The First World War and the All-India War Memorial

Commemoration, Memorialization and the Creation of the Public Sphere

Abstract

According to most ‘public sphere’ scholars, groups and individuals constitute the public or get transformed into political agents once they go into the public sphere. For Jurgen Habermas, it is the rational nature of the public discussion which makes possible the “transformation of socially situated persons into public individuals.” The public sphere refers to a common space, which, in theory, is open to everyone: the local sweet store, the roadside betel shop, an exhibition hall, a coffee house, a maidan, as well as the representational and discursive space of the television, radio, journals, magazines, newspapers and even the internet.