalism as ‘nationalism’ and as a backlash to this fundamentalism of the Muslims. A soft tone is adopted towards the Hindu ‘nationalists’, who are variously termed as ‘activists’, ‘radicals’ and ‘militants’. The epithets ‘extremists’ and ‘terrorists’ are reserved for the Islamic fundamentalists and they are sought to be demonised. The recent violence in Gujarat is being termed as ‘sectarian conflict’ instead of the state-sponsored violence against one community that it was and continues to be. The most ridiculous and at the same time the most dangerous rationale for US interventionism and terrorism to uphold its hegemony came up in the form of the thesis of the “clash of civilizations.” In this clash of civilizations the countries following Christianity and Judaism represent the modern democratic civilization, while Islamic countries represent the obscurantist and anti-democratic bloc.

VII

Acknowledging equality of all religions is also not adequate for defining a secular self. What is needed is a critique of religious ideology itself, whereby the positive humanitarian and liberationist aspects of each religion need to be secularised and assimilated. Also, it is necessary to realise that the devil lives in each one of us – and to achieve freedom and equanimity the primary struggle is with our own internal demons. The inability to vanquish the enemies of our peace of mind makes for a sense of insecurity. These include the demonic emotions of fear, anger, hatred, greed, envy, jealousy and possessiveness. By externalising these enemies it is easy to hit out at the wrong targets that are projected and perceived as a threat to the survival of the self. The forces of globalisation have tremendously increased derootedness and the resultant sense of insecurity; and these feelings can be and are easily being diverted into targeting specific groups among the people.

The rivalry and competition among different sections of trading, professional and business groups is sought to be resolved with the blood and ashes of the people. The scenario is like that of Don Quixote tilting at the windmills but in more grotesque forms. Because such misguided targeting is basically in the interest of big business we did not find these corporates or international donor agencies coming forth liberally with aid and succour to the refugee victims of the Gujarat carnage unlike in the case of the earlier earthquake and other ‘natural’ disasters.

It is time to develop a political consciousness whereby we handle our insecurities as a struggle that has to be primarily waged within oneself to liberate the self from imposed, cramping, impoverishing self-identity; from a mindset that wants to or is rather manipulated into grabbing at consumer goods for a feel-good experience, for the ‘enrichment of the self. We need to collectively resist the present mould of “I buy, therefore I am” and construct more democratic, creative and productively occupied selves, which alone can make history proceed further along the path of humanisation rather than vulgar deculturation. The struggle for such new identities for ourselves necessarily goes hand in hand with the construction of self-reliant, local resources and need-based equitable economies, overcoming caste-based, gender-based and anti-minority barriers as well as the exploitation and alienation caused by capitalist appropriation of the means of production. Through such a process only the possibility exists of superseding narrow religion-based identities by secular, nationality/region-based identities which can form the base for a universal human self.

At closing, I would like to quote Malcolm X again, probably in echo of the Bible: “If we can learn to love one another, we can forestall Armageddon.” If we can discuss, dispute and debate with one another with the objective of arriving at “truth”, we can have a civil society. For that, more than utilising the diminishing space available within the mainstream big media, which is in any case open largely to only a few select ‘celebrities’ and well-cushioned academics, support and initiative should be forthcoming for setting up a greater number of alternative channels of communication for different sections of the people to reach out to one another and without the restraints implied by vested commercial interests.

Here we have been able to touch upon only some of the dimensions of the Media and Identity problematic. More research needs to be done to deal with and do justice to the complexities of the subject at hand and its myriad dimensions.

[This is a slightly revised version of a paper presented at the Centre for Social Studies, Surat on 16.4.2002, which was published in Frontier, June 23-29, 2002].