image metonymic to the image of the country. Images of Shinzo Abe performing the Ganga Aarti, Emmanuel Macron walking hand in hand with Narendra Modi through the streets of Varanasi and on the Ghats produce images of spaces infused with power along with the dissemination of cultural domination and alliance. Appropriation of Aural, visual and textual modes of dissemination at local, national and global scales appendage the ideological cause of selective nation branding and identity formation. The systematic analysis of these forms of latent content aid in surfacing the embedded ideologies within. Through systematic analysis of images and metaphors, it is possible to reveal the deep structure of an ideology, felicitating the production of a theatre state, and its governance through ritual and spectacle. The analysis of the political currency of images surfaces the deeply enmeshed circuitry between the symbolic and the material in India’s post-reform mediascape. Conclusion:
fig.40 The illustration reflects upon the before and after condition of the construction of the Kashicorridor temple precinct project. The built fabric of Varanasi before was like a maze where bodies could lose orientation and reappear at the river banks. With the erasure of the built environment along with such an important sacred politic insert, the site produces politicized bodies (saffron is the colour of BJP) being oriented into the site using various forms of power, concretizing a selective Image of Kashi. 48
