From global to neo-global: Mapping the ‘tele’-visual geography of South Asia through a transnational lens

ABSTRACT Globalization and transnationalism have expanded the physical territory of television and are responsible for global reshaping of media industries and cultures. In the contemporary mediascape, Indian television industry is an interesting site for excavating new transnational patterns wherein the circulation of Indian TV content extends beyond the diaspora and caters to non-diasporic audiences, especially, in South Asia and South-east Asia. The popularity of Hindi language TV soaps in Indonesia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, etc., have aided in mapping a new ‘tele’-visual geography of popular culture that deems Western media influence as almost insignificant, if not absent. Chronicling the success of two Indian TV programmes – the story of a ‘child-bride’ Balika Vadhu (2008–16) in Vietnam and a Hindu mythological Mahabharat (2013–14) in a Muslim-populated Indonesia; this paper traces the transnational circulation of Indian TV content amongst non-diasporic markets in South-east Asia. Drawing from Daya Kishan Thussu’s notion of ‘contra-flows’ and Brian Larkin’s conception of ‘parallel modernities’, the paper argues that the success of Indian television programmes in non-West media markets diverts our attention towards new kinds of transnational media flows which I have termed ‘neo-global’ flows that operate amongst emerging centres of media production and need not be mapped against dominant Western flows.