The Ostentatious Crowd: Public protest as mass-political street theatre in Mumbai¹

Abstract

An ethnographic study of two public protests in Mumbai presents an account of crowd action in contemporary Mumbai as mass political street theater. The narrative is organized around two tit-for-tat rasta-rokos (road blocks) that despite having a nearly identical form and an indistinguishable cast of characters, unfolded in strikingly divergent ways. The article demonstrates the theatrical register within which mass politics operates, with Mumbai crowds revealed neither as spontaneous hordes nor as aggregations of strategic actors, but rather as a participant-audience of discerning voters assembled as a politically mediated ‘ostentatious display.’