ABSTRACT
This afterword reflects on the chapters in Media, Indigeneity and Nation in South Asia and their place in recent studies of media, politics and social change in the modern world of the past 250 years. The essays in the book focus on some of India’s most isolated areas. They illustrate how communication technologies that have reached areas in which printing presses and landline telephones were formerly scarce now enable citizens of those areas to broadcast words and images to the world. This reflective note identifies some of the milestones in this process of change. It suggests that five of the book’s 13 essays describe remarkable new-found capacities of small groups to reach expanding audiences. Six essays draw attention to the problems that may arise when the ability to ‘talk back’ is co-opted by the voices of outsiders who ‘invent’ traditions. The commentary identifies and highlights the unsettling powers of digital media that the essays in this book compellingly reveal.
