Important Notice

This moment, where doubt ends and belief begins in the resurrection of Christ for Thomas the Apostle is depicted literally by Krishen Khanna, but pushes the viewer to a translation of the artist’s intention.

“The fact that Khanna’s labouring men are reimaged in the Christ cycle of paintings indicate how he brings the economically disenfranchised and the religious minority on the same plane. This reflects what Homi Bhabha describes in The... This moment, where doubt ends and belief begins in the resurrection of Christ for Thomas the Apostle is depicted literally by Krishen Khanna, but pushes the viewer to a translation of the artist’s intention.

“The fact that Khanna’s labouring men are reimaged in the Christ cycle of paintings indicate how he brings the economically disenfranchised and the religious minority on the same plane. This reflects what Homi Bhabha describes in The Location of Culture, “The social articulation of difference, from the minority perspective, is a complex, ongoing negotiation that seeks to authorise cultural hybridities that emerge in moments of historical transformation.” (The location of Culture, Homi Bhaba Routledge, 1994)

“Christ becomes emblematic of resistance to persecution, and what Khanna speaks of as “the tragic and perfidious in man.”…in using biblical allegory, Khanna brings the “coherence of narrative and an explicit conflict with figures of authority, symptomatic of public life in the subcontinent….The insecurity caused by communal riots in Gujarat, Moradabad or his own locality Bhogal and their resonance thirty years later at Godhra in Gujarat in 2003 motivates the sense of betrayal. Christ’s absorption into the lumpen labour of the city is complete; this is neither the healing Christ, the divine worker of miracles of the haloed Son of God, but the persecuted figure within an oppressive system.” (Gayatri Sinha, Krishen Khanna, The Embrace of Love, Mapin Publishing, 2005, p.17,18,20)

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