Religious Subjectivities and Digital Collectivities on Social Networking Sites in India
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
| Author | Kiran Vinod Bhatia |
| DOI | 10.1177/2321023021999141 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Religious Subjectivities and Digital
Collectivities on Social Networking
Sites in India
Kiran Vinod Bhatia1
Abstract
This article analyses how the infrastructural architecture of social networking sites (SNS) is condu-
cive to the emergence of religious subjects and digital collectivities. I argue that SNS enable social
connections, and subjectivities are created to reify discriminatory religious and political practices and
discourses online. This study identifies and responds to three critical arguments about SNS and reli-
gious subjectivities. First, it challenges the liberal assumptions that advancement in SNS will lead to
the creation of depoliticized and more rational societies. I argue that SNS deepens the already exist-
ing social segregations in the society through the creation of digital collectivities. Digital collectivities
inform functional possibilities (ontology) and discursive modes (epistemology) of enacting religious
subjectivities. These collectivities not only shape the ways in which users articulate their religious and
political allegiance but also the content of their online presence. Finally, in unpacking the formation and
existence of digital collectivities and how they are linked with the emergence of religious subjects, I
examine the question of digital ontology—the debate regarding what a religious subject on SNS is and
of epistemology—how is a religious subject defined.
Keywords
Social networking sites, religious subjectivity, digital collectivities, ontology and epistemology, online
cultures, abuse, trolls
In his essay ‘Populist Publics’, Cody (2015) argues that classical-liberal theories of public sphere are
both utopian and disembodied.2 Theories and practices of public sphere presuppose a certain kind of
personhood, which is rational and logical. Participation in the liberal public sphere demands that people
bracket their personal commitments, idiosyncratic particularities and private interests to prioritize
rational public goals and debates. This is called the art of ‘self-abstraction’.
1 School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States.
2 I thank Prof. Lindsay Palmer, Prof. Radhika Gajjala, Prof. Vijayanka Nair and Ganesh BE for their feedback on the initial drafts
of this paper. I would also like to thank the reviewers for their generous efforts and critical insights.
Article
Corresponding author:
Kiran Vinod Bhatia, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison,
WI 53706, United States.
E-mail: kvbhatia2@wisc.edu
Studies in Indian Politics
9(1) 21–36, 2021
© 2021 Lokniti, Centre for the
Study of Developing Societies
Reprints and permissions:
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DOI: 10.1177/2321023021999141
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22 Studies in Indian Politics 9(1)
Publicity compels participants of the liberal public sphere to assume an indifference to their gender,
caste, class, racial and other social identities and to detach themselves from their personal experiences
and lived realities. Theoretical boundaries of these liberal discourses of public sphere fail to acknowledge
how material conditions and lived experiences of people who are socialized as religious-gendered-caste-
class subjects inform their participation in public life. The principle of self-abstraction animates a logic
of exclusion at the core of liberal theories of public sphere.
Within this understanding of the public sphere, everyone who fails to imagine oneself as unaffected
by social identities such as gender, caste, class, religion and race is supposed to have no participation in
the formation of the public opinion. The alternative conceptualizations of ‘counter publics’ (Fraser,
1990) are also critiqued (Warner, 2002) on the grounds that these account of participation of minoritized
groups continue to deploy disembodied rational deliberation—mimicking the dominant publics they
intend to challenge.
Cody encourages us to conceptualize critical theories of embodied public spheres that do not
presuppose the dominance of liberal assumptions in publicity and public opinion (2015, p. 59). The first
step on this path of critical enquiry is to acknowledge that those who have the privilege to occupy a
depersonalized and unmarked space of rational participation are a minority. In India, only a small portion
of upper caste-class Hindus can assume this unmarked space through self-abstraction. These liberal
minorities are increasingly challenged by larger groups of social classes who are more interested in
practicing their religious, caste, gender and other social identities and in forming alliances based on
either shared experience of discrimination or collective aspiration of solidarity. These non-liberal ‘new
middle classes’ (Chatterjee, 2004; Fernandes & Heller, 2006) continue to build political mobilization
around collective identities (of caste, gender and religion) through platforms of mass mediation and
subvert the liberal narratives of publicity and civil society.
Scholars such as Warner (2002), Cody (2019), Rajagopal (2010), Gittinger (2018) and others critique
the liberal theories of public sphere on the grounds that these classical conceptualizations overstate the
unifying capacity of mass media technologies. Habermas’ discussion of the public sphere examines
the innate links between the burgeoning newspaper and media industry in the eighteenth century and the
foundations of a democratic society (1991, p. 88). The argument emphasizing that an increase in the
accessibility of reading technologies led to the emergence of ‘reading publics’ implies that technologies
of mass mediation enable people to prioritize rational thinking in public debates/consensus building. To
critique this, it is essential to bring into discussion the theories proposed by scholars such as Anderson
(1983), Appadurai (1996), Gupta (2005) and Orsini (2002), emphasizing how the proliferation of
capitalist mass mediation is concomitant with either the emergence of new forms of political contention
and cultural fragmentation or the reification of the already existing communal fractures in the society.
For instance, in his book, Politics after Television, Rajagopal (2010) explains how new forms of mass
mediation technologies caused the anticolonial nationalist utopia to transform into different forms of
political aspirations and practices. This is obvious in the ways the discourse on nationalism in secular
India is conflated with the Hindu religious ideology.
If previous mass mediation technologies such as newspapers and televisions complicated our
understanding of publicity and embodied participation in the public sphere, the internet introduces more
challenges. Unpacking the ways in which religious ideologies transitioned from offline to online sites,
Dawson and Cowan (2004, p. 2) draw attention to two types of crisis, that is, the crisis of authority and
authenticity. According to Dawson, a crisis of authority manifests in three forms: First, everyone has
access to technologies of content creation and so there is a loss of control over materials, which qualify
as religious and/or pertaining to the religious ideology. Second, this process, enables ‘grassroots
witnessing’, giving community members more access to techniques and practices of meaning-making.
Third, as a result of this, a crisis of authenticity emerges related to both the content/meaning of religious
subjectivities (here, far-right Hindutva nationalists) and the online practices developed to enact these.
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