Extent of impact: A family watches Ramayan after it was revived during the pandemic in Jammu, in 2020. AP
In a way, the mass dissemination of a standardised story of Ram couldn’t have come at a better time for the advocates of Hindutva, as it helped prime a diverse Hindu population brought up on regional variations of the epic, for the unitary ideology of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement
G. Sampath
Ahmed, Resuf, Paul Brimble, Akhila Kovvuri, Alessandro Saia, Dean Yang. 2025. ‘Ancient Epics in the Television Age: Mass media, Identity, and the Rise of Hindu Nationalism in India.’ National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA. Working Paper 33417.
The broadcast of the Ramayan television series happened at a pivotal moment in India’s media and cultural history. It aired from January 1987 to July 1988. This was a time when television signal reception was expanding but still limited. So for a substantial mass of the population, their very first exposure to this novel medium was the televised adaptation of the ancient Hindu epic. Combined with a gigantic viewership and the religious dimension, it caused the serial to have an outsized impact on its audiences.
Exploiting this aspect — the “geographical and over-time variation in television signal strength” — to identify “the causal effects of exposure to the Ramayan TV show, the authors of this paper pose the question: “Can exposure to religious narratives through mass media shape cultural identities and, in turn, influence political landscapes?”
There already exists a body of research that says ‘yes’. For instance, it is not a matter of debate that the Ramayan broadcast aided the rise of Hindu nationalism. It did. This study, by “examining the long-term effects of the Ramayan broadcast on cultural, social, and political outcomes,” seeks to bridge the “several interconnected strands” of this literature. Its unique methodology hinges on leveraging variations in TV signal strength across India to track how “exposure” to the Ramayan serial “affected cultural norms, communal relations, and voting behaviour in the years that followed.”
How the show affected cultural behaviour
The paper offers three key findings. First, areas with “higher Ramayan exposure (higher TV signal strength in 1987) experienced significant changes in cultural practices indicating a strengthening of religious identity.” This study tracked two cultural practices — naming of new-borns, and diet in lower-caste households — and both revealed significant changes. “Hindu parents became more likely to give their newborn sons common Hindu names, and lower-caste households showed increased adherence to orthodox Hindu dietary practices (a substantial increase in vegetarianism).”
Secondly, areas with higher exposure to Ramayan witnessed a “short-term” increase in Hindu-Muslim communal violence through 1992.
And finally, the study found a “long-term” effect (through to 2000) on electoral outcomes, with the Hindu nationalist BJP gaining an increase in its probability of winning assembly elections in areas that had higher Ramayan exposure.
In this context, one question automatically comes up: how do we know if the effects attributed to Ramayan exposure are not also an outcome of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, which was gaining steam around the same time? The authors isolate the ‘Ramayan effect’ using a control variable “measuring proximity to the travelling mobilisation rallies known as the Ram Rath Yatra (held in 1990)”. By doing so, they found that the “estimated effects of exposure to Ramayan starting in 1987 do not appear to be confounded by exposure to the Ram Rath Yatra, the key event in advancing the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.”
Consolidating a singular identity
Pointing out that prior to Ramayan’s introduction, there had never been a TV show in India with a religious theme, the paper notes that the Ramayan series “represented a step-function in religious TV content”. To document this quantitatively, the authors “collected data on all 176 television serials broadcast on Indian public networks since 1980”. There were zero religious shows prior to 1987. This was another factor that amplified Ramayan’s unique impact, given that its viewership, too, was “unprecedented in India”, with an estimated 80 million people tuning in to watch each episode.
At its peak, over 100 million viewers were watching Ramayan simultaneously at a time when there were only 30 million television sets in India. This is explained by the phenomenon of “community viewing” wherein people gathered in “large groups around a single television set, often in public spaces or at homes of neighbours who owned TVs”. As a result, “for the first time, all Hindus across the country saw and at the same time listened to the same thing”. The serial “introduced a congregational imperative into Hinduism” and “provided a unifying narrative that transcended local differences”.
In a way, the mass dissemination of a standardised story of Ram, an avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu, couldn’t have come at a better time for the advocates of Hindutva, as it helped prime a diverse Hindu population brought up on regional and linguistic variations of the epic, for the unitary ideology of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. Interestingly, as the paper underscores, the political impact of the series was likely unintended by the government. “At the time of the broadcast, the national government was led by the Congress party and not the BJP” and the “primary motivation for airing Ramayan was to increase advertising revenue for the state-owned television network.” In fact, the show’s creator Ramanand Sagar had to contend with much scepticism from officials and lobby extensively to get the show approved for broadcast.
Based on their findings, which revealed a strengthening of Hindu religious identity as indicated by shifts to popular Hindu names for new-borns, switching to vegetarianism, and changes in long-term political preferences, the authors contend that “the content of mass media can have far-reaching consequences beyond mere entertainment, potentially shaping the cultural and political landscape of a nation for years to come.”
This empirical study is an important intervention at a time when the Indian media landscape, especially news television, is marked by the perverse phenomenon of polarising communal rhetoric beamed out to millions on a daily basis. It also opens up avenues for future inquiry.
For instance, given the rising trend of majoritarian propaganda films coming from Bollywood, how does a certain “narrative structure, character portrayal, and symbolic imagery activate particular social identities?” And how does the mode of consumption — viewing such content as a “communal experience” in a cinema hall or multiplex versus individually — affect its impact on beliefs and group identity? Such investigations could illuminate the mechanisms through which sustained media exposure to particular kinds of cultural and religious content shapes personal identity and political alignments.
As the paper concludes, “The story of the Ramayan broadcast serves as a powerful reminder of the responsibility that comes with the power to shape narratives and, by extension, the cultural and political future of a nation.”
https://epaper.thehindu.com/ccidist-ws/th/th_international/issues/119502/OPS/G1VDVLDQK.1+GKUDVP392.1.html
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