Bollywood Makes Men: Gender, Globalization, and Nation in India
In a globalizing India, the male body has become a signifier of India’s self-confidence on the world stage. Hindu nationalism and a nationalist triumphalism linked to an assertive global middle class form the material context of this signification. Muscular nationalism, defined in my works as an intersection of armed masculinity with the political doctrine of nationalism, enables a theoretical frame to analyze this version of an imagined India. This talk will draw on Bollywood film, which is an important vehicle for disseminating dominant imaginings of nation in India, to demonstrate the popular circulation of this interpretation of nation.
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Sikata Banerjee is Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Victoria, Canada. Her work focuses on gender and nationalism in India. She is the author of Warriors in Politics: Hinduism, Nationalism, Violence, and the Shiv Sena in India (Westview 2000); Make Me a Man! Masculinity, Hinduism, and Nationalism in India (SUNY 2005); Muscular Nationalism: Gender, Violence, and Empire in Ireland (NYU 2012); and Globalizing Muscular Nationalism: Gender, Nation and Popular Film in India (Routledge 2016).