Of Rubble, Ruins, and Bulldozers: Punitive Populism, Popular Culture, and the Indian Case

Abstract The article seeks to examine the under-studied interplay between punitive populism, affect and popular culture in the context of bulldozer demolitions in India. Bulldozer, seen as a formidable machine, has traditionally been conceived as a harbinger of development and urban planning. However, under the current Hindu-nationalist political regime, it has become the icon that insidiously symbolizes unchecked sovereign power, used for destroying homes of purported enemies of the state (minorities) through subverting principles of justice. The violence perpetrated by bulldozers is crafted for visibility, producing duality of spectatorship- on the one side are muslims, who are on the receiving end of state violence, constantly living under the fear of anticipation and on the other hand are the majority populations, often hysterically cheering for these actions. The article proposes bulldozer as a heuristic device in re-calibrating violence not just in the material sense but deeply shaping embodied, affective responses. In doing so, it offers an affective reading into these two kinds of spectatorship: the first is described as ‘spectral anguish’ experienced by those facing domicide and the second is ‘jouissance’, the celebratory pleasure premised on the revenge fantasy of an anxious majority. This jouissance finds expression in trending Hindutva pop songs on Youtube. These music videos are cultural artifacts embedded with punitive themes and motifs, serving as conduits for cultivation of cultural consent and normative legitimacy of state violence. The article endeavors to make a conceptual contribution to expanding the discourse on militarization within Global South by investigating how state violence is both enacted and affectively consumed through bulldozer justice campaigns and their glorification in popular culture.