Chandra Sarkar, appropriated a Tantric text called Das ́amaha ̄vidya ̄, and rewrote
it in 1873 with a new protagonist, Bha ̄rat Ma ̄ta ̄, imagined variously as the Hindu
goddesses Ka ̄lı ̄, Bhuvanesvarı ̄, Bhairavı ̄, and so on (Chowdhury 1998: 96–7).
Similarly, in Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s A ̄nandamath, a novel that is founda-
tional to the patriotic cult of Bha ̄rat Ma ̄ta ̄ that soon swamped the subcontinent,
“the Motherland” (which shortly afterwards would come to be identified as
Bha ̄rat Ma ̄ta ̄) is explicitly visualized as an icon housed in a temple, much in the
manner that other Hindu goddesses would be enshrined. She manifests herself
in three different forms, two of which are unambiguously named Jagaddha ̄tri
and Ka ̄lı ̄, and the third, the “motherland” of the future, is quite clearly modeled
on Durga ̄, the patron-goddess of all devout Bengalis. Note the similarity between
“the motherland” of the future and Durga ̄ in the following statement:
This is what our Mother will become. Ten arms are spread in ten directions; in each
a different weapon, a symbol of a different power, her enemy sprawled defeated at
her feet, the lion she rides on mauling her adversary...(quoted in Kaviraj 1995:
139)Such verbal attempts to constitute her as a divine figure through prose and
especially verse, were also supplemented by visual productions in which Bha ̄rat
Ma ̄ta ̄ was unambiguously presented to her patriot-devotee as a goddess-like
figure. So, beginning with the 1905 painting by Abanindranath Tagore through
today’s Hindu nationalist visualizations, Bha ̄rat Ma ̄ta ̄ is invariably endowed with
four arms – a somatic feature generally only reserved for deities in Hindu society
- with one of her hands held up in a gesture of blessing her “children,” in much
the same way that Hindu icons are conventionally depicted. Frequently, espe-
cially in the pictorial imagination of her more militant devotees, be they her
Punjabi-speaking Sikh followers attached to the expatriate Ghadar Party, or her
Hindu nationalist devotees of recent years, she stands in the company of the
lion, the animal most commonly associated with the goddess Durga ̄. She is also
invariably shown carrying archaic weapons such as tridents and spears (rather
than a modern gun), and the ornaments that adorn her body are archaic, as is
her clothing.^5
Many of Tamil
̄
tta ̄y’s visual representations as well bestow upon her an air of
hoary antiquity, even though under the influence of the secular Dravidian move-
ment (some of whose radical followers have even professed atheism), there are
attempts made to present her as an everyday Tamil woman, clothed in a modern
saree, shorn of any divine attributes. Although the official government of Tamil
Nadu statue of the goddess shows her with two arms, the prototype on which it
is based – which is currently housed in a “temple” to the goddess in the south
Indian town of Karaikkudi – was cast with four arms, one of which is held in a
gesture of blessing her subjects. Befitting her status as an ancient goddess of
learning and culture, Tamil
̄
tta ̄y is frequently shown carrying cadjan leaves (but
rarely a printed book, although print capitalism has been critical to the dissem-
ination of her cult).^6 Instead of choosing from a wide array of modern musical
562 sumathi ramaswamy