Revisiting Bha ̄rat Ma ̄ta ̄: Geopiety in Colonial and
Postcolonial India
If Tamil
̄
tta ̄y flourishes as an object of “language devotion,” the more well-known
figure of Bha ̄rat Ma ̄ta ̄ circulates as an expression of what I have elsewhere char-
acterized as “geopiety,” passionate longing for and attachment to a territory
named “India, that is Bha ̄rat” (Ramaswamy 2002). As opposed to Tamil
̄
tta ̄y who,
prior to my own work on her, was quite under-studied by to the scholarly com-
munity (for passing reference see Kailasapathy 1970: 64–119; Lakshmi 1990;
Pandian 1987; Thaninayagam 1963), Bha ̄rat Ma ̄ta ̄ has received academic atten-
tion from various quarters. This may be partly because, in contrast to Tamil
̄
tta ̄y,
she was the subject of a fairly extensive official archive that was the product of
the British colonial state’s interest in her (for colonial interest in the goddess, see
Chirol 1910; Ker 1973; McCully 1940: 264–9). Convinced about the centrality
of this goddess to the popular mobilizations of Hindu religious revivalists and
“revolutionary” nationalists alike, British officials – who were already quite
ambivalent about the mother-goddess Ka ̄lı ̄ on whom she was partly modeled –
censored poetry and visuals featuring Bha ̄rat Ma ̄ta ̄ from the early years of the
twentieth century well into the 1940s (Barrier 1974; Shaw 1985). Although this
rich archive has yet to be sufficiently analyzed, what is clear is that soon after her
initial emergence in the writings of Bengali devotees from the late 1860s, Bha ̄rat
Ma ̄ta ̄ became an all-India personage, appearing in the patriotic poetry of every
major linguistic region of the emergent nation from the early years of the twen-
tieth century. It is also clear that it was not just the obviously religiously-inclined
nationalist like Aurobindo Ghose (1872–1950) or Subramania Bha ̄rati (1882–
1921) who sought her blessings and offered her their allegiance, but even
the more “secular” of modernists like Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) or
Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) who invoked her, if only ambivalently.
Scholarly interest in Bha ̄rat Ma ̄ta ̄ has also been provoked in recent years by
her proliferation in the discourses and symbolic activities of various Hindu
nationalist parties whose members have written poems about her, built temples
and shrines in her honor, conducted all-India “pilgrimage” processions centered
around her, sought to introduce her into their schools, and circulated her visu-
ally and materially through postcards and greeting cards, wall posters, and video
film (see e.g. Bacchetta 1996; Brosius 1999; McKean 1996; Sarkar 1995; van
der Veer 1994). The Bha ̄rat Ma ̄ta ̄ of today’s Hindu nationalists is much more
divisive than her previous incarnations and, as Patricia Uberoi rightly notes, less
inclined to participate in a “secular” union to which all Indians regardless of
their religious affiliation are welcome. “In those days, her flag was invariably
the Indian tricolour, not the monochromatic pennant of an imagined Hindu
kingdom” (Uberoi 1999–2000: 34). Although Bha ̄rat Ma ̄ta ̄ today stands as a
symbol of militant “Hindu,” rather than a composite “Indian,” nationalism, I
would nonetheless insist that part of the reason for her popularity among her
present-day devotees is the hard work that has been done through the course of
556 sumathi ramaswamy