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5 - Re-making History: ‘The Truth shall not be touched!’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2012

Christiane Brosius
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Summary

This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

(Walter Benjamin, Theses on History)

This chapter explores Hindutva spokespeople's attempts to exploit the video media in the context of nation building with respect to the notion of history. The key argument is that Jain Studios’ videos were used to create consensus in the viewers that India's history had to be rewritten by re-making it. The new media technology was one tool through which Hindutva spokespeople strove to persuade audiences to get personally involved in what was referred to as an unavoidable ‘turning point in history’, and another step to Hindu people's self-empowerment. The idea behind this was that those who hold the past control the future.

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Empowering Visions
The Politics of Representation in Hindu Nationalism
 , pp. 181 - 232
Publisher: Anthem Press
Print publication year: 2004

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