Seite - 11 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Band 07/02

Editorial | 11www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/2, 7–14 as reading practices), as well as the emphasis on literacy (and with it literary practices and traditions) in western education in colonial contexts, arguably produced irreversible changes in social structures – including, of course, in religious communities and with the help of religious agents such as Chris- tian missionaries. Yet at the same time, even if print was often imported by western agents, it was quickly used locally to promote local traditions and, over the long term, local independence movements and nationalisms.11 Patil’s creative mingling of text and images and her emphasis on the figure of the storyteller in her graphic novels might be seen as ways to play with these shifts between oral and literary traditions, visual and textual media, and to make her own contribution to the continued multimedia narrative of mythologies, both traditional and contemporary. The media of photography and cinema also opened up particular new opportunities: while it has often been noted that films produced in the western cinematographic industry have tended to represent stereotyped images of non-western cultures, it must also be stressed that photography and cinema have been transnational (or global) enterprises from the very beginning.12 As Bornet points out in his contribution in this issue, these tech- nologies were quickly adopted in colonial contexts to serve their particular, and often anti- colonial, agendas. In many of these cases of local media pro- duction, religious themes have played an important role in the identity for- mation of groups. As popular and powerful stories, they are likely to bring together people from various horizons and have the ability to touch people on a deep emotional level, making them particularly persuasive – something Patil also draws on in her graphic novels. Religious themes can also be used to speak indirectly about political realities, especially in contexts in which the expression of political preferences is or was dangerous or censored.13 Today, and with the assistance of cheaper and more accessible digital tech- nologies, local production contexts continue to draw on religious stories and themes to make sense of the postcolonial and neocolonial situation of various communities in a global context.14 These possibilities are apparent in 11 See Green 2014 for a study of how evangelical missionaries in South Asia brought new techniques and media that were appropriated in Muslim circles, and Mitter 1994 for an analysis of the relations between printed art and Indian nationalism. 12 For a critique of the complexity of the role of photography and other visual media in the colonial and postcolonial context and their histories, see Azoulay 2019. 13 See for example Pinney 2004; Dwyer 2006. 14 Meyer 2015.