Narendra Modi inaugurated the world's tallest statue, a 597-foot figure of nationalist leader Sardar Patel, in 2018. Kajri Jain's book "Gods in the Time of Democracy" examines how monumental icons emerged as a religious and political form in contemporary India, mobilizing the concept of emergence toward a radical treatment of art historical objects as dynamic assemblages.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 360 pages
Publication date: 12 March 2021
Publisher: Duke University Press

In 2018, India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, unveiled the world's tallest statue, a 597-foot figure of nationalist leader Sardar Patel. Twice the height of the Statue of Liberty, it is just one of many massive statues constructed following India's economic reforms of the 1990s. In her book, "Gods in the Time of Democracy," Kajri Jain explores how monumental icons have emerged as a religious and political form in contemporary India, drawing on the concept of emergence to offer a radical treatment of art historical objects as dynamic assemblages. Through a decade of fieldwork at giant statue sites in India and its diaspora, as well as interviews with sculptors, patrons, and visitors, Jain provides a masterful account of how public icons materialize the intersections between new image technologies, neospiritual religious movements, Hindu nationalist politics, globalization, and Dalit-Bahujan verifications of equality and presence. By centering the ex-colony in rethinking key concepts of the image, Jain demonstrates how these new aesthetic forms entail a simultaneously religious and political retooling of the "infrastructures of the sensible."

India's Tallest Statue: A Symbol of Nationalism and Economic Reforms

In 2018, India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, inaugurated the world's tallest statue, a 597-foot figure of nationalist leader Sardar Patel. Twice the height of the Statue of Liberty, it is but one of many massive statues built following India's economic reforms of the 1990s. In "Gods in the Time of Democracy," Kajri Jain examines how monumental icons have emerged as a religious and political form in contemporary India, mobilizing the concept of emergence toward a radical treatment of art historical objects as dynamic assemblages. Drawing on a decade of fieldwork at giant statue sites in India and its diaspora and interviews with sculptors, patrons, and visitors, Jain masterfully describes how public icons materialize the intersections between new image technologies, neospiritual religious movements, Hindu nationalist politics, globalization, and Dalit-Bahujan verifications of equality and presence. Centering the ex-colony in rethinking key concepts of the image, Jain demonstrates how these new aesthetic forms entail a simultaneously religious and political retooling of the "infrastructures of the sensible."

Weight: 544g
Dimension: 151 x 228 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781478011392