Rebels for every cause: Mythologies of youth in contemporary India

Abstract

The processes of globalization and liberalization currently underway in most parts of the world address young people as agential subjects, even as a primordial fear of the raw, uncontained, chaotic force symbolized by unrestrained youth persists. In such a context, I argue that youth becomes an aspirational subject position signifying different things to various social actors. Drawing upon Roland Barthes’ notion of ‘myth’ as a sign in a second-order semiotic system (Mythologies, 1993), I examine various popular cultural texts of the mid-2000s such as the popular Hindi film Rang De Basanti (‘Paint me the colour of spring’, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra 2006), as well as select advertisements, music videos and public service campaigns in order to unravel the ‘mythologies’ converging in the figure of youth in contemporary India.