Paper short abstract:

For this presentation, I will analyze the relationship between popular cinema and popular sovereignty in India. Specifically, I will address a limitation in the way popular power is imagined for Indian Muslims in Hindi films, focusing on the portrayal of popular power through the gangster boss.

Paper long abstract:

For this presentation, I will analyze the relationship between popular cinema and popular sovereignty in India. I will address a particular limitation in the imagination of popular power for Indian Muslims in Hindi films. This limitation, as argued by Faisal Devji, is that popular sovereignty can only be imagined through the gangster boss who takes power back from corrupt elites. By tracing the way popular sovereignty is mediated through the figure of the benign gangster boss in the recent history of Hindi film, I will first show how this imagination is constituted in the melodramatic mode. Second, I will explore how the circulation of snippets of the melodramatic mode constitutes an important element in current Muslim politics in India. Finally, I will conclude my argument by questioning to what extent this political imagination is adequate to think about the current state of deinstitutionalization of the Indian Union and the digital circulation of melodramatic fragments.