ABSTRACT
The Taj Mahal – the mausoleum built during the 1630s and 1640s by the Mogul emperor Shah Jahan for his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal – is not only a clichéd symbol of India in the global ‘image economy’, but has become a truly global icon used to conjure up notions of planetary unity and diversity, along with other supersymbols such as the Statue of Liberty and the Egyptian pyramids. Thus the image of the Taj flows across global mediascapes and is ubiquitous in its familiarity. Such image and knowledge flows emerged during the colonial era through the widespread dissemination of British travel accounts, and such flows have thickened ever since. In the early 1990s the Taj served as the backdrop to the lovelorn Princess Diana following her separation from Prince Charles, and as one of the symbols destroyed by aliens in the movie Mars Attacks. This continuous re-marking of the Taj serves further to underline its importance as a must-see global tourist attraction and consolidate its centrality to tourism in India, and to the city in which it is located, Agra, in Uttar Pradesh.
