War of Narratives

Christianity, Iconoclasm, and Decoloniality of Race and Religion

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8135131
AutoresShalini Kakar (Independent Researcher, Boston, MA 02420, USA, autor correspondente)
Ano2026
Volume17
Fascículo2
Páginas168
Data de publicação2026-01-30
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoReligions (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
EditoraMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel17020168
OpenAlexW7126199353
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas88

This paper examines Christian icons in Panjab, in northern India, and their relationship to the larger discourse on race, iconoclasm, and decentering Whiteness in the United States. I analyze the appropriation of Panjabi idioms woven into Christian icons to interrogate the alleged case of forced conversions of lower caste, Mazhabi Sikhs, and the atmospheres of violence. Focusing on the beheading of Christ and Mary’s pieta statue in a church in Tarn Taran, Panjab in 2022, I investigate the iconic materiality and vexed histories of the religious symbol through a visual studies lens. How do Christian images signal liminal material presences that oscillate between their identity of sacred icons and of hegemonic monuments of white supremacy? Using a Lacanian psychoanalytic and decolonial framework, I argue that entangled in the politics of memory, Christian icons are an impregnated space of intersecting colonial histories of oppression and conversion entrenched in hierarchies of race, class, and caste. This study contributes to understanding the growing impact of Christianity in northern India, the war of narratives being enacted upon its icons, and its relationship to anti-colonial and anti-racial expressions of transnational iconoclasm to posit a bigger question: Is there a way to navigate through the dense matrix of colonialism, race, religion, caste, and violence to reclaim agency through Mignolo’s call for a “praxis of decolonial healing”

Christianity · Colonialism · Decoloniality · Iconoclasm · Liminality · Materiality (auditing · Oppression · Postcolonialism (international relations · Symbol (formal · White (mutation · Anthropological Studies and Insights · South Asian Cinema and Culture · South Asian Studies and Diaspora