From Mangoes to Missile Strikes: Cinema and the Political Aesthetics of Modi’s India

Abstract This article examines how popular Hindi cinema has become integral to the political aesthetics of Narendra Modi’s India. Focusing on Modi’s strategic proximity to Bollywood through celebrity interviews, public endorsements of controversial films, election-timed hagiographies, and militarized spectacles, it argues that cinema now growingly operates as an infrastructure of governance rather than a cultural expression. Tracing a trajectory from ostensibly “apolitical” media performances such as the Modi–Akshay Kumar interview to films like The Kashmir Files, The Kerala Story, and Uri: The Surgical Strike, the article shows how cinematic narratives are mobilized to manufacture affect, stabilize nationalist truth claims, and pre-empt journalistic or historical scrutiny. Particular attention is paid to the feedback loop between cinematic representation and political rhetoric, wherein slogans, war-room imaginaries, and heroic masculinities migrate seamlessly from screen to statecraft. Situating these developments within the broader “saffronization” of public knowledge, the article contends that Bollywood is increasingly training audiences to recognize enemies, rehearse outrage, and internalize a grammar of permanent retaliation. What emerges is not merely propaganda cinema but a mode of rule in which spectacle substitutes deliberation and representation collapses into authority.