Biopolitics of Hindutva: Masculinity and Violence in Leila and Aashram

Abstract

This chapter analyses the critical representations of masculinity in SVOD content—web series Leila (2019) and Aashram (2020). The cinematic landscape in India has been replete with representations that are in line with the dominant, hegemonic power structures in India, especially after 2014. Indeed, we can clearly see the increased saffronization of political and cultural landscapes, and SVOD space is a digital frontier and a new ideological battlefield. Despite the abundance of content celebrating Hindutva ideology, there is a broad spectrum of critical imaginations that have emerged in attempts to present a more nuanced portrait of contemporary India. In this chapter several converging problems are analysed. By referring to two web series, both highly critical towards the state of affairs in India, I look at the representations of what I term the politics of anxiety in post-2014 India and the subsequent biopolitical management as well as cultural re-fashioning of India. The chapter specifically emphasizes a gendered aspect of such anxiety which strongly stands out. The main object of the chapter not only is the biopolitics of Hindutva, which is the main ideological force behind the violence, but also the interrogation of this violence in the cinematic mode—a means part of which is an active participant in the Hindutva discourse.