Reclaiming the Gods: Postcolonial Identity and Iconographic Resistance in Indian Contemporary Art

Building on primary sources and visual analysis, this article investigates how contemporary Indian artists M.F. Husain, Nalini Malani, and Atul Dodiya reclaim sacred iconography to contest colonial visual regimes and renegotiate national memory after 1947. Framed by Homi Bhabha’s concept of the “third space,” it shows how devotional imagery becomes a hybrid arena where imperial exoticism and nationalist fixity are simultaneously unsettled. Husain’s Cubist deities fracture Orientalist stereotypes and religious orthodoxy; Malani’s immersive shadow-plays dissolve mythic heroines into moving witnesses of gendered trauma; Dodiya’s shutter installations mix Gandhian symbolism with pop culture to expose the instability of historical myth-making. By foregrounding hybridity rather than cultural purity, these works reveal art’s capacity to mediate rupture, recuperate subaltern voices, and open alternative futures for Indian identity. The study contributes to postcolonial art history by mapping strategies of visual resistance that link decolonisation with gender, religion, and modernism in South Asia today.