Book Launch: ‘Spectacle State’ by Brahma Prakash

Join us for an engaging book launch of cultural theorist Brahma Prakash's latest book Spectacle State: How Hindutva Shapes Feeling and Culture. He will be in conversation with Aakar Patel, author of Discovery of New India and Nisha Abdulla, theatre-maker and co-founder of Offstream, on how Hindutva uses everyday objects and culture in India to propagate a culture of hate and othering under the disguise of devotion and self-preservation. The conversation will be moderated by Ram, a co-founder of Maraa Hornbill Academy. The discussion will be followed by an interactive Q&A with the audience.

Here are the details:

Date: 21st August 2026, Friday

Time: 7:00 PM (seating begins at 6:45 PM)

Venue: Champaca Bookstore, Indiranagar

RSVP here to register.

About the book: 

In today’s India, political power does not merely govern as an invisible force—it marches, roars, dances and displays itself in colour, sound and action, as spectacle. From the beating of drums and the blare of loudspeakers to the rise of symbols such as the bulldozer and intimidating stickers and statues, depictions of politics might surround us—bold, sensorial and all-pervasive.

In Spectacle State: How Hindutva Shapes Feeling and Culture, Brahma Prakash looks beyond leaders, ideology and speeches, towards everyday life, objects and culture in India—religious processions, street performances, monuments, music and festivals. For it is in these charged liminal spaces that violence appears in the garb of celebration, hate as preservation of self-identity and devotion as display.

Thought-provoking and seminal, this book traces how fear, pride, victimhood, anger and piety are produced and circulated in today’s India as spectacle. It asks how Hindutva is changing our day-to-day expressions and relationships beyond ideology.

Meet the author:

Brahma Prakash is a writer and cultural theorist. He teaches theatre and performance studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is the author of Cultural Labour: Conceptualizing the ‘Folk Performance’ in India (Oxford University Press, 2019), Body on the Barricades: Life, Art and Resistance in Contemporary India (LeftWord, 2023) and Spectacle State: How Hindutva Shapes Feeling and Culture. He has extensively published in various research journals and edited volumes and popular media platforms.

Meet the speakers: 

Nisha Abdulla is Bangalore based theatremaker practicing as playwright, performer, director, dramaturg, and educator. Her anti-oppressive arts practice places care, curiosity, and community at the core of the creation process. She is deeply invested in exploring the interplay of identity-belonging-power-gaze in the contemporary socio-political context. She has been the recipient of Voices from the South  Grant by Edinburgh Festival Fringe, 100Artist Grant by Sud kulture, and Artist-in-Residence at Schauburg Theatre for Youth Munich + Vila Waldberta in 2019. She is also the Artistic Director of Qabila, where her work centers new writing and the dissenting imagination, and Co-Founder of OffStream, an artist collective that makes and enables creative projects around anti-caste advocacy.

Aakar Patel is a columnist, journalist, author, and human rights advocate who served as executive director of Amnesty International India from 2015 to 2019. He currently chairs the organization's board in India. He is the author of Our Hindu Rashtra, and of Price of the Modi Years. He authored a translation of Saadat Hasan Manto’s Urdu non-fiction Why I Write. Patel co-authored a report on the 2002 Gujarat riots, titled Rights and Wrongs.

About the moderator: 

Ram is a co-founder of Maraa, a media and arts collective; and Hornbill Academy, a space for social pedagogy and research. He holds a PhD in Media and Communications from the London School of Economics. He has worked in the media for the development sector for more than two decades in the areas of research, capacity building, media production, and policy advocacy. His research interests include the political economy of media and communications, anthropological approaches to media and communications infrastructure, the sociology of disinformation and violence, and the mediation of politics and subjectivity, especially caste and indigeneity in India.

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