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"By making out a forceful case for saving the epics from sacriligious misrepresentation, Mitra has simulataneiously sought to stitch together the fragmented secular fabric of Indian society. And that is certainly an endeavor worthy of emulation."--Media Asia"There are hardly any books of local origin that are based on a cultural studies approach.Ananda Mitra's Television and Popular Culture in India attempts to redress this imbalance and is arguably the first exploration of its kind in the Indian context.... This contribution by Ananda Mitra to the understanding of popular culture in India will be an invaluable resource both to students interested in the methodology of cultural studies as well as those who are on the look out for a critical introduction to television in India.It should stimulate an interest in an exploration of the underlying connections between popular culture and the complex, multivariant terrain of cultural politics in India."--Media Development"This is a study which has several layers of interest.... The book throws interesting insights into a television programme that is a direct television of a famous classical Indian epic. The ideas are very original and striking in their analytical approach.--NewstimeTelevision and Popular Culture in India examines the role television plays in shaping as well as reflecting Indian popular culture. Defining culture as a set of everyday practices that reflect the lived experiences of various groups of people, Mitra explores and interprets the way in which it is presented in the extremely successful serial Mahabharat. The author carefully analyzes the relationships between the narrative, its representation on Doordarshan, and its connection with the popular culture of India. The textual analysis makes it clear that programs such as Mahabharat reinforce a specifically Hindu-Hindi/North Indian image of India, thus marginalizing other regional, linguistic, and religious groups. By concentrating on the series' signifying practices and narrative strategies, Mitra also offers a discussion and evaluation of Doordarshan's ideological practicability. Finally, the show is considered from the broader perspective of India's current political, social, and cultural movements: while a hegemonic system informing the centralized production of television programs does exist in India, the author suggests that it is possible to challenge this system through regional and alternative programs.Combining fresh theoretical insights based on the cultural studies approach with its policy implications for the future role of television in India, this volume will interest media practitioners, policy-makers, and students of mass communication and sociology."He makes very interesting and telling points....His cultural insights are good."--South Asia"An incisive analysis of how television and its Mahabharata (read 'religious soap-opera'), have affected popular culture in India."--Business India ... Read more

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Flavia's nonsense!
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=Flavia's Nonsense
Reviewer: Sharad Sharma from Notre Dame, IN United States
This is a typical nonsense from someone who has no idea about India's culture. First of all, author seems to be one of the left leaning "liberals" who hate everything Indian. Mahabharat is one of the literary masterpieces and largest work of literature in the world.
Now let's discuss Flavia's review. She says "This textual analysis makes it clear that programs such as Mahabharat reinforce a specifically Hindu-Hindi/North Indian image of India, thus marginalizing other regional, linguistic, and religious groups." Nothing can be more ridiculous than this. Mahabharat is a scripture revered by people all over India. It has nothing to do with Hindi/Hindu. It was originally written in Sanskrit and when no Hindi existd. That the serial was made in Hindi was because of commercial reasons than anything else. By this logic I can conclude that a program on Bible will reinforce a Semitic worldview. Will it Flavia???
Again Flavia says "Dr. Mitra concludes that there exists a hegemonic system informing the centralized production of television programs does exist in India, the author suggests that it is possible to challenge this system through regional and alternative programs." Again, this is the usual nonsense from leftists who are uncomfortable with the popularity of the serial. The author conveniently forgets that same Doordarshan broadcast " Bible Stories" after Mahabharat. But that was not at all popular like Mahabharat. Leftists cannot digest that (By the way, are you a missionary Flavia? ). And hence, they launch a vilification campaign against innocuous things like a television serial like Mahabharat. The real reason behind this is leftists fear that serials like Mahabharat will expedite the rightist movement and will marginalize the left. Serials like Mahabharat present history form Indian perspective and which is in contradiction with the lies propagated with leftist historians ( or their masters elsewhere???).
And finally, the religious strife in India is a result of political skullduggery and has nothing to do with a television serial. It has been there for ages and is because of historical reasons which I would not like to go into here. Get a life Flavia and show some rationality in your arguments.

television ideology
Ananda Mitra's "Television and Popular Culture" is a path breaking study, which considers television in India as a distinct cultural form with a specific role in the production of popular culture. Dr. Mitra presents a set of conclusions about the state of television in India and its ability to produce a national image. He discusses the political, social and cultural movements in India with an emphasis on religious fundamentalism and the struggles over issues of language and gender.. The first chapter "Introduction and History of Doordarshan" talks about the various developments in Indian television and gives an overview of the different time periods in the history of Doordarshan.. The second chapter "Reformulating Culture in the Indian Context" examines the position of Doordarshan in the cultural map of India. Mitra here examines the relations between television and the nation, television and religion, and the role of television in relation to gender and language. He reconsiders the notion of culture as a combination of a variety of practice that are often in conflicting relationships, pulled together by ideology and circulated by a hegemonic leadership. Ideas of Gramsci and Althusser are also incorporated in this chapter with respect to ideology. Chapter three "Doordarshan: A Critical Glance" examines television formation as an independent cultural element. Mitra considers the variety of texts like Mahabharat and Ramayan in depth to obtain some conclusions about the position of Doordarshan in Indian culture. Chapter four "Mahabharat on Doordarshan" examines the position of the religious soap opera and its relationship to Doordarshan in variety of cultural practices. This textual analysis makes it clear that programs such as Mahabharat reinforce a specifically Hindu-Hindi/North Indian image of India, thus marginalizing other regional, linguistic, and religious groups. He specifically examines the role television plays in shaping as well as reflecting Indian popular culture. Defining culture as a set of everyday practices that reflect the lived experiences of various groups of people, Mitra explores and interprets the way in which it is presented in the extremely successful serial Mahabharat. Chapter five "Beyond Mahabharat" examines the way in which the struggles represented in the serial are connected with the ongoing tensions in India. Dr. Mitra argues here that Doordarshan is redefining what is currently considered the preferred combination of social, religious and cultural elements. He says that Mahabharat is redefining the image of a secular India to a Hindu Fanatic India. Chapter six "Television and the Nation: Doordarshan's India" examines the same concern as in chapter five of India's representation through Mahabharat. This qualitative look at the serial concentrating on its signifying practices and narrative strategies leads to a discussion of the ideological effectively of Doordarshan. Mitra says, "Doordarshan selects a small set of interconnected elements for representation on television and this in turn, produces a national image of India on Doordarshan". Chapter seven "Doordarshan: Its Internal Contradictions and Positions in Everyday Life" comments on the Mahabharat serial and its increasing popular culture, where the dominant articulations are between Hinduism, Hindi, Northern India and a male patriarchy. He also considers the position of television within the everyday material practices of the people who watch it. Dr. Mitra concludes that there exists a hegemonic system informing the centralized production of television programs does exist in India, the author suggests that it is possible to challenge this system through regional and alternative programs. Finally, a broader perspective of India's current political, social, and cultural movements is suggested to rethink the phenomenon of television in India. "Television and Popular Culture" by Ananda Mitra analysis the extremely popular serial Mahabharat in the 90s and describes a set of relations drawn between the narratives, its representation on Doordarshan and its relationship with the popular culture of India. There are hardly any books of local origin that are based on a cultural studies approach. `Television and Popular Culture in India' attempts to redress this imbalance and is arguably the first exploration of its kind in the Indian context. This book is based on the cultural studies approach combined with its policy implications for the future role of television in India. The understanding of popular culture in India will be an invaluable resource both to students interested in the methodology of cultural studies as well as those who are on the look out for a critical introduction to television in India. It should stimulate an interest in an exploration of the underlying connections between popular culture and the complex, multivariate terrain of cultural politics in India.Althusser referred to ideology as a false consciousness. He explained how myth is naturalized, contrived and constructed to blindfold people. Mitra in his book tries to expose this ideology by a textual analysis of the serial Mahabharat. One important aspect that puzzled researchers was why the serial was so popular.. If we examine Mahabharat in the light of study done by Rossen, we come to the conclusion that Mahabharat has impacted the general public by its conservative dogma. . But in context to the religious soap opera, Mitra shows us how such serials try to portray a Hindu reality depicting the "Hindu Sensibility" and didacticism.What Mitra questions in this book is very true as in reality these religious soap operas project a Hindu macho image and fanaticism which has swept across the country, bringing in its wake miserable violence and threatening the very integrity of India as a secular and united nation. We have witnessed this in the 1993 bomb blasts on the Ayodhya issue.While reading this book one realises that Doordarshan is not free of internal contradictions. The struggles over language, region, religion and gender are textually reproduced in the diversity of texts that are available on Doordarshan now. A textual analysis such as this takes a step towards rethinking the issues that are often considered as normal and natural, pointing out that there are indeed contradictions that exist. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

In-Depth Cultural History
I am informed that nowadays the academic subject known as "World History" has truly become worldly, and the students, at better schools anyway, are required to know the dates of the Abbasid Caliphate and the Tang Dynasty as well as the usual litany of dates from European history.

However, India still remains to some extent absent in the curriculum.The most that the non-specialist is apt to learn about India in school is something about the Upanishads and the beginnings of Buddhism, usually gleaned from an undergraduate course in Comparitive Cultures.One is left with the impression that India has lived in a vacuum for the last two thousand years.

There is a reason for this, and it's one that Professor Mukerjee addresses in the Introduction to this interesting book:unlike all the other major Eurasian civilizations, India does not look at its history in terms of either politics or warfare.The major motive force in Indian civilization, he avers, has been social interaction and metaphysics.This means that analyzing Indian culture with European criteria is misleading.

It is true that Indians sometimes show a bland disregard for diachronicity in their history, leading sometimes to absurdly outrageous statements such as the common assertion that the events in the Mahabharata took place before 3000 BCE, long before the Aryan invasion.It is also true that compared with India, the European, East Asian and Middle Eastern cultures all are alike in emphasizing the politico-military aspects in their own cultural development.

Professor Mukerjee therefore sets out to elaborate his own criteria for judging the development of Indian culture, and does it in terms of declines and renascences - "reincarnations", if you will - in Indian culture, which specifically means Indian religion.In a culture in which virtually everything becomes a question of religion and in which reincarnation is a basic tenet, this is not surprising.

And in fact it is an exceptionally enlightening way of approaching the subject; it certainly provides coherent answers for some of the questions that foreigners are apt to find nebulous in Indian history, such as why Buddhism disappeared in the land of its origin and what gave rise to the Sikh Brotherhood.In fact the book is a storehouse of detailed information regarding the phenomena of Indian culture, as well as the impact that India has had on Southeast Asia and the Indonesian archipelago.

It is a heavy meal, however, and not easily digested.It is not a book for the novice on India, and people starting out on the subject will want to read something like A.L. Basham's "Wonder that was India" first before moving on to this book.If you're not already familiar with Indian history, you may also want to keep a basic book on that within reach too, such as Romila Thapar's history of pre-Moghul India.Despite his disclaimer of the importance of wars and politics, Professor Mukerjee expects that his reader will be familiar with Indian history.The text will jump around chronologically as necessary, and while there is a time line in the back of the book, it is littered with references to cultural items and not easy to follow.

It is in areas like this that the book tends to fall down, and so much background knowledge was assumed of the reader that at first I wondered whether this book was in fact intended for educated Indians and not for foreign readers.In addition to history, it is assumed that the reader will be quite familiar with the geography of the subcontinent, too.

Two other caveats are in order.The book is studded with Sanskrit terms which are apt to make the uninformed reader lose his way.A relatively obscure school of yoga or metaphysics may be mentioned in passing at one point, only to turn up again fifty pages later without a re-description.Also, like the Ancient Greeks only more so, the Indians use a large number of epithets for their gods, and Professor Mukerjee will often use whichever name he feels fits best in a given circumstance.This makes the work heavy sledding for a non-specialist.

Finally, there is the all-too-familiar cloud hanging over the Muslim era, as is usual in books by Hindus on Indian history.Hindu writers usually tend to describe the period from the time of the Sultinate of Delhi onward as an era of stagnation in Indian culture, and while Professor Mukerjee doesn't specifically state this attitude, its presence is felt.The usual critiques are mentioned:the assertion that only low-caste Hindus converted to Islam is repeated, along with the perception that Hinduism mollified and humanized a cold, unfeeling, legalistic Islam.Regarding the first of these, it is no doubt true that most converts were from the lower castes, but this is not really a criticism - the upper-caste Hindus had too much to lose materially by converting and thereby losing their caste status, marriage rights and possibly even their property.As for the charge of Hinduism humanizing Islam, it can just as easily be argued that Islamic mysticism had a humanizing impact on a priest-ridden Hinduism that had become topheavy with ritual.

To add insult to injury, Professor Mukerjee manages to bowdlerize his transliterations of Arabic and Persian words, unlike his scrupulous attention to detail with Sanskrit, although in this case it must be admitted that he does something similar with Chinese terms, using an obsolete system of transliteration.

However, it only fair to mention that the animosity between Muslim and Hindu India has been around for a long time, both sides feel they have good reasons to be offended, and it isn't going to disappear any time soon.The book is primarily designed to describe Hindu culture, in any case.It is an extremely valuable addition to our understanding of that culture. ... Read more

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History of ancient Orissa, India. ... Read more

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Contributed papers presented at a seminar. ... Read more

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Articles on history and culture of early and medieval Orissa. ... Read more

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Examines the historical, social, and cultural roles of women in India, with an emphasis on Hindu women. ... Read more

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The Tamils can be defined in terms of the people who speak Tamil as their mother tongue. The Tamil language is a member of the Dravidian/South Indian family of languages. The four southernmost states of India - Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Andra Pradesh - are predominantly linguistically Dravidian, each state is carved out on the basis of predominance of the four major Dravidian languages. South India and Sri Lanka have been homelands of the Tamils from the beginning of recorded history. The region roughly covered by the modern states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala is identified as ancient "tamizakam" up to about 10th century AD. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Tamils migrated to some British colonies in search of employment and thus there are substantial Tamil populations in Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius, Fiji and South Africa. These volumes provide an extended introduction to the Tamils by discussing all the important facets that make them so vibrant a society. They are arranged thematically and provide a glimpse into Tamil history, culture, politics, language, literature and social progress. ... Read more

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Arranged in two parts, this volume first examines the relations of the emergent Muslim polity in India with the larger Muslim world. It then deals with issues of accomodation, syncretism, and opposition between `Muslim India' since the campaign of Muhammad bin Qasim in Sindh in 710 to the emergence of independent India and Pakistan in 1947. ... Read more