Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses negotiations of identity in various digital media genres, fields of culture and religion and geographical region. It focuses on how Hindu religious authority is negotiated in digital spaces. The book also discusses the self-representations of three authors who have published extensive retellings of Hindu scriptural stories – Ashok Banker, Amish Tripathi and Devdutt Pattanaik. It argues that they work within a dominant Hindu-visual cultural field and a sociopolitical ethos of a hypervisible Hinduism, producing a celevision in their self-representation through a careful process of ancestral self-fashioning. The book also focuses on how the Internet has been appropriated and honed creatively by manufacturers, distributors and sellers of Hindu religious products and services.