Nationalism remixed? The politics of cultural flows between the South Asian diaspora and ‘homeland’

Abstract

This article examines ‘Asian electronic music’, a generally progressive diasporic South Asian scene which fuses electronic dance music beats with instruments/sounds traditionally associated with the subcontinent, and how it became embedded into ‘majoritarian’ Indian nationalism. In India, the music's perceived ‘fusion’ aesthetic became emblematic of an emergent India which was economically prosperous while ‘respecting’ its cultural heritage. Using the case of an album which remixed India's national song, Vande Mataram, this article explores the convergences and divergences between Asian electronic musicians in Delhi and Hindu nationalists. The article concludes that the musicians in Delhi did not lend to Hindu nationalism. However, they perhaps gave secular Indian nationalism a ‘cool’ gloss. Ultimately, the production and consumption of Asian electronic music in Delhi raises significant questions regarding the scene's relationship to Indian nationalisms.

Keywords:

• Nationalism
• diaspora
• India
• ethnicities
• globalization
• transnationalism

Acknowledgements

Research for this article was made possible through funding from an ESRC doctoral studentship. I would like to thank Les Back, Rohit Barot, David Lehmann and Pamela Ballinger and the two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments on earlier versions of this article.

Notes

1. See Flores (2008) for a detailed discussion on musical remittances.

2. This theme continues to be propagated by the Western media. For example, Spencer (2005) described the music of the MIDIval PunditZ as mirroring ‘modern India's mix of ancient and modern’. Here, the ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ become purposefully exaggerated tropes.

3. I am borrowing this term from Essed and Trienekens (2008).

4. Retrieved from the MIDIval Punditz website http://www.punditz.com/biography.html (June 2003).

5. From the Cyber Mehfil website at http://www.cybermehfil.com/camp.html

6. From the Cyber Mehfil website at http://www.cybermehfil.com/camp.html. See also The Statesman ( 2008a ).

7. Personal interview.

8. This mimics the larger divergence in nationalist discourses as Devji (quoted in Ansari 2005, p. 113) argues, ‘The actual contest taking place is between a secular state nationalism and a Hindu nationalism.’

9. From Hansen (1999, p. 112)

10. Interestingly, early colonial-era translations do not refer to the killing of Muslims in this passage. For example, Sen-Gupta (Chatterji and Sen-Gupta 1906, p. 167) translates the second part of the passage as, ‘The villagers would chase any Mussulman that they would meet’, omitting any direct reference to communal murder.

11. http://in.mobile.indiatimes.com/mobile/made-in-india/index.html

12. From their label's site http://www.music-today.com (accessed 29 June 2007).

13. The well known fashion choreographer Aparna Behl regularly uses tracks by the MIDIval PunditZ for shows.