"Starring" Madhuri as Durga: The Madhuri Dixit Temple and Performative Fan-Bhakti of Pappu Sardar

In: International Journal of Hindu Studies, 13 (2009), Nr. 3. pp. 391-416. ISSN 1022-4556

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Abstract

The first part will address how the Hindu temple is being re-conceptualized in post-colonial modernity and how Madhuri Dixit Temple is borrowing from already existing practices of re-appropriation of Hindu rituals in popular culture. In the second part, applying the same model of a museum-temple to the Madhuri Dixit Temple, I plan to draw a parallel between the Madhuri Dixit Temple and the Bharat Mata Temple suggesting that the premeditated display strategies in the Madhuri Dixit Temple function as a museum exhibit, in which images of Durga and Madhuri occupy the "ritualized" space of this temple. In the third part, I propose to unpack some of the multiple layered modalities of Madhuri Dixit Temple under the rubric of an exhibition-temple, a conceptual device, which allows us to understand Madhuri Dixit Temple as a polysemic site.