Abstract
Ever since its technological inception, organized radio broadcasting in India has been a means to “rewire” spaces and people, to organize and articulate the project of the Indian nation, to generate public intimacy, and to forge the translocal listening communities. Since the establishment of the Indian State Broadcasting Service, radio has been a powerful sonic tool for political communication. This old and popular channel of speaking to the nation has more recently been rejuvenated and reinvented by the current Prime Minister Narendra D. Modi through his radio show Mann Ki Baat, aired on All India Radio (AIR) since October 2014. Focusing on the show and its contents, Anandita Bajpai introduces the readers to larger continuities in Indian political oratorical traditions and how populism has remained a predominant feature of the same. The author gives an insight into how the show makes use of contemporary hybridized media technologies, which combine old and new media forms and have become increasingly rampant as instruments for mobilizing electoral support. Through Mann Ki Baat, Modi produces a sonic aesthetic formation, a corporeal experience that is meant to “touch” the listeners and establish a direct link between them and him. The author traces three distinct registers from the show’s content which constitute the making of Modi’s populist discourse, projecting him as an emotional, sentimental, and a “feeling” Prime Minister.
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Notes
- 1.
The show on the MyGov. portal: https://www.mygov.in/campaigns/mann-ki-baat/.
- 2.
The show on the PMO website: http://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/.
- 3.
The show on Narendra Modi’s website: http://www.narendramodi.in/mann-ki-baat, Modi’s Twitter handle: @narendramodi and @PMOIndia.
- 4.
This is explained in detail in section 3 (Meyer 2009).
- 5.
For example, Modi emphasized his humble background as a chai wala (tea-seller) throughout the 2014 campaign, projecting himself as being one of “the people.” For more on the opposition between “the elite” and “the people” as a marker of populist discourse, see also the introduction to this volume.
- 6.
For this and all other references to Modi’s Mann Ki Baat show, see the transcripts on his website https://www.narendramodi.in/mann-ki-baat.
- 7.
All citations from Modi’s Mann Ki Baat can be found on his website: https://www.narendramodi.in/mann-ki-baat.
- 8.
Modi’s website: https://www.narendramodi.in, PMO website: https://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/, Twitter: @narendramodi and @PMOIndia.
- 9.
The term “New India” is not so new either. Nehru spoke of “Temples of Modern India” (dams, universities, production units, laboratories, etc.) as the stepping stones toward establishing a “New India” (Roy 2017). For a detailed analysis of continuities and discontinuities between Nehru’s “New India” and the new “New India” see Bajpai (2018).
- 10.
Unconventionally enough, no party manifesto was released by the BJP until at a very late stage in the campaign—right before the elections.
- 11.
Modi’s strategy of projecting himself as “anti-elite” and therein “pro-the people,” as an outsider to mainstream politics (in that he does not belong to a political dynasty like the Gandi-Nehru family), and finally as a corruption-free leader, also bears a strong resemblance to how Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil profiles himself. Not only in terms of content, there is also a striking similarity in how both leaders have relied upon social media for their electoral campaigns. For a detailed study, see the contribution by João Feres Júnior and Juliana Gagliardi in this volume.
- 12.
It would be an important, even necessary, intervention to conduct a detailed study of how people experience the show in real-time.
- 13.
“Mother India”, which we read in the cited excerpt, is used in the official English translation of the episode’s content on the show’s website. In the original, Modi consciously uses the epithet Bharat Mata and not “Mother India”.
- 14.
I have undertaken a deeper analysis of Modi’s political speeches within India’s larger oratorical contexts elsewhere (Bajpai 2018).
- 15.
For a detailed analysis see Bajpai (2018).
- 16.
For an elaborate explanation of the same, see the introduction to this volume.
- 17.
See, for example, India Today (2019). The PM has usually given direct “Messages to the Nation”, delivered speeches at Republic and Independence Day celebrations, at international and national events, or spoken to select news channels. Though press conferences have been a common feature of Indian democracy, Modi has mostly abstained from the same.
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Bajpai, A. (2021). “Matters of the Heart”: The Sentimental Indian Prime Minister on All India Radio. In: Kohl, C., Christophe, B., Liebau, H., Saupe, A. (eds) The Politics of Authenticity and Populist Discourses. Global Political Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55474-3_6
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