Cultural revivalism in India: pre- and post-independence scenario

India’s struggle for independence from colonial rule was marked by a multitude of resistance movements and ideological currents, culminating in its liberation in 1947. This article examines a pivotal cultural strategy within this struggle: Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s deployment of Hindu cultural revivalism as a tool for mass mobilization. It argues that Tilak’s seminal contribution was his strategic appropriation of the format and function of Islamic Muharram processions, which in colonial Mumbai operated as a carnivalesque heterotopia, a transgressive public sphere that temporarily inverted social hierarchies. Drawing theoretical insights from Mikhail Bakhtin and Michel Foucault, this study first deconstructs the Muharram procession as a site of popular expression and political potential under colonial surveillance. It then analyzes how Tilak ingeniously reinterpreted this model, transforming the Ganesh Utsav and Shivaji Festival into analogous Hindu public spectacles. While this strategy was profoundly effective in forging a unified anti-colonial consciousness, the article concludes that it simultaneously initiated a process of religious demarcation, marginalizing interreligious syncretism and shaping the trajectory of communal politics in contemporary India.