Boginie protestu. Religijne konteksty w kampaniach na rzecz praw kobiet w Indiach .......... 37

GODDESSES OF PROTEST. RELIGIOUS CONTEXTS IN CAMPAIGNS FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN INDIA

The aim of this article is to examine how the Indian women’s movement has reinterpreted traditional religious motifs and the iconography of Hindu goddesses, transforming them into tools of social and symbolic resistance against patriarchal structures. The study is grounded in the premise that religious representations of femininity—embodied in figures such as Durga, Kali, and Parvati—constitute a key component of India’s cultural imagination, serving simultaneously as sources of both oppression and empowerment. Through an analysis of selected posters and feminist campaigns from the 1970s to the 1990s, the article explores how women’s activism appropriated familiar visual codes to challenge entrenched religious and social norms of female subordination. The reinterpretation of divine archetypes enabled the creation of a new visual and ideological language of protest—one rooted in local tradition yet open to universal ideas of equality, agency, and solidarity. Ultimately, the article argues that by creatively engaging with religious symbolism, Indian feminism not only subverted passive models of womanhood but also articulated a vision of the woman as a powerful subject (śakti) capable of transforming both the world and herself.