#bhayanaka

The Bad, the Ugly, and the Defiant: Bhayānaka, Bībhatsa, and Satire in Contemporary India by DebaprasadBandyopadhyay Via Flickr: onceinabluemoon2021.in/2026/04/20/the-bad-the-ugly-and-th... This article offers a philosophically rigorous and politically charged re-reading of the “negative” rasas — bībhatsa (disgust) and bhayānaka (fear) — from Bharata Muni’s Nāṭyaśāstra. Drawing on Abhinavagupta’s doctrine of sādhāraṇīkaraṇa and Krishna Chandra Bhattacharyya’s elevation of bībhatsa as mahā-rasa, it argues that these affects, when properly aestheticised, become vehicles of contemplative bliss (ānanda) and ethical purification (śuddhi). In their non-aestheticised, lived forms under late-capitalist authoritarian regimes, however, they degenerate into pathological modalities: sovereign “Will to Hide” (jugupsā as opacity) and pervasive climates of dread (bhaya as governance). Through a synthesis of dramaturgy, philosophy, and political theory, the paper diagnoses the contemporary global and Indian conjuncture — marked by neo-imperial violence, ecological collapse, inequality, and democratic erosion (especially post-2014 India) — as a theatre in which these rasas circulate without universalisation, producing a deadlock of terror and revulsion. In response, it proposes kautuka–hāsya–vyāṅga (wonder, laughter, and satire) as śilpita pratirodha (art of resistance), tracing a hauntological lineage from Husserl, Benjamin, Camus, and Tagore to Charlie Chaplin and contemporary Indian political comedians and cartoonists, thereby reclaiming rasa as both a diagnostic tool and a horizon of emancipatory resistance against neo-fascist tyranny.

The Bad, the Ugly, and the Defiant: Bhayānaka, Bībhatsa, and Satire in Contemporary India by DebaprasadBandyopadhyay Via Flickr: onceinabluemoon2021.in/2026/04/20/the-bad-the-ugly-and-th... This article offers a philosophically rigorous and politically charged re-reading of the “negative” rasas — bībhatsa (disgust) and bhayānaka (fear) — from Bharata Muni’s Nāṭyaśāstra. Drawing on Abhinavagupta’s doctrine of sādhāraṇīkaraṇa and Krishna Chandra Bhattacharyya’s elevation of bībhatsa as mahā-rasa, it argues that these affects, when properly aestheticised, become vehicles of contemplative bliss (ānanda) and ethical purification (śuddhi). In their non-aestheticised, lived forms under late-capitalist authoritarian regimes, however, they degenerate into pathological modalities: sovereign “Will to Hide” (jugupsā as opacity) and pervasive climates of dread (bhaya as governance). Through a synthesis of dramaturgy, philosophy, and political theory, the paper diagnoses the contemporary global and Indian conjuncture — marked by neo-imperial violence, ecological collapse, inequality, and democratic erosion (especially post-2014 India) — as a theatre in which these rasas circulate without universalisation, producing a deadlock of terror and revulsion. In response, it proposes kautuka–hāsya–vyāṅga (wonder, laughter, and satire) as śilpita pratirodha (art of resistance), tracing a hauntological lineage from Husserl, Benjamin, Camus, and Tagore to Charlie Chaplin and contemporary Indian political comedians and cartoonists, thereby reclaiming rasa as both a diagnostic tool and a horizon of emancipatory resistance against neo-fascist tyranny.

The Bad, the Ugly, and the Defiant: Bhayānaka, Bībhatsa, and Satire in Contemporary India by DebaprasadBandyopadhyay Via Flickr: onceinabluemoon2021.in/2026/04/20/the-bad-the-ugly-and-th... This article offers a philosophically rigorous and politically charged re-reading of the “negative” rasas — bībhatsa (disgust) and bhayānaka (fear) — from Bharata Muni’s Nāṭyaśāstra. Drawing on Abhinavagupta’s doctrine of sādhāraṇīkaraṇa and Krishna Chandra Bhattacharyya’s elevation of bībhatsa as mahā-rasa, it argues that these affects, when properly aestheticised, become vehicles of contemplative bliss (ānanda) and ethical purification (śuddhi). In their non-aestheticised, lived forms under late-capitalist authoritarian regimes, however, they degenerate into pathological modalities: sovereign “Will to Hide” (jugupsā as opacity) and pervasive climates of dread (bhaya as governance). Through a synthesis of dramaturgy, philosophy, and political theory, the paper diagnoses the contemporary global and Indian conjuncture — marked by neo-imperial violence, ecological collapse, inequality, and democratic erosion (especially post-2014 India) — as a theatre in which these rasas circulate without universalisation, producing a deadlock of terror and revulsion. In response, it proposes kautuka–hāsya–vyāṅga (wonder, laughter, and satire) as śilpita pratirodha (art of resistance), tracing a hauntological lineage from Husserl, Benjamin, Camus, and Tagore to Charlie Chaplin and contemporary Indian political comedians and cartoonists, thereby reclaiming rasa as both a diagnostic tool and a horizon of emancipatory resistance against neo-fascist tyranny.

The Bad, the Ugly, and the Defiant: Bhayānaka, Bībhatsa, and Satire in Contemporary India by DebaprasadBandyopadhyay Via Flickr: onceinabluemoon2021.in/2026/04/20/the-bad-the-ugly-and-th... This article offers a philosophically rigorous and politically charged re-reading of the “negative” rasas — bībhatsa (disgust) and bhayānaka (fear) — from Bharata Muni’s Nāṭyaśāstra. Drawing on Abhinavagupta’s doctrine of sādhāraṇīkaraṇa and Krishna Chandra Bhattacharyya’s elevation of bībhatsa as mahā-rasa, it argues that these affects, when properly aestheticised, become vehicles of contemplative bliss (ānanda) and ethical purification (śuddhi). In their non-aestheticised, lived forms under late-capitalist authoritarian regimes, however, they degenerate into pathological modalities: sovereign “Will to Hide” (jugupsā as opacity) and pervasive climates of dread (bhaya as governance). Through a synthesis of dramaturgy, philosophy, and political theory, the paper diagnoses the contemporary global and Indian conjuncture — marked by neo-imperial violence, ecological collapse, inequality, and democratic erosion (especially post-2014 India) — as a theatre in which these rasas circulate without universalisation, producing a deadlock of terror and revulsion. In response, it proposes kautuka–hāsya–vyāṅga (wonder, laughter, and satire) as śilpita pratirodha (art of resistance), tracing a hauntological lineage from Husserl, Benjamin, Camus, and Tagore to Charlie Chaplin and contemporary Indian political comedians and cartoonists, thereby reclaiming rasa as both a diagnostic tool and a horizon of emancipatory resistance against neo-fascist tyranny.