Vortrag und Diskussion
From Nation Building to Nation Branding:
Understanding Nationalism(s) in India
Dr. Anandita Bajpai
(Anthropology Berlin)
Montag, 12.06.2017 - 18:15 Uhr
P204 (Philosophicum)
The Indian economy witnessed a shift (starting in the late 1980s) with the introduction of the neo-liberal economic reforms of 1991, from being an import substitution economy to being a neo-liberalized, structurally adjusted one. Whereas the early postcolonial state propagated nation building through the ‘Temples of Modern India’, a phrase coined by the first Prime Minister Nehru, emphasising the importance of ‘new dams, new universities and new industries’, the post 1991 period witnesses a turn to nation branding. A plethora of channels likes nation branding campaigns, music videos produced by non state actors, campaigns produced at the World Economic Forum etc. have attempted to capture the phenomenon of a new economically ‘Emerging’ India. These campaigns are directed at attracting foreign investors and tourists to India, however, some of them also aim to evoke patriotism and a sense of ‘Indianness’ in perceived ‘Indian’ audiences, both in and outside India. The lecture will focus on the following main axes:
- The hybrid relationship between the global and the national.
- How do nation-states respond to the challenges of open market economies and re-invent themselves?
- How is it possible to accommodate patriotism in times when the flow of capital and humans become increasingly uncontrollable and disconnected to the national?
We will together analyse images, posters and videos from the Indian Nation Branding campaign (eg. Incredible !ndia), political rhetoric of Indian politicians and literature that portrays a “New/Emerging/Rising/Shining India” to seek answers to these questions.
Dr. Anandita Bajpai is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO). She regularly teaches at the Department for South Asian Studies and has offered several courses on South Asia at the University of Leipzig. A regular seminar offered in Berlin is on ‘How to trace India in Berlin’s Archives’. Her PhD titled ‘Speaking the Nation: (E)merging faces of secularism and the neo-liberal economic reforms in the rhetoric of India’s Prime Ministers since 1991’ analyzes the re-profiling of India from the vantage point of its Prime Ministers. She pursued her MA in Global Studies at the University of Leipzig and University of Vienna (2006-08). Her research interest areas include: history of Germany-India entanglements (particularly India-GDR), political rhetoric in India, secularism and neo-liberal economic reforms in India, critical discourse analysis, digital humanities, post colonial state in India.