Desecration and the politics of ‘image pollution’: Ambedkar statues and the ‘sculptural encounter’ in India

Abstract

This essay examines the culture of statue-desecration in contemporary India. The focus is the desecration of Ambedkar statues. The first section argues that the installation of Ambedkar statues is a process of sacralising, reconfiguring public histories and modernities, while instituting a new iconicity. In section two, the essay moves on to examining the ‘profane aesthetics’ of desecration. This includes studying the emergence of a ‘counter-spectacle’ in the political culture jamming of desecration, the creation of a culture of image pollution and the making of an affrontier.