Subversive space: representations of space as articulations of sovereignty in colonial Mysore

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article is an inquiry into the relationship between representations of space and religion, power, and territory. It argues that the manner that space is represented is intimately tied to the colonial project as the tool through which European nations could represent the world they wanted, promulgating a specific religious perspective and articulating colonizers’ desired spatial, religious, and political order. This is contrasted with a set of murals that visualize an alternative perspective of space and territory found in the citramaṇṭapa of the Vēṅkaṭaramanasvāmi temple in Mysore. These murals that depict space differently contested the colonial hegemony of space by articulating an indigenous spatial order constructed upon an alternate cosmological and religious model, thereby subtly subverting colonialism by articulating India as a sacred and sovereign domain.