Episode 16

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Published on:

6th Feb 2025

Is India Developing a Fascist Aesthetic?

Suchitra, Bhakti, and Madhuri look at how India’s cultural landscape has become deeply intertwined with right-wing ideology. From Bollywood’s hyper-masculine action heroes to the aggressive iconography of Hindu gods, from the spectacle of nationalist weddings to the militarization of everyday imagery, the episode unpacks how aesthetics shape political obedience. The hosts trace how authoritarian regimes have historically used visual culture — sculpted bodies, rigid pageantry, and hyper-masculinity — to manufacture patriotic obedience. In India, these elements have been absorbed into entertainment, fashion, and religion, reinforcing a Hindutva-dominated visual order.

Bollywood has played a major role in this shift, moving from chaotic ensemble films to hyper-stylized nationalism. Hindu gods, once diverse, have been transformed into warrior-like, Aryanized figures, while traditions like “karva chauth” and luxury weddings have been aestheticized as nationalist performances. Even Narendra Modi has mastered the fascist aesthetic, from his 56-inch chest mythology to his media-choreographed religious spectacles. The episode also asks: where is counterculture? As Bollywood, media, and fashion fall in line with this authoritarian visual order, the space for resistance shrinks. The takeaway? When culture normalizes uniformity, politics follows.

Key Takeaways:

  • A fascist aesthetic thrives on uniformity, hyper-masculinity, and the glorification of violence. These visual markers have become deeply embedded in Indian pop culture.
  • Bollywood’s transformation from chaotic, diverse narratives to hyper-nationalist action spectacles reflects a broader ideological shift.
  • Hindu iconography has been rewritten to align with muscular nationalism, transforming once-diverse religious imagery into rigid, militarized depictions.
  • Cultural rituals like “karva chauth” and wedding spectacles have been aestheticized and flattened into a single, dominant narrative of Indianness that aligns with Hindutva ideology.
  • Modi has mastered the performance of muscular nationalism, crafting an image of strength and control that is as much about aesthetics as it is about politics.

Keywords:

Fascism, aesthetics, muscularity, nationalism, Bollywood, Hindutva, propaganda, Karva Chauth, Modi cult, wedding industrial complex, Instagram, nationalism, consumerism, uniformity, authoritarianism, obedience, spectacle, erasure.

Hosted by Suchitra Vijayan, Bhakti Shringarpure, and Madhuri Sastry

A podcast by The Polis Project

www.thepolisproject.com

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About the Podcast

It's Not You, It's The Media
Resist media gaslighting
It's Not You, It's The Media! unpacks the ways that the media manipulates narratives and makes you question your reality. You're being gaslighted. Suchitra Vijayan, Bhakti Shringarpure and Madhuri Sastry eviscerate the propaganda, set the record straight and offer moral clarity.

Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, photographer and activist. She is the founder and Executive Director of The Polis Project. For her first book, The Midnight's Border: A People's History of India, Suchitra traveled across the 9000-mile Indian border. A barrister by training, she previously worked for the United Nations war crimes tribunals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda before co-founding the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, which gives legal aid to Iraqi refugees. She is the co-author of How Long Can the Moon Be Caged? Voices of Indian Political Prisoners (2023) which offers a lens into today's India through the lived experiences of political prisoners.

Bhakti Shringarpure is a writer and editor. She is the co-founder of Warscapes magazine which transitioned into the Radical Books Collective, a multi-faceted community building project that creates an alternative, inclusive and non-commercial approach to books and reading. Bhakti is the author of Cold War Assemblages: Decolonization to Digital (2019) and editor of Literary Sudans: An Anthology of Literature from Sudan and South Sudan (2017), Imagine Africa (2017) Mediterranean: Migrant Crossings (2018) and most recently, Insurgent Feminisms: Writing War (2023).

Madhuri Sastry is a former lawyer, specializing in international and human rights law. She was the publisher of Guernica Magazine. Her political writing, cultural criticism, interviews and essays have appeared in several publications including The Nation, Guernica, Slate, Bitch and New York Magazine. She is on the editorial board at the Polis Project.