| Summary/Abstract |
This article employs the concept of culture as a consumable resource in visually-mediated global markets. The Festival of India, first hosted in 1982 in Britain, was a unique state-sponsored spectacle that packaged Indian culture as a commodity for Western audiences. Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister took keen interest in the ‘visual scheme’ of India that was projected during the Festival, simultaneously conscious of her own image as she returned to power after the contentious rule of the ‘Emergency’. The article suggests that Gandhi sought to divert negative media attention on her regime by putting on display India’s ‘soft power’ in artistic and scientific fields. It further comments upon the diversity in the reception of the event by various audiences thereby challenging the notion of passivity often attributed to consumers of cultural performance. By examining how Gandhi and her advisors used culture as something ‘exportable’ to remake her image, the article seeks to place the Festival alongside similar spectacles staged in the early 1980s when Gandhi’s leadership faced a crisis of legitimacy, both at home and abroad.
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