ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of the electronic media in the growth to the power of ‘Hindutva’, or Hindu nationalism. It first briefly outlines the spread of a hegemonic imagination of the nation as a ‘Hindu’ one, with the expansion of television. It then charts the subsequent extension of this imaginary, in and through the emergence and rapid spread of IT communication systems. It outlines the consequent transformations of social spaces and the emergence of a ‘virtual public sphere’ that transcends the more conventional boundaries of ‘public’ and ‘private’, as well as of ‘nation’. The chapter also traces the impact of these on the discourses of gendered Hindu nationalism, and profiles the kind of gendered citizen-subject produced through these transformations and discourses. It argues that there are vast demographies that are excluded from access to these imaginations of the nation, because they lack either technological access, literacy skills or financial means. It concludes with the suggestion that this exclusion is the clearest indicator of the power of Brahminical masculine hegemony, as a deeply entrenched system of social exclusion and negation, to re-establish itself, albeit tacitly.
