The Global Desi: Cultural Nationalism on Mtv India

Abstract

The article examines how the introduction of satellite television into India duringthe 1990s has led to the emergence of a new form of cultural nationalism based on the active and self-conscious indigenization of global media. Using MTV India as an ethnographic case study, this process is demonstrated through analysis of the images themselves and by a consideration of what they mean to informants. It outlines a now-mythical historical narrative whereby a wired-in middle class forced the indigenization of programming on MTV India, programmingthat was initially aimed at a more abstract global audience. It then demon strates the ways and reasons why this cultural nationalism depends, somewhat paradoxically, on its own global dimensions.