Incredible India shining: the idea of India in political and touristic propaganda posters of the XXI century

Political campaigns directed towards a national audience and touristic campaigns directs towards an international audience often deal with stereotyped representations of the nation-state. The goals of such representations are the direct and immediate consumption of the represented nation. This paper analyses the visual and textual representations of India made for local citizens through two political campaigns launched by two political parties. These are: India Shining, launched by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the counter-campaign Aam Admni, launched by the Indian National Congress (Congress), both in 2004. It also analyses an ongoing touristic campaign for foreign visitors, the campaign Incredible India, launched by the Indian Government in 2002. Through discourse analysis based on qualitative data, this paper shows how political campaigns spread positive or negative representations of the nation, depending on whether the politician/party in question is in power or belongs to the opposition. It also reveals that touristic campaigns are invariably positive and how positive representations function as creators and consolidators of nationalistic ideas of the nation-state in space and time. Finally, it also analyses the way in which, while contemporary and globalised, such campaigns are informed and influenced by Orientalism and re-Orientalism, that is, the reinvention of Orientalism in the public and academic spheres in contemporary India.