MICA

the language of enquiry
Vol. 1 No. 1 2003
Television Narratives:
05
Creating a Cultural Complicity;
a Semiotic Analysis of the Balaji Telefilms Discourse
Seema Khanwalkar
15
The King James Bible as sign system
in the eighteenth century
Brian Coates
21
Focussing on the Forest, Not just the Tree:
Cultural Strategies for Combating AIDS
Arvind Singhal
29
Development Communication:
The Unfolding of Harmony
Gaston Roberge
37
The Dialectics of Advertising:
The Search for an Indian Tradition
Rashmi Sawhney
46
A Journey through four decades of Indian
Advertising: An Interview with S.R Ayer
Harsha Subramaniam
52
Encountering the Traumatic: Hey Ram and its
Cultural Narcissism
Venkatesh Chakravarthy
for private circulation
EDITORIAL COMMITTEE
Ang Peng Hwa
Vice Dean
School of Communication and Information
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Volume 1 No. 1 2003
MICA Communications Review is a refereed international journal
of Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA). The
Review promotes inquiry into contemporary communication
issues within the wider social, economic and technological
contexts, and provides a forum for discussion of theoretical and
practical insights emerging from it. For us, communication means:
marketing communications, communication management, mass
and new media, development communication, culture studies, and
organizational communications.
Anjali Monteiro
Professor
Unit for Media and Communications
Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India
Arvind Singhal Professor
School of Interpersonal Communication
Ohio University, USA
N. Bhaskar Rao
Chairman
Centre for Media Studies, India
Cees Hamelink Professor
Media, Religion and Culture
Vrije Universiteit, Netherlands
MCR is published quarterly by the Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad, Shela, Ahmedabad 380 058 India.
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Jyotika Ramaprasad
Governing Council
Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad, India
Associate Dean
College of Mass Communication
Southern Illinois University, USA
Leslie Steeves Associate Professor and Director
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Graduate Studies and Research
School of Journalism and Communication
University of Oregon, USA
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School of Telecommunications
Bowling Green State University, USA
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Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad), India
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Global Studies Programme
World Association for Christian Communication, UK
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Xavier Labor Research Institute, India
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Development Communication, India
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School of Telecommunications
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Published by KGK Pillai on behalf of Mudra Institute of
Communications, Ahmedabad, Shela, Ahmedabad 380 058 India
Department of Communication
SN School
University of Hyderabad, India
CONTENTS
05
15
Television Narratives:
The King James
Bible as a Sign System
in the Eighteenth Century
Creating a Cultural Complicity–
A Semiotic Analysis of the Balaji
Telefilms Discourse
Brian Coates
Seema Khanwalkar
21
29
Focusing on the Forest,
Not Just the Tree: Cultural
Development
Communication:
Strategies for Combating AIDS
The Unfolding of Harmony
Arvind Singhal
Gaston Roberge
37
52
42
The Dialectics of
Advertising: The Search
Encountering
the
A Journey through
Traumatic:
HeyofRam
four decades
and
its Cultural
Narcissism
Indian
Advertising:
An with S.R Ayer
for an Indian Tradition
Venkatesh Chakravarthy
Harsha Subramaniam
Rashmi Sawhney
c o n v e r s a t i o n s
46
A Journey Through
Four Decades of
Indian Advertising:
An Interview with S. R. Ayer
Harsha Subramaniam
EDITORIAL
The MICA Communications Review is a product of India's fourth generation
of educational development in the field of communications and management. The
first generation schools of the 1950's offered certificate courses in 'how-to'
journalism. By the late 1960's, they were replaced by university-based, secondgeneration journalism/communication departments. The departments served a
growing economy and offered a ‘one-size-fits-all’ program that included subjects
such as graphic arts, public relations and advertising. Except Osmania University's
department, and institutes such as Indian Institute of Mass Communication and
Press Institute of India, none published a journal of academic research and inquiry.
The development of general management education heralded the third generation.
The economic liberalization drive of the 1990's created opportunities for new
and bold educational initiatives in communication. Industry captains, Non-Resident
Indians, and established colleges were quick to seize the opportunity and herald the
fourth generation of communications institutes in the country. MICA is the first such
private, not-for profit institute. Alive to the growing needs created due to emerging
technologies and globally integrated marketing communication business environment, fourth generation institutes developed strong industry linkages, diversified
the syllabi, sought faculty from allied fields, and emphasized on Research.
The publication of a research journal is the next logical step that many
departments and institutes have yet to take. MICA has taken the initiative in this
regard. The MICA Communications Review realizes the challenges it faces. Many
scholars lament the academic and research apathy that has crept into social sciences
in the country. The absence of communication research traditions in the academic
world is even starker. The Review proposes to fill this by inviting communication
practitioners and academic researchers to share their experiences and insights. Its
editorial board has, therefore, both well-known industry professionals and
university professors and other academicians on it. By so doing, the Review seeks
to cultivate a new language of inquiry into contemporary communication
phenomena and aspires to become a repository of knowledge flowing from it.
At MICA Communications Review, we realize that we have to work our way
to perfection. But that state would be easier to attain, if at all, when readers
comment on and contribute to the Review.
Atul Tandan
Managing Editor
Pradeep Krishnatray
Editor
Our Vision
‘to be the
pre-eminent
communications
management school’
Welcome to MICA
You will be interested to know that MICA is the first postgraduate school of
its kind, certainly in the country and perhaps in the Asia Pacific region. Moreover,
it is the first of the fourth generation, in the Indian education system.
You will recall that the first generation was the establishment of university
education, with emphasis on the humanities, sciences and engineering. The chain
of the IIT’s in the fifties, corresponding with India’s industrial thrust, signified the
second generation. The establishment of the IIMs and other business schools, in the
sixties and the seventies was when the Indian management came into its own,
heralding the third generation.
Now MICA, the leader of the fourth generation is the natural extension of
the process of economic reforms of the early nineties, that opened up the Indian
market to the global situation with high technology inputs. The phenomenon that
it was, called for a renaissance in business practices and corresponding systemic
responses, throughout the nation.
We have all experienced the overnight transformation of business strategies,
into being intensely communication driven. MICA is the only institute that prepares
young professionals to provide the right talent to meet the requirements of the
growing integrated marketing communications industry.
The institute’s forte lies in providing the Indian Industry with specialists in
the field of Marketing Communications. The spirit of MICA lies in it’s contemporariness, a reflection of the industry it serves. The MICA Brand, thus, stands apart.
Today, it is the alma mater of over 2200 professionals that are serving
marketing, advertising, media, research and consultancy driven organizations.
MICA stands on a belief, a realization and an idea. A belief: that marketing
communication matters. A realization: that it needs professionalism, and an idea:
to provide trained marketing communicators who can make a difference.
Our Mission
To create through education, training and research,
a renewable talent bank, particularly for advertising and
marketing and all the emerging communication-driven businesses.
The Campus
The MICA campus situated on the outskirts of Ahmedabad extends over 17 acres of
green grass and sports a well-tended garden of flowerbeds and orchards. A central
complex houses the classrooms, faculty chambers, the knowledge exchange centre
and the auditorium. In addition, there is a conference hall, a fully equipped
computer laboratory that provides facilities on par with the best management
institutes.
The six hostel blocks have 152 well-equipped rooms, complete with local
area network and Internet connection designed for comfortable and purposeful
occupancy.
The MICA KEIC (The Knowledge Exchange and Information Centre) has a
strong collection of books on subjects ranging from marketing and management to
Indian culture and people. In addition, there are over one hundred subscribed
journals, both national as well as international, that document the latest work in
the fields of marketing and communication. The KEIC also stores the latest
advertising campaigns and print ads in digital formats. MICA’s KEIC provides
monthly briefing services to clients and subscribers and represents one amongst a
series of forays into real time information management, that benefit both the
student community as well as the academic and industry professional.
MICA also has a LAN of 300 personal computers with adequate back-up of
Internet connectivity platform, giving seamless access to information to all its
students and employees.
Television Narratives:
Creating a Cultural Complicity–
A Semiotic Reading of the Balaji
Telefilms Discourse
Seema Khanwalkar
Consultant, Semiotics, India
This paper is an attempt to seek out and draw parallels and contrasts between the
mythical nationalism, with its orchestrated closure, constructed by a successful television
production company producing woman-dominated serials (Balaji Telefilms); and the
open-ended lives of today’s Indian middle-class women. The Prime Time scheduling of
women-centred programming on television channels represents a dramatic cultural shift,
illustrating the increasing recognition of the Indian Woman’s effort to straddle the two
worlds of traditional and modern India. The paper also utilizes several research
evaluation tools from Narrative theory to Semiotics to read the discourse of Balaji
Telefilms.
5
THE KING JAMES BIBLE AS A SIGN SYSTEM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
The Televised World
Television,
as Silverstone (1995) asserts,
is the Principle ‘storyteller’ in today’s world, its
technologically mediated stories having replaced
the human voice. In a world of fragmen-ted and
complex identities, television ‘works’ with people
because it is ‘trusted,’ and imparts a sense of
security. It is an expression of its capacity to
mobilize and create what anthropologists have
1
called the ‘communitas.’ Television has also been
2
defined as new ‘Performative Public Spheres’
creating communities of consumers who share a
common language of cultural agency. It is a
zone in which, as Achille Mbembe has observed,
diverse positions are inscribed in the same
‘epistemological space’ (Mbembe 1992:14). This
is particularly true in a world of intense global
transformations, most of which are mediated
through the prisms of the electronic media like
Television. How does Television enable this?
How is Television a ‘storyteller’? How are the
stories told? To whom are they addressed, and
how do they relate to society?
Television as a medium of communication is no more mediated or contaminated
than other forms of communication (like spoken
language, written language, photography), in its
relationship to reality. And yet television is
received as pure information, as unmediated
‘signified,’ naturally meaningful. Television
seems to provide a framework of security for the
representation and control of the unfamiliar or
3
threatening, owing to its mythic character. “It
refers to the persistence of familiar oral forms of
storytelling–to the structured narratives of
folklore present in news, drama and documentary; to the particular functional significance of
forms of storytelling, as articulating the
endemic and irresolvable contradictions of the
host society; and it refers also to the ideological
character of images and stories which naturalize
and disguise the reality of the historical and the
man-made.” (Barthes, 1972). Narratives, it
seems then, are the dominant mode on
television–the sitcom, the cartoon, the soap
opera, are all somebody’s narration of their
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
6
version of reality. Narratives, as has been
4
conceptualized, have two parts :
Story (what happens to whom)
Discourse (how the story is told)
A ‘story,’ typically is a minimal narrative,
a move from–
Equilibrium
through disequilibrium
to a new equilibrium
But narratives on television do not move
towards a final equilibrium. In narratives of
television serials particularly, once an equilibrium is restored, a new disequilibrium has to
set in, engaging the audience in continuous
enigmas and expectations.
Television and Ideology
What kind of narratives are these?
Television images are ideologically constructed,
discourses. Nowhere is this more applicable than
India as a case in point. Since 1987, Television in
India has played the role of a powerful mediator,
when its only TV Channel, the State-owned
Doordarshan aired the ‘Ramayana’ and the
‘Mahabharata’ the two Grand Narratives of the
country in a serial form. This move undoubtedly
played a significant role in making ‘Hindutva
Consciousness’ a reality, particularly amongst the
5
lower and middle-class. It is a well-documented
fact that during the 1990s, Indian society, polity,
culture and economy experienced a break with
the post 40 years of Post-Independence India
because all secular modern and moral
constitutional democracy were in pieces before
the forces of Hindutva. As Rajagopal (2001)
states, ‘the weekly broadcast of popular serials
like the Ramayana thus inaugurated a new era
not only in television but in politics as well...’ and
he builds his thesis by stating that these
television serials joined the political events
together. Even today, television mediates the
popular political ideology of the country–
Hindutva and ‘our way of life.’ Only the stories,
and the storytellers have changed. The stories
about the ‘Indian’ (read Hindu) way of life are
articulated by middle-class women who seem to
have been given the role of protecting the
country’s lost pride as mothers, Bhabhis, sisters,
etc. And at the forefront of this mission is a
hugely successful television production house
called “Balaji Telefilms.” Balaji Telefilms has
created an indomitable myth that has merged,
very successfully, the oppositions between–
Doordarshan and Satellite Television
Lower/Middle and Upper Classes
Women’s point of view and Man’s point of view in
favor of ‘our (we Hindu’s) point of view.
It is also clearly the case that elements of
these stories operate through a bourgeois model
blanking out of whole areas of many people’s
experiences. There is a monolithic depiction of
a Pan-Indian lifestyle–a glorification of upper
caste Hindu traditions and elitist families
belonging to the Marwari, upper caste Gujarati,
Brahmin and Rajput.
The ‘Mother India’ Syndrome–
Ekta Kapoor and Balaji Telefilms
Balaji Telefilms, a recent entrant in the
business of television production dominates
‘PRIME TIME’ viewing across eight channels
including Doordarshan, Zee, SONY, STAR PLUS,
SUN, GEMINI and SAB TV. This television software
house is credited with not only reviving STAR
PLUS’s fortunes particularly, but with redefining
the economics of the satellite channel industry.
All the mega serials with program titles starting with ‘K’ have met with unparalleled success.
The formula is clear–target India’s most reactive
section–the middle class women. “Of the women,
for the women, by a woman, all these serials
brought kitchen wars and bedroom blues on a
small screen. Affording as in their words, ‘guiltfree bitching,’ it has had a cathartic effect on
6
women.” They packaged their domestic delights
and dilemmas and coincided with ‘dinner time,’
technically referred to as ‘PRIME TIME.’
The focus of all the stories, the middleclass women, are depicted in their roles as
‘daughters’ and ‘daughters-in-laws’ who are the
flagbearers of ideal Indian middle-class values–
Hardworking and dedicated
Culturally rooted- Carriers of traditions
Educated, smart and savvy
Straightforward and moralistic
Upholders of the values of a ‘Hindu way of life’
Strategically, this seems to have worked
well for Balaji Telefilms and the middle-class.
For, since Indian Independence, the Nehruvian
era and the Post-Liberalization phase, if there is
any group that has grown in economic and
social terms, it is the Indian middle-class. It
continues to grow and transform the sociocultural fabric of the country, the criticisms and
resistance notwithstanding. The Indian middleclass, is in many senses, ‘caught between
worlds’ and the markets have clearly exploited
their need for identities and securities, trying to
connect with them through images of ‘struggle,’
‘hard-work,’ and ‘security.’ The middle-class
woman, particularly is being enveloped in
narratives of–‘how to look good,’ ‘how to make
a good home,’ how to keep the husband happy,’
etc. In reality, however, she continues to be
7
caught in the web of her obligatory roles –
Social Archetypes
Ma
Bahu
ACCEPTANCE
ANXIETY
Virgin, Harlot, Goddess
Biwi, Beti, Behan, Vidhwa
Her identities are dictated by these roles,
that she plays both overtly and covertly. Balaji
Telefilms has brought all her roles into the
spotlight, but with a clear goal–build and protect
the Hindu undivided family. Symptomatic of a
‘Mother-India’ syndrome, this mission reflects
the deep sense of insecurities faced by the large
mass of the Indian middle-class. In the face of a
collapse of most social and family institutions,
the middle-class, it is assumed, is looking to any
umbrella that can give it the much-needed
sense of security. Ekta Kapoor, the firebrand
producer of Balaji Telefilms is the ‘storyteller’
who resonates herself with this need. From a
lonely television and food addict as a child,
7
TELEVISION NARRATIVES
Ekta has discovered a ‘family’ and ‘security’ in
her serials. She firmly believes that Indian society
was always about joint families and we can still
make it happen. Her stories, she claims, are all
about selfless women who cope with difficult
8
relatives while anchoring joint-marital families.
The natural road to this leads to Hinduism, the
largest followed religion in the country, which
has historically promoted the joint family
system under the aegis of patriarchy.
While Balaji Telefilms and Ekta Kapoor
would like us to believe that these serials also
give a ‘voice’ and space to women, inaccessible
in their day-to-day lives, we state and explore the
agenda of Balaji Telefilms as ‘Narratives that create
complicity’ in a ‘Jurassic Park’ manner, where
women are one another’s adversaries, friends,
foes, nurturers, and men are mere onlookers and
props in this drama amongst women. The rules
are very clearly spelt out between
Protagonists
Saccharine Sweet
Antagonists
Bitter-than-Gourd
Absolutely black
Under the guise of traditionality, these
women spend their entire life, battling family
politics, and learning to balance traditional
obligations with modern aspirations.
Balaji Telefilms and the
‘PRIME TIME’ Success
To its credit, it must be admitted that
Balaji Telefilms has capitalized on PRIME TIME
viewing. PRIME TIME on television is the
evening slot of 9.00 - 11.00 p.m. The entire family
converges in front of the television or at least at
the dinner table. In the past, this time was
usually reserved for a ‘male unwinding’–news,
current affairs, talk shows, etc. The women had
their own exclusive time in the afternoon slots
where either repeats of televised serials or shows
on beauty and housekeeping were aired. This
segregation of viewing times had characterized
the afternoon/evening slot as ‘gossip’ value and
the PRIME TIME slot as important and
significant. The contents of PRIME TIME and
NON-PRIME TIME were defined by viewership
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
8
numbers. It was satellite television that made
the first intervention changing PRIME TIME to
‘family viewing.’ Game shows, soaps, dance
shows, talk shows competed with news and
9
current affairs for viewership. Balaji Telefilms
took this a step further by capturing ‘PRIME
TIME’ slots across channels–Doordarshan, Zee,
SONY, STAR, etc. For the first time, the entire
nation was subjected to women-centric serials,
making ‘PRIME TIME’ a women’s prerogative,
creating a new Semiotics for television viewing.
Television narratives have become
‘Symbols’–of identity, of culture, of groups with
homogenous identity constructs. These narratives
seem to have transformed into a kind of Quasi
Nationalistic medium. Ideologically, this nationalism gives a ‘feel good’ factor to the masses
by articulating their dreams, offering vicarious
delights, pampering their intellectual abilities
and by bonding through televised serials, give
vent to their ideological frameworks. It has been
argued, structuralists onwards, that stories are
governed by unwritten rules acquired by all storytellers and listeners, much like we all acquire
the basis rules of grammar. A closer look at the
narratives of Balaji Telefilms, we believe will help
us to discover a well-developed ‘Semiotic System.’
Balaji Telefilms has more than 10 serials
on air across channels, but for the purposes of
discussion in this paper, we read five of the
most successful of these–
Balaji Telefilms
STAR PLUS
Kyunki Saas...
Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki
Kasauti...
SONY
Kkusum
Kkutumb
These serials, like the other Balaji Productions have a narrative content focusing on
the various roles of Indian middleclass women:
Ma/bhabhi, Beti/bahu, Patni and Saas; and their
interrelationships with family and outlets for
self-expression. The central hypothesis around
these serials is that these narratives are stories
of conformity and complexity. A formal method
that borrows from Structuralism, Semiotics and
Narratively will help to test this hypothesis.
The Semiotic Perspective
Semiotics is a method of testing that has
no recourse to the judgement or opinion of the
receivers of a message formulated specifically
for them. This is based on the axiom that the
structure of a message does not have to be
conscious in order for it to operate. A semiotic
method explains how communication is
structured within the message.
A fundamental premise of Structuralism,
the founding base of semiotics, is that meaning
emanates from the relationships among
elements which are in themselves meaningless.
The structure is the totality of the relationships
among the component parts of the system and
is crucial to the emergence of the sense. The
meaning of the signs depend on the context in
which they appear. Structures are said to guide
the semantic interpretations which can be
numerous and unlimited. The entire exercise will
involve looking for elements that together
create meaning–‘how’ meaning is constructed
rather than ‘what’ is the meaning.
Semiotics, makes a clear distinction between a ‘consumer’ and a ‘customer.’ Consumers
and brands, semiotically speaking, are not fixed
points in a fixed space. Consumers choose brands
according to their context and are constantly
oscillating between one fixed ‘centred’ identity
and the unstable changing new identity. At
some point, however, the identification takes
place creating one fixed identity–
e.g. ‘The Marlboro Man is Me.’
This reading focuses on the ‘fixed identity’
currently in place between the viewers and the
television soaps produced by ‘Bajaj Telefilms.’ In
semiotic theory, consumers are made, not born.
They are constructed by the communications of
that culture and are cultural effects.’ To find out
what is going on, semiotics looks at the brand
or product, interrogating its communication
first. The brand itself does not exist in isolation.
It interacts at some level or the other with
surrounding discourses, that impact on the way
it is received and expectations from it in these
contexts. Thus, we have Balaji Telefilms in relation
to the surrounding cultures in this manner–
GLOBAL CULTURE
National Culture
Cable TV
SONY
Balaji Telefilms
STAR
Narratives of Balaji Televisions will need
10
to be read as ‘Texts.’ Because like any other text,
they possess a ‘closure,’ individualizing them as
an autonomous totality and enabling their
structural organization. The viewers, we hypothesize discover a unity within this ‘closure.’
They are all loyalists of these serials. Secondly,
the serials, like a text can be segmented into
units, stages or moments that connect with one
another according to certain rules–episodes,
channel schedule, character portrayal, setting,
etc. Third, they have an orientation, and can be
considered as a series of events or activities that
eventually come to be finalized. And finally,
like a text, they have meaning. This reading is
based on the postulate that their meaning has to
be understood as a sum of the relationship of
the elements, all the micro-narratives.
The Semiotic Reading
Semiotic method, as stated earlier in the
paper, is an effort to look for a structure and its
component parts amongst the top performers in
the Balaji Telefilms discourse. For purposes of
economy, we have restricted the numbers, but
have referred to the other serials in order to
arrive at a general discourse of Balaji Telefilms.
The first step in this method involved listing of
all the main elements. The list being fairly exhaustive, it included apart from the central story
9
TELEVISION NARRATIVES
line, the dress codes, the settings, colors, relationships, dialogues, etc. The next task consisted of
an effort to bring a preliminary order into the
assembled data, and the most obvious point to
start was with the elimination of those claims
which did not provide any additional information
to the existing pool; the idea being, to generate
non-redundant sets of elements, because most
of the communications in the media are reinforced
through repetitions and peroration which
Durand (1970:70) identified as the function of
the rhetoric. After having fulfilled the two
requirements–of drawing up an exhaustive and
non-redundant list, we needed to order them in
a meaningful way. The most important organizing criteria chosen for this method was that of
the ‘Binary Opposition,’ which simply means
that the elements in the non-redundant set must
be ordered in a series of dichotomies.
The task of associating all the elementary
segments into binary oppositions which the
‘System’ prescribed for them, must go on until
all the elements of the system are related in that
way and form a network of relationships, or in
other words, a ‘Structure.’ When the ordering is
completed, the result is a list of non-redundant
binary oppositions, which provides a reasonably
good summary of all the television soaps being
analysed. This ordering also acts as an internal
control which ensures the completeness of the
‘system’ at work. The next task then, is the
grouping of the binary oppositions in
paradigmatic relationships, which could be
more than one group. In other words every
system of communication can have more than
one underlying structure. The paradigmatic
groups discovered after reading the narratives
were as followsMiddle Class
Upper Class
Non-rich/simplicity
Traditional
Family bonds
Home-focus
Togetherness, sharing
Emotional
Non-ambitious
Grounded
Sensitive, Caring
Showy affluence
Non-traditional
Non-family bonds
World-focus
Individualism, non-sharing
Practical
Ambitious
Pretensions
Insensitive, Cruel
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
10
Good Bahu
Bad Bahu
Middle-class
Traditional
Family-oriented
Patient, Tolerant
Non-ambitious
Vulnerable/Straightforward
Positive, Builds/Creates
Soft, Exterior
Upper-class
Non-traditional
Individualistic
Impatient, Intolerant
Ambitious
Scheming/Non-vulnerable
Negative, destroys
Harsh, Demonic-exterior
Joint Family
Nuclear Family
Indian
Values
Obligations/duties
Strength
Traditions
Deliverance/Success
Patriarchal
Happiness, Laughter
Non-Indian
Non-values
Self-driven, Non-obligatory
Weakness
Non-traditions
Failures
Non-patriarchal (controlled and
sustained by women)
Non-happiness, Loneliness, Stress
Female Bonding
Female Non-Bonding
In Joint families
Strength
Backbone of a family
Keeps traditions alive
Problem-solving
In Nuclear families
Weakness
Cause of strifes and problems
Breaks traditions
Problem-creating
Good Husband
Bad Husband
Upholds family values, morals
Loyal, Honest
Strength of character
Respecting, Understanding,
Patient, caring
Good professional
Good son-dutiful & Caring
Sober, subdued aura
Flaunts values & morals, Self-centred
Philandur
Weak in character
Disrespectful, Obsessive
Impatient, Demanding, Abusive
Bad professional
Bad son–wayward and Bratfish
Flashy, Arrogant aura
Home
World
Fulfilling, Comfort
Security
Creates bonds
Solutions
Gives strength
Character, Respect
Safe
Hindu
Unfulfilling, Discomforting
Causes insecurity
Creates differences
Problems
Crates weaknesses
Diffusive - lacks character, Little respect
Unsafe
Non-Hindu
These substructures and all the binary
oppositions appear to be related by a common
thread to present aspects of one fundamental
theme which is:
‘Our way of life’ as opposed to ‘Not our way of Life.’
Our way of life refers to everything
positive and is earmarked by everything that
sustains and grows. Going by the numerous
elements that represent ‘our way of life’–dress
codes, rituals, religion, family values, etc., in the
entire discourse. This can be called the ‘Indian’
representation. Thus we have,
Indian : Non-Indian = Our Way of life : Not our way of life
Signifier for
Signifier for ‘others’
Balaji Telefilms
The surface level in the discourse of Balaji
Telefilms’ narratives offers many good and
worthy reasons for living the Indian way of life,
but the inner force of the discourse comes from
the deep structure which promises a facile
solution to a deeper anxiety, of a collapse, of
loneliness, particularly in a post-modern context
where communities are a heterogeneous mix of
people. Each of these television soaps under the
banner of Balaji Telefilms supplies a fragment
or two to the final configuration. Each fragment
is a clue in the detective-like process of discovering the code. The central symbol across
these narratives is the Female Protagonist in her
roles: as a daughter and as a daughter-in-law
and by implication is a ‘maternal’ construct.
11
Psychoanalytical readings on the construct of
the maternal in Indian society, shows that the
‘Good Mother’ has always been the pivot of
Indian morality. The ‘Good Mother’ as against
the ‘Bad Mother,’ nurtures, protects, is asexual
and hence is not a threat. The ‘Bad Mother’ is
perceived as a threat as she is unable to curb
excesses in the personality of the child. The
onus of shaping the personality of her children
and her home–maternal as well as matrimonial
lies squarely on the mother as is evident in the
narratives around the plethora of Mother
symbols in Indian culture.
The Narrative Schema
With a focus on the expression of the
logic of the Balaji Telefilms discourse, we now
take an interest in the narrative forms governing their discourse. The consumer’s accounts of
their experience with the narratives acquired
later, reiterated the hypothesis that these
narratives were constructed in a context of an
ideology that spoke of Indianhood, family
systems, traditions and a clear bent towards
Hinduism. These elements constituted the ‘self’
and everything else was ‘not ours.’ And within
this closure everything took place–the threats,
the solutions and the drama.
Studies on narratives as a ‘system’
largely influenced by the Russian formalist,
Vladimir Propp focused at the initial stages, on
the synchronic (at a given point of time) and the
‘systematic’ (syntactic ordering) aspects. Later,
due to Levi-Strauss’s seminal interventions, the
focus shifted to Paradigmatic projections that
were based on the ‘principal of difference’ as
introduced by Saussure. This principle insists
that there exist only oppositions and sense
emerges from the juxtaposition of differences.
Accordingly, ‘high’ has no meaning without a
reference to ‘low’ and vice-versa. In the context
of the narratives of Balaji Telefilms, it is the
paradigmatic projections, discussed earlier, that
are precisely the armatures of a ‘communitas’–
of Balaji Telefilms loyalists. It is only by recognizing these can we talk about the narrative
lifescript in the ideological context that seeks to
dissolve the oppositions of:
Upper class/Middle-class
Bad Bahu/Good bahu
Nuclear family/Joint family
Non-Female bonding/Female bonding
World/Home
Non-Indian/Indian
In a syntagmatic level (syntactic ordering),
we will see how these paradigmatic relationships are further observed in a narrative of
unity that refer to a common worldview. First,
we take recourse to a model that essentially
differs from the classic Proppian narrative where
the intentions of the story progress in a lines in
a temporal sequence like this–
0
Initial qualifications
0
Action
0
Final glory
In the schema being employed here, the
progress is read in reverse–in an ‘order of
presupposition.’ The hypothesis being that, the
11
TELEVISION NARRATIVES
intentionality of the narrative finds its justification after the fact. Thus, the acts and initiatives of
the female protagonists across Balaji Telefilms–
of overcoming all the obstacles and hurdles,
were conceived within the frame of existing
structures of hierarchy and interpersonal requirements within the Indian family system. The
12
basic narrative schema then, would be as below–
Projecting these narratives onto a
“Semiotic Square,” will organize the conceptual
universe of these narratives coherently,
14
The semiotic square
represents a
scientific legacy in semiotic theory–an assertion
that there is no meaning without difference
(Saussure, 1916) and that all systems of
signification is a system of relations and not a
CONTRACT
COMPETENCE
PERFORMANCE
SANCTION
Within the framework of a
value system, proposal and
acceptance of a program to
carry out
Acquiring the ability required
to carry out the programs. The
ability breaksdown into four
models:
- ‘having to do’ (one’s duties)
- ‘wanting to’ (one’s wishes)
- ‘knowing how to’ (one’s
experience)
- ‘being able to’ (means at
one’s disposal)
Carrying out the program:
Conquering the object of
value of one’s desire.
Comparing the program carried
out with the contract which
was to be fulfilled.
(Relation of Presupposition)
As applied to the Narratives of Balaji Telefilms
CONTRACT
COMPETENCE
PERFORMANCE
SANCTION
To depict a positive image of
the Indian woman–balancing
traditions/ modern life, a
repository of acceptance, and
complicity
Commitment to the family,
possessing the ability to cope,
optimistic, youthful, total involvement (Kkusum,Tulsi, Parvati,
Ganga, Prerna)
Accomplishment–overcomes
obstacles and hurdles, ready
to face new ones
not by
rebellion, but by working within existing structures
Acceptance and acknowledgement by the family
(Relation of Presupposition)
The protagonist, initially occupies a
vulnerable position and obtains sanction within
the family only when she has successfully
carried forward her duties and obligations. The
narratives traverse between the two trajectories–
of the protagonist, and of the value systems of
the Indian joint family. The protagonists, are
heroes ‘within’ the value system of this discourse.
This can be validated by relating the
narratives with the behavioral aspects around
13
these events (audience responses), which we
will call, the micronarratives, that can be
grouped in this manner below-
system of signs as stated earlier. For example
‘good’ is only understood in relation to ‘bad’
and vice-versa. Each of the two positions presupposes the other. But this basic relationship
can get complicated and what we finally have is–
Good
vs
Bad
Not bad
vs
Not good
CONTRACT
VALIDATION
PARTICIPATION
The families converge at
dinner time. “We cook dinner
early so that we can watch.”
Or, “we prepare during the ad
breaks,” ‘cannot afford to miss.”
“This is our story.”
“We feel good–see solutions.”
:Kkusum should not tolerate so much”
“we admire her qualities.”
“Watch the next afternoon on the repeat”
“A Marathi girl adjusting in a high class Punjabi family–
admirable.”
“Kkusum’s mother-in-law– every girl’s dream.
“Wish we also lived in a joint family.”
“Kkusum,Tulsi, Prerna–support their families– admirable.”
These four positions are interdefined by
three relations–contrariety, contradiction and
complimentarity. The semiotic square is able to
organize a conceptual universe coherently, even
one that is not recognized as ‘rational.’ It allows
the anticipation both, of the ways in which
meaning may unfold, and of positions of
meaning that are logically present but not yet in
force. In this square, neither the words, nor the
signs are important. What matters are the
contextual values ascribed to them. What is
inserted into the square does not correspond to
dictionary meanings, but to accepted or
particular meanings.
Having established the narratives as
signifying processes, the behaviors and
relations of the audience seem to fall into broad
and fundamental categories pitting ‘disconnect’
against ‘connect’ in this manner Disconnect ———— vs ——— Connect
Key ———————— Relation of contrariety
Relation of contradiction
Relation of complementarity
Non-connect ——— vs ——- Non-disconnect
Relating the semiotic square to the
audience which constitutes the event, we
discover four essential ways in which the
participants experience these narratives–
Can relate
(Individualists)
To needs, Privacy and
Independence and self-reliance,
Away from the family
(Conformists) (Kkusum, Tulsi, Prerna loyalists)
Unambiguous
DISCONNECT
CONNECT
NON-CONNECT
NON-DISCONNECT
(ambiguous)–cannot
conclude whether an
act was right or wrong–
try to understand
the ‘other women.’
(Optimists) (Parvati, Ganga, Pummy loyalists)
13
TELEVISION NARRATIVES
Conclusion
study for McCann Erickson. Source: ‘Brand Equity,’ The
Economic Times, May 27-2 June, 1998.)
This paper has addressed the Narratives across
Balaji Telefilms as a ‘complete system.’ The
discourse of these narratives takes recourse in
invoking sentiments of ‘Indianness,’ ‘traditions,’
‘joint family,’ ‘Hindu culture’–all of which are
constructed in a discourse that only reiterates
an ideology of ‘who we are’ and ‘who we are
not.’ While these narratives claim to celebrate
and applaud the Indian women, they play on
existing stereo-types about women, their roles,
expectations of them in an effort to demonstrate an equivalence between the ‘author,’
Balaji Telefilms and the target audience–the
Indian middle-class.
The focus of this paper has been mainly
in elaborating a methodological approach to the
narratives which can, in a way forward, be
applied to signifying systems across communications of any kind–advertisements, films, print
media, cultures, just about anything that can be
used to create meaning, and connect human
beings in a network of signification.
Seema Khanwalkar is a practicing semiotician with
a doctorate in Linguistics from the Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi. She teaches semiotics and also uses
it as a research tool to understand how communications
work in the markets with a special focus on cultural inputs.
She works as a consultant to India's premier market
research agency ORGMARG. She teaches Semiotics at the
Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA)
and is also a member of the advisory board of the Semiotics
Research Centre at the institute. Currently also the Joint
National Coordinator for the ‘Same Language Subtitling'
project at the IIM Ahmedabad, her interests include literacy
and mass culture.
8 Source: Website, ‘Daily Dose Television” article on Ekta
Kapoor.
9 It was on SONY that this experiment first took place.
STAR TV followed suit.
10 The Analytical approach discussed here is based on the
Semiotic method developed and applied in Marketing
Communications by Floch, J.M. (2001).
11 See Kakar, S (the Inner World)
12 Based on recent deliberations and applications of the
‘generative model as developed by Greimas (1979). For a
detailed application, see Floch (2001).
13 These responses have been extracted from a consumer
research conducted by ORG-MARG. The author initiated
the semiotic analysis for this study.
14 This dynamic conceptualization of the production of
meaning is one of the major contributions made by A.J.
Greimas to the overall project of General Semiotics.
References
Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities: Reflections on
the origins and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.
Barthes, R. (1977). Rhetoric of the image. In Stephan Heath
(Ed. and Trans.), Image, music, text. New York: Hill and
Wang.
Durand, J. (1970). Rhetorique et image publicitaire.
Communications, 15, 70-95.
Dwyer, R. and Pinney, C. (2001). The history, politics and
consumption of public culture in India. Delhi: OUP.
Keenan, R. (1994). Narrative fiction contemporary poetics.
London: Routledge.
Kakar, S. (1983). The Inner world: A psycho-analytic study
of childhood and society in India. Delhi: OUP.
Floch, J. N. (2001). Semiotics, marketing and communication.
New York: Palgrave.
Mbembe, A. (1992). The banality of power and the aesthetics
of vulgarity in the postcolony. Public Culture, 4 (2), 1-30.
Page, D. & Crawley, W. (2001). Satellites over South Asia.
New Delhi: Sage.
Propp, V. (1968), Morphology of the folktale. University of
Texas Press, Austin & London.
Rajagopal, A. (2001). Politics after television. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press.
End notes
Saussure, F. (1966). A course in general linguistics.
transwade. New York: Baskin.
1 Anderson, B. (1991), The Imagined communities
Silverstone R., (1995). Television and everyday life. New
York: Routledge.
2 See Dwyer and Pinney (2001) for a detailed reading of
Public Culture in India.
3 Extracted from Silverstone (1995)
4 Based on Keenan’s (1994) Conceptualization of
Narratives.
5 Extracted from the Website of ‘THE HINDU,’ June 03,
2001.
6 From the Website ‘Daily Dose Television’ on Ekta Kapoor.
7 These roles have been defined on the basis of Kakar’s
conceptualization on the Indian woman (unpublished
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
14
The King James
Bible as a Sign System
in the Eighteenth Century
Brian Coates
Department of Languages and Cultural Studies
University of Limerick, Ireland
A study of the changing attitudes to the status of the 1611 (AV) translation of the Bible
during the eighteenth century will be elaborated through a semiotic analysis of
contemporary commentaries. It will be demonstrated that the Bible, from its initial status
as a text of public, morally-inspiring “use-value” is transformed during this period into
a text of “exchange-value,” an instance, within a newly-professionalized aesthetic
establishment, of the ‘sublime,’ ‘the primitive,’ ‘the poetic.’ It then takes a place it occupies
to this day of a central text in the secular canon of “English Literature,” then the
emerging gold standard of the nationalist aesthetic enterprise.
15
THE KING JAMES BIBLE AS A SIGN SYSTEM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Sacred books
play a peculiarly
ambivalent function in the sign system of a
culture. As texts they seem amenable to the
established protocols of textual analysis, studies
of grammar, syntax, imagery, stylistic markings
and so on have been conducted on most such
texts. Yet analysis of this nature seems somehow
to miss the main point which is concerned with
devotion, belief, the talismanic extra-textual
power of the “words on the page.”
In this study, one particular sacred text,
the King James version of The Bible has been
selected for consideration. It will be suggested
that a record of the history of readings of this
text in the eighteenth century will help
illuminate the creative bifurcation of reading
responses to such texts in general.
Milton scholars have made much of the
difficulties which Milton found in balancing the
claims of classical epic form with the Hebraic
truth of Scripture. This difficulty is inherited by
eighteenth century writers and provides a useful
starting point for considering the ambivalence
of responses to the King James version of the
Bible throughout the eighteenth century.
Milton’s deeply complex response to the
classics and to the King James Bible, made up
of an artistic allegiance to the classical heritage
and an absolute faith in the truth of Scripture,
inform a body of work that is influenced by both
an admiration for “sober, plain and unaffected”
writing, his account of the method of the Bible
in Of Reformation; and a working practice that
1
seeks “answerable style” (Paradise Lost ix.20)
in that great epic attempt to realize the Hebrew
narrative inspiration in the English language.
As David Norton has noted: “He may... have
thought of himself as writing under a new
inspiration from the same source that inspired
Moses in which case the inconsistency in his
2
ideas diminishes.”
This way of dealing with the possible
inconsistency bypasses the issue of the translated
text. And it is that slippage between the supposed
word of God and the word of God in English
that is considered here.
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
16
A series of polarized attitudes to the
qualities of the Biblical text, its authenticity as
a divinely inspired translation, and its standing
within the literary tradition, then firmly modelled
on ancient precedent, can be read in the essays,
commentaries and various critical responses of
the day. These responses lead on to larger issues:
binary oppositions mark out, for example,
questions of linguistic propriety, nationalism,
the cult of the primitive and the inception of a
highly-charged new poetic. Such oppositions as
Classical/Hebraic; Sacred/Secular; Original/
Translation; Primitive/Cultivated; Longinus/
Aristotle; Augustan/Romantic can be projected
onto these approaches to the King James text.
The Bible is a central cultural reference yet fails
to adhere to classical precedent. It stands on the
side of the Ancients in the Battle of the Books
yet it is not an original but a relatively recent
translation. It contains sacred and awful
wisdom yet this is couched in often extravagant
metaphor. It imitates the elemental word of God
in the form and language of the sublime.
Terms utilizing more recent modes of
analysis will be used here to suggest that these
binaries point to a fluid semiotic system The
King James Bible is both transcendental signifier
and a circulating, much translated agency of
divine, and later national and poetic meanings.
These terms include: Grammar/Rhetoric; Centre/
Circle; Inner/Outer; Truth/Fiction; Structure/
Play; Gold Standard/Currency. These deconstructive models indicate how the King James
Bible through its fictional truth and truthful
fictions maps out a logic of aporia - its status is
always ‘under erasure.’ The phrase ‘The Bible as
Literature’ indicates the uncertainty that still
hangs about the text today. Eighteenth century
attitudes to the King James Bible display a
number of contrasting strategies that are
designed to find a means whereby the apparent
strangeness with which it tells the foundational
narrative of the culture can be assimilated into
current modes of linguistic conduct. At one end
of the spectrum there are arguments for a new
translation; by the end of the century the claim
that the text, because of that dense figurative
structure that offends the neo-classical
temperament, is a work of art of a particular
kind has become the prevailing view. The
apparent quirks of vocabulary and syntactical
structure become identified as a specific literary
pattern, evidence of a textuality that is
eventually acclaimed as the model of a national
poetic. The intention here is to draw out the
ambiguities of response that are inherited from
Milton’s double reading of the text.
As noted, there was a continuing demand
for a ‘proper’ translation on the grounds, in
Richard Wynne’s words that, “an accurate and
elegant translation would therefore be of
infinite service to religion, would obviate a
thousand difficulties and exceptions, prevent a
multitude of chimerical tenets and controversial
questions, give a proper dignity and lustre to
divine revelation, and convince the world that
whatever appears confused, coarse or ridiculous
in the Holy Scriptures ought to be imputed to
3
the translator.” One hopes that he had in mind
a more full-bodied version than Edward
Harwood’s effort in his ‘A Liberal Translation of
the New Testament’ four years later:
“Survey with attention the lilies of the field, and
learn from them how unbecoming it is for rational
creatures to cherish a solicitous passion for gaiety
and dress - for they sustain no labour, they employ
no cares to adorn themselves, and yet are clothed
with such inimitable beauty as the richest monarch
4
in the richest dress never equalled.”
Solomon, a particular monarch has been
generalized into ‘the richest monarch;’ ‘spinning’
presumably a ‘low’ occupation, has been replaced
by ‘labor;’ the language of the Enlightenment
–‘survey,’ ‘employ,’ ‘rational,’ ‘sustain’ ‘richest’–
mathematics, money and work–marks a new
template in which to couch the claims of
religion, providing sentiments which appear to
run against the drift of the original. Alternative
strategies included various justifications or
rationalizations of the King James Bible as
5
‘venerable relic’ or mention of the ‘powerful yet
6
unaffected charms of the style’ and these are
indicative of a struggle to reclaim a language and
literature that appeared to be native and foreign
at the same time. The various categorizations of
it as ‘wild,’ ‘vulgar,’ ‘rude,’ ‘unpolished’ or
‘primitive’ represent an attitude that is shown in
a related context in this remark by Samuel
Johnson in his Preface to Shakespeare:
“The palaces of Peru or Mexico were certainly
mean and incommodious habitations, if compared
to the houses of European monarchs; yet who
could forbear to view them with astonishment,
who remembered that they were built without the
7
use of iron?
Or in Dryden’s somewhat backhanded
praise of the Elizabethan and Jacobean
dramatists in ‘To my Dear Friend, Mr. Congreve
on his Comedy called The Double Dealer’:
Strong were our Syres; and as they Fought they Writ,
Conqu’ring with force of Arms, and dint of Wit;
Theirs was the Gyant Race, before the Flood;
And thus, when Charles Return’d, our Empire stood.
Like Janus he the stubborn Soil manur’d,
8
With Rules of Husbandry the rankness cur’d. (3-8).
Strength and ‘rankness’ are linked
qualities. The image of Janus aptly summarizes
the conundrum that rule-breaking greatness
presented to the Augustan consciousness.
In the case of the King James Bible the
urge both to preserve and to cure are evident.
Some writers such as Anthony Purver (1763)
feel that a translation is justified because of the
crudity of the language and style. His claim that
‘swore’ and ‘begot’ sound too vulgar to be used
of God’ typifies this position; others such as
Charles Leslie (1711) suggest that ‘No writing in
the world comes near it, even with all the
9
disadvantages of our translation.’ Later both of
these positions give way to an admiration for
the authentic primitivism that is thought to be
captured in the translation.
Quasi-scientific attempts to analyse the
nature of Hebrew writing made up another
strand of response. Thus Steele, commenting on
the description of the horse in The Book of Job,
notes, “Images... as would have given the Great
Wits of Antiquity new laws for the Sublime...
the Sacred Poet makes all the Beauties to flow
from an inward Principle in the Creature he
10
describes.” Robert Lowth’s Lectures on the Sacred
Poetry of the Hebrews (1741-50) contextualizes
17
THE KING JAMES BIBLE AS A SIGN SYSTEM
the Bible in terms of Hebrew life and thought
and also analyses verse structure and
compositional technique. He justifies the use of
“low” terms, for example, bottles, dishes, knives
or barns, on the grounds that Hebrew poets
were surrounded with these commodities in
their early years - and that “the meanness of the
image is fully equalled by the plainness and
11
inelegance of the expression...”
“And I will wipe Jerusalem,
As a man wipeth a dish:
12
He wipeth it, and turneth it upside down.”
A second line of defence concerns the
aesthetic effect of “low” terms. Lowth claims
that “our understanding immediately rejects the
literal sense of those which seem quite
inconsistent with the Divine Being, and derived
from an ignoble source... there appears in the
image nothing to excite our admiration,
nothing particularly sublime:
“The Lord heard, and he was enraged;
And Israel he utterly rejected”
But when a little after, the same subject
is depicted in figurative terms, derived from
much grosser objects, and applied in a still more
daring manner, nothing can be more sublime:
“And the Lord awaked, as one out of sleep:
13
Like a strong man shouting because of wine”
Lowth’s discussion of parallelism in the
Psalms remains the most powerful theme in
these lectures for it marks the point where a
text-centred literary methodology is applied to
the King James Bible; he does not appeal to
classical authority, nor to the circumstances and
conditions of textual production nor to a wish
to understand more of the nature of divine
revelation. He is concerned with the nature of
the literary artefact; treating the Bible in this
way opens up the Longinian/Sublime/Romantic
model of analysis in the fullest way; the Bible
enters the field of literary circulation. Lowth
claims that parallelism (he distinguishes
synchronic, antithetic and synthetic kinds)
represents a model of poetry that is more easily
accommodated in the English language text
than in Greek or Latin. But it is critical that a
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
18
literal translation must be adopted in order, he
says, to preserve “the external lineaments, the
proper colour and habit, the movement, and, as
14
it were, the gait of the original.”
An irony here is that Lowth, lecturing in
Latin, has to paraphrase his parallelisms
because as Murray Roston points out, “he was
expected to provide tasteful translations into
15
Latin hexameters.”
The continuing interest in Longinus’
pivotal treatise ‘On the Sublime’ is also relevant.
The use of Genesis in that text instances the
sublime. For Longinus, this is “the ability to form
grand conceptions and “powerful and inspired
16
emotion.” He quotes: ‘God said’ - what? ‘Let
there be light, and there was light; let there be
17
land, and there was land.’ Longinus combines
Greek and Hebrew examples, a method of
working, which actually cuts across Lowth’s
attempt to spell out difference. The sublime acts
here, as it does in Kant’s Critique of Judgment
both as a concept that locks the aesthetic into a
private space that is yet the possession of all and as a public space that is beyond conceptualization and therefore not able to be verbalized. If
the sublime is a universal quality as evidenced
by its appearance in both Greek and Hebrew
texts then the arguments for a specific Hebraic
poetic are undermined. This radical positioning
of the King James text is intensified by the cult
of primitivism that the texts of Percy,
MacPherson and Chatterton exemplify. The King
James Bible becomes transmuted into its own
assumed pre-text of inspiration, passion, and
emotional force–to quote The Communist
Manifesto– all that is solid melts into air, all that
18
is holy is profaned.’ The paradox here is that
Lowth’s careful analytical work, designed to
display the literary qualities of the Bible,
becomes subsumed into the quest for ‘pure’
poetry, the incantatory and Bardic strain that the
mid-century culture learned to admire. Of Fingal,
Dr Johnson remarked, ‘A man might write such
stuff for ever, if he would abandon his mind to
19
it’ –a response that prefigures the very qualities
of the sublime that attract the burgeoning
Romantic movement. It is interesting to note, for
example that Lowth counted Christopher Smart
among his friendship group.
Blake’s Preface to Milton reads the Old
Testament as a book, the translated aspect of
which is of little importance: one solace is that
he reads the classics in the same way:
“The Stolen and Perverted writings of Homer and
Ovid, of Plato and Cicero, which all men ought to
contemn, are set up by artifice against the Sublime
of the Bible; but when the New Age is at leisure to
Pronounce, all will be set right, & those Grand Works
of the more ancient and consciously and professedly
20
Inspired Men will hold their proper rank.”
The Bible is now positioned within a
network of exchange. Moses and David are
more inspired than Homer, Ovid, Plato or
Cicero. Wordsworth in the Preface to Lyrical
Ballads does read closely and appropriates the
King James Bible as a model national English
poetic in contrast to that of neo-classical
authority. His example is the translation by Dr
Johnson of Proverbs:
‘By way of immediate example, take the
following of Dr Johnson:
“Turn on the prudent Ant thy heedless eyes,
Observe her labours, Sluggard, and be wise;
No stern command, no monitory voice,
Prescribes her duties, or directs her choice;
Yet timely provident, she hastes away
To snatch the blessings of a plenteous day;”
...From this hubbub of words pass to the
original,
“Go to the Ant thou Sluggard, consider her ways
and be wise; which having no guide, overseer, or
ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and
21
gathereth her food in the harvest.”
For Wordsworth there is no “want of a
proper translation” for the reason that the King
James Bible has now entered the canon of
English Literature, a canon he spends some time
in outlining in that same text; and it is a canon
that is explicitly established in opposition to the
values of that classical heritage that Milton, and
his successors had tried to link with the Hebraic
and Christian world. Attitudes to the translated
Bible provide one way of anchoring the complexities of that relationship. The philosophic
discourses of the Enlightenment–for example,
Kant’s tripartite organization of knowledge and
experience into Aesthetics, Epistemology and
Ethics–besides the debates on Being and
Meaning, Existence and Essence or Genesis and
Structure can all be located within the deep
structure of the Bible debate.
Stephen Greenblatt’s conception of “the
circulation of social energy” in his discussion of
Renaissance drama provides one way of
elaborating these complexities. The shifting
fortunes of the King James translation, its usevalue as an authorized version of Creation, Fall
and Redemption and its later exchange-value as
one instance (like Homer) of the sublime or as
one particular, richly-inspired manifesto of
Romantic poetry show the potential usage of
Greenblatt’s term. He defines the circulation of
social energy as “a subtle, elusive set of
exchanges, a network of trades and trade-offs, a
jostling of competing representations, a nego22
tiation between joint-stock companies.”
Circulation, exchange, trade can be linked
to the kind of investment that the translated
Bible attracted from its readership. Rejection,
assimilation, accommodation and radical appropriation, strategies all present to a varying
degree from Milton onward (and lasting on into
our own day) suggest that this central text
figures as a site of difference, a place where
‘competing representations’ can be articulated.
The text is always familiar and always foreign.
The commodification of the King James Bible
turns it, in Marx’s analysis, into “a symbol, since
in so far as it is a value, it is only the material
23
envelope of the human labor spent upon it.”
The Bible is both truth and a translation
of the truth. It is constative–telling revealed
truth–and performative–generating truth from
its own linguistic structure. In De Man’s terms,
it is a work of grammar, codifying our knowledge of the history of the race and of God’s
intentions towards His chosen people–and
rhetorical, unassessable by outside reference. In
Jakobson’s terms, it is ‘set’ to message and ‘set’
to reference. It is at the centre of the Christian
19
THE KING JAMES BIBLE AS A SIGN SYSTEM
universe and therefore untouched by the
dynamics of that universe. It is also the story of
the historical unfolding of that universe but
stilled - at the centre - not in the structural plot.
It is the informing principle of that universe,
like the unmoved mover but outside it (as well
as at the centre)–above and beyond the universe
it testifies to. It is a fixed standard of meaning
(like the classics) yet constantly exchangeable for different linguistic garb, as a measure of fine
writing and as that writing itself. Readable as
truth, as metaphor, that is, rhetoric, as a poetry
of a foreign model - which could be understood
by analysis–for example, the use of parallelism
could be learned; instancing the sublime
(Longinus), as poetry in the English language,
the nature of which revealed the authentic voice
of the race according to Wordsworth’s Preface.
Literary Criticism, Vol IX. He is currently writing on Terry
Eagleton’s creative work for a collection of essays to be
published by Blackwell.
One reading of this undecidability stems
from Derrida’s exposition of Walter Benjamin’s
‘The Task of the Translator’:
9 Quoted by Norton p.193.
“As Walter Benjamin says, the model of all
translation is the sacred text. A sacred text is
untranslatable, says Benjamin, precisely because
the meaning and the letter cannot be dissociated.
The flow of meaning and the flow of literality
cannot be dissociated thus the sacred text is
untranslatable. The only thing one can do when
translating a sacred text is to read between the
lines, between its lines. Benjamin says this reading
or this intralinear version of the sacred text is the
24
ideal of all translation: pure translatability.”
The King James Bible, then, by attracting
such a weight of diverse criticism, comment and
praise, can be read as an index of changing
cultural and economic terms. The traffic
between sacred and secular, scholarly and
popular, naïve and cultivated modes of feeling
and understanding during the long eighteenth
century is shown in the varied and creative
attitudes that writers of the time employ in their
reading of the text. It stands for ‘pure
translatability;’ ’untranslatable.’
Dr Brian Coates is a Lecturer in English and Cultural
Studies at the University of Limerick, Ireland. Research
interests include Literary and Cultural Theory, Postmodernism
and Media Studies. His most recent publication is a chapter
on ‘Anthropological Criticism in The Cambridge History of
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
20
References
1 John Milton, Paradise Lost. ed. A. Fowler, 2nd edition
1998, p. 468. Addision Wesley.
2 quoted in David Norton, A History of the English Bible as
Literature. Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 182.
3 Richard Wynne, The New Testament (1764) quoted in
Norton p. 240 .
4 Edward Harwood, A liberal Translation of the New
Testament (1768) quoted in Norton p. 239.
5 Critical Review (1787), p. 46 quoted in Norton p. 241.
6 Vicesimus Knox Essays Moral and Literary (1778) quoted
in Norton p. 244.
7 Samuel Johnson, Selected Writings. ed. Patrick Cruttwell
Penguin. 1968 pp. 278-9.
8 ‘To my Dear Friend Mr. Congreve, On His Comedy call’d
The Double Dealer’ in Poetry of the Augustan Age (Ed.)
Angus Ross. Longman 1970, p.5
10 The Guardian ed. J. Calhoun Stevens. University of
Kentucky 1982 (No. 86, June 19, 1713), p.313.
11 R. Lowth, Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews.
Volume I. Routledge/Thoemmes Press 1995. Lecture 7,
154-155.
12 Lowth Lecture 7, p.155.
13 Lowth, Lecture 16, pp.362-363.
14 Lowth, Lecture 3, pp. 72-73.
15 M. Roston, Prophet and Poet. Faber 1965, p.134.
16 Longinus On The Sublime in Classical Literary Criticism
tr. T. S. Dorsch. Penguin 1965, p.108.
17 Longinus p.111.
18 K. Marx and F. Engels, ‘Manifesto of the Communist
Party’ Collected Works, Vol 6. Lawrence and Wishart
1976, p. 487.
19 Conversation with Reynolds quoted in W. Jackson Bate,
Samuel Johnson. Chatto and Windus 1978, p. 520.
20 W. Blake, ‘Preface to Milton,’ Poetry and Prose of
William Blake ed. G. Keynes. Nonesuch 1961, p. 375.
21 W. Wordsworth, ‘Preface to Second Edition of Lyrical
Ballads’ Poetical Works ed. T. Hutchinson. Oxford
University Press 1969, p. 742.
22 S. Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations. University of
California Press 1988, p.7.
23 K. Marx, Selected Writings in Sociology and Social
Philosophy: Capital I (1867). Ed T. B. Bottomore and M.
Rubel. Penguin p. 184.
24 J. Derrida, The Ear of the Other: Otobiography,
Transference, Translation ed. Christie MacDonald. Bison
Press 1985, p. 1003.
The citations in the article do not conform to the APA style
- Editor.
Focusing on the Forest,
Not Just the Tree: Cultural
Strategies for Combating AIDS
Arvind Singhal
Presidential Research Scholar and Professor
School of Interpersonal Communication
Ohio University, USA
Most behavior change communication interventions for HIV prevention, care, and
support have focused on individuals as the locus of change. Metaphorically-speaking,
interventions have focused more on the tree, and not enough on the forest of which the
tree is a part. The present article argues for the importance of focusing on the forest in
designing and implementing culturally-sensitive communication interventions. Culturebased approaches to HIV/AIDS communication interventions must (1) view culture as an
ally, (2) reconstruct cultural rites, (3) employ culturally-resonant narratives, and (4) create
a culturally-based pedagogy of HIV prevention.
21
THE KING JAMES BIBLE AS A SIGN SYSTEM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
By early 2003, some 65 million people
worldwide had been infected with HIV, of which
25 million had died of AIDS. Of the 40 million
people who are living with HIV, 28 million are
in sub-Saharan Africa, and some 4 million are
in India (Singhal & Rogers, 2003). In Zimbabwe,
a country in Sub-Saharan Africa, 45 percent of
children under the age of five are HIV-positive,
and the epidemic has shortened life expectancy
by 22 years. Two out of three Zimbabweans,
between the ages 15 to 39 years, are HIV-positive.
A 15-year-old in Botswana or South Africa, has a
one in two chance of dying with AIDS. AIDS
deaths are so widespread in South Africa that
small children now play a new game called
“Funerals” (Singhal & Howard, in press).
However, in the next decade, the epicenter of
HIV/AIDS is moving from countries of SubSaharan Africa, to India, China, and Russia. By
2010, India is projected to have from 15 to 20
million HIV-positive cases.
To date, most behavior change communication interventions for HIV prevention, care,
and support have focused on individuals as the
locus of change. Metaphorically-speaking, HIV/
AIDS interventions have focused more on the tree,
and not enough on the cultural forest of which
the tree is a part. What lessons should countries
like India, sitting on the cusp of HIV/AIDS
explosion, glean from these past experiences?
How can they more strategically employ
culturally-sensitive communication strategies
for HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and support?
The present article argues for the
importance of incorporating locally-situated
knowledge, including its constituent cultural
elements, to design, develop, and implement
effective HIV/AIDS interventions. The limitations
of individual-directed behavior change communication strategies are discussed, and an argument
is put forth for considering cultural strategies in
designing and implementing campaigns for
HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and support. These
strategies include:
Viewing culture as an ally,
Reconstructing cultural rites,
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
22
Employing culturally-resonant narratives, and
Creating a culturally-based pedagogy of HIV
prevention.
Behavior Change Communication:
Focusing on the Tree
Behavior change models for HIV/AIDS
communication programming—such as the
diffusion of innovations (Rogers, 1995), the
theory of reasoned action (Fishbein & Ajzen,
1975), and hierarchy-of-effects (McGuire, 1981)
—begin with ascertaining the knowledge,
attitudes, behavioral intentions, and behavioral
practice of individuals regarding HIV prevention, care, and support (Singhal & Rogers, 2003).
Gaps in knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors
among a target audience are identified, and
communication interventions are then targeted
to address these deficiencies at the individual
level. However, results of behavior change
communication strategies for HIV prevention
that have targeted individuals have been mixed
at best, and generally dismal (Airhihenbuwa,
1999; Melkote, Muppidi, & Goswami, 2000).
Why? Behavior change communication
strategies, by focusing solely on individuallevel changes subscribe implicitly to at least
four mistaken assumptions.
Behavior change communication strategies
assume that all individuals are capable of
controlling their context. However, whether
or not an individual can get an HIV test, use
condoms, be monogamous, and/or use clean
needles are all affected by cultural, economic,
social, and political factors over which the
individual may exercise little control.
Behavior change communication strategies
assume that all persons are on an “even
playing field.” However, women and those of
lower socio-economic status are more
vulnerable to HIV/AIDS.
Behavior change communication strategies
assume that all individuals make decisions on
their own free will. However, whether a
woman is protected from HIV is often
determined by her male partner.
Behavior change strategies assume that all
individuals make preventive health decisions
rationally. Why would one logically put one’s
life in danger by engaging in unsafe
behaviors? A Kenyan youth who the present
author met in Nairobi in June, 2001 quoted a
popular Kiswahili saying to justify this nonrational action: Aliyetota hajui kutota, which
means “The one who is wet does not mind
getting wetter.”
Behavior change communication strategies
are guilty of socially constructing HIV/AIDS as
a life-threatening disease to be feared, resulting
from promiscuous and deviant behaviors of the
“others,” the high-risk groups (Paiva, 1995).
Hence, past communication approaches have
mostly been anti-sex, anti-pleasure, and fearinducing. While “sexuality” involves pleasure,
behavior change communication strategies have
rarely viewed sex as play, as adventure, as fun,
as fantasy, as giving, as sharing, as spirituality,
and as ritual (Bolton, 1995). Behavior change
theorists, in their models and frameworks, failed
to see how the social construction of “love”—
which requires risk-taking, trusting, and giving
—contributes to unsafe sex.
Because of their focus on individual-level
changes concerns, most HIV/AIDS intervention
programs rarely take into account how sexuality
is socially and culturally constructed in a
society. Hence, HIV/AIDS intervention programs
are flying blind and culturally rudderless. Here
anthropologist Richard Parker’s work on the
social and cultural construction of sexual acts in
Brazil is illustrative (Parker, 1991; Daniel &
Parker, 1993). Parker argued that the “erotic
experience” is often situated in acts of “sexual
transgression,” that is, the deliberate undermining
in private of public norms. Common Brazilian
expressions such as Entre quarto paredes, tudo
pode acontecer (Within four walls, everything
can happen) or Por de baixo do pano, tudo pode
acontecer (“Beneath the sheets, everything can
happen”) signify how the erotic experience lies
in the freedom of such hidden moments (Daniel
& Parker, 1993). This social and cultural
construction of eroticism may explain why a
happily married man, with a steady home life
and children, visits commercial sex workers.
Within four walls, a CSW may perform a range
of sexual acts that a “proper” wife would shun.
Parker’s (1991) work in deconstructing
“sexuality” provides social and cultural explanations for why the act of anal sex is perceived as
relatively more routine in Brazil than in most
Asian or African country contexts. Parker
explains that anal sex is widely practiced in
Brazil both between men-men and men-women,
and that such sexual scripts are learned early. In
the game of troca-troca (exchange-exchange),
adolescent boys take turns inserting their penises
in each other’s anus (Daniel & Parker, 1993).
Sexual encounters between adolescent boys and
girls also routinely involve anal intercourse to
avoid pregnancy and the rupturing of the girl’s
hymen, still viewed as an important sign of a
young women’s sexual “purity.”
Behavior change communication interventions for HIV/AIDS rarely take into account
such contextually-bound cultural and social
constructions of sexuality. Hence, dissatisfaction with their relative ineffectiveness is
growing. Many communication scholars believe
that it is time to move away from individuallevel theories of preventive health behaviors to
more multi-level, cultural, and contextual
interventions (McKinlay & Marceau, 1999;
2000; Salmon & Kroger, 1992). Metaphoricallyspeaking, new voices urge communication
programers to go beyond analyzing and
influencing the bobbing of individual corks on
surface waters, and to focus on redirecting the
stronger undercurrents that determine where
the cork clusters end up along the shoreline
(McMichael, 1995).
At a 2000 UNAIDS meeting in Geneva (in
which the present author was a participant), a
representative from Kenya talked about how
young school girls in Kenya rendered sexual
favors to urban middle-class and affluent men
(commonly known as “Sugar Daddies”) in
exchange for the 3Cs: Cash, cell phones, and
cars (driving in expensive cars like MercedésBenz and BMWs). Sugar Daddies initiate the
seduction process by asking young girls: “Let
23
FOCUSING ON THE FOREST
me buy you chicken and chips” or “Let me give
you a lift in my car.” Such exchange puts these
schoolgirls at risk for contracting HIV. In fact,
rates of HIV infection among young girls in
Kenya are five times higher than for young
boys, with exploitation by Sugar Daddies
contributing to this difference (Singhal &
Rogers, 2003). Ethnographic research with
school girls in Kenya showed that they were
well aware of the high risks they faced in
contracting HIV, but were willing to take their
chances. Why say no to such glamorous
adventures, when the alternative was to
struggle through school and college, find a job,
and, once married, to attend to domestic chores
and reproductive roles?
In Kenya as elsewhere, strong cultural
undercurrents about masculine sexuality;
beliefs in virility associated with bedding young
girls (which symbolize “trophies”); and power
and prestige associated with such symbols of
modernity as cash, cell phones, and cars
complicate the design of HIV interventions
directed at young girls and Sugar Daddies.
Individual-directed messages such as “Stay
away from Sugar Daddies” or “Stay away from
school girls” will certainly be ineffective.
Cultural Strategies: Focusing on the Forest
A cultural approach to shaping HIV/AIDS
interventions represents a move away from just
focusing on individuals as the main target of
preventive interventions. This approach signifies
that the forest is more important than the
individual tree. Understanding the cultural
context allows one to appreciate the ways that
individual trees are shaped and discern the order
that exists between these trees, including the
roles, connections, and relationships that exist
among them (Airhihenbuwa, 1999). Understanding the forest reveals why certain trees
tower over others, which trees nurture others,
and other nuances.
How can the principle of “understanding
the forest” be operationalized by HIV/AIDS
communication interventions? Communication
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
24
interventions must strive to
view culture as an ally,
reconstruct cultural rites,
employ culturally-resonant narratives, and
create a culturally-based pedagogy of HIV
prevention.
View Culture as an Ally
Communication strategists often viewed
culture as static, and mistakenly looked upon
people’s health beliefs as cultural barriers. This
is a predominantly negative view. Culture has
often been singled out as the explanation for
the failure of HIV interventions (Brummelhuis &
Herdt, 1995; Parker, 1991; Moses et al., 1990).
Culture can also be viewed for its strengths, and
attributes of a culture that are helpful for
HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and support
programs should be identified and harnessed
(Airhihenbuwa, 1995).
Several socio-cultural and spiritual
dimensions of Senegalese society strengthened
the nation’s effective response to HIV/AIDS: For
instance, the cultural norms with respect to the
universality of marriage; the rapid remarriage
of widow(er)s and divorced persons; moral
condemnation of all forms of sexual cohabitation
not sanctioned by religious beliefs; and extended
social networks of parents, cousins, relatives,
neighbors, and others that serve to control
irresponsible sexuality (Lom, 2001). The fear of
dishonoring one’s family and the subsequent
“What will they say?” syndrome exercises a
strong check on individual behavior (Diop,
2000; UNAIDS, 1999). So cultural beliefs assist
HIV prevention in Senegal.
Similarly, the cultural attributes of the
Nguni people in Southern Africa reveal points
of entry for implementing HIV/AIDS behavior
change communication. For instance, among
the Nguni, responsibility for providing sexuality
education to the young is usually delegated to
an aunt or an uncle, at the onset of a youth’s
puberty. Cultural emphasis is placed on sexual
abstinence. A strong taboo exists against
bringing one’s family name to disrepute.
Members of an extended family take turns in
caring for the sick, to avoid burdening one
person. No orphans exist, as extended family
members take care of children without parents.
The practice of ukusoma (a Zulu term for nonpenetrative sex) is commonly practiced by the
Nguni, both to preserve virginity and to prevent
pregnancy. The woman keeps her thighs closely
together, while the man finds sexual release.
Other groups use a bent elbow for a similar
purpose. Similar non-penetrative sex practices
exist among certain groups in Ethiopia
(commonly referred to as “brushing”), the Kikuyu
in Kenya, and other groups.
In a similar vein, smoking cessation
programs among Latinos identified the cultural
strength of the value of familismo (family ties),
a positive Latino cultural norm, and harnessed it
to reduce smoking (Airhihenbuwa, 1995; 1999;
Diaz, 1997). Similarly, close family ties are an
important strength of Indian society, where the
definition of the family includes neighbors and
colleagues (referred to as “family friends”). This
strong family bond should be harnessed by HIV
prevention interventions, and by care and
support initiatives (Mane & Maitra, 1992).
Reconstruct Cultural Rites
As noted previously, existing cultural
practices may often seem harmful to HIV/AIDS
prevention, care, and support. Under such
circumstances, the metaphorical coupling of
culture and harm needs to be exposed, deconstructed, and reconstructed so that new, positive,
cultural linkages can be forged (Airhihenbuwa
& Obregon, 2000)—as the following examples
illustrate.
Nyanza Province in Western Kenya, the
Luo ethnic heartland bordering Lake Victoria,
has one of the highest rates of HIV prevalence
in the world (over 40 percent of the adults are
HIV-positive). HIV entered the Nyanza area in
the mid-1980s and spread rapidly. Like many
other East African cultures, the Luo practice
widow inheritance (also called “home
guardianship”). When a husband dies, one of his
brothers or cousins marries the widow. This
tradition guarantees that the children remain in
the late husband’s family, and that the widow
and her children are provided for. Sexual
intercourse with the late husband’s relative
sealed the bond between the widow and her
new family (Blair et al., 1997). However, this
cultural practice led to the rapid transmission of
HIV among the Luo.
Anthropological research in Nyanza
showed that the widow-cleansing practice
continues as the Luo strongly wish to avoid
chira, a curse that befalls a person who does not
perform traditional rites. However, discussions
with community elders suggested possibilities
for replacing the rite of “intercourse” with
alternative rites, such as the male relative
placing his leg on the widow’s thigh, or hanging
his coat in her home (Blair et al., 1997). Elders
noted that such alternative rites were quite
acceptable, as the Luo practiced them decades
ago. The Nyanza area and the Luo culture
deserve further study to derive lessons about the
role of culture in HIV prevention that might
apply locally, and in other areas.
Cultural insights from Nyanza Province
suggest that HIV/AIDS program managers
should go beyond the identification of harmful
cultural practices (such as “wife-cleansing”), in
order to create and implement culturallyacceptable alternative rites. PATH (Program for
Alternative Technology in Health) in Nairobi
created an alternative ceremony for young girls
in Kenya, called “Circumcision with Words.” To
date, some 6,000 girls have participated in these
ceremonies, thus avoiding the risk of HIV
infection during circumcision ceremonies.
Employ Culturally-Resonant Narratives
As noted previously, communication
interventions about HIV/AIDS prevention, care,
and support overvalue scientific and rational
appeals to motivate audience members. Most
HIV/AIDS communication campaigns in Latin
America, Africa, and Asia undervalued traditional
oral communication channels and the strength
25
FOCUSING ON THE FOREST
of aural comprehension. In these cultures, the
oral tradition is rich in visual imagery, and is the
basis on which learning are founded
(Airhihenbuwa, 1999). Proverbs, adages, riddles,
folklore, and storytelling are thus important
communication messages (Singhal & Rogers,
1999). The narrative tradition offers the
potential of cultural expression, particularly
words of advice and encourage-ment, that are
often couched in adage, allegory, and metaphor
(Airhihenbuwa, 1999).
HIV/AIDS programs fare better if
scientific explanations of HIV/AIDS are
couched in local contexts of understanding
(Harris, 1991). Such context-based explanations
are called “syncretic explanations” (Barnett &
Blaikie, 1992). HIV/AIDS interventions in Africa
should couch prevention messages to fit with
prevailing local magico-religious myths. A
diarrhoea prevention campaign in northern
Nigeria illustrates the importance of providing
syncretic explanations. When missionaries in
Nigeria were alarmed about the number of
infant deaths due to diarrhoea, they tried to teach
mothers about water-boiling. The mothers were
told that their children died because of little
animals in the water, and that these animals
could be killed by boiling the water. Talk of
invisible animals in water was met with skepticism. Babies kept on dying. Finally, a visiting
anthropologist suggested a solution. There were,
he said, “evil spirits in the water; boil the water
and you could see them going away, bubbling
out to escape the heat” (Okri, 1991, p. 134-135).
This message had the desired effect, and infant
mortality due to diarrhoea dropped sharply.
Create a Culturally-Based Pedagogy of HIV
Prevention
In Brazil, several HIV/AIDS prevention
programs are inspired by the participatory
approaches of the late Brazilian educator, Paulo
Freire (1970), who argued that most political,
educational, and communication interventions
fail because they are designed by technocrats
based on their personal views of reality (Melkote
& Steeves, 2001). They seldom take into account
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
26
the perspectives of those to whom these
programs are directed. Freire’s dialogic pedagogy
emphasized the role of “teacher as learner” and
the “learner as teacher,” with each learning from
the other in a mutually transformative process.
The role of the outside facilitator is viewed as
working with, and not for, the oppressed to
organize them in their incessant struggle to
regain their humanity (Singhal, in press). True
participation, according to Freire, does not
involve a subject-object relationship. There is
only a subject-subject relationship.
In 1990, Vera Paiva, a psychologist at the
University of São Paulo and an expert in
HIV/AIDS and gender issues, used Paulo Freire’s
participatory approach to involve students and
teachers in the low-income schools of São Paulo
City in HIV/AIDS prevention. Based on a deep
understanding of the socio-cultural dimension
of risk, the goal of the intervention was to
create a generation of “sexual subjects,” who
could regulate their sexual life, as opposed to
being objects of desire and the sexual scripts of
others (Paiva, 2000). A sexual subject is one
who engages consciously in a negotiated sexual
relationship based on cultural norms for gender
relations; who was capable of articulating and
practicing safe sexual practices with pleasure, in
a consensual way; and who is capable of saying
“no” to sex.
In collaboration with students, teachers,
and community members, Paiva developed a
culturally-based pedagogy of HIV prevention,
which sought to stimulate collective action and
response from those directly affected by HIV,
and living in a vulnerable context. Face-to-face
group interaction with girls and boys pointed to
the importance of understanding the role of
sexual subjects in various “sexual scenes,”
composed of the gender-power relationship
between participants, their degree of affective
involvement, the nature of the moment, the
place, sexual norms in the culture, racial and
class mores, and others (Paiva, 1995). Words
such as AIDS, camisinha (little shirts or
‘condoms’), and others were decoded, and
participants proposed new words and codes for
naming the body and gender rules, thus
generating new realities.
Paiva employed a variety of creative
techniques to help participants formulate a
culturally-based pedagogy of HIV prevention:
Group discussions, role-playing, psychodrama,
team work, home work, molding flour and salt
paste to shape reproductive body parts and
genitals, games to make condoms erotic, and art
with condoms (to be comfortable in touching them
with one’s bare hands). To break inhibitions during
role-plays, a “pillow” was placed in the middle
of the room, symbolizing a sexual “subject.” For
example, the pillow could represent an “in-thecloset” gay or a lesbian; a virgin schoolgirl; or
a bisexual schoolboy. Participants could adopt
the pillow to have internal discussions with the
subject, experience themselves in the place of
the other, or understand their own fantasy. The
pillow provided a vehicle to speak out through
an imaginary character, while preserving their
privacy (Paiva, 1995).
Group processes showed that sexual
inhibitions could be broken in the context of
sacanagem (sexual mischief), accompanied by
“exaggerated” sexual talk and eroticization of
the context (Paiva, 1995). Condoms became
easily discussable when both the boy and the
girl were ready to “loosen the hinges of the
bed,” or “turnover the car,” while engaging in
sex. The pedagogy of prevention was based on
an “eroticization” of prevention.
Conclusions
Vera Paiva’s work in Brazil, and dissatisfaction
with biomedical, individual-oriented behavioral
change approac-hes, point to the importance of
thinking boldly, radically, and culturally about
HIV prevention, care, and support. Needed are
more culturally-based approaches, as opposed
to individual-centered rational approaches.
Needed are more community-based, dialogic
approaches, as opposed to individual-based
“banking” approaches.
Our analysis suggests that culture can
serve a positive or a negative factor in HIV
prevention, care, and support. Program managers
must identify cultural attributes that represent
an ally for HIV/AIDS initiatives, and harness
them. For cultural practices that may seem like
a barrier, the metaphorical coupling of culture
and barriers needs to be exposed, deconstructed,
and reconstructed in the form of alternative
cultural rites (such as, the alternative rites for
female circumcision or wife-cleansing in
Africa). More culturally resonant narratives,
couched in local contexts of understanding,
must be employed. Finally, a culturally-based
pedagogy of HIV prevention must be forged to
create “subjects” who can regulate their life, as
opposed to being objects of desire for others.
While considering culturally-based
communication strategies for HIV prevention,
care, and support, communication planners must
be mindful about the dangers in manipulating or
subverting culture (Airhihenbuwa, 1995; Melkote
& Steeves, 2001). What if constructing or deconstructing culture leads to destroying culture? In
focusing on the forest, one must be mindful to
not subvert the underlying ecology of the forest.
Dr. Arvind Singhal is Presidential Research Scholar
and Professor in the School of Interpersonal Communication, College of Communication, Ohio University. He is
author of Combating AIDS: Communication Strategies in
Action (Sage, 2003); India’s Communication Revolution:
From Bullock Carts to Cyber Marts (Sage, 2001), and
Entertainment-Education: A Communication Strategy for
Social Change (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999).
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End notes
1 The present article draws upon Singhal and Rogers (2003).
Development
Communication:
The Unfolding of Harmony
Gaston Roberge
Professor
St. Xaviers College, India
The paper discusses the development communication discourse which, ever since the end
of World War II, has named certain nations developed and others underdeveloped. In the
discourse as well as in practice, communication was co-opted as an instrument for
development.
These notions have evolved. But even today the idea that you can make people change
their behavior to emulate Western developed countries still lingers in the mind of
"development" agents.
The paper advocates an approach in which true dialogue is itself part of the development
process. In this view true dialogue is at once dialectical and dialogical giving their place
to both mind and heart.
29
THE KING JAMES BIBLE AS A SIGN SYSTEM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
“To promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India, transcending
religions, linguistic, regional or social diversities;
The Discourse on Development
Communication
To promote and preserve the rich heritage of our
composite cultures, including forests, lakes, rivers
and wild life;
Dr. Silvio Waisbord has written a concise
and clear Report on “development communi4
cation.” His document is an excellent summary of
the evolution of the “development communication discourse” and its present inherent
contradictions. The Report discusses the main
ideas of development communication, with their
presuppositions, and the practices derived from
these ideas, along with the alternatives, mostly
oppositional, ideas and practices that have
developed in time. The Report refers to nearly
125 books and articles, about 100 of which were
published in the 1990s, and thus it gives an upto-date idea of the development discourse.
And to have compassion for all living creatures.”
Indian Constitution 51. V. VI. VII
Naming the Underdeveloped
Since the time
after World War II
numerous statements have been made about
“development.” Along with these statements,
various projects and reports were formulated.
Together these constitute the “development
discourse.” Very soon communication was coopted in the development discourse as well as in
the development activity. That, in turn, found
expression in a still more complex discourse,
the “development communication discourse.”
Here discourse does not mean a long
speech. The concept of discourse has evolved
1
out of post-structuralism and semiotics. A
discourse is a consistent (if not always coherent)
set of utterances–verbal or iconographic–on a
subject by a particular group of people. For
instance, the patriarchal discourse on women is
the set of thoughts propounded in words or in
images by persons belonging to the patriarchal
group. A discourse serves the interests of the
group that utters it. A discourse is uncritical and
takes many things for granted. Such is also the
“development communication discourse.”
“Discourse is the social process of
2
making and circulating sense(s).” Discourse is
both a verb and a noun. As a verb, discourse is
a performative act. Discourse names things and
to an extent creates them. For instance, the socalled developed countries utter the development discourse and in doing so they create
underdevelopment by naming certain socioeconomic situations. For instance, “discourses on
globalization function to name, and thus help
bring into being, what they are supposedly
designating or describing..” Hopefully, “the power3
less will ...invariably find ways of renaming.”
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
30
Over the past few decades, the words
“communication,” “development,” and “development
communication” have been used to mean
several things–at times at odds among themselves. For instance,
for some, development is simply a matter of imitating
the achievements of the so-called developed
countries; whereas for others, development is the
unfolding of harmony among people living in
justice, in conversation and in respect of their
physical environment;
for some, communication is mainly a transfer of
messages, while for others it is mainly a matter of
achieving communion through conversation;
for some, development communication is mainly a
transfer of information or knowledge leading to
desired changes in behavior; in that view
communication is merely instrumental, whereas
for others, development communication is itself a
part of the development process.
Based on these premises, the dominant
paradigm is characterized by a mechanistic, behaviorist, scientific (?) approach placing emphasis
on a predictable and controllable cause-effect
relation. That trunk of the family tree has
branched out into two main practices, social
marketing and entertainment education. The
oppositional paradigm, or second trunk of the
tree, criticized the dominant approach on grounds
that, among other things, it creates dependency
on the “recipients” or “target” groups, and, in turn,
the oppositional paradigm adopted different
methods or techniques: participatory approaches,
media advocacy and social mobilization.
In the concluding part of his Report,
Waisbord asks pertinently: “Can the two broad
approaches that dominated the field of development communication, namely, diffusion and
participatory models, converge around certain
principles and strategies?” There can be observed
some rapprochement between different groups.
But Waisbord has perhaps not discussed the fact
that the dominating paradigm, namely diffusion
of modernization through change in behavior,
5
represents what Paul Lazarsfeld had already
called the “administrative” point of view. On the
other hand, the other trunk of the development
communication tree is oppositional not just on
theoretical ground but in this that it mostly
opposes the administrative point of view. There
little chance of a convergence of the two models,
and such convergence may not be desirable.
Perhaps one might conclude, provisionally, that
each situation calls for a particular approach,
the ultimate aim remaining the fulfilling of each
person’s human vocation in a social environment
supportive of such a fulfillment.
The Failures of Development
Communication
It should be obvious that the decades of
“development communication” have not been
satisfactory. That is not to deny that they led to
some positive results. Still less does one question
the intentions of the promoters of development
and of its attendant communication. But we must
courageously face the fact: more and more fellow
men, women, youths and children are suffering
from essential wants. And there is no reason to
believe that their needs will be met in the foreseeable future. Development and development
communication failed.
For instance, since slavery is illegal, there
is a belief that there are no slaves today. Yet,
6
according to Naomi Klein, “Twenty-seven million
people worldwide are now living and working in
brackets, and these brackets, instead of being slowly
removed, just keep getting wider.” These brackets
are the “free trade zones” or “export processing
zones.” Nor is work in “sweatshops” the only form
of slavery. The magazine Scientific American
recently published a study, “The Social Psycho7
logy of Modern Slavery,” which discusses several
contemporary forms of slavery in several countries, including India.
It is also clear that in spite of attempts at
adopting a dialogical approach and at enlisting the
participation of the poor in development activities, development, as an international project, has
been defined, initiated and implemented by the
so-called developed countries. The countries
deemed “underdeveloped” have been the “targets”
of development campaigns. They were at the
receiving end.
The notion of development has evolved
radically in the second half of the 20th century.
But it has remained foreign to those deemed in
need of development. The promoters of development soon felt that there was a communication
problem. But that problem was not what they
thought it was. They felt that the “message” was
not reaching out to the people they considered
in need of “development.” There was, indeed, a
communication problem. But it was not one of
message. It was one of language: developed and
underdeveloped did not speak the same
language, did not talk about the same “reality,”
and did not express themselves “freely.”
Development was defined in terms of the
standards achieved by the developed. The
indicators of development were defined in terms
of the developed. A striking example of this is the
set of indicators propounded by media scholars,
in fact by the UNESCO, regarding the media
requirements of a country. Because developed
countries had a certain number of newspapers,
telephones, radio and television sets for a definite
number of inhabitants, it was assumed that a
country that did not have, for example, 10
newspaper copies per 100 inhabitants was
underdeveloped and needed to develop with
regard to the media. Figures were quoted also for
radios, telephones, and television sets.
31
DEVELOPMENT COMMUNICATION
Yet, people failed to see that India -and
no doubt other underdeveloped countries- had
an extraordinary communication system that
permitted India to know what had to be known
almost instantaneously. Example: the assassination of Mrs. Indira Gandhi. Even before the
bureaucrats decided to release the news on the
Government (sole at the time) television network
the news had spread all over the country.
Another example: In the mid-nineteen
seventies, there was a severe drought in some
part of India. People took to eating a wild
variety of dal. But unless it was boiled, that dal
was toxic. Since the area fell within the reach of
the satellite used for its Satellite Instructional
Television Experiment (SITE), the Government
of India requested filmmaker Shyam Benegal to
produce a television program explaining to the
people how to prepare the wild dal. The
program would be telecast through the facilities
of SITE. Benegal went to the area and convened
a meeting of local communicators: storytellers
and singers. In no time he obtained from them
material for a television program. He then went
to Mumbai to process his film. But he soon got
a message from the field: “We do not need the
television film. The local communicators have
8
already spread the message.” I do not mention
that case here to argue that India does not need
television technology. My view is that while
adopting the new communication technologies
for our own purposes, we had no need to feel
inferior in the area of communication.
Besides, the application of the indicators
mentioned above did not take into consideration the community life prevalent in India. What
if one copy of a newspaper is used by more than
10 people? The fact is, one copy of a newspaper
is used by more people in India than in America
where there prevails a much more individualistic way of life. The same thing can be said of
television and radio sets. For instance, the SITE
was conducted in 1975 with community television sets. From fifty to a hundred people would
gather to watch the programs. Similarly, many
a family engaged in a “cottage industry” listen
to the radio while working together.
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
32
Good news spreads. That is, what is relevant,
useful, important to people, spreads, irrespective
of the communication technology. On the other
hand, don’t we know that even with the best
communication media, what is relevant to us
does not always reach us?
The acceptance of the media standards as
the norm which developing countries should
strive to achieve has had incalculable, harmful,
effects on these countries. It has colonized them.
They have internalized somebody else’s thought
about their own reality. They have developed a
sense of inferiority. They have grown ever more
convinced that the developed West was the
model to emulate.
While we, in India, had our own way of
thinking our reality, we fast became adept at
thinking it the way development agencies did. It
is not a matter of asserting that one way of
thinking is superior to another. It is a matter of
acknowledging that there are different ways of
thinking. Some ways may be more appropriate.
In any case, thinking in one’s own way is a
form of freedom we lost to an extent during the
development communication decades. We were
not even aware of the loss. And the communication problem I alluded to earlier is a problem
of communication between ways of thinking,
ways of seeing, ways of hearing and ways of
feeling. It is a problem of intercultural dialogue.
That problem is to be solved not by “winning
over” the weaker parties involved or by
obliterating their ways. The solution lies in the
acceptance of a plurality of cultures.
All that was mentioned above shows that
not only we have arrived at erroneous conclusions in our thinking, but the way we have been
thinking about “development,” and especially
about “our” development, was itself erroneous. It
would be pointless to formulate other definitions
of development with the same type of thinking.
A comparison may help: ever since
Shannon and Weaver have proposed their
diagram of the communication process, there
have been several variations on the model. We
could have more. But the basic assumption that
communication is the transfer of a message will
always lead to similar conclusions, to a similar
understanding of the “process.” What is required
is a new way of thinking about communication
and, of course, about development. Such a new
way may have been exemplified by the
semioticians who consider communication not
just as a transfer of messages, but as a dialogue
on meaning among the people involved. In that
approach, the Shannon-Weaver diagram is of
little interest, and variations on the diagram are
of a lesser interest still. In a word–a word once
uttered by Sergei M. Eisenstein–you can
change, improve, develop a bullock cart without
end, you will never arrive at a locomotive. For,
a locomotive depends on a new form of energy,
namely, steam. What we need with regard to the
welfare of humankind is a new idea, an idea
that will generate a new form of action.
The Unfolding of Harmony
An idea, in line with the participatory approaches may have received a fresh formulation
9
in the work of Robert Vachon in the mid-1990s.
Basing himself on the reflections of philosopher
Raimon Panikkar, he initiated a dialogue with
some of the aboriginal people of Canada,
namely, the Mohawk Nation. In the process, he
may have developed ideas and methodologies
relevant to our purpose. This essay proposes little
that is original beyond seeking to apply to the
issue of development (and communication) the
concepts, methods and findings of Vachon.
The “development communication discourse” is the discourse of the developed countries
with regard to the underdeveloped world.
That discourse is replete with axioms:
all that can be done shall be done
you must develop your potential [really? can
I and should I learn all the languages that I
could possibly learn?]
everything is amenable to scientific control,
hence development can be planned and controlled
rational thinking alone should guide development
modernity is the frame or reference, hence
development is a confrontation of tradition
and modernity
development is the normal process which
groups deemed underdeveloped have to undergo
most often underdevelopment is due to local
cultures
the thoughts of the underdeveloped have to be
de-mythologized
science, history and development are the pillars
of modern thinking
underdevelopment normally precedes development.
Since development is a project of the
developed, development agents engage in a
dialogue with the underdeveloped and utter the
developmentalist discourse. In doing so, they
articulate some or most of the axioms just
mentioned. There is no room or reason for
development agents to listen to the underdeveloped. The latter are supposed to have a
culture of underdevelopment and, hence, have
nothing positive to contribute.
A question arises here: is underdevelopment the same as poverty? Not always. For,
there are degrees of poverty. When poverty
becomes a lack of what is necessary for one’s
development as a human person, then it is a case
of underdevelopment. Persistent poverty of that
type generates an adjustment to that lack. It
determines certain behaviors of survival rather
than uplift. It prevents the individual from
perceiving his/her own individual potential as
well as that of his/her society. It is not so much
an acceptation of the present situation as it is an
incapacity of perceiving oneself in any other
predicament. This results in a culture of poverty
that prevents development. For instance, bonded
laborers who have been helped financially to
free themselves, have returned to bonded labor
because the newly acquired freedom created a
state of anxiety about the future. It is such a
culture of poverty that prevents development. I
doubt that any culture, religious or other, would
prevent development. It may be that some
theoreticians have not distinguished the culture
of poverty from other cultures.
Besides, as Amartya Sen has emphasized,
“Culture is the essence of development (...it) is
33
DEVELOPMENT COMMUNICATION
the fountain of our creativity and progress (...)
Central to culture is freedom (...) to decide what
we have reason to value, and what lives we
10
have reason to seek.”
In addition to having a negative approach
to cultures, some development agents have often
looked down on the mythological thinking of
some of the underdeveloped people. The
development agents have concluded that these
people must think their reality afresh. They
must de-mythologize their thinking.
Nothing is more abhorrent to development agents than mythology. For, they rightly
hold that mythology is not rational thinking.
And development agents admit of only one sort
of thinking, namely, the rational. That, in turn,
is a myth. Panikkar defines myth as “that in
which we believe without believing that we
believe in it.” Or, again “We believe in it to such
a point that we do not believe that we believe in
11
it.” Perhaps, more simply, a myth is a belief or
opinion that is unquestioned and that is not
perceived as a belief or an opinion. In
Panikkar’s vocabulary, it is a “presupposition.”
Modern man has a number of myths, like
those of science, rational thought, democracy and
development. There is no possibility of dialogue
between developed and underdeveloped so long
as each party involved does not acknowledge
that his or her thought rests on a number of myths.
The main positive achievement of dialogue is to
help each one unveil one’s own myths. Not that
the unveiling will be the end of myth. On the
contrary, once unveiled a particular myth will
give place to a next one. For, believes Panikkar,
a human cannot think without myth.
The problem with the moderns is that
they do not acknowledge that their “scientific”
and “rational” rest on myths. Yet, they more or
less consciously want to impose their myths
onto other people, and they fail to appreciate
the myths of these other people.
Take, for instance, the myth of democracy.
Among the Greeks, who apparently first
experienced democracy, that system was open
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
34
to but a small part of the population. It was
government by the people, but not everybody
was part of the people. Apart from that fact,
democracy is a political system that may (and
should?) be questioned. The Mohawks, in
particular, were horrified at the fact that the
Canadian Government would have liked them
to allow 51 out of 100 persons to decide for the
other 49 persons. That, for them, was absolutely
aberrant. People living in harmony, they thought,
arrive at important decisions by consensus. If the
establishment of democracy is development,
then, they did not want development. Besides,
their language does not have a word for democracy, let alone for “leader.”
They were not alone to think that way.
People in the slums of Mexico, for instance, did
not wish to “elect” “leaders.” They too knew that
power corrupts. But they acted accordingly. They
did recognize natural leaders and they were
happy to follow them so long as they behaved
themselves. And they gave nobody the power to
represent them in negotiations with the
municipality of Mexico.
For development agents, on the other
hand, democracy is a must in any developed
nation. Thus, the myth of democracy and the
myth of consensus constituted the frameworks
of a dialogue between Mohawks and the
Canadian Government, respectively.
Negative presuppositions on the part of
the developed regarding mythic thought render
almost impossible any dialogue between
developed and underdeveloped. But there are
also confrontations of both parties’ scales of
values. Example: a professional infirmarian is
living and working in a slum. One day, the
infirmarian receives a small donation for his
work. That is just before Christmas, and although
the infirmarian is a Christian he lives amongst
Muslims and Hindus. The infirmarian calls some
of the local leaders to discuss with them what to
do with the donation. The infirmarian feels that
a nice Christmas gift to the slum dwellers would
be to have the common latrines cleaned. The
leaders are appalled. They say: “Christmas is a
big feast. It should be celebrated in joy. No
question of spending the money on cleaning the
latrines. Sweets should be bought and distributed
to the children of the slum to make them happy
on that great feast day.” The infirmarian
wondered. What scale of values was preferable?
Yet another example was given by the
same infirmarian. Wanting to live as simply as
possible, he used to shave his beard himself. But
one day, his hosts asked him why he was so
stingy. They explained that there was a local
barber who lived from rendering his services to
the slum dwellers. Why should not the
infirmarian use his services? Why should he
deprive the barber of a necessary income?
12
Again the infirmarian wondered.
Here you have the example of a man
dedicated to the service of the poor. In these two
circumstances, the very people he served
questioned his values. Whose values were to be
preferred?
An obscure belief that there are absolute
values against which all the rest can be assessed
causes development agents to lack flexibility.
That belief has now been shattered. No one has
the monopoly of human life. No one’s experience
encompasses the whole of reality. Hence, one can
only be modest. The Mohawk’s experience is that
modesty must be coupled with what they call
“cosmic confidence.” Both, modesty and cosmic
confidence, have a liberating effect.
To revert to the case of gender. If there is
a problem of inequality between the two
genders, then the two sides have to resolve the
problem. For if the male dominates, he suffers
in his humanity from the fact that he
dominates, as much as the female suffers from
being dominated. Similarly, the developed and
the underdeveloped cannot be fully human
unless they arrive at some form of equality.
The reflections offered so far should
make it possible now to suggest a methodology
for development communication. The method is
a form of dialogue which Vachon/Panikkar call
dialogical - as distinct from dialectical.
A Method: Dialogical Dialogue
Dialogue is always potentially dialectical
and dialogical. Both are complementary.
Dialectical is rational, it is the part of
reason: the eyes of intelligence to see with.
Dialogical is the mythic, the non-rational: the
ears of the heart to listen with. The dialogical is
between two persons; the dialectical is between
two minds.
A problem arises when only dialectical
dialogue is allowed, trusted. And that problem
is only too common.
“The dialectical dialogue is not the only, nor even
the most important form of dialogue. Discovering
the capital importance of dialogical dialogue
represents an important mutation in our times... It
befits the “kairos” (jug) of our times to have liber14
ated dialogue from the tutelage of dialectics.”
Are, then, the myths, values and cultures
of the underdeveloped and those of the
developed irreconcilable? They will be if they
are conceptually defined such, that is, if they
are logically set apart. But, as in the case of
genders, the two apparently opposite may be
perceived as a non-duality. What is implied in
Vachon/Panikkar’s view is
However, it is clear from what has been
noted above about the dominant paradigms,
that dialogical dialogue is not easy. Cees
Hamelink concurs with that view:
“not unity, nor plurality, nor monism, nor dualism,
but non-duality-harmony in our differences,
respectiveness, reciprocity, constitutive interconnectedness, maintenance of polarities without
13
polarization, dialogue and interaction.”
“It should the foremost priority on the development agenda to develop the capacity for the
world’s people to converse with each other across
boundaries of ethnic background, culture, religion
and language.
For, things are not only distinct. They are
also interconnected.
This sounds obvious and facile. In reality however
the dialogue is an extremely difficult form of speech.
In many societies people have neither time nor
“Dialogical dialogue prevents all power relations:
further intentions, like to convert, to dominate or
15
even to know the other for ulterior motives.”
35
DEVELOPMENT COMMUNICATION
patience for dialogical communication. The dialogue requires the capacity to listen, to be silent, to
suspend judg ment, to critically investigate one’s
own assumptions, to ask reflexive questions and to
be open to change. The dialogue has no short-term
and certain outcome. This conflicts with the spirit
16
of modern achievement-oriented societies.”
A complementary reflection on the role
of the development agent as mediator rather
than intermediary can prepare the development
agent for dialogical dialogue.
“We believe that just as modern culture tends to
replace myth by ‘logos’ (reason), the symbol by the
sign, words by terms, reality by its representatives/
representations/meanings–and thus to reduce the
former to the latter–so it tends also to confuse the
mediator with the intermediary and to reduce the
former to the latter. Language itself has ceased to
be a mediator and has become a mere intermediary, a mere vehicle. That is why we communicate
a lot, but oftentimes without communing, i.e.,
without reaching our respective concrete and deep
cultural realities, without reaching the reality of
17
life which transcends us all.”
Naturally, if one holds that communication simply is the transfer of a message, then,
it is enough for one to be an intermediary, a
vehicle for that message. But from that position,
one cannot enter into a dialogical dialogue.
“Intercultural mediation should therefore not be
reduced to a technique, a science, an ideology, a
model, a theory or system. Nor can it be reduced to
negotiation and rational organization. It is a
18
wisdom and an art.”
Conclusion
Development communication, yes, of course. But
not as it was defined so far in what I have called
“the development communication discourse.” In
that discourse, the development agents have
defined unilaterally both development and
communication. What is advocated in this essay
is another form of communication for another
form of development, i.e. another development
communication; one that fosters the unfolding
of harmony among people.
Classroom. He was Director of Chitrabani and EMRC until
1996 and has been consultant to Roopkala Kendro, a
development communication center of the Government of
West Bengal. He has written over a dozen books on
communication and film, including Communication
Cinema Development, for which he was given a national
award on the occasion of the 46th International Film
Festival of India, 1999.
References
1 Fiske, J., et al. (1994). Key concepts in communication and
cultural studies. (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
2 Fiske, J., et al. (1994). Key concepts in communication and
cultural studies. (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
3 Schirato, T. & Webb, J. (2002). ‘What’s in a name?’ in INTER
sections. The Journal of Global Communications & Culture,
2(3-4), 3-10.
4 Waisbord, S. (2001). Family tree of thoeries, methodologies
and strategies in development communication: convergences
and differences. Silvio Waisbord, Ph.D., Rutgers University
waisbord@scils.rutgers.edu. Prepared for The Rockefeller
Foundation. Placed on The Communication Initiative website, August 30, 2001. http://www.comminit.com.
5 Gitlin, T. (1995). Media sociology: The dominant paradigm.
In Boyd-Barrett & C. Newbold (Eds.), Approaches to media.
A reader. (pp. 21-24). London: Arnold.
6 Klein, N. (2000). No space no choice no jobs no logo. London:
Flamingo.
7 Bales, K. (2002). The social psychology of modern slavery.
Scientific American April 24, 286.
8 Personal communication to the author.
9 (1995). The experience of Vachon was reported on in three
issues of INTER Culture, under the title of “Guswenta or the
intercultural imperative, towards a re-enacted peace accord
between the Mohawk Nation and the North American
Nation-States (and their peoples).” Part 1. The Intercultural
Foundations of Peace. Section I. Seeking a common language.
Section II. A common horizon. Accepting the emerging new
encompassing myth: The pluralism (of truth and of reality),
and interculturalism. Section III. A new method. Dialogical
dialogue, mythico-symbolic consciousness, intercultural
mediation, beyond the political culture of modernity as
universal frame of reference. INTER Culture, 28(127, 128, 129).
10 Pandya, M. (1997). Western democracy is of very
recentorigin. Little India, 7(2).
11 INTER Culture,127, p.38).
12 Personal communication to the author.
13 INTER Culture, 127, p. 72.
14 INTER Culture, 129, p. 2.
15 INTER Culture, 129, p. 3.
16 Personal communication to the author.
17 Vachon, 129, p. 21
18 Vachon, 129, pp. 31-32
Gaston Roberge obtained a MA in Theater Arts (Film)
from the University of California in Los Angeles. With the
support of the late Satyajit Ray he started a communication
center, Chitrabani, in Kolkata. He also started St. Xavier's
College's Educati-onal Media Research Centre (EMRC)
producing programs for the UGC telecast, The Countrywide
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
36
The Dialectics of
Advertising: The Search
for an Indian Tradition
Rashmi Sawhney
Department of Languages and Cultural Studies
University of Limerick, Ireland
A study of contemporary advertising needs to take into account the influence of Western
aesthetics of representation on Indian advertising as well as the intertextuality between
advertising and other Indian art forms. On the basis that advertising in India is situated
within and in continuation with a long tradition of representational formats that are
uniquely Indian, this paper examines the sign-system of advertising in the Indian
context using a semiotic approach. The author suggests that the organization of time and
space in a society influence both, the technical and representational aspects of
advertising, and goes on to examine the cultural construction of desire, reality, and
identity as factors that influence the reception of advertisements in a culture. The paper
thus, presents an argument for taking into consideration the unique position of
advertising in Indian society and exploring creative options offered through the
development of an indigenous aesthetic tradition.
37
THE KING JAMES BIBLE AS A SIGN SYSTEM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
The field of advertising, which in its
contemporary form was established in the
second half of the twentieth century, has now
moved to the cultural centre-stage. It works
through make-believe images which, by offering a
stylized image of social reality, present entertaining patterns. These articulate tangentially an
aspiration for westernization that had previously
caught the Indian imagination throughout the
colonial period and left powerful residues in every
image-making field. One finds that the aesthetics
of contemporary Indian advertising have to a
great extent been influenced by representational
techniques used in Western advertisements;
possibly to an extent that has severely limited
the exploration of the Indian aesthetic tradition
as developed in other art forms. As is the case
with other mediums of expression and communication in India, an impact of international styles
and philosophies is not only inevitable, but also
desirable, so long as it helps to further crystallize
and define the identity of the subject under question. For instance, in the area of art and literature,
both Western and Asian philosophies influenced
the work of modern artists and philosophers like
Tagore and Aurobindo, to give rise to a wholly
indigenous art and philosophy (Nandi, 1975).
Postmodernism blurs the boundaries between art and mass culture. Different styles and
philosophies generate an intertextuality through
the mutual impact of one medium upon another.
The ad world for instance, draws sustenance
from Indian cinema, which provides images of
love, glamor, happiness and sorrow to the advertising medium, as well as a regular supply of
film celebrities. Cinema itself, on the other hand,
has its roots in India’s folk theater, music tradition,
early modern paintings and of the romantic sentimental novel that had captivated the attention
of the Indian reading public; influences that
advertising does not visibly incorporate into its
images. However, by going for glamor as
entertainment as its single polar star, it has now
acquired the solidity of a tradition in which
superficial or topical fantasy alone occupies the
cultural spaces reserved for significant patterns
(that form reality) in other art forms.
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
38
For Indian advertising to develop its own
aesthetic tradition, it is essential to treat it as a
form of expression on a par with other art forms,
an argument that has been suggested by Seema
Khanwalkar (2001). Khanwalkar conceptualizes
modern advertising as one of the communicative
‘variants’ on a parallel plane with classical
literature, folklore and, religion and suggests
that as advertising shares a base with other
discourses, some thematic continuities should
exist between these forms. Situated thus, within
a long tradition of representation, advertising in
India assumes a unique identity that cannot be
considered in isolation from other Indian art
forms as well as the specific organization of
Indian society and culture.
The task of establishing an Indian
method or tradition of advertising, is of course,
not an easy one, given that advertising is one of
the battlefields where the battle between
‘preservation of local lifestyles’ and the ‘project
of cultural globalization’ is staged. Advertising
then, in its contemporary form can be said to
embody a Janus-faced duality between homogenization and differentiation. While putting on
record my personal disapproval of any project
that destroys diversity of language, culture and
lifestyle, in consideration of the complexity of
factors working towards creating a monolithic
and undifferentiated mass of consumers, I
believe that it would be reductive to blame
advertising per se. This country has always had
a special position for storytelling, evident in the
popularity of oral and folk literature, mythology
and cinema. Advertising in one sense, preserves
this tradition.
Drawing from the theoretical traditions
of semiotics and psychoanalysis, I will
demonstrate that making advertising ‘context
specific’ involves elements beyond the visual
inclusion of local images. (for instance, the use
of Indian film and cricket celebrities by Pepsi
and Coca Cola are examples of ads that are
visually localized). It will be argued that in
addition to incorporating locally relevant
images, the project of localizing communication
needs to take into consideration structural and
psychological factors that influence
audiences reception of the message.
an
Advertising-Discipline and Sign System
The relationship between advertising and
the Indian audience has been a complex one, akin
more to the exchange of furtive glances, rather
than a direct gaze in addressing the others
presence. This has been conditioned by the
socialistic attitude popular in a newly independent India, as well as the traditionally low status
accorded to greed, excessive material consumption and immodest sexuality. Embedded thus,
within the divergent forces of a traditional
value system and the apparent face of modernization through acquisition of modern products
and acceptance of sexual imagery, advertising
had to initially struggle for admissible
acceptance within Indian civil society as well as
academic circles. (Refer to the disputes over the
Tough shoe ad and the Kamasutra campaign)
In the Western world, advertising became
accepted as a legitimate area of academic study
in the 1960s and 1970s (Barthes, 1972;
McLuhan 1951,1964; Goffman 1976; Williamson 1978) and as a discipline was especially
influenced by the semiotics of Ferdinand de
Saussure. Saussure’s theories have been
published under the title of Course in General
Linguistics (1911) in which he identifies the
need for a ‘common cultural framework’ for the
interpretation of meaning. Saussure’s theory is
based on the relation between thought and
language, and he argues that thought is a
shapeless mass, which is only ordered by
language suggesting that no ideas pre-exist
language; language itself gives shape to ideas
and makes them expressible.
The structuralist framework established
by de Saussure had a great impact on several
areas of study and his ideas were further
developed by Roland Barthes (1972), in his
seminal work Mythologies, where he analyses
popular culture as a narrative text. Marshal
McLuhan (1951, 1964) while exploring the
technological impact of communication as is
popularized through his statement ‘the medium
is the message’ and in particular through his
analyses of advertising (what he calls ‘the
folklore of industrial man’) has made significant
contributions to the field of semiotics and
popular culture. Umberto Eco’s (1977) A Theory
of Semiotics forms the basis for the work of
several authors in the field and another
important work is Judith Williamson’s (1978)
Decoding Advertisements where she very
succinctly displays how advertisements operate
at the level of signs, uncovering the layers of
codes that are put to use, and maintains that ads
can be analyzed in terms of culture and
ideology that implicate the production of the
texts. Erving Goffman’s (1976) analysis of the
representation of gender illustrates ritual-like
behavior in advertisements portraying an ideal
conception of the two sexes and their structural
relationship to each other.
Barthes, McLuhan, Eco, Williamson and
Goffman in their analysis of popular culture
and advertisements have argued that advertising needs to be understood from a semiotic or
structural point of view which recognizes and
attends to the unique characteristics of the
medium–visuals, text, technology–all of which
play a role in the production of meaning of the
advertisement in both denotative and
connotative sense. The argument rests on the
assumption that any work of representation in
advertisements–print or television, involves a
process of production where specific choices are
made to select particular pictures and then
connect them in a particular way to tell a story.
For example, a magazine ad for Pears soap
shows a slightly sepia toned image of a woman
and a girl child with the caption ‘Pears Promises
You Nothing.’ The headline, copy, logo and
picture on this page are deliberately linked in a
particular sequence, and have a specific purpose
behind using definite images, typefaces and
fonts. The implication of the advertisement if it
showed instead, a picture of a woman and a
man with the same caption would be quite
different.
My case is that there is a strong need to
link this important body of material to the role
39
THE DIALECTICS OF ADVERTISING
of advertising in India, where only towards the
end of the twentieth century does one find the
study of advertisements making its presence felt
in academia. Advertising in India, with its focus
on practice, often relegates theory to the
backyard, and my endeavor to locate scholarly
work in the area has led me to only a handful
of publications. The existing work on Indian
advertising spans areas from the linguistic
analysis of advertisements, to perceptions of
women and children in advertisements and the
cross-cultural comparisons of advertisements
(Pandya, 1977; Pillai, n.d.; Chaudhury, 1992;
Bullis, 1997; Kaptan, 2001; Gaines, 2000;
Ahmed, 1996; Jena, 2000) The significance of
semiotics as a method of making advertisements
more context specific to Indian culture has been
suggested by Khanwalkar (2001) in her article
When is a Coconut Not a Coconut which argues
for a diachronic analysis of advertisements, and
emphasizes the need for advertisements to
invoke the historical and cultural backdrop and
build this into their communication strategy.
Another article which very briefly talks about
semiotics as a powerful method for the study of
advertisements is a column by Shoma Munshi
(1995) Images of Indian Women in the Media.
There remains, however, the need for a
comprehensive study of ad texts as cultural
products that simultaneously re-present the
dreams of a people as well as act as a sign
system at a structural and psychological level to
a uniquely constituted Indian audience. In this
paper I have drawn attention to the needs of the
Indian advertising industry to develop an
indigenous base located within the Indian
aesthetic tradition.
The resistance encountered by advertising within Indian civil society and academia
can be explained by the conflict it represents as
a sign system. Advertising as a signifier connotes
modernity, capitalism, abundance, change and a
general move towards ‘Westernization,’ all of
which stand in direct conflict with the Indian
emphasis on detachment, spirituality and
simplicity. In a manner then, advertising seeks
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
40
to replace the ‘natural’ elements of Indian
society with the ‘cultural’ drivers of consumer
society. While making a general statement about
advertising as a sign system it is important to
keep in mind the cultural and social diversity in
India and the undesirability and difficulty this
presents in establishing one common cultural
framework. This difficulty is compounded by
the multitude of ways of organizing individual
allegiance in India based on linguistic, state,
religious, ancestral and gender identities; and
hence the increased difficulty of establishing
meaningful global or international communication, where signs take on different meanings
even across linguistic states.
Paradigmatically, advertising as a
signifier, within the structure of the Indian
social system, acts as a substitute for other
sources of ‘useful’ information such as the
village gossip circle, oral communication or
mythology and folk culture. Syntagmatically
advertising operates as part of the linear
arrangement between the ‘search for identity’
and the ‘lack’ represented by the unattainable
image of the self, and the solution or ‘mirage’ of
attainability represented by the product, a point
which is elaborated in this chart.
PARADIGM
I want (search
for identity)
‘me-ness’
Myth
Folk
Solution
Gossip
Advertisement
Car/Holiday...
Because I am lonely (fantasy image
of self that represents a ‘lack’)
SYNTAGM
Here, the desired paradigm of ‘ego-ideal’
or wholeness is represented by the core, where
in another age or in rural culture, group identity
is a sufficient substitute. The syntagm or grammatical chain sets the substitute inside a social
framework. What is important, however, is that
as a sign system, advertising operates within a
dynamic and transient cultural code. This is
constituted by and defines the acceptable range
within which advertisements must operate.
The Interface of Time and Space
At an individual level, advertisements
share interfaces of time and space with their
audience and the conceptualization of notions
of time and space have significant bearings on
the process of communication and its interpretation in any society. Advertisements deal with
the organization of time and space on two fronts–
their own suspension in time and space, as well
as the organization of the audience’s concepts
of time-space within their cultural framework.
In terms of their suspension in time and
space, advertisements differ from most other
products of cultural consumption such as
cinema, operas, paintings, newspapers and so
on, in the respect that they are usually imposed
on an audience, and are not the prime object of
consumption, but an object of incidental
consumption. Thus the audience can not predict
the time and space where they will encounter an
advertisement and the only control they have of
avoiding exposure is to divert their gaze from
the image. The characteristic of ‘imposition’ has
significant bearings on the reception of
advertisements, as well as the structuring of their
content and their physical placement. Imposition
explains why more and more advertisers are
attempting to make the commercial content of
the advertising message appear in seamless
continuation with the news content of the
medium it is encapsulated within, a trend that
has given rise to print and television
advertorials, and the immensely successful
method of in-film advertising (such as that
shown in the film Yaadein, where Hrithik
Roshan shares a mouth freshner pass pass with
Kareena Kapoor–who is seen riding on a Hero
cycle with Coke in the backdrop).
On the other hand, it has been established
that the time-space notions of Eastern and Western societies differ in that the West organizes
time-space in a linear manner and the east in a
cyclical manner (Berman,1983; Harvey,1989;
Soja,2000; Coomaraswamy,1918). Thus, the
representation of time and space within a visual
message will be interpreted differently in
different cultures. In Western society, an
advertisement that depicts existence in two time
frames, or the transcendence between worldly
spaces will signify different meanings than in
eastern society, or more specifically Indian
society, where such transgressions between time
and space zones are an accepted phenomenon,
represented in popular form through the
television versions of the epics, Ramayana and
Mahabharata. The organization of time and
space within Indian society as a fluid and
permeable concept (Nandy, 1983) influences not
only ‘what’ can be represented within visual
communication, but also ‘how’ it can be
represented to make interpretation of the
message more effective. The blurred distinction
between the past, present and future in Indian
society allows for the creation of advertisements
(noticed especially for ayurvedic products) that
depict communication between a sage from the
past and a person from the present in
simultaneous time frames; one would seldom
encounter such representation in the Western
world. Similarly, it offers possibilities to media
planners to develop a message in totality within,
for instance, the cyclical spaces of a local
railway line, utilizing the concept of journeys
between different time and space zones.
The suspension of an ad text in time and
space affects the representation techniques used
both in terms of the message as well as
technology. The relevance of an advertisement
to an audience is influenced by factors that
operate not only at a physical or technological
level, but also at the psychological level. From
the study of visual representation in cinema, a
field that has now established its own canons
and has been influenced primarily by the work
of Jacques Lacan, I borrow three concepts that
influence the psychological relevance of images
to the spectator-reality, desire or fantasy and
identity.
Reality & Desire
Reality in advertising is dealt with at two
levels; one by trying to establish their own
reality or authenticity of the message, and two
41
THE DIALECTICS OF ADVERTISING
by trying to function within the spectrum of
acceptable reality of the audience.
The concept of imposition as discussed
previously, compels advertisers to use
representational techniques that establish a
truth-value (such as testimonials and ‘slice of
life’), or that negate the notion of falseness by
reducing the ad text to mockery. Goffman
(1979) in his analysis of gender advertisements
distinguishes representation of scenes from real
life and scenes from advertisements through the
process of ‘hyper-ritualization,’ where standardized
and exaggerated ritual characteristics are
represented as mockery or other forms of
unseriousness. The ‘ritualization’ that Goffman
talks about functions so as to give a myth-like
character to the advertisement, which is
compounded by the fact that the audience is
aware of the half-truth being represented in the
message. Take for example the television
commercial for Sil jam that mis-matches a grown
man’s body with a child’s voice crying for the
jam. Or the ‘dum laga ke’ ad for Fevicol that shows
a tug-of-war which cannot be won because the
adhesive that holds the rope together is so strong.
Both these advertisements by making ritualized
use of a particular characteristic (the man crying
for the bottle of jam, or the teams tugging at the
rope) within contexts that add a touch of humor,
reduce the message to a form of mockery, whereby
its truth value is automatically established.
The concept of reality as applicable to
cinema is written about by Baudry (1975), who
uses a classically Freudian model to explain the
ideological effects of the cinematic apparatus,
and in particular the impression of reality it
creates. Baudry argues that reality is represented as the fantasies of a ‘dream wish’ which
unlike waking perceptions impose themselves
on and submerge the subject. At once enabled
by and enabling a state of sleep, the dream,
according to Freud (1899), involves a state of
regression comparable to the beginning of psychic
life, where perception and representation are
not differentiated. The desire to recreate this
state of regression is, Baudry (1975) maintains,
‘inherent in our physical structure’ and has in
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
42
the course of history given rise to a number of
art forms, like painting and opera. Baudry
further states that the dream-state is most
effectively brought about in the darkness of the
auditorium with the spectator immobile and
passive, gazing at moving images.
The issue of reality in advertising
becomes complex due to the nature of the
communication which usually lasts for less than
a minute and does not enable the dream state
that ultimately results in the representation of
the dream wish or fantasy as reality. Further,
since advertising is usually watched from the
confines of one’s own living room, without the
effect of the dark cinema hall which creates the
phenomenon of a ‘mass ceremony’ and a
‘collective gaze’ (Kakar, 1983), the realization of
reality through fantasy gets further minimized.
It becomes imperative for advertising then, to
create reality within the parameters of its form
(in terms of time and viewing by the audience),
an issue which is addressed by representing
reality as the mundane and real concerns of
daily life, rather than a dream. Thus, reality as
represented in advertisements usually is located
within a material solution for a real life problem
such as not being able to wash clothes to their
whitest or make one’s teeth look their sparkling
best, and is linked to a larger desire for love,
power or success. However, within representations of the mundane, advertising attempts to
shape perceptions of a real world which are far
removed from reality and represent an
unattainable image, putting to use the conflict
between reality that is attainable and a desirable
fantasy which is perceived as being real. This
explains the primary focus of advertisements on
glamor and power. Take, for example, the
numerous advertisements for men’s shirts that
show images of Western looking young men in
crisp white shirts in a plush office, surrounded by
women. The combination of attractive features
and an aura of power (both of which attracts the
women!) are attributed to the shirt, creating the
myth of ‘power dressing’ that is largely oblivious
to climatic and work conditions in India. The
image of reality created in such ads, is necessarily
situated within an unattainable fantasy, and it is
the conflict between this represented reality and
the gap it signifies that makes advertising effective
communication. Thus, the ‘absence’ that is represented in cinema through the imaginary signifier
(Metz,1982) is transformed in advertising to a
material absence that is compensated for by the
solution offered in the visual images.
Since in different societies and in
different target groups, the nature of ‘reality’
varies, this has bearings on the representational
techniques used to create meaningful communication. For instance, on comparing advertisements
for children with advertisements targeted at
adults, one often finds the scope of imagination
in the two is very different, with monsters and
adventure stories featuring more prominently in
children’s advertisements. So also, in Indian
society, where the conflict between the saans
(mother-in-law) and bahu (daughter-in-law) is a
popular reality, one finds ads that represent a
particular washing soap or cooking oil as the
solution to impress the mother-in-law. The
mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship, however, does not offer much excitement
to the advertising industry in the Western world.
On the other hand, the possibility of a mother
putting her own interests over that of a child
does not belong to the realm of the real within
the Indian imagination, hence an ad like that of
Muller yoghurt, telecast in Western Europe, where
the mother eats the child’s lunchbox would lie
outside reality as perceived in Indian society.
Thus, reality and desire, not only manifest
themselves as factors to be considered seriously
in terms of representation in the message itself,
but also in terms of their acceptable spectrum
within different cultures. It would be judicious
then, to examine desire and reality not only in
terms of their manifestations within a culture
(or definitions of desirable objects or characteristics), but also the relevance of the concept of
desire and reality itself. It might be an overstatement to say that in popular Indian culture,
reality and desire take forms that are influenced
by perceptions of the epics and mythology.
However, it would certainly be an understate-
ment to consider the Indian world-view as being
formed independently of religious influences. The
answer lies somewhere in between, and one could
say that in modern India, although religious
sentiments continue to influence popular
attitudes, these are modified to suit contemporary living. Advertisements display varying
degrees of sensitivity to such culture-specific
parameters, operating both within the code of
acceptance, as well as attacking stereotypical
images of acceptability. A majority of advertisements for financial investments targeted at
elderly or retired people, shows them leading a life
of detachment, yet a life of comfort and security.
The representations in such ads are based upon
the representations of contemporary ‘vanyaprastha’ after having fulfilled one’s duties towards
the family and society. However, not all
advertisements use stereotypical images of old
age, and a television commercial for a Philips
music system shows a frail elderly lady dancing
to heavy metal music behind closed doors; the
message implies that the music system is powerful enough even to make a granny dance. Here,
the old woman is allowed to possess a desire for
entertainment, and in a manner, the ritualized
act of dancing reduces to mockery the image, in
turn establishing the truth-value of the message.
Identity
The third concept that I borrow from film
studies is that of identity. This is perhaps the
concept most relevant to advertising representation. Through the creation of the dream-state in
cinema, it is apparent that spectators desire to be
transported into a ‘fantasy’ world, allowing
themselves to lose their real identity for a brief
period and assume the mask of another persona.
Advertising offers to help the spectator to
relocate or reconstruct their identity by offering
for real possession the desired ‘mask.’ The role of
advertising in this context is strikingly similar to
that of the ‘mirror image’ as suggested by Lacan
(1977), where advertising often functions as the
mirror which one uses to form an ego identity.
In a society where the media often result in a loss
of identity, advertisements act as the cathartic
solution that tries to give us back our lost ident-
43
THE DIALECTICS OF ADVERTISING
ities. These are however, identities generated
through material consumption, creating a
consumer society.
India has a long tradition of assuming
foreign personnae through the use of masks in
dance, as well as in street and folk theater. At a
more spiritual level, this act is signified by the
frenzied actions of people ‘possessed’ by the
spirits of a goddess or an evil spirit. Thus, the
theme of assuming another person’s identity has
been a part of Indian culture, and advertising is
situated within the same tradition. This then
implies that the identity or role that the audience
of advertisements can assume must fit into the
cultural framework of a society. Thus, an advertisement which represents evil through the sign
of a ten-headed Ravana will be acceptable in the
Indian subcontinent, but will be misunderstood
in the West, where the figure of Frankenstein
may be more suitable to signify evil. Similarly,
an advertisement that requires the audience to
slip into the role of a super-mom, managing
home, career and kids with equal efficiency is
more compelling within Indian society, which
does not excuse being a bad mother and wife.
Because the self-image represents a
degree of completeness and perfection never to
be attained, the image is a narcissist selfidealization or, as Lacan puts it, ‘a mirage,’ designed
to parry the lack in being and ‘to preserve the
subject’s precarious pleasure from an impossible
and non-compliant real.’ Thus, while all visual
media allow the spectator to position themselves
in the role of the ‘other’ or the mirror image,
deriving pleasure from the unattainable, or the
lack, advertising positions material products in
this gap between the ‘real’ and the ‘imaginary’
providing a possibility of bridging the gap
through a symbolic signifier. Hence, in the case
of the super-mom role, the fantasy suggests
possibility of fulfilment through utilization of a
particular brand of chocolate drink, washing
machine or car.
Sudhir Kakar (1981) offers an interesting
analysis of how ‘identity,’ in terms of its establishment in Lacanian terms, in Indian society is
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
44
formed differently from that in Western societies.
He explains the ‘mother fetishism’ prevalent in
Indian society through explorations of social and
family structures, and their impact on the development of the concept of ‘self’ as different from
the ‘other’ in Indian children. Kakar theorizes that
the process of identity formation occurs in
Indian societies at a much delayed time, and also
offers an explanation of how the identification
of the ‘self’ differs in girls and boys, as a result
of their positions within the family system.
The fact that identity is formed
differently and at different times within a
culture may have implications for advertising,
which symbolically functions as the mirror that
helps in the process of identity creation. The
implications could either take effect in the form
of an increased consumption of advertising and
material culture, as a direct backlash at the
suppression of self-identity within social
structures, or it may result in the shunning of
advertising as a representation of the mirror
image. The direct impact the process of identity
formation has on advertising representation is
that very often advertisements for children’s
products in India are designed for an audience
consisting of parents. Also, the existence of a
genre of advertisements which could be
classified as ‘rebel’ ads and are targeted at the
teenage segment are further testimony to the
increasing importance being given to individual
identity (as opposed to identity as part of a
family or community).
The point I want to reiterate is that the
dynamics of advertising in any society operates
through the dialectics of desire, reality and
identity within a specific cultural framework, and
hence, such culturally influenced parameters need
to be taken into account to make an advertisement more context specific and relevant to a
particular audience. As the function of advertising shifts from being one of entertaining,
informing and inducing purchase, to that of
providing a brand experience, an exploration of
traditional forms of communication such as folk
performances which allow the spectator to
experience the event by getting involved in it,
either physically or psychologically, can be
invaluable. The high degrees of permeability
and selective assimilation (Nandy,1983) exhibited in Indian society, a fact that is evident
through its mythology and history, make it
possible for the communication forms and
representation techniques we use to represent a
symbolic transgression and existence in
multiple states through visual images. The
possibilities offered by this phenomenon are
numerous and exciting and when considered in
totality with other culture specific factors such
as those of time, space, reality and identity, the
canvas of creativity available to the advertising
industry is vast. Consider for example the creative
potential of simulated exposure to different media
in continuum displaying the same message; or
that of the representation of multiple identities
of a single persona in different media to build up
a complete signifying system for the audience to
comprehend; or simply the possibility of representing simultaneously the past and the present.
I have tried to demonstrate that advertising needs to be considered on a par and in
continuation with other art forms in India and that
its dialectics within the Indian cultural context
offer possibilities of developing an indigenous
aesthetic tradition. The intricacies of such
aesthetics is an area that needs to be explored.
Rashmi Sawhney is a postgraduate research student
at the University of Limerick, Ireland, where she teaches two
modules on Media Representation-Introduction to Cultural
Studies and Comparative Literature. She holds a postgraduate Diploma in Advertising and Communications Management
from Narseemonjee Institute of Management Studies,
Bombay and has worked with The Times Group in Baroda
and New Delhi. Her current research is on the politics of
representation of the ‘feminine’ in the media of twentieth
century India, with special focus on cinema and advertising.
ments. Bombay: Nachiketa Publications.
Eco, U. (1977). A theory of semiotics. London: Macmillan
Freud, S. (1976). The interpretation of dreams. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Gaines, E. (2000). Imagining the other: An American
interpreting signs of India. In C.W. Spinks & S. Simpkins
(Eds.), Semiotics 1999; New York, Peter Lang Publishing.
Goffman, E. (1979). Gender advertisements. New York: Harper
Trade.
Jena, S. K. (2000). Globalisation and popular culture:
Reading advertisements sociologically. Paper presented at
the LEC Seminar Workshop “The limits of cultural
globalisation,” JNU and Albert-Ludwigs University, Freiburg.
Kakar, S. (1981). The Inner world: A psycho-analytical study
of childhood and society in India. New Delhi: Oxford
University Press.
Kakar, S. (1983). The cinema as collective fantasy. In Aruna
Vasudev & Philippe Lenglet (Eds.). Indian cinema
superbazaar. (pp. 89-97). New Delhi: Vikas.
Kaptan, S. (2001). Women in advertising. Jaipur: Book Enclave.
Khanwalkar, S. (2001). When is a coconut not a coconut?
Using semiotics to harness culture in India. In ESOMAR
Publication Series, Vol 249.
Pandya, I. (1977). English language in advertising: A linguistic
study of Indian press advertising. Delhi: Ajanta Publications.
Pillai, N.N. (n.d.). Press advertising today: A study of trends.
New Delhi: Indian Institute of Mass Communications.
Lacan, J. (1977). The four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis. London: Hogarth Press.
Lapsley, R. & Westlake, M. (1988). Film theory: An introduction.
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Levi-Strauss, C. (1970). The raw and the cooked. London: Cape.
McLuhan, M. (1951). The mechanical bride: Folklore of
industrial man. New York: Vanguard Press.
McLuhan, M. (1994). Forward through the rearview mirror:
Reflections on and by Marshall McLuhan. London: MIT Press.
Metz, C. (1982). Psychoanalysis and cinema: The imaginary
signifier. London: Macmillan.
Munshi, S. (1995). Images of Indian women in the media.
International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter 5,
Summer.
Nandy, A. (Ed.). (1998). The secret politics of our desires:
Innocence, culpability and Indian popular cinema. New
Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Nandy, S. K. (1975). Studies in modern Indian aesthetics.
Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Studies.
Neu, J. (Ed.). (1991). The Cambridge companion to Freud.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Unnikrishnan, N. & Bajpai, S. (1996). The impact of television
advertising on children; New Delhi, Sage.
References
Williamson, J. (1978). Decoding advertisements: Ideology
and meaning in advertising. London: Boyars.
Ahmed, N. (1996). Cross cultural content analysis of
advertising from the United States and India. PhD thesis,
University of Southern Mississippi.
Barthes, R. (1972). Mythologies. London: Cape.
Bullis, D. (1997). Selling to India’s consumer market. London:
Quorum Books.
Chaudhury, R. R. (1948, 1992). Early Calcutta advertise-
45
THE DIALECTICS OF ADVERTISING
conversations
A Journey
Through
Four Decades
of Indian Advertising
An Interview with S.R Ayer
Harsha Subramaniam
Journalist, India
Harsha Subramaniam
holds a bachelor's degree in English Literature,
Vivekananda College, Madras University, and Master's Degree in Business Administration
with specialization in marketing. He is also a postgraduate in Journalism from the Asian
Collge of Journalism in Chennai.
Until recently, Harsha was a Marketing Analyst with The Hindu Business Line, where he
wrote extensively about advertising, marketing and media.
Apart from being a journalist, Harsha is a theater artist and has been working with
leading theater groups in Chennai.
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
46
OnOctober12, 2001, when the Advertising Club Madras conferred the Distinguished
Service Award on S.R. (Mani) Ayer, there were
people from different generations who were part
of the function. Among the dignitaries were R. K.
Swamy, the veteran advertising man, N. Murali,
Joint Managing Director of The Hindu, V. Narayanan, former MD of Pond’s among others. There
were also brand managers and senior managers
from marketing companies, vice-presidents and
creative directors from several ad agencies who
had once been Ayer’s protegees at O&M. There was
also a group of young copy-writers and account
executives who had just entered the profession.
They had only heard about Mani Ayer, never met
him. And, there were also journalists like me who
had been deputed to cover the event.
“Have you met Mani Ayer before?” I asked
the young account executive seated next to me.
“No I haven’t. But I have heard that he was
the best managing director O&M ever had,” she
replied.
“What else have you heard about him?” I
prodded
“He’s also supposed to be a great mentor
and has a great sense of humor.”
Later that evening, a scroll of honor
presented to Mani Ayer bore an interesting quote
from the late Subhas Ghosal, which read thus:
“Mani Ayer was the best agency manager of his
time. He not only demonstrated how to run an
international agency to international standards
but also significantly guided the professions of
many outstanding professionals.”
his theory of self-reliance, was following the
policy of import substitution or developing
products indigenously that were on par with
those from abroad.
It was during this time that twenty-twoyear old Mani Ayer walked into the office of
Benson’s Overseas Marketing Advertising
Services (BOMAS), a subsidiary of S. H. Benson,
in Bombay, to join as a copywriter. “Advertising,
those days was hardly considered a serious
activity. The joke was if you couldn’t get any
worthwhile job, you tried advertising,” he
reminisces. Working in an advertising agency, in
those days, essentially meant selling advertising
space-outdoor signs or cinema slides. But there
was a great awareness of the ‘value’ that advertising could create. Imported products, for
example, that were advertised set the quality
standards of the time.
Domestic production of goods and
services was still at a nascent stage and generated
meagre business for advertising agencies. But the
demand for indigenous products created by
World War II had sown the seeds of Indian
manufacturing and had created a new breed of
advertisers. Textile mills, for instance, which were
servicing the requirements of the Indian Army,
emerged as the largest advertisers of the time.
If you analyse it, Ghosal’s description of
Mani Ayer is not very different from what the
young account executive had heard about him.
In marketing parlance, Mani Ayer was a reputed
brand–and a successful one at that. In this brief
narrative tracing the roots of of Indian advertising, Mani Ayer recounts his experiences through
his thirty-six-year long journey through the
world of advertising.
But the first significant impact of advertising on the Indian economy was its ability to
organize distribution for consumer products,
says Ayer. When a product was advertised, the
trade network: distributors, dealers and retailers,
took notice and evinced interest in participating
in the chain. “People came forward to become
stockists and distributors,” he says. And, the
reasons for a product to be advertised were to
evoke dealer interest and sell a product at the
list price without offering discounts. Advertising
created an aura of quality among dealers,
distributors and consumers and it also built the
impression that the product being advertised
was as good, if not better, than an imported
alternative.
The year was 1958. The Indian economy,
under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru and
Some manufacturers were quick to understand the equity that advertising created for
47
A JOURNEY THROUGH FOUR DECADES OF INDIAN ADVERTISING
them. “Binny’s, for example, had a system of
guarantors or stockists–who provided them sales
volumes, warehousing facilities and finance. So, in
order to realize their margins, they advertised,”
explains Ayer.
It was in this era of import substitution,
that quality became the basis for purchase of
products and the ISI mark became the stamp of
approval. “Advertising was largely responsible
for popularizing the ISI mark and communicating this sense of quality,” says Ayer.
Growth of the Media
Indian advertising owes its initial growth
to the growth of the media. Media options were
limited to cinema slides, print media (newspapers or magazines) and radio. Cinema, which
was controlled by a single distributor (Blaze),
had the potential to reach an audience effectively but there was no foolproof method to
check whether your ad was ‘aired’ or not. “Only
companies with a large sales force such as Brooke
Bond could physically check in every cinema
hall whether the ad was being shown. All the
others did some random checks,” says Ayer.
Print media, and newspapers in particular,
were the only organized media business, which
followed professional practices (such as giving
vouchers for ads published). “The Indian Eastern
Newspaper Society (IENS) which was set up in
the late ‘40s was instrumental in getting this
business organized,” he says.
Radio, a relatively new medium, has a
fascinating history. Soon after Independence, Dr
Keskar, the then Information & Broadcasting
Minister, packed the programming content on
All India Radio (AIR) with classical music. Radio
Ceylon, on the other hand, offered light entertainment such as Binaca Geet Mala and became
immensely popular.
Says Ayer, “There is a story that when
officials of the AIR Research Cell submitted a
report to the Government, they were in for a big
surprise. The Minister was apparently unhappy
with the report which said that AIR was losing
listeners to Radio Ceylon. So, instead, of
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
48
changing AIR’s programming, he shut the
research cell down!”
However, when Indira Gandhi took over
as I&B Minister, she realized the masses were
hooked onto Radio Ceylon. “So, she was
instrumental in the creation of Vividh bharati in
1965, which brought in popular entertainment
at a low cost. This gave Indian advertising its
much-needed shot in the arm,” says Ayer. The
advent of Vividh Bharati coincided with Ayer’s
return to India after two-year stint in England
between 1963-65.
Yet the role of advertising and its impact
on society was very restricted due to the lack of
indigenous production of various goods and
services on a large scale.
It was an era where products were scarce
and obsolescence was unheard of. Ayer offers an
interesting theory: “Imagine you had Rs 20,000
in 1965. You could do absolutely nothing with
it. If you wanted to buy a car, you had to wait
for eight years; a refrigerator–wait for five years;
air-conditioner–five years. If you wanted to
travel abroad there were a host of procedural
hurdles. There was no internal tourism, no
stocks or shares. What would you do? How
much gold would you buy? Even property was
not a worthwhile investment since you could
pay the rent on the interest earned without the
capital being lost. What could one do?”
Growth in Manufacturing Base and
Government Control
Things changed with the growth of the
manufacturing sector. This marked the second
phase of development in the Indian economy that
influenced the advertising business. By 1970,
the Indian economy had witnessed the birth of
domestic entrepreneurship in many sectors. There
were new product categories, new consumer
segments and new breed of advertisers. Ayer says.
“I remember that I once calculated over 40 brands
of ceiling fans in the country, any number of
kitchen mixers, low-priced detergents and so
on.” Yet growth was being stifled by the license,
quota and permit systems of the Government.
The idea behind the quota system was clear–
promote small-scale industry and curb the
growth of big industrial houses.
Ayer says that many players chose to
remain small-scale to escape the licenses and
quotas. Very often, it was the same person
running four different companies selling the
same product under four different brands.
This generated consumption which in
turn sparked off advertising. Regional media
also benefited from the growth of these brands.
“Small newspapers in Uttar Pradesh or Madhya
Pradesh did not get any national advertising.
They grew because of small regional brands
such as a Polar or a Khaitan fan that were
catering to smaller pockets,” he explains.
Even newer categories of advertisers
emerged. “For example, there was a growing
demand for OTC products and that needed
advertising,” says Ayer.
Corporate advertising in its nascent stage
also made its presence felt. There were
advertisers such as Ashok Leyland or TELCO who
invested their money to promote their trucks.
“There was a booking system for these vehicles.
The purpose of advertising was to raise the share
of mind of the product to a higher level so that
you at least book your vehicle. The longer your
money was with them–their working capital
needs were looked after,” he says.
Another significant development was the
evolution of the public sector as a major
advertiser. India, even today, is perhaps one of
the few countries in the world where the public
sector invests large sums of money on
advertising. Mani Ayer believes that it was Mr
R.K. Swamy who was instrumental in making
the public sector aware of the value and the
need to advertise. “The credit should go to him.”
he said. He was a great believer that a PSU is
owned by its shareholders and that they have a
right to know. So advertising was about
creating accountability. He convinced many
PSUs with this theory. For example, BHEL, HMT
were all advertisers he created,” he says.
In 1974, Mani Ayer took over as Managing Director of Ogilvy Benson and Mather at the
age of 38. This was a time when the Government’s
tightened its grip on various sectors of the
industry. The advertising business was directly
impacted in 1979, when Charan Singh’s
government brought back the system of disallowances to control advertising expenditure.
This system, introduced earlier by TT Krishnamachari in 1965, petered out because of protests
from different quarters. But Charan Singh’s
disallowance system based on a percentage of
the advertiser’s turnover struck a lethal blow on
agency revenues. “Companies that did not need
advertising had large sums of money to spend
and companies which desperately needed to
invest in advertising did not have money,” says
Ayer. This system was repealed when Congress
came back to power.
But the mood of the government then was
to curb ‘unnecessary expenditure’ on advertising
by the large industrial houses. “At a meeting
with the Government where I was representing
the Advertising Agencies Association of India
(AAAI), I remember Pranab Mukherjee, the then
Finance Minister, argued that big industrial
houses were splurging on advertising and
depriving the government of its revenue,”
narrates Ayer.
The government also held the media on a
tight leash. Newsprint regulation was a major
cause for concern for newspapers. “They could
not increase number of pages or quantity of
newsprint. So, regulation of newsprint and
dwindling ad revenue because of disallowances
forced newspapers to be content with their
existing circulation,” he says.
A significant repercussion of government
regulation of the media was that newspapers
lacked the resources in invest in media research.
But it was with the first National Readership Survey in 1970 that media research shot
into prominence. NRS I, as it was called was a
joint effort by the Indian Society of Advertisers
(ISA), IENS and advertising agencies.
49
A JOURNEY THROUGH FOUR DECADES OF INDIAN ADVERTISING
“This spurred the interest in the media
planning and buying activities. Prior to this,
there was no research with few exceptions such
as the Ananda Bazaar Group and Reader’s Digest
which did some research,” he says. NRS offered
a mine of qualitative information about the
reader compared to mere quantitative data that
the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) had been
providing since its inception in the ‘40s.
Readership surveys expanded in their depth and
span of research–with the introduction of color
in newspapers and the birth of magazines (such
as India Today) in the ‘70s.
But it was with the arrival of television
that media research underwent a drastic change.
“There was a qualitative difference in the
approach and the investment made in media
research with the arrival of TV,” says Ayer.
The birth of Network television in 1982,
created the true concept of ‘mass market’ in the
country. The visual impact of television gave it
the additional edge over radio and opened new
creative vistas for advertising agencies. “Clients
started taking more interest in the process of
advertising and there were new revenue
opportunities,” says Ayer. However, his overseas
experience made him apprehensive of what
network television meant for the future of
advertising agencies in India.
In 1983, at an all India management meeting, Mani Ayer predicted that the advent of
network television would erode the income for
agencies. His logic was simple: TV was instrumental in bringing down commissions from 15
per cent to 12.5 per cent everywhere in the world.
“I saw it happen in England when I was working
The structure of the ad agency
Advertising agencies, since the early days
(as early as 1950), were account driven. Account
management was the most coveted position and it
was the account executive who received all the
recognition and the money.
Studio and art directors also had their pride
of place for the visual emphasis of their creative
work. However, Lintas and Ogilvy & Mather (in its
earlier avatars) were among the few agencies
where the copywriter reigned supreme.
Ayer points out that Ogilvy & Mather was
the first agency to recognize the importance of
the media and creative functions and put them on
par with account management in terms of reward
and responsibility. The presence of executives from
media and creative departments on the agency’s
board acknowledges their importance.
When Ayer returned home after a brief stint
in Australia (1972-74) to take over Ogilvy, Benson
and Mather as its Managing Director, he made sure
that at an operational level, every account was
managed by three persons–one representative
from each department. “This gave media and
creative people direct access to the client,” he says.
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
50
The structure of the agency evolved further
with the creation of language advertising. Earlier,
briefs were written in English and executed in a
regional language. Now, advertisers such as HLL or
Richardson Hindustan (later called P&G) allocated
a major share of their ad budgets on cinema than
on any other medium. “So when creative work was
evolved in a regional language, it created a new
class of copywriters who were completely
bilingual. For example, Piyush Pandey or Balwant
Tandon (of Lintas).”
As the industry evolved, and the media
became a business in itself, the profile of talent
entering the profession underwent a change. The
growth of management education created a breed
of managers of a different calibre who brought in
new skills to the advertiser’s marketing team.
Soon, Mani Ayer set to the task of creating
professionals of a similar calibre, who are suited to
the requirements of advertising agencies. He
became the guiding force behind the Mudra
Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA) a school dedicated to create professionals
equipped to handle the challenges facing the
business of advertising.
there in the ‘60s and I saw it happen in Australia
in the ‘70s. So I was aware that India was not far
behind and it was only a question of time,” he says.
Ayer also prognosticated that with
greater volumes and greater media availability,
there would be more pressure on agencies to
collect money and meet their working capital
requirements. These prophecies earned him the
infamous tag of ‘Prophet of doom,’ but even his
worst critics had to eat humble pie as each one of
his predictions came true, one after another. “I had
no doubt in my mind that the agency’s margins
were going to be squeezed from all sides,” he says.
An Era of Opportunities
Manmohan’s Singh policy of liberalizing
the Indian economy from the clutches of
government control in 1991 ushered in new era of
opportunity for Indian advertising. Global competition became a reality and new products and
services were available for the Indian consumer.
“It made an impact on advertising. A readymade
shirt was not just a shirt, it became a statement.
A two-wheeler was not just a mode of transport,
it stood for several things,” explains Ayer.
Ogilvy & Mather, as the agency was now
called, had become the nursery for creative talent
and had created some of the most successful
campaigns ever in the history of Indian advertising. Titan, for example, was a classic example
of a brand that not only withstood competition
but also created a new category of consumers,
he says.
But Ayer believed that a mere twentysecond commercial was not sufficient to manage
the communication needs of a client. “We needed
to look at other options to solve the client’s
problem in the most cost-effective manner.” Thus
was born the country’s first-ever direct response
cell of an advertising agency.
Ayer explains that direct marketing was
necessary to make up for the lack of specialized
media options. “How do you reach people? For
many of our advertisers such as industrial
products or segmented products, there were no
specialized media available,” he says.
Ayer also believed than an idea should
not be media-driven. “An idea is an idea. You
should find the right delivery for it and not the
other way around,” he often said. This paved the
way for the agency to promote Public Relations
(PR) as a new medium of communication and as
an effective tool for management. In short,
Ogilvy & Mather ushered in the concept of
integrated marketing communications (or
‘orchestration’ as Ayer called it) as a holistic
approach to solve the client’s communication
needs in the most cost-effective manner.
In 1994, when Mani Ayer said goodbye
to Ogilvy & Mather, he left an institution which
was impregnable, and which had built some of
the best brands such as Asian Paints, Cadburys,
Titan and many others in the country.
Much has changed in the advertising
business since Mani Ayer bid adieu.
But try telling him this and he will
convince you that nothing much has changed.
“The means have changed but the business is
the same,” he will argue.
“As long as this business is about
identifying and stating the problem and finding
a solution in the most cost-effective manner,
nothing really changes. This is the basic function
of an agency and it has remained the same.”
But yes, one function he admits that has
changed drastically is media buying.
“It has become a business by itself.
However, I think media buying has become
commoditized and operates on clout,” he says.
But is there a thread of commonality that
runs across four decades of Indian advertising?
“Three things apply to any era of
advertising: Environment, Wants and Different
consumer segments. The environment dictates
priorities of wants. The consumer segments may
vary but the availability of choices also plays a
role in prioritizing.
These are interconnected elements. And,
the interaction between them through the use of
media is what the game is all about,” he replies
with his trademark eloquence.
51
A JOURNEY THROUGH FOUR DECADES OF INDIAN ADVERTISING
Encountering the
Traumatic: ‘Hey Ram’
and its Cultural Narcissism
Venkatesh Chakravarthy
Visiting Fellow
Institute of Developmental Alternatives
Chennai, India
In terms of the immense proportion of human lives lost and the unbearable trauma
unleashed, the Partition Riots of the Indian subcontinent, the critical focus of the film
Hey Ram (2000), is comparable to the holocaust in Nazi Germany and the aftermath of
the nuclear bombing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Taking issue with the narration of
traumatic events of this nature, contemporary debates on the matter insist that any
attempt to tell the story of these or similar events will inevitably lead to narrative
fetishism. A pertinent question that arises about Hey Ram (2000) then is: How does it
encounter or negotiate the various traumas it addresses, the constitutive anxiety of Saket
Ram, the protagonist, or the trauma that triggers his quest or mission; the ordeal of
Partition; the disturbing assassination of Gandhi; and the suffering initiated by
contemporary Hindu-Muslim riots? For instance, what do the two friends Saket Ram
(Kamal Haasan) and Amjad Khan (Shahrukh Khan) do after living through horrendous
genocide on either side, when they so deliberately and yet so accidentally encounter each
other at the climax of the film? Do they share a prolonged and intense moment of silence
that could initiate the process of mourning?
My paper would explore these issues by reading the film along with its published script
by utilizing the methods of psychoanalytic semiotics. Unlike the typical narrative, it is
my hypothesis that Hey Ram narrates an aborted Oedipal journey verging on psychosis.
In that the individual psychosis and the infantile narcissism of its protagonist is
necessarily reflective of a wider cultural psychosis or cultural narcissism.
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
52
In terms of the immense proportion of
human lives lost and the unbearable trauma
unleashed, the Partition Riots of the Indian subcontinent, the critical focus of the film Hey Ram
(2000), is comparable to the holocaust in Nazi
Germany and the aftermath of the nuclear
bombing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Taking
issue with the narration of traumatic events of
this nature, contemporary debates on the matter
insist that any attempt to tell the story of these
or similar events will inevitably lead to narrative
fetishism. For instance, citing Eric Santner’s
History beyond the Pleasure Principle Hayden
White observes:
The danger of yielding to the impulse to “tell the
story” of the Holocaust–and by extension any other
“traumatic” event-opens the investigator of it to the
danger of engaging in narrative fetishism, which is
in his view, a “strategy of undoing, in fantasy, the
need for mourning by simulating a condition of
intactness, typically situating the site and origin of
loss elsewhere.” In short, the threat posed by the
representation of such events as the Holocaust, the
Nazi Final Solution, by the assassination of a
charismatic leader such as Kennedy or Martin Luther
King or Gandhi... is nothing other than the threat
of turning these events into the subject matter of a
narrative. Telling a story, however, truthful about
such traumatic events may very well provide an
“intellectual mastery” of the anxiety which the
memory of their occurrence may incite in an
individual or a community. But precisely in so far
as a story is identifiable as a story, it can provide
no lasting “psychic mastery” of such events
(Hayden White, 1996:31-32).
As an alternative to this problem of representation, he concludes therefore in favor of
avant-garde anti-narrative texts and their
technique of deliberate narrative blockages and
artificial closures (Hayden White, 1996:32).
Notwithstanding the significance of these
strategies, it must be emphasized that Hayden
White does not consider those narrative
moments in the history of cinema or literature,
which refuse to achieve any psychical mastery
of the traumas they address. Crucially, the very
teleology (a linear structure moving towards an
inevitable climax) of some of these narratives
instead of achieving narrative equilibrium lead
to the eruption of the inassimilable traumatic to
1
sunder any form of closure. Hence, the trauma
itself is not resolved by erecting a fetish. In
contrast, these narratives place emphasis on the
need to undertake serious mourning work by eschewing all forms of narcissistic gratifications.
The point remains, though, that such narratives
are an exception to the rule propounded by
Hayden White rather than the standard that
falsifies it. They only indicate that antinarratives are not necessarily the only
alternative to narrative fetishism. Mostly,
narratives that focus on a harrowing historical
experience and in that sense struggling
incessantly to represent something that eludes
symbolization erect a fetish demanding reality
status, in order to subdue the traumatic excess
thrown up by their narrative world to achieve
an ultimate but an impossible equilibrium.
What results from such an exercise is not the
realization of some unattainable intellectual or
psychical mastery of the trauma but a
compulsive, repetitive and aggressive extraction
2
of narcissistic compensation. This kind of
narcissism, however, is not just a preoccupation
of some individual psyche, but is collective and
cultural in import, as narratives are forms that
engage the public domain.
A pertinent question which emerges
about Hey Ram (2000) then is: How does it
encounter or negotiate the various traumas it
addresses, the constitutive anxiety of Saket
Ram, the protagonist or the trauma that triggers
his quest or mission; the ordeal of Partition; the
disturbing assassination of Gandhi; and the
suffering initiated by contemporary HinduMuslim riots? For instance, what do the two
friends Saket Ram and Amjad Khan do after
living through horrendous genocide on either
side, when they so deliberately and yet so
accidentally encounter each other at the climax
of the film? Do they share a prolonged and
intense moment of silence that could initiate the
3
process of mourning? If not, what can we
understand from these responses generated by
the film in the public sphere:
The infinite brutality experienced by the Hindus
for the sake of their motherland has been injected
into every drop of blood in Hey Ram. This is the
53
ENCOUNTERING THE TRAUMATIC
first step laid by the film field for the uprising of
the Hindus and at least for that reason alone
blessing Hey Ram is now the duty of every Hindu
(Idayam Pesukirathu, 27 February, 2000).
The gruesome deeds of the Hindu fundamentalists
are not represented with the same depth as that of
Muslim fundamentalists. Similarly in the days
when Nathuram Godses and Gopal Godses are
being made heroes, it is disturbing that a criticism
on Gandhi, even if it is correct, may lead to wrong
interpretation. That the Sangh Parivar is also
maintaining silence over the film is only strengthening this doubt (Magalir Chinthanai, An AIDWA
Journal, April 2000).
Still criticisms do arise that this film’s attempt to
denude Gandhi is only a ruse to bejewel Hindutva.
Hey Ram, is praised both by Tushar Gandhi, the
grandson of Gandhi and Gopal Godse, the brother
of Nathuram Godse. Such praises from two
opposite camps have only perplexed some, who are
in a dilemma to either approve or reject it (Kadir
Nilavan, Poraali, April 2000).
Contrary to the first two responses or
readings, it is Kadir Nilavan’s observations
recorded in the third quotation that describes
the ambivalent propensities of Hey Ram, as
evidenced by other events. For instance, if
Idhayam Pesukirathu, the Tamil weekly cited in
the first reading indexes a clear case of right
wing support for the film, then in contrast,
despite the stance taken by the left wing AIDWA
journal in the second reading, the organized left
in the country has officially endorsed the film.
And this a fact that was circulated to maximum
advantage by the director and star of the film:
I got the news there were threats to burn down a
theater in Jyothi Basu’s state.
‘Who is threatening?’ I asked
‘The Congressmen,’ they said. I felt like laughing. ...
Chakravarthy, a minister from Calcutta called me
on the phone. ‘I saw the film. I also reported to the
Chief Minister Jyothi Basu, that there was not a
single objectionable scene in it. He too regretted
that this should happen in our state,’ and said
further, ‘It is our duty to ask pardon for the
disrespect shown to a good artist here, in this soil
which bore Tagore and Satyajit Ray. We would like
to ask your pardon. Please come. Come with
everyone.’ I went along with Illayarajah and Tushar
Gandhi (Kamal Haasan, Devi, April 2000).
These contradictory responses reflect in a
way the ambivalences that are structural to the
film, integrated as they are into it among other
reasons to pre-empt any criticism. Before I elabo-
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
54
rate them with the methods of psychoanalytic
semiotics by reading the film in conjunction
with its published script, an obligatory plot
summary of Hey Ram becomes necessary.
I
Presumably, the film narrates a tale of
moral redemption. Saket Ram, a South Indian
Vaishhavite Brahmin and an archaeologist by
profession, loses his Bengali wife, Aparna (Rani
Mukherjee), a schoolteacher, in the Calcutta
Riots of 1946. She is gangraped and brutally
murdered on the Direct Action Day called by
Jinnah, by their tailor, Altaf (Sadaf Khan), and
some members of his Muslim community. After
avenging her sacrilege and death by taking the
life of Altaf and killing other Muslims who have
no direct connection with his tragedy, Saket
Ram encounters the Hindu militant Sri Ram
Abhayankar (Atul Kulkarni) who later becomes
his mentor by identifying Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Naseerudin Shah) as the main
villain behind the riots.
In the next sequence, almost a year later,
Saket Ram weds Mythili (Vasundradas) a
member of his own South Indian caste and sect
at Mannarkudi in Tanjore. Pursued by persecutory images of the past though, he sets out to
assassinate Gandhi, under the tutelage of
Abhayankar and the patronage of a Maharashtrian Rajah (Vikram Gokhale). Just in time,
before he could accomplish his mandate, however, his close friend and erstwhile colleague,
Amjad Khan (Shahrukh Khan), a Pathani
Muslim, suddenly surfaces in Delhi. He has
chosen to return to India despite partition and
the emergence of Pakistan. With the bloody
sacrifice of his life, he attempts to restore the
sanity of his friend Saket Ram, who then kills
Hindu militants in order to protect Muslim
women and children. Five decades later, Saket
Ram himself loses what remains of his life in a
contemporary Hindu-Muslim riot. In the final
flashback of the film narrated by his grandson
Saket Ram Junior (Gautam Khandadai) to the
great grandson of Gandhi, Tushar Gandhi
(Tushar Gandhi), we learn that Saket Ram tries
to confess his sins to Gandhi by surrendering
the box containing his murder weapon. In his
hurry to attend his regular meeting, as Gandhi
defers this ritual and continues to proceed on
his way, the inevitable happens with Nathuram
Godse (Sharad Bongse) blocking his path and
firing thrice to kill him on the spot. In the
epilogue that follows, Saket Ram Junior hands
over to Tushar Gandhi, the murder weapon, and
Gandhi’s worn out footwear and broken glasses
brought back by Saket Ram Senior.
II
The fact that Tushar Gandhi, the great
grandson of Gandhi did not just accompany
Kamal Haasan for the grand occasion organized
by the Government of Bengal to honor the film
in Calcutta but actually appeared in the film is
what provides its fantasy with an ultimate mark
of authenticity even before it could acquire any
public acclaim elsewhere.
The initial addressee of the story
apparently narrated by Saket Ram Junior in the
beginning of the film, is the young doctor,
Munawar (Abbas), a Muslim, and a stand–in for
the spectator in this first scene of Hey Ram.
Surprisingly, however, Tushar Gandhi, the
great-grandson of Gandhi himself takes this
position at the end to metonymically confer the
blessings of Gandhi on the film. In the world
described by its narrative, Tushar Gandhi thus
arrives in it, seemingly to receive the confession
of the sins of Saket Ram, that his illustrious
great grandfather could not. As Tushar Gandhi
appears as himself, however, as if he is from
outside the realm of its fictional characters; on
the one hand his presence is included to preempt any criticism of the film by obtaining a
Gandhian validation of it and on the other to
double its reality effect. The film cannot achieve
these ends without inadvertently creating one
of its major ambivalent components as it raises
the issue whether Tushar Gandhi belongs to the
narrative world of the film or stands outside it.
The crucial question then is: What is the
actual status of Tushar Gandhi in the film? Is he
real or fictional? It seems obvious that he
appears as himself and not as characters
normally do in fiction because he carries his
actual name within the film, and in which case
he is real. If then, how can he make the
impossible claim that he is the fan of the
writings of Saket Ram Junior who is obviously
a fictional character and in which case Tushar
Gandhi’s status is then as fictional as that of
Saket Ram Junior. In other words, the film
cannot achieve its ends without denying the
fictional status of Tushar Gandhi in its
narrative. This process is derailed as the
repressed fictional status of his character returns
not just in the visual construction of the scene
where he meets another fictional character, but
in the very utterance of Tushar Gandhi to Saket
Ram Junior, ‘I have read your books. I am your
4
fan’ (Scene71: 182), that locates the speaker of
this statement as an equally fictional character.
His presence thus gives rise to two incompatible
statements at the same time. Like saying that,
although he is actually an imaginary character,
he is nonetheless real. The fact that the film
cannot control the emergence of his fictional
status on its own surface, however, makes
evident that Tushar Gandhi’s presence in the
film is nothing more than that of a fetish that
attempts to efface the yawning gap between
5
reality and representation. What appears in the
film therefore, contrary to its claims is not
history in all its impossibly unsullied
archaeological being, but something that takes
its place with all the fascinating powers of the
cinema to claim reality status. Precisely that is
the function of the fetish.
Ambivalences (pairs of opposites) or
disavowals (simultaneously holding or asserting
two incompatible beliefs) of this kind abound in
the film to produce other devious contradictions
conferring reality status to what the film finds
desirable and fictional status to what it does not
find desirable. In scene 19, immediately after
the wedding ceremony, where Saket Ram is
becoming a little more acquainted with Mythili
in their nuptial bedroom, he refers to Gandhi’s
autobiography, The Story of My Experiments
55
ENCOUNTERING THE TRAUMATIC
With Truth, as “biography” and therefore in his
opinion as “semi-fiction.” To Mythili on the
contrary, because it is a “biography” it is “history”
(Scene 19:74). The issue here is whose words
carry the necessary authority and power of
truth within the film and therefore it is what
Saket Ram says that carries all the weight.
In direct contrast to Gandhi’s book, Veer
Savarkar’s unidentified book about which a
great deal of secrecy and curiosity is aroused in
the film, is “history” to Saket Ram but “semifiction” to Mythili (Scene 32:95).
Intriguingly, the film introduces Savarkar’s book for the first time to the spectator as
if it is an equivalent of Everything You Wanted
to Know about Sex (Indian History) but Forgot
to Ask Veer Savarkar. It is Sri Ram Abhayankar
who gives the book to Saket Ram in a hushhush tone uttering, ‘read this book... this is a
banned book... this is Veer Savarkar’s...’ and
saying nothing more on it (Scene 11B: 55). Later
in the aircraft on their way to Poona, noticing
Saket Ram’s absorption in the book, Mythili
suggests that he may be reading “pornography”
because the brown wrapper on the book
deliberately hides its identity (Scene 32: 93-94).
Does Mythili’s comment interjected at this point
in the film work as a subversive remark on Veer
Savarkar’s book? The facts are to the contrary.
Her statement is neither a dialogical contestation of Saket Ram’s position on the book nor a
self-reflexive instance in the film aimed to
deconstruct its fetishism. Moreover, the
possibility for such a reading does not arise,
because Saket Ram at the conclusion of the
scene washes the book clean of its historical sins
or of all stains of evil by equating it with the
very moral principle of Gandhi’s three monkeys
before Mythili can half heartedly deny it by
saying, ‘I hate semi-fiction’:
Mythili: I am like the three monkeys of Mahatma.
I would see no evil, speak no evil and hear no evil.
For good things, these three senses will always
remain open.
Saket Ram (offering the book to her): Good! Then
you can read this book. History!
Mythili: I hate semi-fiction!
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
56
Thus in this scene, what emerges
contradictorily as pornography ends up as a
morally worthy history. The film registers
Mythili’s claim ‘I hate semi-fiction’ only as a
naive remark and as a partial denial. Hence, her
voice is not the dominant one in it; or woman
as woman do not exist or enjoy any speaking
position within the film. They can only
6
masquerade as ideological constructs. Her
initial comment on the book therefore is an
important index of the ideological mechanisms
of the film. By introducing the metaphor of
pornography, it doubles the sense of curiosity in
the spectator about Savarkar’s book, triggered
initially by Abhayankar. Which then makes it
easy for Saket Ram to emphatically assert the
fetishized status of it as the missing link in the
history of the nation or give that problematic
representation of history the necessary phallic
consistency and its associated desirability.
This is not a chance occurrence in the
film as there is always a necessary link between
fetishism and curiosity. What provokes the
curiosity of the human subject in its Oedipal
journey is its initial belief in the existence of the
maternal phallus somehow hidden from its view.
The discovery of its traumatic absence, the horror
of mother’s castration, however, triggers the
subject’s uncontrollable fear of a similar loss in
its own being and it is in order to evade such an
excruciating trauma it erects a memorial to the
maternal phallus by way of a fetish. The fetish
in turn constantly sustains desire and intensifies
curiosity of all the imagined mystery there is in
the woman. However, it is not the case that the
little boy has not perceived the absence of this
maternal plenitude but simultaneously he
wishes to retain his belief in its existence in order
to evade the traumatic kernel of symbolic
castration. It is this simultaneous holding of two
incompatible beliefs or positions in the face of
anxiety that Freud characterizes as disavowal,
which is symptomatic of fetishism (Sigmund
Freud, 1991: 352-353).
However, it is necessary to emphasize that
psychoanalysis makes an important distinction,
between the phallus and the fetish. The phallus
is primarily a signifier of a primordial lack or
absence (the absence of the maternal phallic
object), an empty place suggesting that other
signifiers can occupy this position in the journey
of the subject in order to provide a deluded sense
of plenitude and fullness. In that sense, psychoanalysis uses the concept of phallus not to make
any claims regarding its reality status but to
identify the impossible desire that marks the
subject and the possible outcome of that process.
7
In contrast, the fetish claims reality status.
To return to the earlier discussion then,
the fact that Saket Ram is in love with
Sarvarkar’s book because it is history; and Mythili
hates it because it is semi-fiction, does not entail
an absolute polarization of views between the
two because the ambivalence of love and hate
expressed towards the same object often strengthens its libidinal attachment. Significantly, if
Mythili objects to Saket Ram’s desire for hunting
by pointing out that it is a sin at one time and
quite elaborately at that (Scene 33: 97-99) then
later on she says to Saket, that is after she has been
thoroughly subdued in bed in an extravagant
demonstration of hyper-masculinity, ‘You like
hunting. That is not a sin. It is the Tiger’s
dharma to do so. I love you my Tiger’ (Scene 42:
116). Implying that she has already come
around to Saket’s point of view and would
eventually read the book he recommended.
In comparison to Veer Savarkar’s book,
Gandhi’s autobiography in the film does not
enjoy the same status despite the contradictory
statements made about it, as it does not occupy
the register of the fetish. The film includes it
therefore to only reject it, valorizing Saket
Ram’s experiments with truth against Gandhi’s
experiments with truth. Moreover, the narrative
clearly identifies it by its name and provides no
cause for any excited secrecy or curiosity about
it. Secondly, it is Mythili’s copy and in the scene
in which it appears, as it is her initial sense of
history, Saket Ram wishes to overcome he
flippantly dismisses it as semi-fiction (Scene
8
19:74). The third and the most significant point
is that within the dynamics of the film the very
fact that Gandhi’s book has surfaced in the
nuptial bedroom on the night of the wedding in
a rather unusual context is a sign that the
expected coitus is not going to take place.
However, this has nothing to do with moral
connotations associated with Gandhi, but
something that needs to be explained within the
Oedipal trajectory of the film.
III
Saket Ram’s Oedipal journey traverses
both the family and the nation. His individual
trauma thereby subsumes other larger traumas
imagined in the film. Unlike the typical Oedipal
scenario, it is my hypothesis that Hey Ram
narrates an aborted Oedipal journey verging on
psychosis, in that it goes without saying that,
the protagonist’s individual psychosis and its
infantile narcissism necessarily reflect the film’s
cultural psychosis or cultural narcissism.
With the foregoing description of the
maternal fetish, it should be clear that symbolic
castration is the constitutive trauma or anxiety
of human subject formation, introduced by the
third figure in the family, the father. In the
typical Oedipal scenario, there are two fathers:
the obscene father who monopolizes all phallic
enjoyment and the symbolic father, the
9
repository of culture and who institutes its law.
The child rejects the obscene father opting to
come under the rule of the symbolic father. To
enter this process of socialization or
enculturation it thereby severs its incestuous ties
with the mother to accept symbolic castration
from the latter. This is a prerequisite for
intersubjective communication and participation within a community but not without the
associated ideological baggage consequently in
terms of what it means to belong to that society;
and do so either as a male or a female subject.
This, of course entails a traumatic separation
from the mother, as evidenced in the trauma the
boy encounters with the discovery of the
absence of her phallus, as now that he learns it
is something that is associated only with the
10
father. However, the transition through the
Oedipal phase is not the same in every case. In
general, the so-called normal subject pays the
57
ENCOUNTERING THE TRAUMATIC
necessary symbolic debt or its pound of flesh by
severing its incestuous bond with the mother,
but attempts to overcome its trauma or unify its
subjective universe by way of some individual
fetish. The subject with a psychotic disposition,
on the contrary, refuses to pay his debt and in
order to shield itself from symbolic castration
shuts out the symbolic father, failing therefore
to come under the rule of his law. In other
words, this figure that alone can lend coherency
and balance or symbolic anchorage to the
individual’s subjective world is foreclosed in
psychosis (Jacques Lacan, 1997: 205). The
psychotic subject thus alienates itself from the
big Other (the symbolic community), as the
symbolic father is the representative of this
order (ibid: 194).11 Consequently, trapped in an
imaginary conflict with the fallen, or meagre
other, or just the image of the paternal position
and its shadows (Jacques Lacan 1997: 204 &
209). In other words, in the world of the psychotic, there is no contest over the maternal object
or the mother, only a never ending ‘either me or
him’ struggle with the degraded vulgar other or
the image of the paternal position. In that sense,
the obscene father who monopolizes phallic
enjoyment is also absent in psychosis. The
deluded subject nonetheless manages to reconstruct this sundered and traumatic world by
lending it a precarious logical structure or
coherency by way of a megalomania, in which
it emerges as the sole messianic redeemer of a
disintegrating universe (Freud 2001: 18-29), as
just fetishes alone cannot end this excruciating
battle in its subjectivity.
In standard patriarchal narratives, for
instance, the heroic character often eliminates
or subdues the obscene father and wins the
approval of the symbolic father by willingly
accepting symbolic castration or by paying
some symbolic debt to this figure to emerge as
the authorized and authoritative masculine
subject or an ideally interpellated subject of
12
ideology and society of its narrative world.
How then can we describe the constitutive
trauma of Saket Ram in the film?
MICA COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW
58
His separation from his mother is not enacted in the film, but from what other characters
say, we learn that he lost his mother in early
childhood and that his uncle’s wife, Vasantha
Maami (Nagamani Mahadevan) is his surrogate
mother. Narratives, however, often include a
traumatic scene to trigger the quest of the hero
and these scenes work as a metaphorical substitute of the castration trauma the heroic subject
encounters on his Oedipal journey. In Hey Ram,
it is the Calcutta Riots sequence, which works in
this manner by enacting Saket Ram’s trauma.
The traumatic loss of his passionate love object,
Aparna, for instance, could then be read as
recapitulating the hero’s traumatic separation
from his mother. Significantly, this specific loss
occurs within the private space of his house
rather than elsewhere.
As mentioned, the standard Oedipal hero
would attempt to recoup this loss, by undergoing a long ordeal and paying his symbolic
debt to some father figure, and winning the hand
of a princess in the moment of final reckoning.
Conversely, Saket Ram’s second marriage
with Mythili, does not take place in this manner
as it occurs immediately within a couple of scenes.
If we read Saket Ram as a subject susceptible to
psychosis, according to my suggestion, then his
trauma as highlighted by the film in the riot
sequence takes on an entirely different color.
When the intruding gang violates Aparna, Saket
Ram, like a helpless child, is unable to do
anything. In contrast, when a somewhat elderly
Muslim attempts to sodomize him, however, he
manages to reverse the situation in an exhibition of the utmost violence by inflicting a severe
blow right on this man’s crotch and sending
him reeling across the balcony to his gruesome
death below. Only after this event, Saket Ram
finds that the gang of intruders have slit
Aparna’s throat to further enhance his trauma.
In this primal scene, it is not a chance
occurrence, that this somewhat elderly sodomizing Muslim is the leader of the rampage. The
script emphasizes at this point that Altaf refers
to him as ‘Dada’ when he invites him as his
leader to enjoy the honor of feasting upon
Aparna first (Scene 10:46). In that sense, he is a
stand in for the castrating agency, specifically a
degraded vulgar father image. Moreover, by
refusing to accept Altaf’s invitation and staying
behind to meet his fate, this figure does not show
his preference for Aparna but expresses his desire
to sodomize Saket Ram. But this is an exercise if
taken to its logical conclusion would entirely
undermine the masculinity of the heroic subject
establishing his feminized position in relation to
this figure. This is something more inimical and
traumatic to the subject than the contest over the
love object, as it would destroy the very identity
the subject wishes to possess. Significantly, what
distinguishes the psychotic subject, according to
psychoanalysis, is this feminized subject position
he occupies in relation to the sodomizing father
image, forming the constitutive trauma of his
paranoid subjectivity (See Freud, 2001:18-29). To
confound matters though, this subject position
does not emerge from without as he imagines
because this subject ambiguously but intensely
desires a homoerotic relationship with this
13
father figure. This impulse violently contradicts
and threatens the masculine identity of the subject from within, and for this reason he expels
this desire with equal force to overcome his
anxiety. Nonetheless, this trauma continues to
pursue him now in an opposite guise from
without as an external threat posed by the desire
of a persecuting agent or a father figure. The
process that thus turns the table describes one of
the basic features of psychosis, otherwise known
as the mechanism of projection wherein what
begins as an internal perception ends as an
external perception. What needs to be emphasized at this point is thereby the initiative for the
subject’s delusion comes from outside from the
symbolic field of the big Other. It is this initiative the paranoid subject struggles to seize but by
negating his own homoerotic desire (Jacques
Lacan 1997: 193). In effect, the traumatic disintegration of the subjective universe of the
psychotic initiated by his own desire appears to
its paranoid perception as a phenomenal worlddisintegrating event (See Freud, 2001: 3-84)
initiated by the fallen other. This is how the
Calcutta Riots sequence functions for Saket Ram
as it is his expelled homoerotic desire that erupts
in the guise of the sodomizing other, producing
its most intense trauma and the reciprocal
reactive brutal retaliation aimed at this person.
It is in order to overcome this inaugural traumatic and emaciating threat to his masculinity,
that Saket Ram desperately constructs grandiose
and virulent hypermasculine images of himself
to seek narcissistic compensations. This sodomizing virile Muslim ‘other’ being a common
figure in the collective phobia or fantasy of
those who advocate Hindutva, the bloody
compensatory aspects of the hypermasculine
exercises indulged in by the saffron brigade
during various pogroms share a similar locus or
a traumatic sense of loss of authority.
The expelled feminized disposition of
Saket Ram, however, refuses to disappear pitching him in incessant battle with its forces. Thus,
for instance, in every scene of copulation in the
film a traumatic note enters it before, after or
during the process to disturb its resolution within
the typical male-female romantic scenario
producing bizarre masculine expressions on the
part of the hero. In the very first scene of
copulation in the film, in order to reassure his
sense of masculinity, he claims to Aparna that it
is he who has ‘sexually assaulted her.’ After one
such act in the same scene, he covers his
posterior with a long flowing white bedsheet
thrusting his chest forward to play the piano
while Aparna lies beneath narrating poetry. This
use of the bedcover is a significant variation of
the common instance enacted by female figures
in Hollywood cinema where of course, in similar
scenes, the white sheet covering the female body
fetishizes it enhancing the mysterious quality
attributed to womanhood and triggering the
desire to see more. Here on the contrary, the
extended flow of the sheet stretching behind
Saket Ram is a condensation or a metaphor for
the desired paternal phallus that almost seems to
anticipate the intrusion of the sodomizing other
in the following riot sequence.
The second copulation event between
Saket Ram and Mythili does not take place on
59
ENCOUNTERING THE TRAUMATIC
the ordained nuptial night, for as discussed
earlier Gandhi has intruded this space in the
form of his book, and he is another father figure
who occupies the disturbing paternal position in
relation to Saket Ram reminding him of his
feminized position. In this scene, this emaciated
figure also appears as the repugnant squirming
lizard, another metaphor for the paternal
phallus, to trigger Mythili’s scream and the
ensuing traumatic hallucinations of Saket Ram
wherein he finds this lizard wiggling through
the streaming blood on the floor to approach
him. The traumatic images associated with the
Calcutta Riots that emerge at this moment are
not therefore the actual cause for the disruption
of the ordained coitus of this wedding night. By
way of metonymical sediments of the first
traumatic scene, they only reinforce Saket Ram’s
fears about his feminization. The disruption of
the coitus in this scene has another important
reason as well. Becuse Saket Ram has not yet
found his quest or symbolic mandate, he cannot
indulge in any phallic enjoyment, a mandate
that necessarily entails the renunciation of any
preference for Gandhi’s book given the
trajectory of the narrative. This maternal call for
the duty of the son comes later in the secret
ritual conducted by the Marathi Rajah at his
armoury room. In this scene, once the names of
Sri Ram Abhayankar and Saket Ram turn up for
the mission of assassinating Gandhi, the Rajah’s
face morphs into the face of Aparna to utter the
command in English, ‘Today is Vijayathasami. It
seems like it is the will of Bhavani that it shall
be a Ram who should do the job’ (Scene 37: 108).
Significantly, it is only after Saket Ram
accepts this maternal command, his earlier
traumatic hallucinations cease to trouble him
any longer and the devilish images of Gandhi
occupy the place vacated by them. Therefore,
the last time ever the trauma of Calcutta assails
Saket Ram is briefly before Abhayankar takes
him to the armoury room, to attend the secret
ritual. It is not a mere coincidence then as a
reward for his acceptance of the command
when he symbolically murders Gandhi by
shooting at his demonic hallucinated image,
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Saket Ram can indulge in coitus with Mythili in
the subsequent scene. This displacement of one
set of hallucinations by another set of hallucinations also reverses the role of the persecutor
and the persecuted, the protagonist thus seizing
the initiative from the imaginary other.
Specifically the guilt that assails him in the
haunting image of the little blind Muslim girl
(metonymically a remainder of Gandhian values)
giving the persecutory charge to the first set of
hallucinations does not have a similar counterpart in the second. In these succeeding images,
Saket Ram is the persecutor and the persecuted
is of course, Gandhi and this displacement of a
delusion of persecution by a delusion of
grandeur is typical of the deluded subject who
has locked himself in an unyielding infantile
14
narcissism. This transformation further indicates
that Saket Ram is rebuilding his disintegrated
world gradually with a fantasized megalomania
wherein he can emerge as the sole redeemer of
his Hindu Nation. Moreover, this transition from
the first to the second set of hallucinations is
mediated by the transformation of the Rajah’s
face into that of Aparna’s face. For that reason,
the Aparna who pronounces his symbolic
mandate is not the Aparna who died in the riots
at Calcutta but the Aparna recovered through her
Durga portrait in Saket Ram’s second visit to
Calcutta. The fact that now she wears the Rajah’s
turban as she pronounces her commandment
amidst what is a ritual that is clearly identified
as an effort to redeem the Hindu Nation makes
it obvious that this Aparna is the phallic mother
with whom the nation converges. She clearly
therefore invokes the will of goddess Bhavani
and the just war in the Mahabharata when she
indicates that his mandate is delivered on the
day of Vijayadasami.
The other Aparna who died in Calcutta,
consequently, does not remind Saket Ram of any
trauma or permanent loss but appears in the
succeeding scene, the lavani song and dance
sequence, once again as an object of his
voyeuristic gaze indicating that now the block
against his phallic enjoyment has been
temporarily removed. However, in the first event
of actual copulation that follows immediately
between Saket Ram and Mythili, the expelled
desire towards the father figure emerges again.
To tackle which Saket Ram becomes the
persecuting agent transforming Mythili’s body
into a gigantic Mouser gun aimed at his avowed
target Gandhi, who is of course, physically
absent in this scene but metaphorically present
as the imagined target.
The ambivalent feelings expressed by
Mythili and Saket Ram over Gandhi’s book thus
do not carry the same libidinal component as
that of Savarkar’s book as the latter provides
the compensatory vision for the chasm introduced by the former. Above all, Gandhi
occupies the position of Saket Ram’s principal
adversary, since he threatens to rupture both the
masculine unity of Saket Ram and the virility of
the Hindu Nation. Saket Ram’s compensatory
reactions opposing this trauma are therefore
grandiose in proportion and registered among
other things, in the very quality of the hallucinated images of Gandhi.
The intensity of these images of Gandhi is
better described then by comparing the script
version and the film version of the secret ritual
scene in the armoury room. It begins when the
Rajah says, specifically, in English, ‘the misfortune of this Hindu Nation is that its worst
enemy is a practicing Hindu. Right from the
beginning he has been taking their side and
neglecting the people of his religion.’ On this note,
as Saket Ram begins to hallucinate, according to
the script, a gold coin rolls down to find its way
to a large heap of gold, which is then downloaded from a carriage of a train-like rock metal
at a quarry. The camera then tilts up from a pair
of boots to reveal Jinnah offering his ceremonial
salute to formalize Partition and the transfer of
power. In response to this image an army parade
is led by Mountbatten, formally juxtaposed to a
procession of the gold bearing carriages of a
train, but significantly visualized in black and
white with the telling details, the gold coins
alone in their resplendent color. The sole
purpose of this formal mechanism is to highlight
the narcissistic wounds of Hindutva to ensure
that the spectator does not miss their intended
significance. The moment the doors of the
carriages swing open, the cadres of the Congress
Party download the gold at the feet of Jinnah. In
the next black and white image, Gandhi is
imitating the ceremonial pose of Jinnah as he
witnesses a parade of a refugee train full of dead
people with only their blood revealed in color.
Now as the Engine shrieks bellowing smoke and
expunging steam beneath its wheels the Rajah
declares, ‘for centuries we have worshipped in
valor and its accompanying instruments. He
now wants us to change our form of worship and
pray to a new god–himself and a new religion–
ahimsa.’ Saket Ram’s hallucinations return on
this note with Gandhi sprinkling gold coins at a
cactus plant that transforms itself into the green
flag of the Muslim League. The Rajah interrupts,
‘brave men it should be done as a symbolic act,
and not as revenge. But, to show the world and
the country what a Hindu is capable of.’ The
names of Saket Ram and Sir Ram Abhayankar
turns up after this and as the Rajah announces
the final words his face is replaced by Aparna’s
face. Accepting the mandate and choosing the
required weapon, as Saket Ram takes aim with
it, the next series of hallucinated images follow.
A refugee train proceeds with numerous dead
bodies, but Gandhi is casually witnessing the
scene, spinning cotton at his wheel. He then
turns towards Saket Ram as if someone called
him. Instantly, Saket Ram fires a shot at him. An
explosion shatters Gandhi’s image into
smithereens, and from the blaze produced by the
bullet, a Nazi Swastika emerges and transforms
itself into a metallic lotus to disintegrate and
disappear by way of a transition to the next
scene, the lavani dance sequence.
Compared to the script, these hallucinations are somewhat condensed in the film
and unlike in other instances the published
script does not indicate if some of these images
were censored. In the film, we first see Gandhi
sprinkling gold coins at a greenish cactus plant.
Later in the second montage, we see Gandhi
spinning at his charkha against the backdrop of
the Muslim League flag looking towards Saket
61
ENCOUNTERING THE TRAUMATIC
Ram who then fires at him. From the resulting
explosion and the subsequent shattering of the
image, a Nazi Swastika emerges. Then a Hindu
Swastika (not in the script) displaces it followed
by the Sangh Parivar’s metallic lotus. This last
image does not shatter itself or disappear as
described by the script but is replaced by a
smooth elliptical wipe that opens on to the
subsequent Marathi lavani–the song and dance
sequence, formally and literally opening the
door of phallic enjoyment. What needs to be
emphasized at this point, is that like the fantasy
of the sodomizing Muslim other, these images of
Gandhi and the words spoken by the Rajah
share a similar locus in the discourse of
Hindutva as outlined by his emphasis on the
Hindu worship of valor as against ahimsa. This
principle of non-violence is singled out for
attention as it does not provide any narcissistic
compensation to Brahminical or Upper Caste
authority in the context of a series of threats it
faces from below and what is more inimical
about this principle to these protagonists of the
Hindu nation is, it feminizes its subject position.
Similarly, as elaborated by the black and white
images, in many instances today, since the
institution of the Mandal Commission Report,
the more the challenge to this authority, the
greater the virulence of Hindutva.
A major instance of this distended
aesthetic of self-representation in the film, is the
glorification of Saket Ram’s body when it
phenomenally weathers a twister of a sandstorm
in the weird dream sequence that begins the
second flashback of the film. Embellished in fullfledged Brahminical attire, with a silk dhoti
outlined by a shining golden red border and a
half naked torso glossed by an erotic play of
light, and, an aggressive posture enhanced by
the extendable fancy handle of the Mouser gun,
Saket Ram perfects his aim at his target. As he
gets closer and closer to it, a sandstorm gathers
in the horizon. The moment the bullet hits the
clay model, a substitute for Gandhi’s head, the
storm attacks Saket Ram and significantly,
precisely at this moment, it comes as a serenely
enjoyable occasion for Saket Ram. Violently but
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erotically unwinding his mane and in its wild
flow evoking its iconographic similarity to the
flowing mane of Ram as in the deliberate fusion
of Shiva and Ram deployed in many Sangh
Parivar cut-outs during the shilanya phase of
Chalo Ayodhya call of Sangh Parivar, the storm
caresses his body with all its mighty force.
According to the script (Scene 48:127), this
gigantic twister is supposed to be dancing in the
form of Uduku, Shiva’s percussion instrument,
and hence could be read both as a metonymical
and metaphorical substitute for his divine
phallus. In addition, because, once the storm
fully engulfs Saket, according to the script, he
becomes its very eye and perhaps because of that
‘he is all the more serene’ signifying an ecstatic
sexual fusion between (Saket) Ram and Shiva.
Only with this kind of megalomania, Saket Ram
15
is willing to thus compromise his virility.
This dream sequence is another hallucination of the protagonist but it is with that his
megalomania reaches its culminating point
providing the anchoring point for his fantasy as
the sole messianic redeemer of the Hindu Nation.
However, the God of Saket Ram or the Ram of
Ayodhya the way Hindutva locates him ‘is
stricken with a sort of feminization’ or suffers
from an ‘imaginary degradation of otherness’
like the protagonist (Jacques Lacan, 1997: 101)
lending a precarious balance to this redeemer
fantasy. Nonetheless, with the explosion of this
meglomania, Saket Ram does not hallucinate
any longer in the film, as there is no further need
to imagine anything greater. As discussed
earlier, the disturbing and persecuting hallucinations of the Calcutta Riots are there only to
mark out a place in advance for such narcissistic
eruptions at a later stage for the delusions of
persecution to give way to delusions of grandeur
that succeed. The delusions of persecution itself
are, however, the flipside of this narcissism as it
sustains the subject as the illusory centre of the
world in which case it becomes the only target
of all attack. The delusions of grandeur reverse
that process by projecting the bad object outside
the self. Hence, it is indicative that the image of
the target itself appears on the eye of the
protagonist at the beginning of this sequence
such that at its end he can become the eye of the
storm to blast it away from its vicinity. In that
manner, all initiative has returned to Saket Ram.
There is another important parallel to this
16
maniacal explosion in the film to what Jacques
Lacan has to say on narcissism and its role in
another redeemer fantasy that anticipated the
advent of Nazism, the famous book of Schreber,
Memoirs of My Nervous Illness:
People today act as if narcissism were something
that was self-explanatory–before extending to
external objects, there is a stage at which the
subject takes his own body as object. The term
narcissism does, it is true, has a meaning in this
dimension. Does this mean, though, that the term
narcissism is used only in this sense? President
Schreber’s autobiography, in the way Freud used it
to support this notion, shows us, however, that
what was repugnant to the said President’s
narcissism was the adoption of a feminine position
towards his father, which involved castration. Here
is someone who is supposed to be better off
obtaining satisfaction in a relation founded on a
delusion of grandeur, since castration can no
longer affect him once his partner has become God
(Jacques Lacan, 1997: 89).
It is the same with Saket Ram’s encounter
with Shiva, as it provides him the necessary
shield to diffuse castration.
IV
How do we then read Saket Ram’s
ambiguous second phase of relationship with
Gandhi, in which apparently there is some
recovery of this father figure once Saket Ram
decides to confess his sins? Does Gandhi
thereby emerge as the symbolic father of Saket
Ram in opposition to this extraordinary but
imaginary divine partner of his?
In order to unravel these implications we
have to go back to the very first scene of the
film. In this scene, the prologue of the film,
Saket Ram Junior in his conversation with the
doctor, Munawar, reveals three basic features of
his grandfather. Firstly, although the rest of the
people consider Saket Ram as mentally unstable,
the grandson thinks otherwise. Secondly, in
opposition to Gandhi who prefers bright light in
his room, Saket Ram prefers darkness. Last but
not least, although Saket Ram may not be a
Mahatma like the former, he is nonetheless a
good atma whose story is worth telling. As the
grandson insists (Scene 1: 10), ‘Maybe my grandfather is a Mahatma or not, but he is a good
man. A good average atma! Is that not enough?’
Enough for whom is the issue. If being an
ordinary atma were sufficient, then there is no
need for the story. In that sense, the narrative
poses an enigma at the very outset and that is:
Is Saket Ram sane or insane? Is he a Mahatma
or an ordinary atma?
In contrast, at the threshold of the Oedipal
phase, ‘Am I a man or am I a woman?’ is the
burning existential and hysterical question that
assails the human subject (See The Hysteric
Question I & II, Lacan 1997: 161-182). By paying
its pound of flesh or accepting symbolic castration, and defining its identity in terms of its
similarity or opposition to the symbolic father
figure, the child assumes a male or female sexual
identity by thus answering this question. In the
psychotic subject, however, this question cannot
be resolved as it excludes the symbolic father
from its subjective world producing its associated trauma. The film, of course, does not raise this
hysterical question directly. Instead, it assumes
the shape: Am I sane or insane? Am I a Mahatma
or an ordinary atma? This is something indicated by the narrative itself.
To be a Mahatma, according to the very
dynamics of the film in this first scene, is to
show a preference for bright light as against the
darkness preferred by Saket Ram. Now, as Lacan
rightly insists (1997: 148-149), day and night,
brightness and darkness are not just experiences. They are above all signifiers that connote
something for someone, as we have in the
widely prevalent practices of many a culture,
wherein the bright luminous Sun stands as the
symbol of masculinity in opposition to our
planet, the dark Mother Earth, which stands as
the symbol of the feminine. Similarly, sanity and
insanity are not just experiences but signifiers,
as patriarchy often associates women with dark
madness and men with shining sanity. In that
sense, these signifiers opposing each other stand
63
ENCOUNTERING THE TRAUMATIC
for the presence or absence of the phallus.
Provided, our discussion on Saket Ram’s
feminized position so far, it is not surprising that
in the first scene, the film itself, by way of these
signifiers, confers exactly a similar status to
Saket Ram, as people regard him as mentally
unstable and he prefers darkness. It is this
inaugural lack, the film or Saket Ram’s extended
journey through the nation hopes to annul so
that he can possess the light in the end to restore
his masculinity, and transform his insane
Hindutva discourse into a shining picture of
sanity. To achieve this of course, Gandhi and his
discourse of ahimsa have to be castrated and
pushed to the feminized/insane position and
ejected into the limbo of darkness.
What seems to blatantly contradict this
picture is the fact that, once Nathuram Godse
kills Gandhi, Saket Ram withdraws his gun on
Goel’s (Om Puri) insistence on non-violence
thereby apparently subscribing to some Gandhian value. The point remains, though that, Saket
Ram who imagined the murder of Gandhi so many
times in the film, cannot imagine his murder of
Nathuram Godse even for a brief moment. Such
a thing is not possible, not because Saket Ram
has undergone a change of heart and therefore
prefers non-violence, as the film seems to insist,
but because Nathuram occupies the same
position that Saket Ram always wished to
occupy. The film very clearly equates them in the
secret ritual scene, when Aparna declares, ‘It
seems like it is the will of Bhavani that it shall
be a Ram who should do the job’ (Scene 37: 108).
Therefore, it does not matter for the film whether
it is Nathuram or Saket Ram who accomplishes the
job. The former is simply the double of the latter.
It is worth comparing this aspect of the film to
Hamlet’s predicament. He procrastinates over a
long period about whether to kill his uncle or
not, knowing well that this man has killed his
father and married his mother. He postpones
this decision, as Lacan points out, because his
uncle occupies the exact position of Hamlet’s
Oedipal desire for his mother as he has accomplished what Hamlet unconsciously wishes. Only
at the end of the play when his mother proves
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that her love for Hamlet is greater than her love
for his uncle by drinking the poison meant for
Hamlet, does he kill his uncle (See Madan Sarup,
1992: 163-167). A similar situation of Saket
Ram killing Nathuram cannot occur in Hey Ram
even as an imagi-native exercise, because there
is no contest between the two for the affection
of the Hindu phallic mother. Similarly, between
Saket Ram and Gandhi, there is no contest for
the same maternal object, however, in this case
it is so because they do not desire the same
thing, on the contrary, Gandhi’s idea of a nation
threatens the virility of Saket Ram’s nation. It is
for that reason, we cannot read Saket Ram’s
narrative within the standard Oedipal scenario.
Does it imply then that Saket Ram fails to
emerge as the heroic figure of the narrative
because Nathuram accomplishes a goal staked out
in advance with all melodrama for the former?
On the contrary, out of sheer necessity that the
ideology of the film must fit facts, it grants
Nathuram Godse the position to eliminate
Gandhi, otherwise, the film does not throw any
doubt on Saket Ram’s heroic stature. Moreover,
according to the narrative, as Lacan points out,
what becomes necessary is, ‘when you entrust
someone with a mission, the aim is not what he
brings back, but the itinerary he must take
(Jacques Lacan, 1977: 179).’ It is not necessary
therefore, that Saket Ram should kill Gandhi all
by himself but only share the same itinerary or
journey with Nathuram Godse.
Yet, Saket Ram brings back something
that Godse could not take with him, the broken
spectacles and the worn-out footwear of Gandhi.
How do we read this, as an expression of his
love for Gandhi? He does not bring these objects
alone though, but also the box containing his
much-cherished murder weapon, the mouser
gun. If there is any central failure, therefore, on
Saket Ram’s part it is the fact that his surrender
of the weapon to Gandhi does not transpire
because that would have then constituted the
payment of his pound of flesh to his symbolic
father. By way of a great coincidence, Nathuram
Godse by killing Gandhi just in time, however,
does not provide Saket Ram, a second chance to
do so. These coincidences in the film have a
close connection with the desire of Saket Ram
and the ideological coherence the film wishes to
achieve by way of many a similar chance
occurrence. For instance, whenever, Saket Ram
desires Sri Ram Abhayankar, he seems to materialize from nowhere, three times at that and
always by some coincidence. In other words, if
Gandhi in the later part of the film is recovered
as a symbolic father, then Saket Ram would
have surrendered his weapon and confessed his
sins to him. Saket Ram’s delusion, however,
rules that out. It is for that reason once Gandhi
moves away from Saket Ram saying he would
listen to him later, this briefly revered figure is
returned to his earlier vulgar image flung as he,
is irreverently and obscenely, on the ground by
the impact of the bullets flowing from Godse’s
gun. The short friendly demeanor of reverence
given to Gandhi therefore has only one function
and that is to name Saket Ram a Mahatma by
Gandhi’s own words (Scene 16:159), as he does
because Saket Ram apparently saves the lives of
some Muslims. The whole Hindu-Muslim trouble
towards the end of the film, where Saket Ram
suddenly becomes a savior of the Muslim
people, however, begins only after he first kills a
Muslim, Jalal (Manoj Bawa) to reclaim his gun
from him at the Azad Soda Factory (Scene 63A
158-159). That this man is the uncle of Amjad
Khan and despite his death right in front of his
eyes, Amjad Khan is self-effacingly Gandhian,
are quickly glossed over by the film in order to
establish Saket Ram as a Mahatma.
Nevertheless, the question remains as to
how we can reconcile the ambiguous fact that
Saket Ram kills Muslims at one point and Hindus
at another point in the film. The point is not to
reconcile these contradictions or other secular
prevarications of the film but to shift the locus
elsewhere because for the hero of the narrative
as Lacan observes about the deluded subject:
Reality isn’t at issue for him, certainty is. Even
when he expresses himself along the lines of what
he experiences is not of the order of reality, this
does not affect his certainty that it concerns him.
The certainty is radical. The very nature of what he
is certain of can quite easily remain completely
ambiguous, covering the entire range from
malevolence to benevolence. But it means something unshakable for him.
This constitutes what is called, whether rightly or
wrongly, the elementary phenomenon or, as a
more developed phenomenon, delusional belief
(Jacques Lacan, 1997: 75).
In effect then, nothing in the film
challenges Saket Ram’s unshakeable certainty
that he is the sole messianic redeemer of the
Hindu nation. Hence, there is no space in the
film for two messiahs to coexist. It is not merely
a coincidence then that Saket Ram’s death in the
film ambiguously precedes Gandhi’s assassination and death. That is, if according to the film’s
story time or the temporal order within the
story, Gandhi dies in 1948 and Saket Ram dies
in 1999, then to the contrary, in the discourse
time or the temporal order of the narration with
its flashbacks, Saket Ram dies first. By such a
strategy a film that was widely advertised as a
film about Gandhi, jettisons his funeral scene.
Instead, it invites the spectator to witness the
funeral scene of Saket Ram but mediating it
through the presence of Tushar Gandhi. He,
however, by proclaiming himself as the fan of
Saket Ram Junior, is ironically oblivious of the
fact that he is not receiving the confessions of
the sins of Saket Ram but the castrated entrails
of his great grandfather in the shape of the
worn out footwear and cracked spectacles.
It is important to note at this point what
happens once Tushar Gandhi begins to look at
these objects including Saket Ram’s Mouser gun
and from whose point of view he does so. To
frame this event, the camera crosses the imaginary line by violating the 180-degree rule, not to
self-reflexively reveal its symbolic mechanisms
but to situate an impossible gaze, as we now see
the event from the head of Saket Ram’s bed.
Although he is dead, absent, he is nonetheless
present by way of this impossible gaze. This gaze
is impossible because only in a fantasy or a dream
it is possible for someone to be present as a gaze
17
of one’s own birth or death. The last image enacts
such a fantasy. We see from that point of view
an unusually large portrait of Gandhi painted on
what are a series of closed windows. If Saket Ram
65
ENCOUNTERING THE TRAUMATIC
always remained in the dark in this room, which
the film and script takes pain to emphasize, it
implies that Saket Ram never could have looked
at this image in the dark. Why then now his
grandson, incidentally named Saket Ram Junior,
open these windows and the spectator is privileged to share it from the impossible point of
view of Saket Ram? Because it is from this point
of view Saket Ram simultaneously possesses the
bright light, the signifier of masculinity, the
phallus, as his grandson, gradually pushes
Gandhi’s image into darkness, the signifier of
femininity. The compensatory pleasure derived
by this gaze is revealed by the fact that it is from
this point of view Tushar Gandhi, a little before
the windows are opened receives the broken
spectacles and the wornout footwear of Gandhi,
a metaphor for the castrated entrails, and thus
Gandhi’s position is doubly feminized. In the
foundational traumatic scene of Calcutta Riots,
one eye-piece of Saket Ram’s glasses is shattered
during his struggle with the sodomizing other
and, in the end, it is Gandhi’s glasses which
receive such a mark, at the point of his death,
thus resolving Saket Ram’s trauma. There is no
attempt in the film, therefore, to recover Gandhi
as the symbolic father only the opposite effort,
to push him into the abyss.
Is it possible then Saket Ram has a
symbolic father say for instance, in either Sri Ram
Abhayankar or the Maharashtrian Rajah who holds
forth on Hindu valor? Seemingly, Sri Ram Abhayankar appears to fit the bill for two reasons.
Firstly, the connotations generated by both the
names of Saket Ram and Sri Ram Abhayankar
provides one argument. Saket Ram literally means
Ram who hails from Saket in Aydhohya and the
name Sri Ram Abhayankar literally means one
who offers refuge to Ram. Moreover, in the very
first encounter between these two, Abhayankar
quotes his origin in Sanskrit by citing the Kausika
gotra, which thereby makes him a surrogate
Vishwamitra. Secondly, after complete paralysis,
he obtains a pledge from Saket Ram that the
latter would renounce his familial ties to
accomplish the avowed mission. Later, at Kasi,
Saket Ram ritually renounces his ties. Cumula-
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tively these elements seems to imply that Sri
Ram Abhayankar is the actual symbolic father
of Saket Ram because the latter pays some kind
of symbolic debt to him by renouncing his
familial ties. For more than one reason, however,
it is not worth rushing into this conclusion.
Because Saket Ram, castrates Sri Ram Abhayankar as well by sending him into his fatal
paralysis and death. This event transpires during
the tent pegging game, when riding close to each
other Saket Ram’s horse knocks down Abhayankar from his horse to cause the fatal accident.
Again, it is not mere chance that produces this
event. Above all because if Abhayankar remains
alive he would only threaten Saket Ram’s
megalomania that can permit only himself as the
sole redeemer of the Hindu Nation. Therefore,
when Abhayankar finally hands over the murder
weapon to Saket Ram, a metaphorical comparison is made to the calendar image of Hanuman
tearing open his chest to reveal his real love and
affection for Rama and Sita. By similarly tearing
open the box placed on Abhayankar’s chest, he
offers the murder weapon to Saket Ram. In this
manner, Abhayankar who begins his journey as
Vishwamithra ends up as a Hanuman. The pledge
given to him by Saket Ram is therefore not
equivalent to symbolic castration. Moreover, when
Saket Ram renounces his familial ties it is very
clear that he is not severing himself from his
incestuous ties with his phallic mother. In that
sense, he is not paying any symbolic debt to any
father figure. Since, immediately after he breaks
his sacred thread and abdominal cord and takes
a dip in the Ganges this image smoothly dissolves
into his mother’s photograph as if he is merging
with her. Strengthening this link, in a few scenes
previous to this event of renunciation, Saket Ram
while perfecting his weapon in his secret chamber,
caresses the map of Akhand Bharat and the
photograph of his mother with one continuous
affectionate stroke of his fingers as both these
objects are conveniently placed next to each other.
Why does the film then expend so much
18
drama over this scene of renunciation and
takes all that trouble to do so at a great distance
from Chennai in a place like Kasi? No doubt, the
main purpose is to religiously anoint Saket
Ram’s mission by turning his quest into a spiritual
one, but it simultaneously entails an attempt to
overcome other contradictions. Within the South
Indian Tamil Vaishnavism, which prioritizes
bhakti marga over the jnana marga, renunciation means giving up family ties and everyday
attachments to dedicate oneself to humble
service in a temple or related order. If Saket Ram
does so, his entire mission would lose its maniacal
masculine aura. Moreover, as argued Saket Ram’s
Vaishnavite god Ram, is ‘stricken with a sort of
feminization’ and opting for bhakti marga
would in no way help him or his god. It would
in that sense rob Saket Ram of his masculinity
by turning him into a resent less baul singer
transforming him in the process into a close copy
of Gandhi singing his bhajans. This is something the hero cannot tolerate and there-fore he
chooses to conduct his renunciation according
to Saivite rites just as he dreams up the fusion
of Ram and Shiva in the storm sequence. Consequently, in this renunciation sequence, Saket
Ram wears the Saivite sacred ash on his forehead instead of his usual Vaishnavite red mark.
Another object, thus achieved is the smoothing
or fusing of contradictory traditions into a
unified monolithic Hinduism.
To return to the previous question, if Sri
Ram Abhayankar for the reasons cited fails to
emerge as Saket Ram’s symbolic father what then
are the chances of the Maharastrian Rajah in
becoming the chosen one? He loses the race in the
crucial scene because exactly when he announces the symbolic command his face is effaced by
Aparna’s face. Moreover, Saket Ram yields
nothing of symbolic value to him. What then
about Saket Ram’s absent father in the film, at
least does he enjoy such a privilege? The first
instance, we get to know that Saket Ram has a
father, is by way of his telegram that reaches his
son in Calcutta. He tears it up though to formalize his marriage with Aparna. However, he later
marries Mythili according to the wishes of this
father. How do we read this position? Ambiguously, although Saket Ram either directly or
symbolically annihilates anyone occupying the
paternal position in relation to him, he is nonetheless quite submissive to these figures from
time to time. For instance, when he undertakes the
pledge with Abhayankar, in his swift response
to the telegram sent by the Rajah to proceed on his
mission or in eventually complying with his own
father’s desire by marrying Mythili, Saket Ram
takes a submissive position towards these figures.
As Lacan observes such a submissive attitude is
revelatory of the conformist side of his delusion:
The alienation here is radical, it is not bound to a
nihilating signified, as in a certain type of rivalrous relation with the father, but to a nihilation of
the signifier. The subject will have to bear the
weight of this real, primitive dispossession of the
signifier and adopt compensation for it, at length,
over the course of his life, through a series of
purely conformist identifications with characters
who will give him the feeling for what one has to
be a man (Jacques Lacan, 1997: 205).
It is because of this foreclosure of the
paternal signifier or the name of the father that
signifies symbolic fatherhood and which cannot
be internalized by Saket Ram, his rivalry with all
the father figures oscillate between two poles
moving from submission to attack or from
attack to submission or from reverence to
19
degradation or vice versa. For instance, in the
case of the sodomizing Muslim other, he moves
from a position of submission to a position of
attack. In the case of Gandhi, he moves from
attack to submission when he briefly kneels
down in front of him to offer him his gun box
but in the end again moves into a position of
attack by burning Gandhi’s effigy, the huge
portrait on the wall, with his impossible gaze. In
addition, the expulsion of the paternal signifier,
going beyond all these figures is problematic for
Saket Ram’s own paternal position. He cannot
therefore, recognize his own son, M.G. Raman
(Chandra Haasan) who is condemned to be an
inferior shadow. This does not imply that Saket
Ram lacks any desire to procreate. In the storm
scene, where his megalomania reaches it full
form, as discussed, given the kind of sexual
fusion that takes place, involves a final
compromise of his virility. This compromise
necessarily entails a pregnancy fantasy, as,
without that, the purpose of this divine erotic
67
ENCOUNTERING THE TRAUMATIC
relationship is not realized within the delusion
of Saket Ram. Like his counterpart Schreber, he
thus wishes to father/mother a nation or a world
all by himself, and proliferate it with an entire
20
race of his doubles. This is ‘procreation after
the deluge’ after the conclusion of the hero’s
most agonizing apocalyptic encounters with the
sodomizing other and Gandhi (Lacan, 1997:213).
M.G. Raman in that sense, is one of the products
of the deluge, hence his inferiority. It is significant that in the story of Saket Ram there is a
huge temporal gap between January 30, 1948 and
December 6, 1999, probably indicating in the
interim a period of hibernation or incubation.
Hence, the pride of place the grandson Saket
Ram Junior enjoys. He is the only one
authorized to speak on behalf of his grandfather,
a status granted to him by the very name he
bears. It is not surprising, that like his grandfather, he has the ambiguous ability to unnerve
the Muslim police officer Ibrahim (Nasser) with all
benevolent intentions by asking him for his name,
so that the onus of proving one’s secular creden21
tials is always on the other. In the film, when
we first see this police officer, except for the fact
that the role is played by Nasser we do not know
whether the character he portrays is a Muslim. In
the end when Saket Ram Junior asks for his name,
by way of another coincidence his name badge
is missing. Searching for it and not finding it,
the officer after some embarrassing moment of
hesitation announces his name as ‘Ibrahim.’ In the
Chennai riot sequence, it is this officer who blocks
the vehicle taking Saket Ram to the hospital and
forces the stretcher carrying Saket Ram into a
dry drain and the others accompanying him, to
wait along with him below the surface of the
ground until the riots cease. In that sense, he
enjoys all the initiative at this point. Although
during the riot, predominantly Muslim mobs are
involved in destructive activities, this officer is
highly conscientious about his duty proving his
secular credentials for the gaze that judges him.
In the end, Saket Ram Junior seizes the initiative
by asking for his name, thus revealing the gaze
that was judging him all the time and this father
figure in the process. In that sense, even in the
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case of Saket Ram Junior anyone who occupies
the paternal position, is degraded in some
manner after an initial moment of submission.
V
The fantasy to thus double one’s selfpresence reveals the mechanism of Saket Ram’s
death drive to achieve an impossible
equilibrium in his rapidly disintegrating world.
Symptomatically revealed in the compulsion to
repeat, as the film privileges Saket Ram, this
narrative drive for absolute resolution takes the
form of the compulsion to double everything in
his universe (Jacques Lacan, 1997: 209).
Providing the energy for the hero’s relentless
narcissistic craving to disavow, prevaricate,
hallucinate, and to hunt and kill.
To begin with, there are two Saket Rams in
the film, Saket Ram Senior (Kamal Haasan) and
Saket Ram Junior (Gautam Kandhadai). Two close
friends of Saket, Amjad Khan and Abhayankar.
Two wives of Saket Ram, Aparna and Mythili.
Two Aparnas, the one who represents his love
object and one who represents his phallic mother.
Two portraits painted by Saket Ram’s two wives,
the portrait of Durga by Aparna and the portrait
of Aandal by Mythili. The two mothers of Saket
Ram, his long dead one and Vasantha Maami, his
surrogate mother who dies later and the two
uncles of Saket Ram, the one who mediates his
father’s desire and the other who dies just when
he takes off on his mission. Two telegrams, the
first one sent by his father and the second and
last sent by the Maharajah. Two elephants, the
first roaming in Calcutta and the second
anchored safely at Mannarkudi. The two initial
assassins of Gandhi, Saket Ram and Sri Ram
Abhayankar and the two eventual assassins of
Gandhi, Saket Ram and Nathuram Godse. The
two riots in the film, the Calcutta riots
represented in color and the Chennai riots
represented in black and white but the telling
details of destruction unleashed by Muslim mobs
digitally isolated in color. The two religious
identities of the protagonist, Saket Ram as a
Vaishnavite and Saket Ram as a Saivite. Two red
calendar hearts, the heart of Hanuman in
Abhayankar’s hospital room when Saket takes
his pledge and the heart-shaped red visiting card
of the pimp Govardhan (Kollapudi Maruthi Rao)
that leads Saket into the Jumma Masjid area
when he loses his gun. The two weddings of
Saket Ram, the first private one at his apartment
in Calcutta and the second public one in
Mannarukudi. Saket Ram’s two trips to Calcutta,
the first one in which he loses Aparna and the
second one in which he recovers her Durga
painting. The two rounds of killing indulged by
Saket Ram, the killing of Muslims at the
beginning of the film and the killing of Hindus
at the end. The two narrators of the story, Saket
Ram Junior who narrates the story briefly in the
beginning and at the end and the elder Saket
Ram who narrates his story from an impossible
third person point of view in the first two long
flashbacks. Because within the narrative there is
no voice over or any other device to indicate
who is speaking or narrating the extended
middle of this (auto)-biographic thriller. The two
addressees of the story, Dr. Munawar and Tushar
Gandhi, and the two Gandhis, Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi portrayed by Naseeruddin
Shah and the actual great grandson of Gandhi,
Tushar Gandhi. The two portraits of Gandhi,
Adhimoolam’s black and white portrait, which
occupies Saket Ram’s workshop and the gigantic
portrait of the popular public image of Gandhi
we see at the end of the film. The two Mahatmas
the film juxtaposes, Mahatma Gandhi and
Mahatma Saket Ram with their pair of three
monkeys. If we learn about Gandhi’s monkeys
through dialogue then Saket Ram’s monkeys are
‘real’ in contrast as we see them as three monkey
skulls linked to the Indus valley. The two cracked
spectacles, Saket Ram’s in the Calcutta Riots and
Gandhi’s, cracked at the point of his death in the
last flashback narrated by the film.
It would be impossible to explore the
connotations of all these signifiers here. Some
of them have already been analysed. However,
by exploring one illustrative case, the two
elephants in the film, I hope my analysis would
suggest that the rest of the signifiers although
do not signify the same thing nonetheless
emerge from the same vortex.
Wandering aimlessly in the riot-torn
streets of Calcutta, after he avenges the sacrilege
and death of Aparna by killing Altaf, Saket Ram
encounters the temple elephant for the first time
when he sees it standing tragically besides its
slain Mahout, whose goad is lying in a forlorn
state next to his dishevelled body. In the next
sequence, when Saket Ram vacates his residence
and leaves Calcutta, from his taxi he sees the
elephant roaming the streets all by itself holding
its goad aloft in its trunk. We hear at this point
a Vaishanavite Bhakti hymn in the sound track.
The essence of which means, ‘I am roaming like
a mad elephant, living an insane life without the
goad that can reign in my state. Where are you my
Great Mahout who is praised by the four Vedas?’
As the last few lines of this chant merges with
the next scene, we move to Mannarkudi. Now
from another car, a fully transformed Saket Ram,
embellished by the marks of his Vaishnavite sect
on his forehead and the conventional Brahminical tuft of hair well secured behind his head,
22
cranes his neck out to look. By way of
answering the question posed by the poetry, we
now see an elephant firmly anchored to its post
as the idol of Vishnu emerges, through the
massive doors of the temple, carried on a palanquin by some priests.
In the Calcutta sequence, the elephant
goad lying on the ground is an obvious
metaphor for the castration of Saket Ram and his
Hindu Nation. The elephant roaming the streets
with the goad marks the transition from one
order, now in chaos, to another order that would
reign in the chaos. In the Mannarkudi sequence
that follows, the other elephant firmly rooted in
its ordained place, and the Vishnu idol that
emerges out of the temple metaphorically suggest
what that new order is: the Hindu theocratic
23
state. Significantly, Freud notes in his elaboration of the castration trauma that ‘in later life
a grown man may perhaps experience similar
panic when the cry goes up that Throne and
Altar are in danger, and similar illogical
consequences follow’ (Sigmund Freud, 1991:352).
69
ENCOUNTERING THE TRAUMATIC
The hymn itself, in its question, ‘Where are you
my Great Mahout’ who can ‘reign in my state’
simultaneously loses its traditional implications
or its connotations of bhakti, within the
dynamics of the film, to stand for Saket Ram’s
trauma and his fantasized relationship with his
God, thus providing consistency to his desire.
VI
Hey Ram is the first Tamil film ever to
broach the subject of Partition and its traumatic
overtones and therefore, the fact that no other
Tamil film has aspired to tackle this issue until
now seems somewhat intriguing. Probably, that
even during the unbearably terrifying moment of
Partition there were no widespread communal
backlashes in Tamilnadu, provides the required
explanation for this conspicuous and prolonged
absence in the region’s cinematic oeuvre. The
agony of Partition, in other words, did not carry
the same degree of weight and intensity in
Tamilnadu as it did in Bengal and Punjab. It
may not be preposterous then to underline the
obvious geographical fact that Partition, as the
most excruciating historical experience did not
transpire in the region. Nevertheless, considering the engagement of Tamilnadu in the
Independence struggle, and on which there is quite
a corpus of films, this does not necessarily
implicate it as a remote region where such horrendous occurrences lack any significance whatsoever. Being just the opposite, it registers the
fact that Tamilnadu is one of the few places that
enjoyed considerable communal concord during
those times, which lent the indispensable balance
to its composite and hybrid communities, despite
the dreadfulness of the events that tore them
apart elsewhere in the subcontinent. This does
not imply though that communal antagonisms
were entirely absent in Tamilnadu during the
colonial period. For various reasons, these
tensions did not take the kind of ugly turn they
took in Bengal or Punjab, although some Muslim
families did migrate to Pakistan. Principally, a
great deal of ethnic similarity between various
communities, popular religious syncretism and
its associated practices that makes a visit or
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70
pilgrimage obligatory to many Tamil Hindus to
Islamic or Christian shrines, and the impact of
the Dravidian Movement are the factors that lent
the required stability. So much so that, even the
miniscule minority of aristocratic Muslims who
predominantly live in Chennai, although ethnically trace their roots to Hyderabad are well integrated into the region. Yet, it does not imply that Hindu
militancy was entirely absent during colonial
times. Legendary names like Vanchinathan,
24
Subramanya Shiva, and Subramania Bharati
provide ample evidence for its presence.
Spearheaded as it was mainly by upper-caste
Tamils, its influence, however did not become
widespread owing to two reasons. The NonBrahmin movement created a rupture between
upper-caste elites and subaltern participation in
the Congress led Independence struggle was
greater because of figures like Kamaraj.
Things began to change, no doubt, in the
1990s with the increasing presence of Hindu
Munnani (Hindu Front) and its unholy activities
culminating as they did in the bloody riots of
Coimbatore (November 29 - December 1, 1997)
followed by the Al-Umma retaliatory blasts
(February 14-16, 1998). A clear repetition of the
pattern that was first established at Bombay in
December 1992 and January 1993.
Consequently, in addressing the associated anxieties of this contemporary antagonism
25
in Tamilnadu and elsewhere, the film finds a
convenient ground to invoke the trauma of the
Partition Riots. The objective is to primarily
negate the causes of the present conflict by way
of a detour through a past trauma, so that the
responsibility for both the Partition bloodletting
and contemporary communal riots is located
‘evidentially’ in a single agency. Collective
memory being as well known for its amnesia as
individual memory is, the Great Calcutta riots of
1946, provided the way it evolved on the Direct
Action Day called by Jinnah, offers a sure-fire
opportunity for a narrative strategy of this kind
to coherently rest, the entire blame on Muslims
as the initiators of all violence and with the
same stroke implicate Gandhi as the principal
supporter of such virulence and bloodshed. Only
if, as the film does, a series of highly significant
historical events are absolutely silenced in the
process. Sidelining the designs of colonialism,
specifically its first partition of Bengal along
communal lines, the importance of the Muslim
question, raised on the threshold of self-rule, the
hysteria whipped up by the Hindu press, the
over-rushed nature of the Partition of the
subcontinent and the transfer of power, the
contradictions thrown up by the predominantly
Sikh-Muslim Partition riots in Punjab, and the
extensive efforts taken by Gandhi amidst
26
mayhem and bloodshed. And all such elisions,
further smoothened out by an imagined past in
which the nation is mapped as belonging
unquestionably to the self as against the
demonized other, who is figured as a naturalborn killer and an alien aggressor, to efface what
problematic traces of meaning remain. The
closure of the gaps and discontinuities between
a colonial past and a post-colonial present are
thereby not effected, before the film extracts
maximum pay-off by way of its most telling
cultural narcissism.
Venkatesh Chakravarthy has served as Lecturer
at the Film & Television Institute of Tamilnadu and Loyola
College, Chennai. Breaking away from academic life, he
entered professional film and television production,
directing about 90 hours of programming. Later, he returned
to teaching at the School of Communication, Science
University of Malaysia, Penang. Since June 2002, he is
Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Developmental Alternatives, Chennai. Co-authoring a book in Tamil, Marabu
Meeriya Cinema (The Unconventional Cinema), an
introductory volume on the films of the French New Wave,
he has continued to write articles, essays and papers both
in mainstream print media and national and international
academic journals.
The question arises then as to what
exactly is the nature of the central trauma
addressed by the film. I hope that the foregoing
analysis would have clearly suggested that it
has nothing to do about engaging in the
necessary mourning work for the painful losses
incurred during Partition or contemporary
Hindu-Muslim riots, and has everything to do
with an aggressive recovery of a hypermasculine Brahminical authority. That even
after a century of challenge, initiated by the
Non-Brahmin movement in the region, the film
inadvertently reveals by its own mechanisms
that this historical loss of authority is still not
mourned but relentlessly reclaimed, and has
found a fresh lease of life in the problematic
popularity generated by the discourse of the
Sangh Parivar. With the compulsion to repeat
thus dominating the scenario, the possibilities
of a new beginning are forever receding.
2 Although in its commonly associated meaning the death
drive signifies all the murderous and destructive impulses
in the psychic apparatus, Sigmund Freud specifically
postulated it in opposition to the life drive. Mainly to
explicate the resistance of the subject in deferring the real
encounter both with its present day conflicts and the
inaugural trauma of subjectivity, the rock bed of
symbolic castration triggered in its Oedipal phase. The
death drive, which supports this process of resistance, is
revealed symptomatically in the Subject’s compulsion to
repeat the same action, same mistakes or same symptoms
ad infinitum. On the one hand, the impossible trajectory
of desire sustains the Subject in its search for an illusory
plenitude that would somehow overcome its inherent
sense of lack caused by symbolic castration. On the other
hand, the agency of the ego-ideal (Super-Ego) by turning
the ego into its narcissistic object organizes its repeated
failures and subjects it to equally repetitive and reciprocal
over-aggressive self-reproaches to achieve narcissistic
gratification by way of unconscious guilt. As the
impossible and vicious demands of the Superego could be
satiated only in an ultimate state of equilibrium or
quiescence synonymous with death, Freud locates it as
the death drive. Similarly, the drive to achieve closure and
equilibrium in a narrative could be conceived as an
evasion of an inaugural trauma aimed at achieving
narcissistic compensation rather than signifying a real
encounter necessitating mourning work. For more details,
see Sigmund Freud (1991:245-268 & 281-294) and
Jacques Lacan (1977: 123-202).
End notes
1 See for instance, the way Slavoj Zizek (1992: 1-26) reads
the teleology of Chaplin’s City Lights. As his argument
here rests on the important distinction he draws between
a teleology that is constitutive versus a teleology that is
regulative also see his interpretation of the Kantian
teleological judgement, Zizek (1993: 172). Other
cinematic examples that do not aim to resolve its trauma
or locate the origin of loss elsewhere; are those
Hibakusha films like Kurosawa’s Record of a Living Being
(1955) and Imamura’s Black Rain (1989). See Borderick,
Mick (1996) for more information on Hibakusha films.
When it comes to stories relating the trauma of Partition,
the work of Sadat Hasan Manto stands out as a clear
example as to how even in simple short stories, the
trauma can erupt with all force at its conclusion.
3 Such a moment of silence occurs in Kurosawa’s Rhapsody
in August (1991) when two old women, who have lost
71
ENCOUNTERING THE TRAUMATIC
their husbands in the atomic explosion in Nagasaki, meet
each other. In what is a sustained long take, they do not
exchange a single word.
4 All parenthetical references to the scenes in the film are
drawn from the published screenplay, Kamal Haasan (2000).
5 For a more elaborate discussion on the fetishism of the
cinematic image see Christian Metz, (1986, 244-280)
6 For a detailed description of the concept of masquerade
in relation to the representation of women in cinema and
its implications for the female spectator see, Mary Ann
Doane (1991: 17-43).
7 For instance, Zizek (1993: 161) observes in this context:
“The primacy of possibility over actuality enables us also
to articulate the difference between the phallic signifier
and the fetish. This difference may seem elusive since, in
both cases, we have to do with a “reflective” element
which supplements a primordial lack (the fetish fills out
the void of the missing maternal phallus; the phallus is
the very signifier of the very lack of the signifier).
However, as the signifier of pure possibility, the phallus is
never fully actualized (i.e., it is the empty signifier which,
although devoid of determinate, positive meaning, stands
for the potentiality of any possible future meaning),
where as a fetish always claims an actual status (i.e., it
pretends actually to substitute for the maternal phallus).”
8 There are a number of other problematic disavowals in
the film but cannot be explored here because of reasons
of space and time.
9 On the question, why are there always two fathers, see
Zizek (1992: 149-192).
10 In this context Lacan (1997:319) observes: “Now, if
effective, imaginary exchanges between mother and
child are established around the imaginary lack of the
phallus, then that which makes it the essential element
of intersubjective coaptation in the Freudian dialectic,
the father, has his own and that’s that, he neither
exchanges it nor gives it. There is no circulation. The
father has no function in the trio, except to represent the
vehicle, the holder, of the phallus. The father, as father,
has the phallus - full stop.”
11 The fact that the deluded subject is alienated from his
symbolic community does not imply that he fails to
communicate. As Lacan insists: “A delusion is not necessarily unrelated to normal discourse and the subject is
well able to convey it to us, to his own satisfaction, within
a world which communication is not totally broken off.”
studying sexual excitations other than those that are
manifestly displayed, it has found that all human beings
are capable of making a homosexual object choice and
have in fact made one in their unconscious. Indeed
libidinal attachments to persons of the same sex play no
less a part as factors in normal mental life, and a greater
part as a motive force for illness, than do similar
attachments to the opposite sex. On the contrary,
psychoanalysis, considers that a choice of an object
independently of its sex–freedom to range equally over
male and female objects–as it is found in childhood, in
primitive states of society and early periods of history, is
the original basis from which, as a result of restriction
in one direction or other, both the normal and the
inverted types develop. Thus from the point of view of
psychoanalysis the exclusive sexual interest felt by men
for women is also a problem that needs elucidating and
is not a self-evident fact based upon an attraction that
is ultimately of a chemical nature.”
14 Except the first hallucination, Saket Ram has during his
wedding night with Mythili, other hallucinations result
from either the bhang drunk by Saket Ram or by way of
one of his dreams. What is of importance here is not the
question of whether these hallucinations are drug
induced, conscious or unconscious, but the compulsive
or repetitive nature of them.
15 Schreber makes a similar paradoxical compromise with
his God. It is with that his delusion reaches its
culminating point. See Freud (2001:18-29) and Lacan
(1997: 351).
16 Published in 1903, the memoirs of Schreber was later
analysed by Freud as a principal example of his theory
of psychosis. For its link with Nazism, see Jacques Lacan
(1997:211).
17 For instance, the film Terminator narrates the fantasy of
a subject witnessing his own birth. See Penley
(1989:121-140).
18 Renunciation of real ethical value according to
psychoanalysis entails the very renunciation of the
symbolic mandate foregoing all forms of narcissistic
gratifications in the process. This is something Saket
Ram or the film cannot envisage as such a possibility is
excluded by the terms set by the narrative. See Zizek
(1992: 167-173)
12 It is not necessary that the symbolic father must be
present in some way in every film. Often it could be an
impersonal agency like the law, community or other
things, which can take its place. Sometimes a figure
mistaken for an obscene father may later emerge as the
symbolic father. See Mathew Sharpe (2002) for a lucid
introduction to the name of the father and the role it
plays in films.
19 It is because of this if at one point the Rajah’s face is
replaced by Aparna; then at an earlier point the Rajah is
required by Saket Ram, to embellish himself with the
masculine qualities of hunting. Moreover, it is worth
noting at this point that none of these figures despite the
degradation they suffer from time to time; are ever
equivalent to the (obscene) father who monopolizes
phallic enjoyment. For instance, the Rajah shares his
phallic enjoyment. Others like Gandhi or Abhayankar do
not indulge it. The sodomizing Muslim other, however,
only desires Saket Ram.
13 This is not to suggest that all homosexuals are
necessarily psychotic in their disposition or any
preference for a person of the same sex would
necessarily lead to psychosis. Psychoanalysis never
makes such a claim except insisting that there is a
necessary link between psychosis and the expulsion of
homoerotic desire. As Freud (1991: 56-57) clarifies:
“Psychoanalytic research is most decidedly opposed to
any attempt at separating homosexuals from the rest of
mankind as a group of a special character. But by
20 Like Hey Ram, Jayamohan’s magnum opus of a Tamil
novel, Vishnupuram (1997), is an elaborate fantasy
about ‘procreation after deluge.’ It also displaces the
bhakti aspect of South Indian Vaishnavism with jnana
but by appropriating a great deal of dialectical teeth
from Buddhist logic and Jain ontology. This shift from
devotion to knowledge thus marks the new modern
image solicited by such a discourse. In comparison to
the megalomania that dictates this book, Hey Ram seems
like a ripple in water. For a more elaborate description
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of this fantasy and the paradoxical role assumed by the
deluded subject, see Lacan (1997:285-294).
21 For instance, when Saket Ram flings the axe of seven
hundred years of Muslim rule on Amjad Khan who as if
he is confessing before a Stalinist trial says
apologetically, ‘I was not born then’ (Scene 65:163). The
onus of proving one’s secular credentials thus always
rests with the other. This is a point brought out by
M.S.S. Pandian during one of my discussions with him
on secularism.
22 As if addressing the camera obliquely, at this point,
Saket Ram gently nods towards the spectator to ensure
that the implications of this scene are not missed.
Incidentally, after the release of the film, Kamal Haasan
fan clubs started giving themselves a militant identity.
One fan club, for instance, called itself ‘Kamal Haasan
Paasarai’ which means Kamal Haasan Armoury Room.
23 For an account of a similar transition of the phallus, see
Madhav Prasad, (1998: 217-237).
24 By associating Subramania Bharathi with Hindu
militancy, I am aware that I am making a controversial
claim; for he has been recovered as an admirable
nationalist hero within the prevailing commonsense in
Tamilnadu. However, a cursory look at the cartoons
published in his paper India published from Pondicherry
during the first decade of the twentieth century would
suffice to understand the nature of anti-Muslim images
published in it. Moreover, in the recent feature film
made on Bharathi, although the film does not go into
details it does show that Bharathi did not have an eyeto-eye relationship with Gandhi. For the cartoons see,
A.R. Venkatachalapathy (1994)
25 In contrast to the representation of the past, the entire
present in the film is restricted to one singular day,
December 6, 1999; depicting it as if there are periodical
riots every year in Chennai on this day. This is a blatant
distortion. Only recently, that is, around December 6,
2002 a nation-wide hysteria was generated by making
bogey men out of Muslim fundamentalists as witnessed
by the various security checks at public spaces like
railway stations, air ports and bus stands and check
posts. In that sense, the film seems to have anticipated
these manoeuvres.
and Other Works, The Standard Edition of Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: Volume XII,
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73
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Summerfield, A. B., & Lake, J. A. (1977). Non -verbal and
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Psychology, 68, 133-136.
Books
Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on Conversation (Vols. 1 & 2).
Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Kendon, A., & Ferber, A. (1973). A description of some
human greetings. In R. P. Michael & J. H. Crook (Eds.),
Comparative ecology and behavior of primates (pp. 591668). New York: Academic Press.
Atkinson, J. M., & Heritage, J. (Eds.). (1984). Structures of
social action. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Tabachnick, B. G., & Fidell, L. S. (1996). Using multivariate
statistics (3rd ed.). New York: Harper Collins.
Unpublished thesis
LeBaron, C. (1998). Building communication: Architectural
gestures and the embodiment of new ideas. Doctoral
dissertation, University of Texas at Austin. (University
microfilms, No AAT98-38026).
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