Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the visual image of the contemporary Indian anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare as a “second Gandhi’. This idiom of iteration powerfully demonstrates the continuing vitality of figures associated with anti-colonial nationalism, not simply as empty points of visual reference but as forces that continue to animate the political landscape and the repertoire of political possibilities in India. The idea of the ‘media-fold’ attempts to explicate the layering and bricolage which characterizes much popular Indian visual culture and whose logic seems to demand that the future is always half-seen-in-advance

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores the visual image of the contemporary Indian anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare as a "second Gandhi' or a "Krishna for today". Hazare assumed media centre-stage in August 2011 during his fast at the Ramlila Maidan in Delhi. The highly visible idiom of iterability deployed by his supporters powerfully demonstrates the continuing vitality of figures associated with anti-colonial nationalism, not simply as empty points of visual reference but as forces that continue to animate the political landscape and the repertoire of political possibilities in India. Alongside debates about a Citizen's Ombudsman, the Right to Information Act and the desirability of the Unique Identification Number database, the Mahabharata is mixed with Bombay commercial cinema's imagination of the freedom struggle through films such as Lage Raho Munna Bhai . In a parallel manner the agitation also performed a script already partly written by Rang de Basanti (the film which perhaps more than any other spectacularly negotiates the role of the archive in the popular). The Indian political "archive" is highly dynamic, an unstable and recursive location which has certain authorizing functions but which in the absence of systematic sedimentation, renders images "live" and ready to fall into the future. The idea of the 'media-fold' attempts to explicate the layering and "hot" bricolage which characterizes much popular Indian visual culture and politics and whose logic seems to demand that the future is always half-seen-in-advance through the prophetic voice of media.