What Is A “Sellable” Muslim? Towards a Political Economy of Muslim Cultural Representation in Contemporary India

While exclusionary forces continue to claim Muslims do not belong in India, specific Muslims are uniquely visible across diverse genres of cultural representation. This paper focuses on the tension between official forms of Muslim exclusion and the visibility of certain types of Muslims in diverse media forms including commercial theatre, Hindi cinema, and heritage tourism. Created by Muslim and non-Muslim producers, the paradoxical hyper-visibility of selective Muslims shows that the Hindutva movement functions not only as a politico-religious project but also as an economic one. Such representations support a neoliberal capitalist agenda that undermines Muslim dignity (Kunnummal 2022). Questions this paper explores include: what kinds of Muslims are “sellable” for twenty-first century forms of cultural consumption? How are the goals and strategies of producers to make Muslims visible in genres of cultural representation shaped by the forces of twenty-first century, late-stage Indian capitalism and neoliberalism?