Hindutv The Ideas Of Mass Media And Identity In India

Mass media includes a huge spectrum of media and technologies that are used to communicate with the mass and disseminate information and ideas to them. It is the principal mode of communication through which the vast majority of the common public receives information and entertainment. It includes newspapers, books, radio, television, cinema, the internet, etc. Mass communication plays an important role in disseminating information about current events happening locally, nationally, and internationally, and propagating new ideas. It also helps in reshaping existing ideas, and thus shaping public opinion and their perception of the world, its social and political issues.

One of the most important roles played by mass media is identity formation.

Hindutva is a political ideology in India that seeks to establish Hindu hegemony and way of life in India. According to Chandhoke, the first objective of the Hindu nationalists is to construct the identity of India in terms of the ‘narrow definition of Hinduism’, and the second objective is to distort the images of the minorities, including Indian Muslims (Sengupta, Representation of the Muslim in Contemporary Hindi cinema, 2014). The Hindutva ideology defines Hindu identity and intends to create a Hindu nation (Mishra P. A., 2012). It is the official ideology of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). According to this ideology, Muslims and Christians are not Indians since Islam and Christianity did not originate in India (Thapar, 2000), and so, Muslims and Christians are not true Indians; they can never be. Such identity construction of Muslims by the Hindu fundamentalist groups in the country was intended to (among other things) serve the purpose of a particular political party, the BJP. As Hasan (2009) pointed out, the religion based identity politics of the BJP has helped them to rise in the political arena of the country (Hasan Z. ,