Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Communications
Episode: Mrinal Pande, "Popular Hinduism, Stories and Mobile Performances: The Voice of Morari Bapu in Multiple Media" (Routledge, 2022)
Description: This book addresses the recent transformations of popular Hinduism by focusing upon the religious cum artistic practice of Ramkatha, staged narratives of the Ramcharitmanas.Focusing on the sensory and media experiences, the author examines the aesthetics and dynamics of the Ramkatha ethnoscape through participant-observation in everyday practices, and how it particularly, translates politics from the realm of religion. Besides being socially constructed, the Ramkatha heavily relies on technologies for its production and continuation. Negotiated through a telling of Hindu religious stories, the mediated voice of Morari Bapu, a former school-teacher turned narrator, is a major medium of perfor...