Ritual and practice marked out Ramayan-watching as an act of worship. Watching television became for many a religious act, and personal devotion to the actors playing the gods emerged as a form of popular piety. This chapter argues that Ramayan concretised a religious and aesthetic vision that was deeply imbricated with Hindu nationalism, and that its enthusiastic viewers received it religiously in their daily lives. Though derided by critics for its gaudy costumes, extremely slow narrative pace, and low-quality special effects (Lutgendorf 1990, 144-147) Ramayan evoked spontaneous outbursts of popular piety and became an important focus of devotion, with viewers performing purification rituals before the programme began and adorning television sets with flowers and incense, consecrating them as altars (Mitchell 2005, 2). This was a realisation of the Ramayana, one of India’s most loved stories, an epic regarded as smrti (“that which is recollected”) scripture, and was shown on Doordarshan (the national broadcaster, founded in 1959). ![]() "On Sunday mornings from 25 January 1987 to 31 July 1988 between eighty and one hundred million Indians watched Ramayan, a 78-episode television series directed by Ramanand Sagar (Kumar 2006, 38).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |