3/8/2016 TheBlackBharatMataandtheNationalismofSedition|TheWire

CULTURE

The Black Bharat

Mata and the
Nationalism of
Sedition
BY KAREN GABRIEL AND P K VIJAYAN ON 08/03/2016 LEAVE A
COMMENT

What we need is a full national symbol a

slant-eyed, black Bharat Mata, crippled by
hunger and deprivation, pain and disease,
dressed in rags and chains, howling in rage
while being eaten by a lion and getting ready to
be reborn unchained.

http://thewire.in/2016/03/08/theblackbharatmataandthenationalismofsedition24148/ 1/9
3/8/2016 TheBlackBharatMataandtheNationalismofSedition|TheWire

Bharat Mata. Credit: Kannanokannan [CC BY-SA 2.0]/Wikimedia Commons

In the passionate speech that landed him in trouble with

the government, JNU Students Union President Kanhaiya
Kumar said he does not see his mother in Bharat Mata. He
was right of course. None of the many and varied images
of Bharat Mata that we have collected over the years
signify, reect or document Kumars mother. Neither do
they resemble the mother of Rohith Vemula, Umar Khalid,
Soni Sori, Manorama, Ishrat Jahan, Irom Sharmila, Bilkis
Bano or the Christians of Kandhamal.
So then who is this Bharat Mata and what purpose does
she serve?

Bharat Mata or Mother India is a gendered image that

emblematises and literalises the idea of a nation called
India. In this specic instance, the contours of both the

http://thewire.in/2016/03/08/theblackbharatmataandthenationalismofsedition24148/ 2/9
3/8/2016 TheBlackBharatMataandtheNationalismofSedition|TheWire

nation and the maternal body coincide, and Bharat Mata

is frequently depicted with her saree pallao billowing over
the North and the North-Eastern parts of the country.

But Bharat Mata is also a paradox. She is imagined as

literally birthing the nations multitudes, while remaining
herself the form of the nation still engorged with the
multitudes who populate her. Despite both bodying forth
the nation and embodying it she rarely resembles her
multitudinous offspring. It is in this remarkable
separation between Bharat Mata and her children that a
resonant paradox is born: Bharat Mata continually births
herself who is rarely identical with her selves. What does
this say about her?

The Aryanised Bharat Mata

In the popular Durgaesque RSS version of her, Bharat

Mata is fair-skinned, resplendent with nery, prestige,
condence and power. She leans gently but assuredly on a
magnicent lion while bestowing a benediction on the
viewer-devotee. Although this version is far more
ferocious than Abanindranath Tagores 1905 early
inspiration for Bharat Mata the benign, ethereal, austere
but bountiful Banga Mata the two are almost identical in
their signications of power and prestige. In fact, the
numerous versions of Bharat Mata, including those by P S
Ramachandran Rao, Ravi Varma and the RSS versions, all
retain the crucial signiers of upper-caste, Vedic Hindu
divinity, Aryan ancestry and marks of bourgeois
respectability. In short, in Bharat Mata we have a Vedic,
Aryanised, possibly North Indian, upper-caste, wealthy
even regal, Hindu gure.

This gure then is not a national one at all; it is rather

elitist and highly exclusive. It is also an orthodoxically
gendered one. It is an auspiciously clothed,
unquestionably fecund one whose anity with the
http://thewire.in/2016/03/08/theblackbharatmataandthenationalismofsedition24148/ 3/9
3/8/2016 TheBlackBharatMataandtheNationalismofSedition|TheWire

Mother Goddess has been so drastically minimised that

she appears heteronormative and domesticated. The
orthodox socio and sexual politics of this gure are
familiar and provocative to those who exist on the ipside
of its eld of signications, i.e. the dark-skinned,
non-Aryan, low or outcaste, non-Hindu, tribal, poor,
queer or gender-sexual marginals. These get signied only
as othered absence. Interestingly, these absent(ed)
constituencies actually constitute the majority in a
country that is being beset by a majoritarian politics in
which the understanding of majoritarianism is elitist and
feku. The ruling upper caste Hindu, who claims to be the
voice of the majority is a small 13% minority.

Representing what should be

What then is the national use of this gure? Like all icons,
it seeks to stabilise, visibilise and reiterate an idea; in this
case, the dicult and highly contested idea of India.
Bharat Mata is an idea of what should be but is not. It is a
hegemonic misrepresentation of India. It constitutes a
deliberate and systematic exclusion. And through that, it
becomes the assertion of privilege, a taunt that advertises
the power of those who are legitimised by the system, and
their control over resources, discourse and
representation.

What makes matters worse is the fact that the inuential

social hierarchies that the Bharat Mata icon asserts
semiotically are enforced and reinforced as normative
and desirable in daily life and in dominant discourses of
nation. The many outcaste, denied step children of the
Mother Nation and the Father State are expected to aspire
and hope that one day they too will display the markers of
lineage, and nally become pedigreed and blessed sons
and daughters of Mother-Nation and Father-State.

http://thewire.in/2016/03/08/theblackbharatmataandthenationalismofsedition24148/ 4/9
3/8/2016 TheBlackBharatMataandtheNationalismofSedition|TheWire

Bharat Mata. Credit: Abanindranath Tagore [Public domain]/Wikimedia

Commons

The infuriated nation-state

And what is possible with the blessings of the nation-
http://thewire.in/2016/03/08/theblackbharatmataandthenationalismofsedition24148/ 5/9
3/8/2016 TheBlackBharatMataandtheNationalismofSedition|TheWire

state? Ask the Tatas, the Birlas, the Ambanis, the Mittals
and the Ruias. Ask Amit Shah, G D Vanzara, Ankit Garg, B
S Bassi. Ask Smriti Irani, P Chidambaram, Sushil Kumar
Shinde. Ask Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself.

Now, look at Soris burnt face, Sharmilas desiccated body,

Jahans tragic corpse, the aming mouths of Muslim
infants, Vemulas body and his mothers anguish. Think of
Batla House, Best Bakery, Bastar, Khandamal, the Armed
Forces (Special Powers) Acts and the Unlawful Activities
(Prevention) Act. Think of the custody of Kumar, Khalid
and Anirban Bhattacharya, the sword over Reyaz,
Ashutosh Kumar, Rama Naga, Anant Prakash, Aishwarya
Adhikari and Shweta Raj among others. Look at our own
precarious, nervous and beholden middle class existences.
Now you will see the unfriendly, withholding nation-state.

It is this infuriated nation-state the Durgaesque ag-

bearing Bharat Mata with the leonine state at her side
that Irani invoked verbally and non-verbally in her recent
melodramatic speech on Mahishasura in parliament
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz04kP4Oj2E). The ironies of the
stressed my in her theatrical, And may my God forgive
me for reading this [JNU pamphlet], were of course lost
on her. Like the privileged everywhere, Irani too remains
blind to the hegemonies that she thrives on and
perpetuates. Her God IS GOD.

Black Bharat Mata a full national symbol

And Mahishasura? Well, hes the devil itself or some

version of it that has to be destroyed by the incited and
enraged Bharat Mata. So also the students of Hyderabad
Central University, JNU or indeed the tribal, the Dalit, the
peasant, the factory worker and the minorities who stand
ranged against the corporate-state nexus. They are simply
some Mahishasuraic abomination, the forgotten and
condemned children of a monstrous Union who the
http://thewire.in/2016/03/08/theblackbharatmataandthenationalismofsedition24148/ 6/9
3/8/2016 TheBlackBharatMataandtheNationalismofSedition|TheWire

progeny of the Vedic Gods seek to trump by hook or by

crook, sooner than later.

After all these Mahishasuraic abominations are in fact the

ones who will change the face of this nation, who address
and redress the taunt that the resplendent Bharat Mata is.
And they are terrifying to the old order.

Yes, the Bharat Mata of yore is a fantastic face that has

been pasted over the stark reality that is Bharat. She is the
fantasy of a morbidly self-pleasuring outmoded and
predatory set of men and women who have no memory of
innocence and no appetite for truth. Bloated with blood
and banditry and yet obscenely hungry, they circle as
beggarly and unwelcome hawkers at every known
country and doorstep. They are the repeat offenders that
continue to drain the very blood out of the nation that
they arrest and detain in their treacherous march to
dismantle her sovereignty, to pimp her out to the highest
bidder, to squander the bounty that belongs to
generations not yet born. And they have the gall to speak
of nationalism and arrest for sedition those who are angry
about this and speak of the rot in the state of India!

Bharat Mata is an idea and an emblem. What we need as a

full national symbol today, is a slant-eyed, black Bharat
Mata, crippled by hunger and deprivation, pain and
disease, dressed in rags and chains, howling in rage while
being eaten by a lion and getting ready to be reborn
unchained.

Karen Gabriel is an Associate Professor at St Stephens

College, Delhi University and P K Vijayan is
anAssistantProfessor at the Hindu College, Delhi
University.

What to read next:

http://thewire.in/2016/03/08/theblackbharatmataandthenationalismofsedition24148/ 7/9
3/8/2016 TheBlackBharatMataandtheNationalismofSedition|TheWire

What to read next:

In Defence of Mother Modi Sarkar's Upkar A Thousand

India, Students' to Manoj Kumar Kanhaiya Kumars
Movement Takes In "Cinema" and Umar Khalids
Charge Will Bloom
In "Dissent" In "Dissent"

Categories: Culture (http://thewire.in/category/society/culture/), Featured

(http://thewire.in/category/featured/), Politics (http://thewire.in/category/politics/)
Tagged as: Bharat Mata (http://thewire.in/tag/bharat-mata/), Bilkis Bano
(http://thewire.in/tag/bilkis-bano/), Irom Sharmila (http://thewire.in/tag/irom-sharmila/),
Kanhaiya Kumar (http://thewire.in/tag/kanhaiya-kumar/), Manorama
(http://thewire.in/tag/manorama/), Mother India (http://thewire.in/tag/mother-india/),
Narendra Modi (http://thewire.in/tag/narendra-modi/), nationalism
(http://thewire.in/tag/nationalism/), Rohith Vemula (http://thewire.in/tag/rohith-
vemula/), sedition (http://thewire.in/tag/sedition/), Smriti Irani
(http://thewire.in/tag/smriti-irani/), Soni Sori (http://thewire.in/tag/soni-sori/), Umar
Khalid (http://thewire.in/tag/umar-khalid/)

http://thewire.in/2016/03/08/theblackbharatmataandthenationalismofsedition24148/ 8/9
3/8/2016 TheBlackBharatMataandtheNationalismofSedition|TheWire

Comments Community
1 Login

Recommend Share SortbyBest

Startthediscussion

Bethefirsttocomment.

ALSOONTHEWIRE WHAT'STHIS?

FormerJudges,Juristsurge TheGrowingIrrelevanceof
SupremeCourttoActAgainst theBudget
HateSpeech
4comments3daysago 1comment4daysago
H.K.SatijaYesanurgent anilkumargoyalLow
correctiveactionisrequired. interestratesto
industry/retailcustomerswill
meanlowerdepositrates
TheBudgetIsItReallyPro EnglishTranslation:FullText
PoorAstheNewspaper ofKanhaiyaKumars
HeadlinesSaid?
1comment4daysago ElectrifyingSpeechatJNU
43comments4daysago
DileepMenonForfarmers NaveenKanhaiyaisaCPIM
Budget.Suchagoodidea!. sympathizer/support.History
WhenMahatmaGandhiwas hasshownthatcommunism
askedaboutwestern willNEVERworkanywherelet
Subscribe d AddDisqustoyoursiteAddDisqusAdd

http://thewire.in/2016/03/08/theblackbharatmataandthenationalismofsedition24148/ 9/9