The global rise of right-wing populisms necessitates an understanding of how national sentiment is sustained through cultural expressions such that it becomes a visceral force for members of the nation-community. In India, over the last decade, Hindu nationalism, a religious-territorial ideology envisioning India as a Hindu nation, has gained predominance, partly due to electoral victories. However, scholars such as Anna Schultz highlight the significance of locally rooted music/performances to nationalist mobilization. A case in point is the nationalist appropriation of the powada, a performance tradition in Maharashtra historically stemming from performance cultures of subaltern castes. The powada constitutes ballads on themes ranging from pre-colonial figures such as Shivaji, to anti-colonial leaders and contemporary social issues. As Sharmila Rege writes, it has adapted to various socio-political contexts, from anti-caste and left-wing politics to exclusionary Hindu nationalist movements.

Delving into the powada’s politics, this paper analyzes ways in which the powada, performed across spaces like government-sponsored workshops, ticketed programs, temples, and social media platforms, enables performers to perform the nation, in ways that perpetuate as well as unsettle Hindu nationalism. Performers from diverse caste/class/gender/age backgrounds deploy the powada to lead audiences into emotionally charged experiences of differing visions of the nation. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with select performers in Pune in 2024-2025, I will analyze how performers from differing social locations plumb aspects of the powada such as a ‘rustic’ voice that ‘emanates from the navel’, liveness, melodramatic enactment, and thematic content to shape varying sonic imaginations of the nation.