(In)credible India? A Critical Analysis of India’s Nation Branding

We offer a political-economic, postcolonial interrogation of nation branding based on the Incredible India campaign. We show how the discursive violence inherent in nation branding promotes internal hegemonies and external market interests at the expense of cosmopolitan ideas of belonging and community. In Incredible India, colonial identities are reinscribed, peripheralizing India in line with the demands of global markets, privileging Western desires and imagination. Internal political hegemonies promoting India as a Hindu nation are also reflected in the campaign, marginalizing minority groups. However, the attempt to construct a unitary nation simultaneously reveals the presence of the “other,” contesting the narrative's boundaries. The analysis confirms nation branding as a fundamentally political process, implicated in the production and perpetuation of inequalities.