This anthology is an examination of Indian popular culture through the lens of postcolonial theory. Its essays focus on graphic narratives, chick-lit, Instagram poetry, memes, online games, football fans, talk shows, 24x7 news channels, and films and OTT shows. The essays are marked by a fundamental awareness of the plurality of discourses within which popular cultural representations are manufactured and received and the attendant negotiations of hegemony and counter-hegemonic currents which are inevitably generated. Although the authors remain aware of colonial representational matrices and ongoing machinations of empire, economic or cultural, they also remain equally keenly aware of the fissures within the nation-space, based on considerations of class, caste, sexuality, gender or ethnicity, which popular cultural representations also constantly negotiate with in a variety of ways. Postcolonial Popular Culture in India will help scholars, teachers and students understand the concerns of cultural studies as a discipline and the possible avenues through which future research might progress.

THE EDITORS

Abin Chakraborty is Assistant Professor of English at Chandernagore College. He is the author of Popular Culture (Orient Blackswan, 2019), and the editor of Postcolonial Interventions, an interdisciplinary online journal of postcolonial studies.

Ramanuj Konar is Assistant Professor of English at Sarat Centenary College. He has researched representations of childhood in Australian Aboriginal plays. His areas of interest include the literature of northeast India and cultural aspects of intangible and craft heritage.

Sayan Aich Bhowmik is Assistant Professor of English at Shirakole College. His areas of interest are Indian writing in English, postcolonialism, and popular culture.

Introduction – Abin Chakraborty

Rhizomatic Readings: Insights into the Post-millennial Indian Graphic Narrative Scene – E. Dawson Varughese

The ‘Indian’ Superhero and the Discourse of Power: A Study of Narayan Debnath’s Bantul the Great – Rishi Ghosh and Oindrila Mitra

Terrorism, Graphic Novels and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Hero – Puja Sen Majumdar and Rini P. Kujur

Tales from Shining and Sinking India: Configuring the Postcolonial Identities in Indian Chick Lit – Puja Chakraborty

Shakespeare in Indian Political Rhetoric – Suchetana Banerjee

Millennial Women ‘Instapoets’: Online Communities and Subaltern Counter Discourse – Medha Bhadra Chowdhury

Missing Girls Trafficked and Saved: Meaningful Social Change through Digital Gaming in Postcolonial South Asia – Siddhartha Chakraborti

Hybrid Locality and the Glocal Nature of Memes – Ananya Chatterjee and Nisarga Bhattacharjee

Digital Effects in Indian Cinema: A Technological Jujitsu – Mita Bandyopadhyay and Arindam Modak

Representation of ‘Westernisation’ in India in Three Web Series: Permanent Roommates, Little Things and Adulting – Jayati Ganguly

Desirable Femininities as Part of the Hegemonic Nationalist Discourse in Three Contemporary Bollywood Films – Shyaonti Talwar

‘Postcard From Kashmir’: Representations of the Fractured State in Bollywood Films – Somrita Misra

Tonight, What the Nation Wanted to Know but Never Listened To! ‘Info-Perennis’ and Popular Public Arena – Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha

Global Desi: Indian Beauty Pageant Winners on the American Stage – Sarbani Banerjee

Home and Away: Refugees, East Bengal FC and Evolving Fandoms in Calcutta – Rajarshi Roy and Shirsho Dasgupta

Contributors