ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I argue that a deeply influential turn in Indian history was signaled and influenced by a series of videos circulated by Hindu nationalists in the late 1980s. This turn in Indian history helped prepare the political sphere for its rejection of secularism, and for the onset of more exclusionary forms of nationalism. These videos conveyed a largely fictious history in the style of a factual film, with soundtrack and voiceover mimicking newsreel or documentary footage. Rather than treat this cinematic detour as irrelevant or epiphenomenal, as the prevailing scholarly division of labor has assumed, this chapter seeks to outline a series of mediatic forms that accompany the ascendance of Hindu nationalism, and to clarify the mechanism of their succession.
