Somehow we all are very touchy about our mothers and
rightfully so. Kanaiah Kumar who is currently jailed in the high security cell
of Tihar Jail, Delhi for sedition charges while giving a speech at the steps of
the administrative block in the Jawaharlal Nehru University just a day before
his arrest, raised his mobile phone and said that he could show the messages
that abused his mother and sister profusely by the right wing who, he wondered,
were the same people who spoke highly of the ‘mother India/Bharat Mata’ and had
been baying for the blood of the anti-nationals. Considering the events in
India today, we also need to say here that what hurt some people most is not the
‘anti-national sentiments’ but the ‘anti-nationalist sentiments’. Most of us
know where the difference lies. Nationalism is more of a cultural inclination
and soft pride about the goodness and wellness of the place or country where we
happen to take birth, while Nationalist feeling is something that is imposed by
certain political and religious ideology/ies that demand a huge amount of
patriotism (the contradiction is there in the articulation itself; your
nationalist loyalty is measured by the patriotic fervor that you cherish) and
illogical loyalty for the country which you have been happy to be born and
brought up in.
Let’s rest that argument there for the time being and
proceed with the idea of ‘Bharat Mata/Mother India’, which is all of a sudden
on the upswing mode. As we know, this chant and pride of/for Bharat Mata is
more than a century old. Indian nationalism, as any student of history knows is
an outcome of the colonial process and the erstwhile sub-national movements,
wars and struggles were not really for establishing an India as we see these
days. Historians have noted that burning, looting and breaking the existing
systems that include both the social political and religious structures, were a
part of the process and all, irrespective of their religions and social
perspective had done these atrocities. But when the British became the sole
authority of the Indian sub-continent, subjugating the subject fiefdoms as tax
paying entities, it became necessary for the erstwhile warring provinces to
bury their differences and join hands against the common enemy. We should also understand
that even in the process of forming a ‘national resistance’ which was primarily
a conglomeration of ‘sub national resistances’, some of the parties were
surreptitiously working with the colonial masters in order to perpetuate their
interests and survival. This shows that our nationalism was not without any
betrayals or vagaries of its own kind. But it was the idea of ‘Mother Nation’
that could ethically and emotionally bring all these warring factions together
and it was emotionally difficult for many to defile the mother, means the
country.
(Goddess Lakshmi by Raja Ravi Varma)
Hence, by the second half of the 19th century AE,
we started seeing the formation of a peculiar notion of ‘Mother India’ getting consolidated
and it was purely an abstract idea, which was liable to be interpreted in the
most pious way by the ‘patriotic’ subjects. Indian sub-which that has been
conjoined invisibly despite its cultural and linguistic difference, in fact
stood on the common mythologies and the shared values of Hinduism manifested in
different forms and practices all over the sub-continent. And we could see how
the original structured religious philosophies either talking about the ‘primordial’
god whose existence even before the existence or talking about the ‘primordial
couple’- Shiva-Shakti or Purusha-Prakruti. The presence of this binary but
joined inseparably in evocation and meaning, helped the early nationalists to
formulate their nationalism around it and the ‘mother’ became all the more
important in the process. And ironically we should see that this idealization
of mother also comes from a predominant male chauvinism shown by the Indian
society in general because any war including the mythical ones were waged in
the name of women or by staking women in the war efforts. The very basis of the
atrocities committed against women during the war is because in wars
property/earth/land/women are considered as one or as the part of the war spoils
as a whole. So, upholding one’s right over the earth/land/kingdom/nation is
equated with one’s right over the woman who belongs to the land. Woman,
therefore has been treated as an entity that has to be fought over as she lacks
her own agency.
Mother, though we attribute a lot of value to her then and
now, is not different from any women in that case. But the early nationalists
had to use mother as the primordial Shakti and this could gravitate people’s
sentiments around it; the sudden view of India as a nation and as a mother
abused by the whites could change the whole course of the nationalist movement.
That’s why we see the slogan ‘Vande Mataram’ in late 19th Century in
Tara Shankar Banerjee’s ‘Anand Math’. One has to be particularly watchful here
because this slogan was not coming from the material men but the spiritual
seekers that in fact could give more authenticity to the claim over women’s
body and soul as India as a philosophical unit could easily identify such a
claim. Coming from Bengal, it took very less time to mix up this abstract Vande
Mataram with the image of Ma Durga, which is the reigning deity of the
Bengalis. One need not say it emphatically that the initial anti-colonial
struggles started in Calcutta and in Bombay because the colonials were ruling
India from these places and the initial struggles were intricately connected to
the human labor, surplus value or profit and the alienation of the worker from
the work. India was changing fast because of the introduction of rail and
postal service. The printing technology was the real catalyst for consolidating
the dispersed and diversified nationalistic efforts.
(Galaxy of Musicians by Raja Ravi Varma)
Though these communication facilities were there, in their
nascent form it was very difficult to involve a large populace into the common
nationalistic struggle from different parts of India. With no literacy to be
considered, it was necessary to have pictorial depictions of ideas that could
penetrate into the walls of ignorance. Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906) was perhaps
the first artist to recognize this factor. He was not a nationalist per se. But
he wanted his works to be seen by the people, not just by the rich royal and
feudal patrons. He had already painted the Devas and Devis (gods and goddesses)
of Indian mythology and it was now his responsibility, as he thought, to
proliferate these images amongst the masses. He was not a Hindutva artist as we
understand today of the word, but he was a Hindu with an intention to get his
works in all the Hindu household as an inexpensive but a reverent image meant to be
worshipped. Hence for the first time people got a chance to identify with the
goddesses who looked like them. Instead of feeling disgust and awe (the way the
French felt disgust while looking at the familiar prostitutes in the works of
Eduard Manet in the late 19th century), the illiterate Indian people
accepted the gods and goddesses who looked like them. It was the beginning of ‘Bharat
Mata’s’ journey though Ravi Varma did not have any intention to create such a ‘rath
yatra’.
Ravi Varma could be the pioneer artist who imagined an India
with all its cultural differences. His ‘Galaxy of Musicians’ was not a
political map or the effort was not to create a visual topography of a
political India. What Ravi Varma attempted in this painting was to bring the
cultural varieties of Indian ethnic diversities into one pictorial frame and
using the musical harmony as a device to imagine the beautiful and harmonious
co-existence of different cultures within one India. We cannot just say that Ravi
Varma was unaware of the socio-political movements that were taking place
around him. He knew the initial upheavals of a political nationalism in
Maharashtra and its Hinduist thrust as he was a well travelled artist in the
western parts of India. So though apparently an apolitical artist, Ravi Varma
had this subconscious inclination and interest to see the kind of India that would
come into a reality eventually. Ravi Varma did not live to see the independence
of India. But he could foresee what is coming. He knew eventually India would
come under one flag/one frame. But what we need to appreciate in his artistic
vision is his deliberate choice of avoiding the ‘male’ figures from his future
India. He saw a ‘woman’ India or rather a women India. It was progressive on
the one hand considering his time and on the other hand he was going by
conventions because India saw women as land and land as women, the right on which
were in the hands of the male. Hence, Ravi Varma here is the absent male who
creates the visible/present female.
(Bharat Mata by Abanindranath Tagore)
Though it might sound unethical to posit Ravi Varma into
this scheme of things to which he does not have the capacity to forward a counter
argument, art historically it is necessary to see that Ravi Varma indirectly
creates a Bharat Mata, with some kind of a physical contour which looked like
belonging to the common women in India. Though Ravi Varma knew the Botticelli’s 15th
century masterpiece, ‘The Birth of Venus’ and modeled several of his works on
that painting, it was his choice of models, ethnic beauties of India that had
made all the difference. What Tara Shankar Banerjee initiated in his clarion
calls, in Ravi Varma it found its visual echo. In Vande Mataram, Banerjee
allowed the people to see their women and women themselves in the slogan. Ravi
Varma by giving the visual semblance of the ordinary people to the ideal
mother/mother land/mother earth, made it visually viable. Then happened the printing
press revolution in Bengal primarily and elsewhere in India too. The local
artists reinterpreted the ‘mother India’ in the Ravi Varma way. Cheap prints
were available for the common people. Newspaper cartoonists and illustrators
were profusely using the ‘common woman mother India’ and were pushing her
towards some kind of a political divinity. She was ordinary yet she was divine.
And looking around the artists saw that the best form of an ordinary woman
achieving the divine powers was to combine her image with that of Ma Durga.
The Durga image came as a result of all the powerful woman,
originated, hailed and then filtered out of the Tantric forms, then to the
mainstream Hindu art by the 7th and 8th century AE,
became the standard iconography for the artists, cartoonists and the
illustrators. Mahishasur Mardini, the vanquisher of the buffalo demon was the
most powerful iconography of Durga. With her lion mount, eight hands attributed
with weapons and finally with a dying Mahishasur at her feet, she was the
perfect choice for the mother India to find manifestation. In her struggle to
be seen and heard, she had assumed the most ferocious looks. At times she
appeared as impoverished, at times crude, and at times really aggressive, in
the hands of the illustrators. Interestingly we have to see Ravi Varma had
never portrayed a Durga, the way the later artists did. People lapped it up and
for the political activists, especially the Hindu version of political activism
it was an easily adoptable visual vehicle. The shrillness of imagery however
was too much for the more egalitarian and educated class. They wanted to see
Mother India in much more graceful manifestations. It was Abanindranath Tagore
who made all the difference in redefining the Mother India. Though it did not
become the standard mother India after a point of time, it could change the
visual discourse pertaining to the Mother India in Indian political and visual
discourse.
(Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli, 15th century AE)
Abanindranath Tagore (1871-1951) did his Bharat Mata in
1905. The year is very important. It was in this year, based on their Divide
and Rule policy, on behalf of the British Empire, Lord Curzon, the Governor
General of India, divided Bengal into two parts; Muslim dominated East and the
Hindu dominated West (Bengal). India’s nationalist movement became quite strong
after this. One has to see the irony; today we are talking against the Muslims
and ironically, the Indian Independence struggle here was against dividing the
Muslim from Bengal. Abanindranath, perhaps, was thinking about a much
cosmopolitan, humanitarian, compassionate and less aggressive Bharat Mata. In
Tagore’s work we see a Bharat Mata with four hands; one has a japamala, a
rosary, showing her religious/spiritual bent of mind. In another hand we see a sheaf,
which shows the agricultural flourish, one has a palm leaf book, showing the
erudition and one hand holds a white cloth, showing the symbol of peace. A very
potent image indeed! But what makes Tagore’s work more impactful is the
de-sexualization of the woman; she is a mother and she is clad in saffron
clothes and this saffron is different from the Hindutva saffron today. This
cloth connotes the idea of renunciation. She is not sexually appealing like
Durga (who is in the act of killing a male demon which could be seen as a
sexual play). She is more like a nun or a widow; the one who has disinvested
herself of all her sexuality for the cause of the land. She is not to be
desired but worshipped and emulated. Tagore places his Bharat Mata against the voluptuous
goddesses envisioned by Ravi Varma. But could this Bharat Mata stay in the
visual memory of people in India?
No is the answer. Reasons are many. With the arrival of
Mahatma Gandhi into the Indian political struggle, the Hindu thrust as
formulated within the Congress and represented by Tilak and MM Malavya was
pushed behind and a more secular approach was put in place. Gokhale who was the
political mentor of Gandhiji was not really following the Tilak like Hindu
nationalism. Gandhi learnt the ropes from there but at the same time knew that
estranging the Hindu lot was not a good thing. So he upheld Gita as his
political text and followed it to the T. The Hindutva tendencies within the
nationalist movement were kept under check by this move of Gandhi and he had to
pay a heavy price for it later on 30th January 1949. Nathuram Godse,
a Hindu fundamentalist shot him dead. But the irony is it was Mahatma Gandhi
who inaugurated India’s first ‘Bharat Mata Temple’ in Benaras. In a program
attended by Khan Abdul Gafar Khan and Sardar Patel, Gandhiji, while
inaugurating this temple had said: “In this temple there are no statues of gods
and goddesses. Here only a map of India is raised on marble. I hope this temple
will take the form of a worldwide platform for all religions along with
Harijans and of all castes and beliefs, and it would contribute to feelings of
religious unity, and peace and love in this country’ (quoted from Icon of
Mother in Late Colonial North India by Charu Dutta in EPW November 2001).
Gandhiji’s vision was much closer to that of Abanindranath Tagore though he did
not want a human figure there.
(Nargis in Mother India, 1957)
In the post-colonial India where Hindutva did not have much
of a say despite their never ending efforts they kept the heat on in different
levels and till they found their chance in 1992 in the destruction of the Babri
Masjid and it was mainly through temples, RSS branches, VHP and many other
outfits (which is now counted as 91 number). The post-independence India
actually did not do much to curb the activities of the Hindu nationalists. It
was necessary to keep both the Hindus and the Muslims in good humour especially
after the partition in two different phases; in 1947 and in 1971. Hindutva
people always behaved as the hurt parties though their hurt was largely
neglected by the people in general and the governments in particular. They had
an opportunity to consolidate during the Emergency period in 1975, which was a
short lived honeymoon with the socialists in India. Indian governments led by
both Congress and many other regional combinations were mostly tolerant and
benevolent towards even to the Hindutva forces fearing the vote bank politics would
decimate them had it not been in that way (which eventually decimated them).
Hence, overt presentations of the Bharat Mata were allowed right from the
school levels. During the youth festivals Bharat Mata is an unavoidable
tableau. Through match boxes stickers, films, village fairs, textile calendars,
new temples this idea of Bharat Mata as an aggressive goddess was kept alive
and she was a potential tool only to be used at certain times. It is interesting
to see how, the Bharat Mata is on a come back trail and both Ram and Hanuman
are in a retreating stage.
It is imperative to discuss how Bharat Mata took a different
turn and moved many leagues away from the images that both Raja Ravi Varma and
Abanindranath Tagore had created from their proximate perspectives with the
emerging nationalist sentiments in the late 19th and early 20th
century respectively. Bharat Mata got a new avatar in Nargis (Dutt) in Mehboob
Khan’s ‘Mother India’, the cultic movie released in 1957. Nehruvian Socialism
was not really working and the new License Quota Raj was emerging strongly. The
new political leadership was not really interested in the Lal Bahadur Shastri’s
Jai Jawan Jai Kisan slogan was inspiring (1965) but not really taking the kisan
anywhere. Feudalism in general was not ready to leave its clutches loose over the
Serbs and the farmers were pushed under the yoke of debts. Hence, Mehboob
Khan’s (notice his religion) Mother India presented a new Mother India, in
Nargis, who presented the toiling farmer woman with two sons. With her husband leaving
them for the fear of debt, the burden of the family falls on her. One of the
sons becomes a dacoit and takes revenge. But in the film, what we see is a
young voluptuous Nargis becoming a desirous mother, whose body is desired by
the feudal lords. Interestingly, there is an Oedipal subtext to the story which
is extraneous to the narrative of the film’s original story. Sunil Dutt, who
acted as one of the sons of Nargis got romantically involved with his ‘mother’
in the film sets and post film shoot they got married.
Nargis, in the popular imagination stands for two things;
the toiling mother, the fighting mother, the dignified mother and the mother
who is voluptuous and desirable by her son/s. The toiling mother who is an
agricultural worker takes a lot from the Ram Kinkar Baij’s imagination (not
directly but from though a larger visual culture awareness). Baij’s famous
sculptures ‘Santal Family’ and ‘Mill Call’ were already there in the cultural
scene and Baij’s interest was more in the industrialization as pitted against
the natural agricultural scenario of India rather than the direct conflict
between the colonial master and the subject. Baij imagined the celebration of
the people who move from one location to the other with a lot of spirit to
survive than complain. He as a free soul was not either wanting his
protagonists to be under the yoke of any ideology. It was more like carrying
the essence of the Gandhian philosophy with the village as an autonomous unit.
Baij’s protagonists were free to move out of this unit and also were free to
come back to this. But in Khan’s imagination we see Nargis trapped in the rural
setting, which is agrarian and oppressive at the same time. Sunil Dutt, her son
moves out of the system not only by becoming a Daku but also by marrying his ‘mother’
outside the film’s narrative.
All of a sudden we have a double edged Bharat Mata unlike
the voluptuous Bharat Mata of Raja Ravi Varma and the desexualized
Mother India of Tagore. Here in Nargis we have both. She resists the sexual
advances of the feudal lords; she fights like a Durga. But at the same time she is austere and monogamous, and believes in the Hindu way of life. She wants her
children to study. She is a farmer. She is the embodiment of piety. All
attributes attuned to that of Tagore’s
Bharat Mata. But her body is voluptuous and desirable. So from Nargis we
see the slow transition of Bharat Mata in the calendars and other visual
ensembles; she regains her sexual prowess (more like Ravi Varma characters) and
gets her fighting spirit (like Durga). Together they make the present
aggressive, desirous Bharat Mata image. Sometimes she is clad in saffron sari,
she is with her mount Lion, the backdrop against which she stands is the
topographical representation of the Indian Sub-continent where the northern
part is made more abstract as a conscious effort to push the memories of
partition and the Jammu Kashmir conflict out of the viewers’ minds. The Akhand
Bharat (undivided India) concept of the RSS is played out here. This Bharat
Mata is a woman with a lot of ‘male’ power. She is ‘masculine’ in her war
spirit and ‘feminine’ in her physical attributes. Sometimes she is seen as
wearing a tricolor sari. At times she is holding the national flag and at times
she holds the saffron flag. This interchangeability of the flags connotes the
polity as a Hindu polity. Tricolour could be replaced with saffron, it seems to
say and interestingly that has been a demand of the several Hindu outfits.
During the Ayodhya movement in the late 1980s and early
1990s, and during the aftermath of it, and even during the new first decade of
the new millennium we witnessed a benevolent Ram, the Ram in Gandhiji’s
imagination or even in the Uncle Pai’s versions of Ramayana, turning slowly
into a masculine, angry and armed Ram who is about to wreck revenge on all
those who stand against the making of a Hindu Rashtra. But it slowly lost its
steam and the main architect of this movement, Mr.L.K.Advani slowly left his
hawkish stance and turned into a dove before he was rendered politically
irrelevant by Modi-Shah duo. Now with the JNU row, we once again see the
reintroduction of Bharat Mata. From Go-mata to Bharat Mata was a lighting
transition. Go-mata did not yield enough results and it is time for the Bharat
Mata, who is actually a ‘mother’ of our time. The fear is this; she will be
violated by the enemy of the country. This fear is a potent weapon to make
everyone a nationalist. Ironically, we are a lot that uses maximum number of
expletives that highlights the violation of our mothers’ and sisters’ private
parts. The invocation of Bharat Mata sounds like an obscene thing these days
because of this connotation preordained by the same aggressors who are out
there to decide the nationalists and the anti-nationalists.
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