Creative Encounters and Subaltern Aesthetics in the Early Years of the Indian Space Programme

Abstract

The paper presents a historiography of satellite television in India, which was set up by the Indian space agency in the 1970s, and traces the involvement of creative practitioners in the conceptual development and implementation. The term 'subaltern aesthetics' is used in this paper as an analytical tool with which to plot the link between creative activity, agency and technology. Revisiting this neglected aspect of the history of the Indian space programme matters because it shows that the processes by which local adaptation of technology was enabled had a dependency on creative activity.

The context of the study is the decision taken by the leader of the space programme, Vikram Sarabhai, in the late 1960s that India would use space technology for national development goals by linking its villages via satellite televisions. This was an innovative and radical decision taken at the time the US and Soviet Union were focused on planetary missions. It enabled residents in rural villages to negotiate, write, perform and produce the television programmes they watched.

This agency to create programmes reflecting concerns of viewers and use of media to shift established power relationships and force change, happened in many ways against the odds and at a particular historical moment of opportunity, which lasted for only a few years. By the time India had launched its own synchronous satellites for direct broadcasting, the political will to give rural audiences the equipment and training to create local television had disappeared. The paper examines the reasons for these shifts