CULTURAL STUDIES IN INDIA Edited by Rana Nayar, Pushpinder Syal and Akshaya Kumar Got'J\P\Jt"1rl'.~i}\n"" cOP'l' ;".fl r""i'~'~· C ~'''r~'0' cA..' C 1\ "'" 'i;.*,l "1.: ••.•:••. " 01 I•••' U~,·- \r~" I~~~O~~~;~~;UP NEW DELHI LONDON NEW YORK 11 (IN)VISIBLE PUBLICS Television and participatory culture in India Abhijit Ray A rubber stamp with the name and address of a person must be very common. But what were uncommon in this little black-ink stamp I discovered sometime in the early 1990s were the two Bengali words of designation: Betar Srota ('Radio Listener'). Proudly displayed by I he rightful user, a paan-shop owner in the southern fringe of Calcutta, Ihis text used to appear below his signature in every letter he wrote 10 All India Radio's Calcutta station, particularly to Vividh Bharati. Apart from being an indicator of popularity of radio in the heydays of public television in India, this is also an amazing testimony of how the ubject interacting with media constitutes its identity. Such personal- izntion may be rare but it hints towards the myriad histories of partici- p.uory culture in India and their various relations with the personal, Ihe private and the public. In this essay I seek to understand some of Ihem with a view to roughly propose a critical agenda for studies in lndian participatory cultures. Indian television has achieved a certain height of inter activity, par- ruipation and mobilization through the genres of Reality TV and 'H'WS. I focus in this essay on the many legacies of the current phase of p.rrticipatory culture around Reality TV launched with Kaun Banega srorepati (KBC) in 2000. More than 'public opinion' that is primar- ily associated with news television, important in our discussion are .p.irticipatory culture' and broadly forms of publicness and collectivity Hound mass media, radio and television to be precise, from the 1950s III rhe 1990s. Such distinction between Reality TV and News (and for tlI,1I matter any generic distinction) is a contingent discursive necessity III understand the complex of generic confluences and overlaps that I h.I racterize our times. The questions I am asking are: Can we now 201 ABHIJIT ROY (IN)VISIBLE PUBLICS reflect back and think of a 'pre-history' of the current form of participa- of a railway township in eastern India in the 1970s and 1980s is of tory culture around Indian television? If yes, what continuities and rup- women enjoying a sunny winter afternoon sitting around a radio set, tures enable us to historicize forms of publicness in the 21st century? listening and chatting while knitting sweaters. Another image is of The first in this project is possibly the task of probing into the young boys and men assembled in the corner of a field listening to the under-researched forms of participation in the era of exclusive domi- live commentary of a Mohun Bagan-East Bengal football match or a nance of state-controlled radio and TV.While print media's forte in this cricket match from Calcutta's Eden Gardens. Yet another memory is regard had mainly been deliberation on civic issues through 'letters to of Mahisasurmardini, a programme designed by 'Akashbani Kolkata' the editor' (and occasionally participation in 'contests'), the radio used narrating Goddess Durga's triumph over the evil Mahisasur with songs to primarily invite participation through song-request programmes. and parts read from Chandi, the Sanskrit script on Durga's deeds. This Television, on the other hand, was to be understood by what James programme, since 1931, has woken up millions of radio-possessing W. Carey once called 'transmission view of communication', being Bengali families at 4 o'clock in the morning on the last day of the Hindu an apparatus that either discouraged or tried to control participation practice of paying the fortnight-long tribute to forefathers on the eve of (1989: 14-23).1 The Indian state's scepticism about the legitimacy Durga Puja. Associated tales range from compulsory bathing before the of the cinematic public in the project of nation-building extended to programme to people listening with flowers in their folded hands in the radio, as radio became a major site for the transmission of Indian popu- mode of a mass prayer. Such was the popular appeal of this programme lar film songs. In 1952, B.Y. Keskar, the then Minister for Cultural that we took long to realize that the day had any other significance than Affairs banned film songs from radio on the charge of vulgarity but the 4 o'clock broadcast. The association of this radio programme with had to lift the ban because, according to a press release, 'it cost the a contingent community or the act of 'coming together' still continues broadcasting organization too much in popularity' (Chatterjee 1992: as many local clubs transmit the programme every year through loud- 36).2 The broadcast public, directly under the aegis of post-colonial speakers in sync with the early morning broadcast. State pedagogy, could never be the libidinal 'vulgar' public of popular We also heard from elders how Akashbani Kolkata's news broadcast cinema, the constituency of capitalism's enchantment with the erotic, on East Pakistan's war of liberation, read by Debdulal Bandyoadhyay the vestige of colonial expansion worldwide of 'entertainment'. One (whose voice had a peculiar melange of romance with an imminent can in fact go to the extent of suggesting that the kind of public the sovereign Bangla nation and the determination of muktijoddhas, sol- State-controlled Media tried to create till the 1980s, though largely in diers fighting for liberation), also drew people around the radio set. vain, was in many ways opposite to the public of popular cinema in The indifference in this popular tale towards the relative silence of India. While the popular cinematic public was conceived as one asso- Calcutta radio about the brutal repression of the Naxalites in West ciated primarily with the streets and lumpen public spaces, the terri- Bengal around the same time needs to be further investigated. The tory of the broadcast public was essentially the home and the family, structure of civility and citizenship within which the collective engage- the sanctity of which, it was thought, could better sustain a citizenship ment of the educated middle class with media and news grew was premised upon the patriarchal order of the nation-family bondage. always unstable, as the mainstream public was eerily discomforted by, Microcosms of the public manifest in small physical assemblies have but couldn't address, the other form of collective engagement based on always been created around portable media like the transistor and the disavowal of the codes of such civility and citizenship, and questioning newspaper. The home-centric sets like the electric radio, the 'record of mainstream media's politics. Since a large part of the leadership in player' and, later, the television, also, had the capability of bringing the 'other' form of mobilization emerged from the same 'bhadralok' the neighbourhood and acquaintances together, especially when the section, the mainstream could never rid itself from the uneasiness of a access to such media was not widespread. This surely was not a 'par- blurred boundary between the sensibilities of civility and that of delin- ticipatory' public but definitely one that was, at least partly, mobilized quency constructed under repressive state regimes. by a particular medium, in the form of small listening/viewing/read- How do we understand such publics? Is there any need to begin to ing and discussing communities. One of my vivid childhood memories historicize participatory culture from such a vantage point? In case of 202 203 ABHIJIT ROY (IN)VISIBLE PUBLICS early television, one can remember the days of popularization of live 'going out for the speciality of a spectacle' constantly negotiates the cricket when people from non-television homes would go to a neigh- new lexicon of 'entertainment', the ever-presence of a domestic flow bour's place to watch the matches. The funeral of Indira Gandhi tele- of sound and images. The larger community of the nationwide watch- vised live in colour on Doordarsharr' comes also to mind as a media ing public, however, always intrudes as a rule through the apparatus event that made large number of people gather in homes having colour itself, generating a peculiar space of 'privatized public'. Television par- television. Whatever may be the reason, problem of access or the plea- ticularly has given rise to a new home, a site that is torn between a sure of collective reception (an overlap of the two possibly describes sense of threat to its property and peace, and a sense of security, an the phenomenon best), these contingent little communities had radio intensification of the boundary of home underlined by the 'distance' or television at their centre. These little popular assemblies, I suggest, of reception. The impression that is created in any act of watching TV cannot merely be understood as a public that were forcefully brought is not exactly of 'being at home' but possibly of 'being in one of the together by a 'lack' and that gradually dispersed as demands for access homes'. The home and the familial space here harbour a certain order were met. I would rather like to explore what correspondence these of porosity and ephemerality. The order of communitarian engage- gatherings had to structures of already existing communities. One ment, hence, is not completely lost from television. In a way the gath- corresponding frame of such collective reception beyond the famil- erings around media, in its early form and present incarnations (for ial space was the 'modern' culture of discussing topical issues around instance, collective watching of a high-power football or cricket match the day's newspaper.